> - and maybe the Gods help out. I'd always rather assumed that the gods (or whatever entities created and maintain the Cycle -- which I think is something rather "higher" on the scale) were exerting a great deal of influence to keep the political status of the world at quo. From the time of the founding of the Empire, there weren't *any* significant cultural shifts (that we've been made privy to, at least) until the Interregnum. The recent degree of change is literally without precedent for hundreds of thousands of years. Indeed, the relevant question might not be, "why haven't the Easterners developed at all?", but rather, "Why has the Empire suddenly been allowed hasty development?". > Re the "physics is different here", I just want to point out that Vlad > is human and functions like a human here which implies the same physics. > We know Aliera knows what a nerve is - presumably she's interested in > how they work, and would find it hard not to know about basic E&M; surely > some Dragon was interested in projectiles and found out about gravity, > coriolis forces, etc.; Morrolan knows plenty about air pressure. I don't > see how engineering/physics/chemistry aren't more advanced. Given what we've seen of amorphia, psionics, etcetera, we can take it that our understanding of physics is, at best, an incomplete description of the physical laws that work in the vicinity of Dragaera. The presence of the Great Sea of Chaos may introduce enough variation into what we consider physical law that it becomes very hard to experimentally discover such laws -- or to use them effectively once discovered. For example, suppose that it's possible to build an electrical battery, but that it has a significant probability of dissolving into raw chaos. Heck, even if it releases its charge in an uneven and unpredictable fashion, that's already enough to put a major dent into electronics research and industry. There's an SF book (I forget the author, I think the title was _Newton & the Quasi-Apple_) about some advanced aliens covertly infiltrating a society of approximately 17-th century tech development, I think in order to oppose an oppressive government or some such. But the high-tech tricks that they used had the unwitting side-effect of torpedoing that society's equivalent of Newton, who was busily trying to understand basic physics. He couldn't get anyone to listen to him, because the aliens had easy-to-demonstrate counterexamples to all his "laws". Alexx Alexx Kay Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers alexx at world.std.com http://world.std.com/~alexx Another News Flash: A ship carrying a cargo of yo-yos, bound for San Francisco from Hong Kong, was hit by a typhoon and sank twenty-three times. -- from rec.humor.funny