On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 03:45:32PM -0700, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > On Sun, Apr 11, 2004 at 05:25:28PM -0500, Peter H. Granzeau wrote: > > At 01:31 04/11/2004 -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > > >On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 06:19:01PM -0600, Bryan Newell wrote: > > > > > >minor, not very plot-related spoilers for _sethra lavode_ > > > > > >a > > >b > > >c > > >d > > >e > > >f > > >g > > >h > > >ij > > >k > > >l > > > > A > > d > > d > > i > > n > > g > > . > > s > > o > > m > > e > > . > > m > > o > > r > > e > > > > >Near the end, Teldra introduces Morrolan to the facts behind the concept of > > >time zones, and it is implied (a) that the world is a sphere and (b) that > > >they > > >don't actually know this, just that the Orca say weird things. Unless the > > >world has some other weird shape, such as a cylinder or donut. Given that > > >sorcerers know genetics and atomic theory (an earlier revelation of the > > >book) > > >this seems odd. > > Morrolan appears to have had a somewhat limited education before we first > > met him--he was blissfully unaware, for instance, that he was not an > > unusually long-lived Easterner, for example. > But what I said wasn't (mostly) about Morrolan, but about what the Dragaerans > know, as filtered through Teldra. Like, they don't know the shape of the > world. 200,000 years later, they've got genes and atoms, but not "the world > is round". (Possibly some sorcerers do, as atoms are an exotic concept... but > did Aliera have to explain genes to Vlad? I forget.) The Empire appears to have some curious geographical restraints given the amount of time and the Orb-induced power disparity with the surrounding peoples. Given that, they don't seem particularly inclined to exploration, nor to wide dissemination of information. (This was a classic problem of medieval society -- solutions did not readily propagate). Worse, while they do have sorcery and, using it, can directly examine things on the scale of genetics or atoms, they don't appear to have especially advanced knowledge of geometry or other abstract mathematical disciplines. As such, I can readily believe that no one has *bothered* to conceive and conduct the experiments necessary to prove a spherical earth and then tell everyone about it. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp