Well, of course there were be other quirks to make it alternate, besides simply having an Internet built from 1970 tech. Like, personal robots remote controlled from a central mainframe installed on every block. I dunno. Maybe the OPEC oil embargo led to a real collapse of the US economy.
Or maybe the Cuban missile crisis escalated into a real shooting war, and the US and USSR are both rubble.
I was thinking Britain in 1970 might be an interesting setting for this. Or heck, 1975. Then you'd have real punks! It's already a depressing and grey place. Imagine the already conservative government has cracked down on travel and civil rights - the punks have something to rebel against besides grimy public housing and boredom. Everyone in the country needs an ID card - a hold-over from WWII that was reintroduced when America went belly-up in 1963.
Sure, it's just a rehash of cyberpunk plots and what not, but I think with some work I could make it original.
In the 1960s' heist-caper movie "The Italian Job," Michael Caine hires a computer science professor to write a program that will screw up a traffic control computer in Italy. He and his team sneak into the computer facility, and switch spools. They use the resulting traffic jam as cover for a gold heist. Hmm. Ideas, ideas...
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Date: 2002-09-11 12:39 pm (UTC)Or maybe the Cuban missile crisis escalated into a real shooting war, and the US and USSR are both rubble.
I was thinking Britain in 1970 might be an interesting setting for this. Or heck, 1975. Then you'd have real punks! It's already a depressing and grey place. Imagine the already conservative government has cracked down on travel and civil rights - the punks have something to rebel against besides grimy public housing and boredom. Everyone in the country needs an ID card - a hold-over from WWII that was reintroduced when America went belly-up in 1963.
Sure, it's just a rehash of cyberpunk plots and what not, but I think with some work I could make it original.
In the 1960s' heist-caper movie "The Italian Job," Michael Caine hires a computer science professor to write a program that will screw up a traffic control computer in Italy. He and his team sneak into the computer facility, and switch spools. They use the resulting traffic jam as cover for a gold heist. Hmm. Ideas, ideas...