I've got lots of questions, but I'll try not to barrage you! I'm wondering about the technology of this technophobic world Adam lives in. (OK, they're phobic for good reason.) But while they've banned most tech, they've got flying cars! How does that work?

Alex Hughes Great question! The tech that they've banned is all computer-based. The flying cars work by largely mechanical means, with most of the parts being like the mechanical parts for cars in the 60s & 70s before computer chips were incorporated. There are two "futuristic" additions though: (1) the small fusion reactor, which supplies a large amount of power very cheaply, and is contained and controlled by electrical fields, and (2) the antigravity unit, which gets power from the fusion reactor, and produces anti-gravitrons in a uniform way to "cancel out" the gravity field of the earth in a variable way to allow the car to "fly." The second is incredibly power-intensive, but the fusion reactor makes a lot of power quickly and cheaply. Both are known technology in this world, and both sets of fields are regulated through very low-power computer chips no stronger than you'd find in an oven timer. Both have safety systems designed into the hardware that, in the absence of the computer chip regulation, will slowly lose power and then "die" naturally rather than blow up. In other words, the vast majority of the technology here is in physics--fusion reactions, electrical fields, and antigravity (the last of which is only an unproven theory in our world at the moment). It's not a computer-heavy technology, and so it's not something that makes the population scared. Ditto for biotechnology and such in that world.

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