You read any adventure yarns set more'n a few years ago, and you start noticing plot aspects that Just Wouldn't Work Today. Like, no end of situations that only arise because people don't have cellphones.
Well, currently on my Kindle is a tale that involves a terrifyingly difficult effort to reach an inaccessible plateau somewhere in South America. And I keep wondering: why couldn't someone, back when the expedition was organized, have pulled out his Magic Elf Box and looked up "Zeppelin Rentals"?
Because Zeppelins were a thing in 1912, right?
Update: still on the same book, though now they've just decided to ignore for the moment the impossible task of getting back down from the jungly plateau. Because, obviously, they can't fabricate a thousand-foot-long rope from indigenous materials. I guess there'll be some clever solution later on, possibly involving blue clay. Either that, or they die up there and some later expedition retrieves the narrator's notes.
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