My Favourite Science Fiction, Fantasy, D&D, and History Books

Isaac Asimov's view of Nuclear Power is rather naive due in part to the newness of it in his time. To think that Nuclear Reactors could be reduced to the size of a walnut (see Techman section in Foundation and Empire) AND be safe is very Foolish, and that nuclear fallout appears in patches. Also he assumes not only that every Planet will have Oil, gas and Coal all derived from the corpses of life forms - meaning life has to evolve on EVERY planet but not to a higher functioning level. And that it will not be depleted after over 10,000 years of history. We ARE LIVING IN A GOLDEN AGE. Oil will be depleted in 100 or 200 years and Gas will not last longer the 500 to 1,000 years. Charcoal will have to be used to smelt metal, only aluminium can be smelted by electricity or mega-deep mines opened. Plastics will have to made from bacteria on a much smaller scale. Then there is NOTHING!!!!!

Global warming IS NOT A POSSIBILITY IT IS A FACT to 30 years or a little later it will happen. It seems to be happening a lot slower than it should! As have the worlds cities are on the cost due to trade, fishing and colonisation. They will ALL flood unless protected. Where are the people to go in a over populated planet and where will the food come from lost farm land? Only Nuclear Power, but we only have 70 years of known Uranium deposits. France has 80% nuclear power and we even import some across the Channel. Dams, Wind, Wave, and perhaps Solar and Thermal power can help but are very expensive and sometimes unreliable. I went done a Gold Mine, Western Deeps in South Africa just west of Soweto (SOuth WEstern TOwnships) which is the deepest in the world and needs cooling water pipes to stop the workers dying from the Earth's core which is used to power the whole mine and near by town. Helium-3 of course is the answer, see moonbase.

The boys and girls at Harwell or Culham (I forget which) Southern Oxfordshire better get a move on with their 'Joint European Torus' a toroid shaped magnetic field that will contain a safe waste free nuclear fusion reaction (together, as opposed to nuclear fission: apart that we currently have where one particle hits an atom releasing three, which go on to release nine etc...). It will be as hot as the Sun. This will use Helium-3 commonly available on the moon. Russia has plans to go to the Moon in 2015 and the United States in 2018 to collect it. The Breaking of the Speed of Light Barrier may mean Fusion Power is here today???

I went for an interview with a couple of Doctors at one of these places for a job check Satellites. They had a bloke going round with a trolley of books for all the Scientists. They still make them through-hole large PCB components because they are tried and tested. You don't want to send up Millions of pounds/dollars/rubles? Satellite to go up in space and then break. I always thought they used SMT (Surface Mount Technology) which used much smaller components assembled by a robotic pick-and-place machine, so as to safe weight and space thus reduced the cost of getting it into space. They also have a small Particle Accelerator. We're still waiting to discover one more exotic particle and the ever elusive Graviton. There are plans for a even bigger particle accelerator to be built than the one at CERN funding by the US, EU and Japan but there seems to be a bit of a squabble over where it is to be built.

Most of the Bible stories you have heard of appear in Genesis and Exodus. And if you want to read a short book try Jonah, it's only one and a half pages long. They also say John is very inspirational: In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God and he was God.... There are so many different versions of this opening. It could be interpreted loosely as a code or programme for the Gravitational Constant, DNA... I suppose. All four Gospels tell the story of Christ many bits being repeated in each. John was an apostle and I believe didn't write this book of the Bible until over 100 years old in Ephesus in the Roman Province of Asia and the Ionic coast (West Turkey today). It was home to one of the 7 wonders of the world, compiled by the Greeks and surprise, surprise all two of them being Greek. The last Greeks were expelled from Ephesus by the Turks in 1900. To be re-populated by Muslim Kosovan's expelled by the Serbs.

I think she quite liked me, I quite good at the old one-liners. She had her own big house which only she lived in but she wasn't really my type. I should have recommended her to Christian Friend's Fellowship an organisation that brings couples together through local meetings and group holidays.

No one knew if a nuclear bomb when released would lead to a never ending chain reaction that would consume the entire atmosphere and not peter out. The computer boffins at Albuquerque, New Mexico (the oldest State Capital in America founded by the Spanish) developed the first computers to figure this out during the Manhattan Project in WWII. Los Alamos near by was the site of 'Trinity' the first nuclear explosion: ground zero. Albuquerque became the hub of the world computer industry for a short time and Bill Gates was based their hacking away at his MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) and BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). What hacker of the '80's with a cheap personal computer that plugged into your TV didn't use this. Programming seems to have gone out of fashion with the rise of the Internet, colleges still teach internet languages such as PERL which is only used as far as I can ascertain to strip internet sites and USENET newsgroups of you Email to be compiled in millions on CD's and sent out as SPAM'S (from Monty Pithen’s SPAM, SPAM, SPAM and EGG'S sketch). Check my article 25 years since the first Microcomputer (longer now since I wrote the article) at http://baec.tripod.com/ for a bit of Tech. Nostalgia.

