Pyramid Pick
Fluid Mechanics: Technology in the World of Blue Planet
Published by Biohazard Games
Written by Jeffrey Barber, Greg Benage, Greg Porter, Brian Schoner, and Jason Werner
128 pages, hardbound; $23.95
Fluid Mechanics bills itself as a guide to technology in Blue Planet. If you translate that as "gun and toy catalog," think again. The book includes some toys, sure, but more than that it looks at how technology affects all aspects of life in the Blue Planet universe. So while Fluid Mechanics details diamond machetes, it devotes equal space to wetsuits and an essay on fusion reactors in 2199. The technology is divided into four broad chapters: "Hardware," "Weapons," "Biotech," and "Vehicles."
"Hardware," the longest chapter in the book at 40 pages, covers an amazing assortment of material. It starts with a general overview of technology on Poseidon, then moves into power sources and tools, sensors, materials such as diamond glazing and body armor, computers, espionage gadgets, medical equipment, survival gear, and cetacean hardware -- plus many other topics. In short, there's a lot of stuff crammed into this chapter.
For example, the Computers section begins with a page forecasting the integration of computers into everyday appliances and their resulting standardization, the use of optical chips and DNA-based memory, and the way Commcore, a futuristic Internet, has led to a distributed computing network, where users rent most processing power . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: February 16, 2001
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