On Wed, 4 May 2016 01:12:27 +0100, you wrote to Freelance Traveller:

>On 3 May 2016, at 23:27, Freelance Traveller <xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com> wrote:
`
>>What sort of anachrofuture("AF", henceforth) technology can you think of
>>to incorporate into Traveller? I'm not suggesting that if you choose to
>>incorporate such AF tech that you go hog-wild and shove it into every
>>corner, but I'd like to see what sort of ideas you can come up with, and
>>why.

>I'm not quite sure what you mean, are you thinking of something like the
>space pirate with a slide rule between his teeth on the 1959 cover of
>Astounding magazine?

Well, not exactly a pirate with a slide rule between his teeth, but that
points at another example of AFtech from past SF - Computers as big as a
house, but the technician or scientist needing to do a quick calculation
whips out a slide rule (or "slip stick") to come up with his answer.

Another "more modern" idea might be _not_ having smartphones (which are
powerful enough to emulate an Apple II or original IBM PC), and
"portable calculation" is at the TI-30 or HP-48 level.

>Traveller has so many already, like blade skill being so common that
>blade is even a mustering out benefit.

There's actually a case for that, if you don't know about "frangible"
ammo for slug throwers - you don't want to be firing bullets where they
can smash through walls and other inanimate things and doing damage to
the controls or other essential equipment.

But that leads to another thought: What if the standard shipboard
"sidearm" is a pistol crossbow?

>If you mean that you want a suggestion to add a new AF into Traveller,
>the one that immediately comes to mind is a world where radioactivity
>doesn't cause cancer, so mid tech worlds have Orion battleships in orbit
>and launch costs are much lower and grav tech is not required to build
>large space stations in orbit or on the moon, plus you could still have
>glowing watch dials. Not sure if we need the radium or thorium
>toothpastes for whiter than white teeth though.

OK, this would be a reasonable AFtech to postulate, if not in the OTU.

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