For a time I liked him because his Science is well researched and based on fact generally. He invented the geostationary satellite and now lives in Sri Lanka a country with over 10,000 years of history thanks to it's warm climate with many ancient Palaces and Fortresses.

2001 for and away his most famous book. It starts at the dawn of history when mankind's primitive half-ape ancestors find a strange Monolith has arrived. It soon teaches them to use tools which they use for hunting. Turning them from a half-starved group on the edge of survival into a well feed group with a very promising future.

Unfortunately he got his dates wrong thinking we would have a strong space-faring culture by 2001. I strange alien monolith is discovered on the Moon by it's magnetic signature which seems to broadcast to a Moon of Jupiter. I mission is setup to go and explore that Moon using a Spacecraft controlled by a Self-aware Computer name HAL (Many have postulated that this is a dig at IBM which is one letter apart, but it is probably just a co-incidence, it actually stands for euristic ALgorithm). Two crew are awake during the mission to Jupiter and three more are in suspended animation specially picked for their skills in science and exploration, to be awakened when they arrive. But the computer goes mad and things don't work out to plan...

They actually made a film of this book. Unfortunately it lost many of it's nuances in being transferred to the big screen. And having Rigsby the Landlord from Rising Damp and one of the key Astronauts/Scientists seemed a funny choice.

There is also a new film called 'HAL's Legacy' which was made in 2001 staring Arthur C. Clarke and Garry Kasparov: 'How close are we to building a real HAL-9000 computer?'.

The City and the Stars is about the last City on Earth where people are retrieved from the Eternity Circuits in the Hall of Creation to live 1,000 years and go back again to live once more later. The city is run by a giant Computer and Robots and the Eternity circuits ensure it stands for ever. A City that will stand against Time itself! But, occasionally something unusual happens, a new life is created! Called Uniques they have a desire to escape the City and change history. Alvin the Hero is one such unique, summoned from the hall of creation fully grown and given adopted parents and a tutor. To help him in his quest is the Jester put in the City by it's creators to liven things up by playing pranks now and again. In order to play his pranks he is given deep access to the circuits that control the City and can use them to help Alvin in his quest, he however can not leave the City like all it's inhabitants due to a in built fear. Only Alvin, a unique can! But he must unseal the gate first...

Rendezvous with Rama is about a alien Starship which arrives in the Solar System. Only one human spaceship is near enough to reach and explore it before it travels on and leaves the Solar System. Once inside they discover it is staffed by Biots (BIological RobOTS) which our just head, arms, legs, a brain and a 'battery', no digestive track or reproductive systems. They our created out a Biological/Chemical soup and highly advanced machines so they don't have to remain alive in Deep Space. He also postulated Simps (Smart Genetically Engineered Chimps) to work in Space as they eat less, take up less space and require less rocket fuel to lift into orbit (which is VERY expensive). Why not use Dwarfs?

A Fall of Moondust a book about a Moonduster craft that travels over dusty areas of the moon carrying tourists. It sinks and the book goes into various suggested methods to rescue it and it's inhabitants. Testing the Space Engineers to their limit with the clock ticking. The passengers go through all sorts of emotions like fear, hope, and boredom while waiting to see whether they live or die. Only a lone scientist on a Spacestation circling the moon knows where the duster sank using infra-red technology.

The Fountains of Paradise set in a fictionalised (10 degrees South so it is on the equator) version of Clarke's adopted home of Sri Lanka, one of his most personal. The story is based around the fantastical yet scientifically supportable idea of a 'Space Elevator', a 'tower' from the earth to geo-stationary orbit, 23,000 miles "high". The purpose is to make access to space routine, safe and cheap, and the 22nd century-set novel essentially follows Vannevar Morgan in his quest to complete this monumental project.

As luck would have it I have already written a bit about the Space Elevator at www.colonization.biz/orion/elevator.htm.

Incidentally Arthur C. Clarke has postulated that genetically engineered life could exist in the upper Jovian atmosphere. They would be giant zeppelin like creatures that float and life of gas, or eating vegetable matter that feeds of the heat generated by the pressure of the Jovian Atmosphere. They could be harvested for meat. The surface area of Jupiter is about 100 times that of Earth! Only 10 times the radius. The surface area of the Moon is equivalent to that of Africa. And it is possible the there is a diamond the size of the Earth at it's centre. Pressure and heat make diamonds from common carbon. Heat can be generated by pressure, or be that left over from the creation of the Solar System like the Earth's core, which hasn't had time to cool.

