4.5 KiB
Rational Inkheart?
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Author: u/High_king_of_Numenor *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3mfh4d/rational_inkheart/
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Score: 1
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Created: 2015-09-26T04:56:50
Post:
I feel like this series would be GREAT for a rational rewrite, but I haven't come across any. Are there some out there, or does it just not exist?
What would be your take on it?
How long before you ruled the world, if you had access to that power?
Comments:
u/jldew [+6] (45 minutes later)
If I'm not mistaken, you can basically bring anything what so ever into existence simply by writing it and reading it aloud, right? So about five minutes, give or take.
u/High_king_of_Numenor [+5] (an hour later)
There are limitations.
Without finding the book again to check, I'm pretty sure that size seems to be limited to about a car, advanced technology seems impossible/impractical, and the accuracy of an object seems dependent on both the reader's concentration and the verisimilitude of the text.
(Any or all of this may be wrong, it's been years since I read this book)
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (2 hours later)
advanced technology
Fuck that, infinite photons. Energy crisis, solved.
u/PeridexisErrant [+4] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (9 hours later)
infinite photons. Energy crisis, solved.
Along with such problems as the unfortunate tendency of the sun to rise each morning and the paucity of cislunar black holes...
u/None [+3] (9 hours later)
[deleted]
u/High_king_of_Numenor [+1] (12 hours later)
AFAIK:
Magical items were never read into existence, which leads me to believe they couldn't, as that would be incredibly useful.
The cash fund thing is entirely possible (happens in the story), although It'd be a bit hard to wander up to a bank with five metric tons of gold that 'fell out of a book' without drawing undue attention.
u/chaosmosis [+2] and with strange aeons, even death may die (12 hours later)
Does Dustfinger count as a magic item?
Does a fairy?
u/High_king_of_Numenor [+1] (12 hours later)
Those are living things, which apparently are a different category, according to the power.
I think.
u/whywhisperwhy [+2] (13 hours later)
From a wealth-building perspective (which is always my default first step) I would think using a variety of objects would work well: like gemstones, jewelry, ancient coins. Or ultra-expensive rare commodities/substances like scorpion venom or painite, rare books or the recipe to greek fire... It might take a bit of research but I think you could easily be wealthy. So with that taken care of, I guess the next step is probably figuring out what other limits there are- you said advanced technology doesn't work, but are there any known limits before the cut-off? What about devices that aren't much more advanced than what we already have?
From a technology perspective,
u/High_king_of_Numenor [+1] (14 hours later)
The (largely undefined) limit that I observed seems to cut off somewhere around the industrial revolution, although that may just be because they just didn't read anything past that into reality (although why this would be, I couldn't guess.)
u/chaosmosis [+3] and with strange aeons, even death may die (12 hours later)
Additionally, I'm pretty sure that what counts as a "story" is not unlimited. Maybe the writers were all just being prissy, but they frequently insisted that they couldn't write just anything they wanted into a story, and that it had to fit well with the world they were creating.
u/High_king_of_Numenor [+2] (12 hours later)
I'd think that falls under verisimilitude, however it is a good thing to point out on it's own.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (17 hours later)
Are there some out there, or does it just not exist?