Comment by sfRattan
9 hours ago
Reminds me of Lest Darkness Fall[1], a 1939 novel about an archeology professor who is transported back in time to Rome under the Ostrogoths on the eve of Belisarius' invasion to reconquer Italy for the Eastern Roman Empire under Justinian.
The hero of the novel, Martin Padway, gets his start teaching Arabic numerals to a Syrian banker in Rome, and then distilling brandy. By the end of the novel he's running a newspaper and has a semaphore telegraph network set up throughout Italy. Good fun reading.
This isn't dissimilar to deathworld 2, where a futuristic guy crashlands on a planet and has to reinvent modern technology for a mongolian style culture. I'm a big fan
There's also The Lost Regiment[1] series, about a Maine regiment from the American Civil War transported to an alien planet. They discover that medieval Russian peasants were previously transported there and now live as serfs/peasants under nomadic alien warlords (IIRC the aliens periodically cull the humans for food). The Union boys, in tremendously fun if a bit predictable style, lead a peasant rebellion against the aliens.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Regiment
I know Lest Darkness Fall. It’s great. Someone recommended it in the Hacker News thread when I posted the first volume, so I read it after that.