The GURPS Muslim worlds...how plausible?

Actually, the Stellar Caliphate keeps the war from spreading beyond Earth. :D

You must really hate space opera.

I don't mind Space Opera.

I do mind the idea that it would happen by 1684 AD. An earlier printing press is not going to speed things up that much.
 
Thanks. Certainly the Muslims deserve immense credit here, but I'm not sure they were ahead to such a degree - probably a discovery here and there, but "we've estimated the circumference of the earth more accurately" is not the same as having higher technology.

Still, it's a viable basis for saying there could be an IR from here - just not immediately.

My knowledge of Byzantium is rather sketchy, but I am fairly certain that at the time (ninth-twelfth centuries more or less), Muslim elites tended to feel they HAD a significant edge on the Byzantines in tech and culture.
Their attitude to Byzantium seemed to be a mix of respect and disdain. (Putting it horribly simple).
 
My knowledge of Byzantium is rather sketchy, but I am fairly certain that at the time (ninth-twelfth centuries more or less), Muslim elites tended to feel they HAD a significant edge on the Byzantines in tech and culture.
Their attitude to Byzantium seemed to be a mix of respect and disdain. (Putting it horribly simple).

Doesn't make it well founded, though. And I think - I'm not 100% sure - most of that was in the first half of that period (ninth and tenth centuries), before Byzantium's resurgence.
 
Doesn't make it well founded, though. And I think - I'm not 100% sure - most of that was in the first half of that period (ninth and tenth centuries), before Byzantium's resurgence.

I agree for the second point. I don't know enough about Byzantium for arguing about the first, but we all know that self-perception can be spectacularly wrong at times.
 
I agree for the second point. I don't know enough about Byzantium for arguing about the first, but we all know that self-perception can be spectacularly wrong at times.

Yeah. Sufficient to say for discussion's sake, the Muslim world was one of the advanced areas at this point.
 
I love the GURPS sourcebooks, and hope that at least a few of the fun TLs have a ghost of a chance. I just decided to go through some that seemed interesting and not totally hopeless and put them up for discussion. I was going to post some more Roman ones, but if you are so upset I will abstain. Thank you.

Actually, I find these very interesting (though implausible), and would love to see the Roman ones. It's arguable that ASB is a better forum, but it's also arguable that this is indeed the preferable forum.
 
Actually, I find these very interesting (though implausible), and would love to see the Roman ones. It's arguable that ASB is a better forum, but it's also arguable that this is indeed the preferable forum.

My inclination would be to post them here for analysis, as the Before 1900 forum has several of the site's plausibility sticklers.

Then from there we can see what ones are ASB and what ones can be salvaged. Most of their ideas are interesting enough that even if the Caliph one is going too fast, we can still make something worth writing a timeline over from it.
 
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