That is a thought. I'd forgotten GURP's 'solution'. I think I was fairly pro this idea until Jeff persuaded me otherwise!
IIRC without checking, even one of my 2300AD efforts for Freelance Traveller (one of my personal favourite NPC write-ups) in Este Toivenen lost any direct mention of Lord of the Rings. (The character was inspired by a real life Yavanna that I met - named by a Finnish Dad and Romanian Mum for one of the Valar).
I'm often tempted to put such references in but always remove them. At least I can't recall anything I've published with a direct Terran 20th century reference. Perhaps I should revisit that.
tc
On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 7:47 AM, Timothy Collinson <xxxxxx@port.ac.uk> wrote:Another difficulty is along the lines of one that I think Jeff Z and I have discussed although I can't recall if was privately or publically (i.e. on TML). Would the The Third Imperium of 1100 have any record of Solomani literature from three or four thousand years previously? And even if they did, would there be any chance of it being culturally significant knowledge? (My quick answer would be yes, possibly, to the first; very unlikely to the second.)As to this, GURPS Traveller got around the tendency of Traveller authors to incorporate such references by postulating the existence of an "Authenticist" movement, whereby 11th century Imperial humans would pick a culture from Earth to emulate. They would - at least to some degree - live like some subset of their ancestors, rather in the way that some real world people spend weekends recreating the Renaissance or [American] Civil War. Because of the late-20th/early-21st century AD was particularly well-documented - and also because it was the last era in which Earth humans had not yet openly encountered non-terrestrial civilizations - this period tended to be the most popular for such use.--Richard Aiken
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