Serendipity and the Overly-Creative Mind
Apr. 23rd, 2003 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
herewiss13Life conspires strangely at times.
A) With nothing better to do, I turn on a late-night PBS documentary on the Greek Empire as I surf the web. It details the Athenian/Spartan war and Socrates' demise.
B) Not two days later I'm reading "Worlds that Weren't" a new Alternate History anthology. First story? What might have happened in Socrates had enlisted in the Athenian Infantry and advised the general fighting the war.
If I hadn't half-watched the documentary beforehand, I'd have gotten much less out of it. Funny how you never know when random information will suddenly become useful...
______________
All this Greek stuff does funny things to the plot-generator in the back of my head.
Consider a trireme...designed by Archemedes (the DaVinci/Mad Scientist of the ancient world)...with twin naphtha catapults and a mirror cleverly affixed to the mast that can be aimed to burn enemy ships. Now crew it with a Etruscan named Tiberius, a Hibernian, a Nubian linguist, a haughty and coldly logical Egyptian, a Slavic warrior, a helmsman from beyond the Middle Kingdom, etc. Their mission: to boldly go where no Greek trading vessel has gone before. Their name: Tolmema, Ponos or possibly Epicheirema...I'm not sure yet.
In any case, Enterprise.
::shrug:: don't ask me why, these are just the things that come to me. And the Mediterranean Basin is _such_ a rich place for voyages of discovery and culture clash.
...God, I'm weird...
A) With nothing better to do, I turn on a late-night PBS documentary on the Greek Empire as I surf the web. It details the Athenian/Spartan war and Socrates' demise.
B) Not two days later I'm reading "Worlds that Weren't" a new Alternate History anthology. First story? What might have happened in Socrates had enlisted in the Athenian Infantry and advised the general fighting the war.
If I hadn't half-watched the documentary beforehand, I'd have gotten much less out of it. Funny how you never know when random information will suddenly become useful...
______________
All this Greek stuff does funny things to the plot-generator in the back of my head.
Consider a trireme...designed by Archemedes (the DaVinci/Mad Scientist of the ancient world)...with twin naphtha catapults and a mirror cleverly affixed to the mast that can be aimed to burn enemy ships. Now crew it with a Etruscan named Tiberius, a Hibernian, a Nubian linguist, a haughty and coldly logical Egyptian, a Slavic warrior, a helmsman from beyond the Middle Kingdom, etc. Their mission: to boldly go where no Greek trading vessel has gone before. Their name: Tolmema, Ponos or possibly Epicheirema...I'm not sure yet.
In any case, Enterprise.
::shrug:: don't ask me why, these are just the things that come to me. And the Mediterranean Basin is _such_ a rich place for voyages of discovery and culture clash.
...God, I'm weird...
