Where did the week go?

[wyld_dandelyon]

I turn around, and it's Friday already!

So, my NaNoWriMo story is set in an alternate Chicago where people ride horses, bicycles, or surreys, and get power from windmills.

What local color would you suggest ought to be there?

Or, if you prefer, tell me what cool devices might exist in a world with no fossil fuels or computers! 

They do have electricity (though no grid), and  plastics (or something similar) are grown from the byproducts of bacteria. 

Comments

[musicmutt.livejournal.com]

"Where did the week go?"

They took it to little factory just outside Mississauga where they ground it up to make mattress stuffing.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

I approve of these tags. :D

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Wow, no fossil fuels? I didn't remember, from what I heard you read at Cap, it being that different a world -- though I don't think you went into much explanation of the technological and economic basis of the world, I took it for more steampunk -- so no common use of liquid petroleum-based transportation fuels, but having coal based industry, so you have trains, factories in a location without water (or really good wind) power, and steel.

If your Chicago is a big city, it has to be a transport hub, which presumably means linking Great Lakes shipping to the inland rivers and the canal systems (which were just getting going when they were supplanted by railroads).

I could chat about this sort of world building background stuff for a long time, but I gotta run now, and if you're trying to NaNoWriMo you probably don't want to spend a huge amount of time on this now, especially for a world that you already know in your own head...