Rhodes was a rich diamond miner and colonial adventurer trying to start the Boer War early and founding Southern and Northern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe and Zambia). He began with nothing and worked his way up, using his strength of character and a few cons as well. Their is also a Rhodes College in Oxford that provides scholarships to promising students, the most famous of which is former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Anyway after working for a Diamond Recovery Business on the Atlantic coast, they decide to set up their own business. They have found an island in the Southern Atlantic of the South West African coast and buy the guano rights to it, which also include the mining rights. The document goes back to a failed attempt to collect the guano many decades ago, the island proved to difficult to dock at. A big diamond mining company owns the rights to mining a vast area of the South Atlantic and claims it's claim is superior, the court rules otherwise. Incidentally guano is the dropping from millions of seabird's who nest on little islands over millions of years i.e. a lot. And is used as a high-grade fertilizer. Industrial Chemistry now provides our fertilizer stripped from the atmosphere: nitrates, also used in the munitions industry. They shell out a fortune for a specially commissioned ship to mine the channel between two islands that theory predicts will be diamond rich. But they only discover a tiny amount. What could be wrong? Read the book.

South West Africa / Namibia: The Portuguese reached this area in 1488, just before the history changing discovery of the Cape and the Route to the Riches of the East, then controlled by high mark-up middle Eastern traders. Explorers, hunters and missionaries followed over the next few centuries. It was made a German Colony set up in 1884, after the Congress of Berlin which carved up Africa between competing European Powers. The German's founded two colonies on the coast Luderitz and Swapmondkand, which still contain a German speaking population. They then performed Germanies first but not last Genocide killing 60% of the native population! The German Government now sends in vast amounts of cash in support of remaining Germans and recompense. The colony was invaded and captured by South African forces in the First World War. No reinforcements could be sent through the strength of the British navy. If they had to spare in the first place. Another German Colony: Tanzania held out to the end of the War, but changed hands at the treaty of Versailles, 1919. During the Cold War Namibia was used as a base for South Africa to invade Angola, which had been occupied by Cuba. Cuba did not have the resources for a long occupation gambling that the Soviet Union could not afford to lose face and would back them up, which they did. The Communist and Capitalist factions still squabble and occasionally come to blows, mainly over both forces having to integrate in the army and Angola's intervention in the Congo. In 1989 the South West African Colony was made independent and named Namibia, after Cuba agreed to withdraw from Angola. It has since had democratic elections, and also intervened in the Congo.

Aztec Century by Christopher Evans: the Aztec Empire has been growing ever since Cortez changed sides in the 16th century. They already control great areas of the world and now it's 20th-century Britain's turn to submit to Aztec rule. This story of war, politics, intrigue and romance is narrated by a daughter of the British Monarch.

They started by allowing Jesuit Missionaries in to teach them modern science, then fought a battle in the Mississippi valley against a combined British and French army which they win forcing them to retreat to Boston and Montreal. They then got a foothold in Europe by a Royal Marriage with Spain and they influence continues to grow. Also details the rather unpleasant Aztec religious practises. The most know of which is the sacrifice of many people on their great pyramids to appraise the Gods and guarantee that the Sun will continue to rise. The Inca's had a similar believe but only 3 child sacrifices are known high in the Andes - little dolls.

Day of the Triffids by John Wyndam Where a bright flash of light blinds nearly every one except for the hero who has had eye surgery and is wearing bandages and a few other lucky people. Civilization soon breaks down as people can't work.

One group clubs together at a local University by using a search light to guide all seeing people to them. Their plan is to gather supplies and truck out to a country estate and try to start again, growing food etc... they get a load of blind girls from the local school (not boys) as they know how to work without seeing and will be used to re-populate the country. No other blind people can be taken the harsh judgement is taken as they will be of little or now use. Disease and starvation spreads quickly with a plague, the collapse of the sewage system and many dead bodies, a lot through suicide.

Another more compassionate group tries to save as many people as possible by attaching one seeing person to a group of blind people and going on scavenging missions to shops. Our hero is forced to help this group and handcuffed to some blind people.

But this is not all. The Triffids a sentient moving plant originally breed to make oil escape their farms and start killing humans with their stings. There pods spread everywhere, soon nowhere is safe. Our hero escape and joins the University mob. He has skill on a Triffids farm and brings his Triphids hunting equipment to help protect the group.

