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From: Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: (ReacTor) Five SFF Novels Featuring Tunnels
Date: Sat, 3 May 2025 14:12:29 -0700
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On 5/3/25 13:16, WolfFan wrote:
> On May 3, 2025, Robert Woodward wrote
> (in article<robertaw-442CBB.21431502052025@news.individual.net>):
> 
>> In article<m7j4jeFh205U1@mid.individual.net>,
>> ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
>>
>>> In article<robertaw-D8F92F.22155701052025@news.individual.net>,
>>> Robert Woodward <robertaw@drizzle.com>  wrote:
>>>> In article<0001HW.2DC41BBD00DE1B5F70000A55238F@news.supernews.com>,
>>>> WolfFan <akwolffan@zoho.com>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On May 1, 2025, ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan wrote
>>>>> (in article <m7hfh7F8ibmU1@mid.individual.net>):
>>>>>
>>>>>> In article<vuvrkl$2nm1j$1@dont-email.me>,
>>>>>> Tony Nance <tnusenet17@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>>>> On 4/30/25 10:04 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
>>>>>>>> Five SFF Novels Featuring Tunnels
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Name a better place to hide from and/or look for trouble!
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> https://reactormag.com/five-sff-novels-featuring-tunnels/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've only read the Verne, but I did re-read it just last year. You are
>>>>>>> absolutely on-target about being careful about which translation you
>>>>>>> read.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A couple tunnels that come to mind from recent reading:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Reynolds - On the Steel Breeze (Poseidon’s Children #2)
>>>>>>> Two places: in the giant colony/generation ship (leading to<spoiler
>>>>>>> stuff>  AND from the ancestral African home to the “rail gunâ€
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Ashton - Mickey7 (which I will finish later today - 50 pages to go)
>>>>>>> The
>>>>>>> title protagonist starts the book in a labyrinth of tunnels, and those
>>>>>>> tunnels (and what happens there) turn out to be important for the rest
>>>>>>> of the book, in at least two very prominent ways.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Lastly, it's only a small part of a long book, but:
>>>>>>> In Stephen King's The Stand, the Lincoln Tunnel scene is very
>>>>>>> memorable,
>>>>>>> very intense, and is generally considered to be one of his most
>>>>>>> memorable scenes.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Tony
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Harrison did an alt-hist, _A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!_. I don't
>>>>>> recall much, but I think the tunnel was more a mcguffin than something
>>>>>> spent a lot of time in.
>>>>>
>>>>> My fav part of that book was the coal-powered airplanes.
>>>>
>>>> That bit caused an overload to my Suspension of Disbelief.
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam-powered_aircraft
>>
>> It was not the steam part, though that didn't help; it was the coal.
>> Burnng coal results in significant less BTUs per pound of coal versus
>> burning 1 pound of jet fuel. So much so, I am not certain if the vehicle
>> can fly for any length of time if it is carrying any amount of payload.
> 
> That was a major reason why I was so amused too. My first job was with an
> electric utility. They got rid of all their coal plants not to go green, but
> because coal was so bad at powering steam engines, even if it was cheap. The
> savings on storage and transport costs for enough coal vs enough bunker C
> fuel oil (not the best fuel by any means, but certainly cheap) to run a steam
> unit for a year paid for the coal-to-oil conversion process. Storing coal
> especially was a problem, you wouldn’t believe how messy it is. Oil is much
> easier to handle. A bunker C airplane would be not the most efficient
> airplane, but far better than a coal airplane.
> 
> There are several reasons why the Royal Navy was the globe-bestriding
> behemouth it was during the late 19th century: the Empire Upon Which The Sun
> Never Set had a_lot_ of small isloated islands all over various oceans not
> because Vickie loved islands, but because you could stick coaling stations on
> them. Several major battles were fought because one side or the other needed
> to coal. See further the last cruise of the German East Asia Squadron;
> multiple actions were fought, including the last one at the Falklands,
> because someone needed to coal. Winnie Churchill, then First Lord of the
> Admiralty, had already decided to move the RN to oil; Admiral von Spee’s
> antics in the Pacific and then the South Atlantic merely accelerated the
> process. (That’s Admiral Graf Maximillian von Spee, not the panzerschiff
> named for him, which also roamed the South Atlantic, 25 years later.)
> Oil-fired ships could go faster and further than coal-fired ships.
> 
> There’s no way that anyone would use coal in an airplane if they had any
> other choice. Not happening.


	A side note on Coal and its historical effect: The USA under the 
pretext of requiring coaling stations forced the opening of Japan to the
Western World in the 1860s. That took the overthrow of a nearly medieval 
military dictatorship aka the Tokogawa Shogunate which has been in 
charge for about 260 years

	And in WW II we had to fight the Japanese, by then a modernized, 
industrial military dictatorship. But suffering from bad intelligence
in that the NAZI ruled Germany told them that we would be a pushover
because we were ruled by commerce.

	bliss