It's funny that the page references a
Twilight Zone episode. I've never seen that episode, and it doesn't even sound familiar despite the fact that I read a summary of the show (including every episode) just last year. But the Are You A Connecticut Yankee thing is a common geek conversation. People often get excited about the idea until they realize that there'd be a lot of this:
Time Traveler:
You don't need to use buttons for everything! You should be using zippers!Locals:
WTF are 'zippers'?Time Traveler: [laboriously and awkwardly describes zippers]
Locals:
Sure, sure. Can you make one?Time Traveler:
Yeah! Um, I mean, I think I can. Well, actually, now that I think about it, I'm really not sure how the hell they work. Never mind.Locals:
Fabulous.Marco Polo had it easy. You'd be more likely to be the town eccentric than Leonardo da Vinci.
One of the rec.arts.sf boards frequently had threads about it. You're stranded on an Earth-like alien planet, no proper tools or advanced anything,
Gilligan's Island-style, and you need to build a radio transmitter to signal for help. At first, lots of people would say 'Easy!', but then they'd point out difficulties in each others' plans, and the enthusiasm would fade . . . .
It's hard to do shit from scratch. Leo Frankowski wrote an interesting update to the Connecticut Yankee problem (
The Cross-Time Engineer and sequels), set in medieval Poland (the protagonist is trying to get things up to speed to head off the upcoming Mongol invasion), but the books get painfully sexist as they go along.