A third militaristic group sets up in Brighton and used blind people as slave labour, making them pull ploughs and feeding them mashed Triphid. Triphids can be farmed safely if their stings are cut out. They set up small enclaves surrounded by electric fences to farm the land. But one by one these fall to the Triphids who bunch together against the wire until if falls. Only sheep survive due to their fleece protecting them from Triffid stings.

The University mob retreat to the Isle of Wight (which I have visited on the fast cat, like being at the helm of a Starship if you sit up front. I've also been on the ferry to France: Le Harve from Portsmouth and Dieppe from near Brighton). They collect and destroy the pods before they have a chance to grow into Triffids. Those who don't agree with the ideology of the group are allowed to retreat to the Channel Islands and run things their own way.

There's also a film of Day of the Triffids which I found most enjoyable when it was shown many years ago. It hasn't been repeated like a lot of good old programmes and I'm not sure whether it is readily available now.

Physicist's still have yet to develop the Unified Field Theory. Magnetism and Electricity have long been linked by Faraday (who invented the Motor, Dynamo and Capacitor among other things) or Maxwell's differential equations (a Scottish engineer come mathematician (magic-a-mation ;-) ). The 'weak' force Gravity and the Nuclear force still haven't been linked in.

The foundation of Quantum Theory was laid by the German physicist Max Planck, who postulated in 1900 that energy can be emitted or absorbed by matter only in small, discrete units called quanta. Also fundamental to the development of quantum mechanics was the uncertainty principle, formulated by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927. Known for Heisenberg cat's proposition: a cat is put in a box and may or may not be gassed, you don't know if the cat is dead or alive until you open the. So what? Yawn? Physicist’s seem to lap this one up though. Another one is that a the position and velocity of a particle can not be known at the same time. Well obvious really, if you hit a particle with a electron to detect it will move. The heart of a transistors operation is Quantum Mechanics as electrons trigger whether a transistor is on or off (1 or 0: binary, the heart of all digital electronics). Hawking’s further developed Quantum Theory into String Theory. Or as it is known 'the theory of nothing' as it has absolutely no practical applications! Incidentally while not at the union debated and drinking he used to test how long he could hold his breath in the bath. He lasted a long time which may have damaged his brain caused his motor-neuron disease which he was told would kill him in a matter of years he has lasted decades! He can memorise complex mathematical equations in his mind. Quite a feat. Einstein said 'God does not play dice'. Well according to Quantum Theory he does!

Also I believe that Quantum Singularities can exist, are extremely complex, and can Warp Space. Not to be confused with a Singularity which created the Universe!

Where did I get all this stuff? I watched the whole Open University Video Teach-a-phon on 'Astro-Physics' at the Library at Polytechnic and the rather more gruesome and haunting the 'World at War' series. Thanks God for Nucs. Or they would have had material for a now series when the Soviets invaded Western Europe. It is said NATO forces could last no longer than 3 weeks on mainland Europe. The forces were only really to stop the Soviet's infiltrating our boarders; give time for negotiation before Doomsday and Nuclear Winter; and reassure the public. Luckily our policy worked, Britain and France spent about 7% of their budgets on the military other European countries about 5% where as the Soviet Union spent 40%! Clearly our money was spent on better things like investment in infra-structure, scientific research and the welfare state ('A safely net, not a crutch?').

What did the Soviets have to show for their policy: decaying nuclear submarines in Murmansk and Vladivostok and a ruined economy. Russia has always suffered from too many borders, too few people (relative to the country’s size: 150 Mill. against 1.3 Bill. in China for example) and off course a terribly harsh climate. Their Paranoia about a new German / 'Western Imperialist' invasion help feed their arms race. At a time when West Europeans were actually winding up their Empire's while the Soviet's had one in Eastern Europe! Not unjustified as Germany has cost the Soviet Union 20 million war dead and the Western powers had intervened in support of the White's in the Russian Civil War holding most of the ports which cost 10 million war dead.

Longitude - the True Story of a lone Genius by Dava Sobel who solved the Greatest Scientific problem of him Time. Ships could not tell the time at sea due to not having sufficiently good watches, this lead to them not knowing their Longitude which meant many got lost at sea. Parliament offered a prize for who ever could find a way of navigating safely. John Harrison clock maker eventually won this price after many years work and four clock's: H-1 to H-4. Which I viewed at the Greenwich Admiralty, London.

Another method was proposed based on studying the Stars and Sun using a Sextant which eventually blinded seamen in one eye. Complex Logarithmic tables were then used calculate ships position. Charles Babbage a Victoria Scientist proposed and partially constructed an Arithmetic Engine used cogs and clockwork to calculate logarithms correctly without the many mistakes that hand/brain calculation accrued. He couldn't get it to work due to Victorian Engineering not having the required precision. The Science Museum, South Kensington, London has built a copy according to his plans and it works, I've seen it. The only other copy is owned by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and Multi-Billionaire.

