tlb wrote:Note that both Path of the Fury and On Basilisk Station were published in 1992. So in one story he had a sentient computer and in the other computers were "underestimated" by him? How does that does make sense?
I think an author writing SciFi taking place in the future explicitly postulates some fictional elements, while everything else is more or less extrapolated from how our world could develop.
Possibly, in Path of the Fury, he wanted to write about sentient computers as fictional element - thus, he didn't need to extrapolate "real world" development. And in the Honorverse, his explicitly fictional elements are Gravitics, Hyperspace and Telepathic species, wereas e. G. the generation ships, or fields like biology/genetics or linguistics could be seen as "extrapolated" from real world development. Clearly, wine, beer and food are also "extrapolated" from the real world, given that people tend to eat and alcoholize whatever they find where they live.
Just inventing everything new without checking back on the real world just prevents him from writing interesting stories, and makes it hard for the readers to relate to the world, they're too busy with trying to interpret the strange world instead of concentrating with the story.