In a similar vein is A Canticle for Liebowitz which is about an order of Monks whose goal is to preserve all technology and information after an apocalypse scenario. I think it may have been the inspiration for the Brotherhood of Steel.

It moves through time and shows how ignorance of technology can mix too easily with religious power.

What I really loved about Foundation was the sheer timescale of it. Too much Science Fiction is only on a scale of an individual doing something, and maybe it will follow a few individuals over the course of a few decades or even a couple of centuries and you're left to fill in the blanks, meanwhile Foundation is on a timescale of tens of thousands of years

Half of the plots of the Wizard books are about what happens when someone ignores that advice and does start poking at things better left alone. Wizards are only human after all, and the magical equivalent of a "don't touch; wet paint" sign leaves them so very tempted.

Meanwhile a research such as Miss Level asks, and keeps a log of, what subspecies of henbane works best and does it work better if collected at midnight under the full moon?

While Esmé Weatherwax eschews most magic mostly, preferring Hard Work and Headology, even against Death. Unless magic is really required, when she digs deep into the strongest magic imaginable.

To this day, I don't understand how wired telephones worked.

I mean, I kinda do, since I watched a bunch of YouTube videos explaining it. But then I kinda don't.

Also, basically my codebase at work.

I wanted to like that movie more, just for the novelty. I got a strong impression that the story wanted to be a book, but it was forced into movie script shapes that didn't quite work?

That could be the least comprehensible critique I've ever written, but I did just wake up. If it doesn't make sense I'll try again when my eyes have stopped trying to close.

As a worldbuilding enthusiast who cares a lot about making it all hang together as a rich tapestry and all (come check us out at https://lemmy.world/c/worldbuilding btw) it really does chafe to see someone become a billionaire by literally only making their worldbuilding serve the plot and the tone, with no effort to make it internally consistent or even coherent outside of the main narrative.

Disability in fiction is always going to be fertile soil imo because it's such a genuine aspect of the human experience. Even when fictional devices have answers for some things (a focus spell would be nice), there are still always personal struggles that are worth exploring.

Harry potter, they all go to wizarding school (not that HP should be used as a reference for world building...).

The Infernal City, Greg Keyes. It's set in the elder scrolls, where knowing a spell or two is the norm.

I read the Dying Earth stuff. It's writen between 1950 and the 1980is, I think. And you can fucking tell. It has rape scenes that are handed so utterly casual as if they said "and then the character got on a bus." Got a lot of other problems along those lines too.

That said, it does give an interesting idea of how D&D Magic might look if you translate the game mechanics of spell slots etc. into how that would work and feel in a practical sense and what implications it would have for the world it is set in, in general.

But read it as a historical document, it you do so. It helps that the main protagonist is a fucking unlikeable brick.

I love the Numenara RPG concept - haven't had a chance to play it, but I've workshopped ideas with a friend who likes to write stuff in it. I'll put that book on my radar, another lemming got me going on Glen Cook's Black Company series currently.

I've tried to get into more 40k books, but my first ones were the Eisenhorn and Ravenor series, and then Ciaphas Cain. Kind of hard to top that.

I mean Mad Max has a reason for that, because of the harsh setting and difficult lifestyle where everything is trying to kill you. You know... Australia.

Reminds me of the story of Golgafrincham from the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy books:

The planet Golgafrincham creatively solved the problem of middle managers: it blasted them in to space.

Golgafrinchan Telephone Sanitisers, Management Consultants and Marketing executives were persuaded that the planet was under threat from an enormous mutant star goat. The useless third of their population was then packed in Ark spaceships and sent to an insignificant planet.

That planet turned out to be Earth.

This so much, all the information in the world one click away online and most people just doom scroll nonsense. If money wasn't an issue I'd be a perpetual student, just learning things for the heck of it.

Curiosity was always rare, and not always encouraged. We're the "make the same hand axes for hundreds of millennia" people, after all.

Have you encountered modern shifters? They're fairly involved.

Electronic shifting, hydraulic brakes, liberal use of sealed cartridge bearings, carbon fiber parts requiring strict torque specs...these are definitely different than 70's friction shift ten-speed bikes.

My Forester XT has that for the CVT. I'll admit it's fun, but not as much fun as a nice 5 speed manual.

In the past, it could have been an emulator included in an app in secret.

Probably just Afterplay

As someone who is 25 I get some weird looks when I blankly and automatically tell people I don't have nor will I use apps for store services. I'll use a website happily but the busted ass apps can go fuck themselves.