Animal Farm by George Orwell deals with the perversion of the ideals of Communism pointing to it's supreme simplicity, naivety, and the ease with which it can be corrupted. It is based on the great terror of Stalinism in the post Lenin Soviet Union (Lenin didn't want Stalin to succeed him) and forced Industrialization - he also wrote 1984 (new Speak, Big Brother, Ministry of 'Truth'...) which I listened to in the evenings of 1984 on Radio 4 at the age of 14. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives by Alan Bullocksee above. Details how these evil men gained power, what they did when they got it, and the Great Continent Shaping War between their two opposing ideologies in which 50 Million People died. For my Commentary of how this War could have been avoided goto http://infoscripts.tripod.com/ and download the WinFrotz Interpreter and my largely un-regarded game 'WhatIF'. If you have any problems getting it to work just Email me.

The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Well's - in part a commentary between the differences of the working and ruling classes in pre Social Democracy Industrial Europe. "He envisaged a race of frail, privileged beings, the Eloi, living in a ruined city and co-existing uneasily with ape-like Morlocks who toil underground and are decended from the downtrodden workers of today." He also wrote: The Invisible Man (1897) The War of the Worlds (1898) The Shape of Things to Come (1933) Well's was a committed Socialist and one of the World's first Science Fiction writers after: Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein in 1815 (the same year as the Battle of Waterloo: Wellington and the Prussians v. Napoleon). She was married to Percy Bysshe Shelley. During the Shelley's stay with Lord Byron at Lake Geneva she conceived Frankenstein at the age of 18 . Wrongly assumed as the name for the Monster, Frankenstein is in fact the creator of the monster. I believe Lord Byron was a Poet and fought in the War of Greek Independence against the Ottoman Turks. Jules Verne who works include: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864; trans. 1874) From the Earth to the Moon (1865; trans. 1873) 20,000 leagues Under the Sea (1870; trans. 1873) Mysterious Island (1870; trans. 1875) Around the World in Eighty Days (1873; trans. 1873).

Anyway Parmelion's life in Sparta was not pleasant being half-Athenian a fact of which he was reminded many times in often brutal ways. He did however learn to fight. And more importantly the war tactics which helped him become a General.

In 480 B.C. Leonidas I and his 1400 men fought at the only major Greek north-south pass at Thermopylae (hot gate) in, 300 being Spartans against a Persian force estimated to be 1 million strong, of course many were camp followers. They ultimately were betrayed by a fellow Greek who showed the Persians another less good pass which allowed them to come up behind them. But they held out long enough for Greek forces to assemble, and much more importantly for their not insubstantial fleet supported by trade and colonies across the Mediterranean (middle Earth sea) to assemble and destroy the Persian fleet. This forced the Persians to withdraw the Asia as they were left unsupplied with food etc... saving the Greek states.

Alexander's father Philip of Macedon who died unfortunately young. Had ended the interferment of the Greek city states and leagues in Macedonia who often bought off different towns, opened a Gold mine and started a military college. Philip is also the name of the Queen's Husband who came from the now defunct Greek Royal family. Alexander was training by one of the great Greek Philosophers.

Thus the greatly strengthening Macedonia with the aim of expanding which it did south into Greece proper and then attacking East across the Aegean sea into the Persian Empire's Western most province which contained mainly great subjugated Greek cities and whose Capital was Lydia. These liberated Greeks soon flocked to the colours.

The Companions were an elite regiment headed by Alexander. He was known for his giant drinking sessions and on one unfortunate occasion got so drunk he ordered the burning of the Persian Capital Persepolis (pre-Islam from which the name Persia is derived). Persian practiced the religion of Zaroastroism, the worship of fire. he then secured the treasury and the rest was easy, cities could be bought or intimidated to surrender and army paid. The Greek Phalanx, a line of Soldiers 8 or 16 men deep with 20 foot poles tipped with arrows proved invincible.

Alexander actually claimed to have conquered the entire world, knowing of only three continents:

• Europa: 'Home' - including Greece; Illia (Albania), and Thrace (Bulgaria, famed for their Horsemen which Alexander recruited to great effect. The Bulgars actually didn't arrive until the late Roman Empire as one of the tribes from the steeps of Asia which the Empire had become unable to check, adopting a policy of settlement and Romanisation).
• Asia: Ionia a number of important Greek Colonies, existing on trading and fishing. The famous most being Illium (Troy) which King Agamendom raised, Byzantium (now Istanbul) the Capital of the Western Roman Empire chosen by the first Christian Emperor Constantine, and Ephesus which is where John's Gospel was written and lends it's name to another book of the Bible as well as being home to one of the seven wonders of the world.
• Libya: Africa.

