|
9 May 2006: from Jacqueline Lichtenberg to Greer Watson
Greer:
Your points show your thinking is very close to my own—I can't see any
difference on this topic really.
Yes, Simes do build in the cave systems where they have caves—and Ancient
Ruins where those exist.
Yes, stone is the building material of choice—check out Valleroy's first
glimpse of Zeor. Stonework is pretty high tech and labor intensive—takes
a huge motive to get Simes to do stuff like that. Gens are motive enough.
You wrote:
So why are Simes living longer? What has changed?
I wonder whether, between House of Zeor and Zelerod's Doom, there
wasn't a big bug on nutrition. Someone really got the news out that, if
you ate properly, you'd live longer.
Yep, that's it. Your thinking is right on target. Nutrition and
aesepsis—don't forget that quirky behavior of washing the hands etc,
boiling water to clean a wound, and so on. Very simple things can increase
survival.
Population of North America around ZD ought to be somewhere around or well
under 30 million. The magnitude of the die-out of the Ancients and all
supporting civilization is something most fans don't really quite grasp.
It's a knock-down of population that is truly horrendous. The USA is
pushing 300 million already.
You should be able to guesstimate the proportion of territory controlled by
which larity from the map in ZD.
I expect most of the people live in Gen Territory—but you are correct
about the estimate for Gens under Sime control. It has to be far far more
than the Sime population.
And yes, there has been a climate shift, too. We're in the middle of it
now, and I predicted this back in the 1950's.
We haven't specified what tumbled Norwest into Doom on the advice of Gene
Roddenberry—don't establish what you don't have to in order to tell this
story. The next story may require establishing something different.
The whole situation in North America is just plain not stable, however
stable it may seem to given story-hero people.
I wish I could be more exact in my answers, but I do think you have a
good handle on the situation. Use 30 Million; and—though most of the
square-miles of land are controlled by Gens at the time—the Sime
Territories have been growing and amalgamating, grabbing for arable
land, that being the main resource for Genfarming. If Unity hadn't
happened, the wars over land would have knocked everything back centuries.
They didn't have our farming techniques (source of the dustbowl, too).
JL
Greer's next e-mail
◊
Greer's previous e-mail
Main Population Page
|