Its gonna be a nice tractor! (At least, as a rolling shell, it looks like a tractor!)
My (late) father was a fitter and turner, he passed when I was 19 (almost twenty years ago now..), and I regret not spending more time in the shed(s) with him learning move about mechanical contrivances and torque tolerances, and milling, and etc.
It is something that I really appreciate the mathematical beauty of engineering in now, and these old vehicles have it in droves.
Yes there's something inherently fascinating in how old machinery works. The skills of fitter and turners are next level and translate into other practical skills as they just have a good understanding of how things work. I know one who retired from Fords at 50 and went on to build his own planes. It's a little sad Jamie can't pass on his own skills in that way.
Some guy in the staffroom yesterday, dubious of even Jamie's skills (the guy had a Land Rover he was rebuilding, a first for him) asked me whether I liked cars. 'Well, I know a lot about Land Rovers and really enjoy learning about their mechanics' I said, putting him in his place. Jamie went on to say he'd rebuilt many engines and does his own wiring and so on. The guy was a bit gobsmacked. His version of the rebuild, we found out, was outsourcing a lot of the work to mechanics. Jamie's theory is that he can learn anything, and once you have done a number of mechanical jobs, the skills and knowledge translate to any shed job that turns up.
It does make me appreciate anyone working on this kind of mechanics. I worry these skills are being lost but there's always some kid coming up with a love of practical mechanics. And these old cars being restored are keeping the old skills alive.
There's bound to be a dark age at some point in the future where we lose the sum total of human knowledge due to someone clicking a wrong button on a computer.
Lucky, we have books, and for now, at least, people can still read, but well, our society is so fragile without practical knowledge.
I always think of a sci fi book Mum got called The Feed by Nick Clark Windo - Ai summary because time poor:
The thing I remember most about it is that when the Feed goes down, some peoples minds just broke. They'd look for how to do things on the feed but it wasn't there - a consant searching for maps, guides, resources. People who didn't go on it all the time fared better. To survive, they had to learn everything from scratch. It really appealed to me - not particularly brilliantly written, but good enough to stick in my mind for years to come.
I hope the library has it, I'll add it to my list :) Thank you.
I read a few academic books on the digital dark age when researching my thesis (which was about the representation of death in Art) - so sounds like this would be up my alley.
One of my favourite parts of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is the analogue for TV where people rot their brains.
Today we've just got it in tiktok shorts, and in the palm of people's hands.
Even the news eg ABC are doing shorts! It's crazy. I mean, The Feed isn't as well written as DADOES, but it's a good read with food for thought. My Mum was always a fan of good stories of any kind of post apocalypse or speculative fiction - and still is, so I rely on her to find them for me, ahha. If it's a damn good story and a good read, I can put my love of literature aside :P
Science Fiction /is/ literature. I just finished my re-read of Ender's Game, and I'm about to start on Children of Time by Tchaikovsky. I have sixteen days on my loan and its 981 pages... I'm off to read at least 65 pages. :D
Get off Hive and into your book!!!!
Are you sure the author isn't M.T Anderson ? I found a book called "Feed" available at my library with a similar synopsis.
Yes I am positive.
And lol - just went looking and realised the BBC had made a miniseries based on the first chapter, which is likely terrible, but there you go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feed_(British_TV_series)#:~:text=The%20Feed%20is%20a%20British,novel%20of%20the%20same%20name.
Yuck, TV?!
It doesn't seem like the library has this. I've put a hold on the other one, keep an eye out on my blog, eventually there will be a review :D