Alexander died in the newly founded Greek City of Alexandria of his many war wounds. He always fought in the heart of the battle to inspire his men. He is said to be buried in the catacombs their but no one has ever found him. Other Greek colonies include the French city of Marseilles and the Sicilian city of Syracuse - home of Archimedes of Eureka fame 'I've found it'.

So what Alexander was really saying was that he was unable or too dumb to send out explorers to the edges of the known world! He assumed the Caspian sea was a branch of the great northern sea even though it had fresh water NOT salt! Also his mean rebelled refused to cross the Indus river, as they missed their home land and families who that had not seen for many years. No Email or Telephones then! A later Greek worked out the world was round by planting a stick in Pella the Capitol of Macedonia and then going to the first cataract of the Nile in Greek controlled Egypt and planting another stick. Measurements of the lengths of the shadows showed that they were not the same length thus meaning the Sun's rays were distorted by the curvature of the Earth thus proving the Earth was round. Q.E.D. Also showing much of it was yet to be discovered.

Persians often hired Greek soldiers, as they were very very very rich having over 100 Stalaps (provinces) in their Empire and weren't fond of fighting. They regarded Spartans as worth 5 normal soldiers, and Athenians worth 3. In Roman times the rich state of Pontus in north Anatolia / Turkey hired exclusively foreign Mercenaries so when Caesar came calling they simply surrendered knowing the skill and strength of the Roman legions. Hence the term Latin: Veni, Vidi, Vici : 'I came, I saw, I conquered!'

• From the foundation of their trading port in Madras, which dealt mainly in Spice (must in demand prior to refrigeration as meat often went off and became unpalatable) perhaps a little Silk too. Tea came almost exclusively from China at this time.
• Through the war with the Tippoo Sultan of Mysore backed by the French but with the aid of their ally the Nizam of Hyderabad.
• The War against the Marathas Confederacy.
• Clive of India, an East India Company Bureaucrat turned unlikely Soldier who conquered Bengal (modern day Calcutta and Bangladesh) from the once great but now decaying Muslim Mogul Empire that built the Taj Mahal in Agra, just south of India. It was originally intended that there would be a black copy of the Taj Mahal built opposite the white one.
• The conquest of the Sind (where British trading Interests were strong) and the Punjab (which had a modern army). Both the Sind and West Punjab are now in Pakistan. It's name derives from Punjab Afganistania (were the Pastuns still remain divided from their like in Afghanistan thanks to a British line of Control) Kashmir Indus-Sind and Bacustan.
• The Mutiny caused by several reasons: Muslims thought that bullets they had to bite had been greased with pig fat, Hindi's thought it was Cow fat and deteriorating relations between European Officers and Indian Soldiers due to the Crown taking over control of the Army rather than the more culturally aware and less racist Company. Many regiments rebelled or were forced to disarm only the newly conquered Sikh's and Nepalese Ghurka's remained loyal with a few totally European regiment's. Once they rebelled however the regiments didn't really have a strategy of what to do so just holed up in the Red Fort, Delhi giving the British time to bring in a few new regiments and allowing them to conquer bit by bit instead of facing the whole force. Captured rebels were chained to a cannon and blown apart. Some Muslim's were even smeared with pig fat and had pork sausages put in their mouth. But some British officers refused to carry out such barbaric and insulting practices.
• The two Afghan Wars. The mountainous terrain of this country leads it to good defensive warfare. Old British Indian weapons were sold to Arabia and then smuggled to Afghanistan. These wars were prosecuted in part to prevent Russian influence in Central Asia stretched further and ultimately making War of British India and getting their 'Warm Water Port' which they so longed for.
• Indian contributions to the First and Second Worlds Wars. In the First World War Indian Troops conquered the Ottoman Turk province of Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. Where farming was invented on the rivers Tigerus and Euphrates. It gradually spread West reaching Britain about 6,000 years later. Farming was also co-invented in the Indus valley, South-east Asia and Mexico: all warm climates. The semi-independent Maharajah also helped in the War effort by for example providing Ambulances for the Wounded. They had maintained their independence by allying with the British seeing their superior weaponry for one thing.

  Iraq was ruled for a time from India and there were plans to Colonise it with Indian settlers such as happened in Mombassa, Kenya (in order to help build the railway to Uganda and run the Civil Service as it was uncomfortably hot for Europeans) and Natal, South Africa (where they cut the Cain and later largely rose to the middle classes), Fiji (where the cut the Cain again and now are in a dispute with the local Polynesians), Singapore, and even Guyana, South America (yes Cain again, to replace African slaves when slavery was outlawed) on the Caribbean. Carrib's were the original inhabitants of this sea but were wiped out by the Spanish through disease and forced labour - they practiced cannibalism, but you probably know this from Sid's manual anyway.

  And more up to date South Asian's have moved in the Britain to run our Cotton Mills (now closed and relocated to countries with cheaper labour), Shops and work as Doctors in our hospital's. The reason the name Patel is quite common is that it means village headman i.e. the only one in the village with enough money to emigrate. Another Indian word is Zaminder meaning money lender who were and presumably still are much hated. They were needed as the British taxed the Ruts - Peasant Farmers to the hilt, rather unfairly. Partly to support the army. Meaning they always had to borrow to survive particularly with a dalry system. The tax was eventually reduced somewhat at the bequest of British Manufacturers who wanted a new market for their Wares. This incidentally increased productivity somewhat by providing the Peasants with better tools etc... You must remember this was in a time when Britain sent young boys down the mines, there were workhouses and Britain didn't intervene to feed the Irish in the Potato Famine when vast amounts of farm produce were being shipped to Britain from Ireland. Dicken's provides a good picture of the toughness of Victorian Britain, unlike our chussy Welfare State. Other Indian words that have found there way into our language are Khaki and Bungalow. I'm sure there are a lot more. The decimal number system was invented in India, a well known fact, hence the large number of Indian Males (Maths is generally a Male Brain orientated subject) who take an interest in Mathematics.

  South Asians have also settled in Canada and the US, a vast number taking up posts a computer programmers with the take off of the internet. Cricket is now played in California. The US in particular take a lot of Indian's as it has a quota system where by the number of new immigrants admitted is proportional to a countries population and India makes up 1/6 of the World's population and train their doctor's for example in English. Indian's refer to Indians living outside their country as N.R.I.'s (non-resident Indians).

  The War stopped before all the Kurdish regions in Turkey could be liberated. Leading to the modern day partition of Kurdistan between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles promised Kurds a homeland. Only Iraqi Kurds have a large degree of autonomy. Syrian Kurds are heavily repressed. Turks regard Turkish Kurdistan as indivisible Turkish Territory for ever, having built hydro-electric dams along the Tigerus and Euphrates rivers which starve off water to Syria and Iraq. The Kurds run a low scale terrorist war against the Turks and Western Tourists.

• In the Second World War Indian Troops fought in:
  • North Africa under a General that spoke all their native language's thus gaining their respect, the Indian contingent was raised three times such were their loses.

  • Singapore which fell remarkably easily to the Japanese being defended by Sea but not land - the British regarded the Malaya Jungles as impassable but the Japanese used bicycles. The only language off Singapore today in English one the reasons it is such a economic success, another reason being that it has major sea and air links. The population is mixed between Chinese and Indians. To avoid ghettoisation no neighbourhood is exclusively one group or the other except perhaps the old town.

    The Island had just been reinforced and all troops were captured and expected to be treated accorded to the rules of the Geneva Convention. But the Japanese had not signed the Geneva convention and regarded surrender as higher dishonourable. So the British and Indian troops were shipped to Burma to build the infamous Burma Railway. Many died of over work, disease and starvation. The Japanese to this day have refused to offer any compensation to the victim's of the Railway and actually have a Burma Railway Museum in Japan. It should not be forgotten that many Burmese also worked as Slave labourers on the Railway. Burma (Mynamar) was once the richest country in South-East Asia but now is one of the poorer due to being under a military dictatorship allied with Communist China with very poor human rights. The Japanese captures also suffered some deprivations and their leader secretly became a Christian after the War.

  • The Japanese gave the Indian Troops from Singapore a chance to join them in the War to take British India. I think about 1/3 joined up the rest regarding it a dishonourable to break the solemn pledge they had made to the Crown. They also regarded it as an insult to their religion to break their word. These troops were moved up to Burma and then over the Indian frontier were they fought other Indian Troops under the British. After Independence the Japanese Indian Troops were rewarded with pensions by the Indian state being regarded as Independence Fighters. The Troops that remained loyal to and fought with the British received nothing. Not even a pension from Britain which I regard as a slur on our Honour particularly as India is such a poor country and many were injured so couldn't work properly.

• Partition happened when greater India gained Independence from Britain. Where Muslim's were in a majority that was Pakistan, where non-Muslim's were in a Majority that was India. That left Pakistan on two sides of the country. And each semi-independent Maharaja state got to choose which country they wanted to be in. The Hindu ruler of Jammu and Kashmir choose India even though the majority of his subjects were Muslim.

  Pakistan immediately invaded and grabbed as much territory as it could before superior Indian forces stopped them in their wake. This lead to the line of control where both sides often shell each other. And lead to both sides spending more on their Armies than they might have even though their countries are desperately poor Pakistan in particular. Also a Nuclear Arms race and the bombing of the Indian parliament. Benazir Bhutto Oxford Educated and one time President of Pakistan said 'We will have a Nuclear Bomb even if our people have to eat grass'. India started by testing 6 bombs, Pakistan retaliated by having 7 (one more obviously!) in the province of Bacustan (near the Afghan boarder) whose Citizens had hijacked an Airplane to try and prevent this. India had it's air force on stand-by to prevent Pakistan testing a Bomb but ultimately choose not to act. Pakistan has flip-flopped between Corrupt Democracy and semi-benevolent Dictatorship under the Army. When East Pakistan (Bangladesh) won a majority in the Pakistani Parliament the West Pakistani's refused to accept the result and sent a Expeditionary Force to Bangladesh. Bangladeshi troops rose up but lacked the numbers to expel them. It was calculated that at least three time the force was required to win, so India invaded and helped create an Independent Bangladesh.

  Over 1,000,000 people died in the Horror of Partition due to being on the wrong side of the lines. Muslim fanatics attacked, Hindu fanatics retaliated. Whole train loads of people were slaughtered There just weren't enough troops to keep the peace. 200,000 West Punjabi's were forcibly converted to Islam against it direct teachings. Lahore is the Capital of Pakistani Punjab. Both countries joined the British Commonwealth of Nations but gave up the Crown after 2 years.

  In the following decades the population of South Asia went up greatly. Especially because of Irrigation Works, Cutting down Jungle, and the Green Revolution in selective breeding of Plants for maximum Food yield. There are many Ruts in India who scrape a living growing Rice, Dye, Cotton, Tea... Working the land is very labour intensive.

• The book covers other things such a Ghandi's Salt march, the Scandals of the Maharaja's particularly when they visited Europe (most were educated at Oxford or Cambridge) and a chapter called 'A Hearty Desire: Sex, Religion and the Raj'.
• The British never really intended to build an Empire in India their focus was trade. But a war with France forced them to expand in order to weaken the French and protect their trading interests. Then boarders became unsafe and had to be pacified. The final aim was preparation for Self-Government through increased education of India's Inhabitants. The problem with India is that it is rich in food, having up to three harvests a year which can support a huge population but poor in natural resources. For example their is very little remained forest cover.
• One of the most famous authors of Colonial India was Rudyard Kipling whose most famous work was the Jungle Book (1894). Not many Europeans actually settled in Colonial India. Perhaps 300,000 mainly Administers, Soldiers, Wife’s and Tea planters out of 300,000,000. Tea improves concentration, and helps you think better, and be imaginative. Probably due to the oppressive heat and disease. 1/3 of the Dominion was run by Maharajahs. A Bengali friend of mine said Maharajahs started in Bangladesh. Incidentally Cliff Richard was also born in India.
• India doesn't have a common language. They include Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada (Kanarese), Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Meithei (Manipuri), Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Telugu, Tamil, and Urdu (spoken in Pakistan as well). The rulers of the Mogul Empire spoke Persian and imported many Muslim settlers from Afghanistan and Persia. But there are actually 112 widely spoken languages. English is increasingly widely spoken by the middle classes of which their number is 200,000,000-300,000,000 out of 1,000,000,000. And some of the new generation speak it as their sole language.

He speaks English and Swahili but can other write his name in Arabic. Aden it's Capital was once a refuelling port for British ships on the way the India which had come through the Suez canal.) and Zanzibar. This trade drove many African's south into Southern Africa such as the Zulu's who conquered their own Kingdom in a brutal manor. Livingston was forced to rely on Arab slavers to explore the Zambezi river area, which boarders Zambia and Zimbabwe. European Engineers built the Kariba Dam and lake to supply the needs off these two countries in Colonial times.

The remaining 96 codes are assigned to common punctuation marks, the digits 0 through 9, and the uppercase and lowercase letters of the Roman alphabet. If memory serves me correctly: 0 starts at character 48, Capital A at 65, and Smallcase a 97. So by just AND'ing uppercase letters with 32 you can get the lowercase equivalent. There is also a 256 character version which includes mathematical symbols, foreign letters and characters for drawing boxes pre-Windows graphics. All you have to do to get any character is hold down the Alt key and type in it's number. It is a highly outdated system and modern computers speed, memory and data transmission speeds could easily support a 2-byte version which would allow over 65,000 possible characters.