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[fanboi]

The extreme lack of any technology or social advancement. Many fantasy stories have histories that span thousands of years, but pretty much everything is exactly the same technology-wise. Are you telling me no one in the history of Lord of the Rings thought up a gun? Or electricity? Or plumbing? Star Wars is the worst at this. KoTOR takes place thousands of years before the movies, but almost everything is the same. Other parts of the EU also fall into these conventions. They try to add something in that makes it seem older, but they just wind up with something ridiculous like lightsabers hooked up to a battery backpack.

Are there any fantasy stories that break this convention? Like one story that takes place in faux medieval times with wizards and magic and then later it's more hi-tech and sci fi?

Feel free to mention other things in genres that bug you.

Actually... regarding LOTR we are a teoretichal 7th age... as in OUR world is the 7th age.

Thats advancement!

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

The only thing that really bugs me about fantasy stories is how conveniently stable culture and language are over such long periods of time. I can buy that Westeros has a common language, but not that a man can read scrolls written 1000 years ago with no translation.

Any of you read an untranslated Chaucer or Beowulf? Sh*t's incomprehensible yo.

 

[Timbuktu]

Lotr is pretty anti technological advancement, isn't it? Or at least industry. The ambition in progressing with technology is not often seen as a good thing when the stories are about have balance and harmony.

 

[Count Dookkake]

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote.

 

[FyreWulff]

This always annoyed me too, which is why when I made a game, I had guns just coming into being via an inventor in the story. With the clever name of "autoslingshots"! Of course, you also have to avoid the pitfalls of introducing new technology just for the sake of it.

Another annoything you'll notice: in period drams (1950s, 60s), everyone has new clothes and a brand new car. There's never any actual spread from the previous years (clothes, cars and styles from the 40s and 30s)

People are going to make movies in 2050 based off the 2000s and every car in the movie will be like a 2005 Ford/Dodge/Chevy van/car/truck and mysteriously no 90s/80s/70s cars like you'll see right now.

 

[Lissar]

The only thing that really bugs me about fantasy stories is how conveniently stable culture and language are over such long periods of time. I can buy that Westeros has a common language, but not that a man can read scrolls written 1000 years ago with no translation.

Any of you read an untranslated Chaucer or Beowulf? Sh*t's incomprehensible yo.

While all languages change, of course, not all languages change quite as much as English (English is definitely a language with a peculiar history.) With some languages it is easier to read older text without any translation than others. Especially if a language is isolated and not influenced by other languages or environments.

 

[Combichristoffersen]

Lotr is pretty anti technological advancement, isn't it? Or at least industry. The ambition in progressing with technology is not often seen as a good thing when the stories are about have balance and harmony.

Tolkien was opposed to industrialization, as he had seen the effect it had on the rural England he remembered from his childhood.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote.

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

Spoiler

What the hell does that even mean?

 

[Log4Girlz]

I hate how people are credited for designing shit in Star Trek. The technology has been shown to be advanced enough that artificial intelligence systems should be at the forefront of all development AND, they should have hit an apex of technology because of this. That's what I like what I read on The Culture. It deals with a post scarcity society.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

While all languages change, of course, not all languages change quite as much as English (English is definitely a language with a peculiar history.) With some languages it is easier to read older text without any translation than others. Especially if a language is isolated and not influenced by other languages or environments.

Chinese completely changed its pronunciation even if it's writing was relatively stable. Classical Latin in the style of Livy would have sounded as archaic and confusing as Shakespeare to your average Roman on the streets of Imperial Rome.

Languages change. There's no getting around it, no matter what Le Academie Francais might try.

 

[Count Dookkake]

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

Spoiler

What the hell is that all aboote?

fixed

 

[LuCkymoON]

Native Australians and New Zealanders never progressed past the stone age. The stone tools of some tribes weren't even particularly sophisticated for stone tools. Until Europeans destroyed their ways of life in the 1700s to 1900s, technology had stagnated in that region for closer to 10 000 years. Sure culture evolved slowly, but their way of life did not change. Natives in most of the Americas were not that much better off. Three entire continents never made it to the iron age at a time where Eurasians had gun powder.

This is what happens when all of your potential trading partners live in the same environment you do.

 

[Lissar]

Chinese completely changed its pronunciation even if it's writing was relatively stable. Classical Latin in the style of Livy would have sounded as archaic and confusing as Shakespeare to your average Roman on the streets of Imperial Rome.

Languages change. There's no getting around it, no matter what Le Academie Francais might try.

Sure, but aren't we talking about writing (as with your example)? Even if we can read and understand (to a degree) works written during the Great Vowel Shift when writing became standardized, if we went back to that time it would be pretty difficult if not impossible to understand. But we can still make out what they're trying to say.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

This is what happens when all of your potential trading partners live in the same environment you do.

And you have no plants or animals suitable to domestication.

 

[Carcetti]

Easy: magic gives many of the advantages of the technology, but it can't be taken advantage of in the same mass-produced way. Why? In most (bad) fantasy magic is powerful and in control but it's also regulated by rare talent (prophecied hero, hereditary nobility magic etc), morality (magic corrupts, wizards turn into evil hermits) or gods/nature (you abused magic, no more magic for you).

Of course, there's lot more in magic these days. The OP problem describes generic 'fat fantasy' books. You could take something from the New Weird genre like Perdido Street Station which has industrialized magic (zombie factories), magic taught in universities like physics (main character is a theoretic magical sciences researcher), magically powered judiciary system (people turned into human/machine hybrids), magic-powered mass transportation and even magic turned into bombs.

 

[Dwight Schrute]

NEW SUN OF URTH

Youwon't be dissapoint.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

Sure, but aren't we talking about writing (as with your example)? Even if we can read and understand (to a degree) works written during the Great Vowel Shift when writing became standardized, if we went back to that time it would be pretty difficult if not impossible to understand. But we can still make out what they're trying to say.

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
...............................................
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

Bifil that in that seson, on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.

------

This was written just over 600 years ago, maybe 300 years after Aegon William the Conquerer injected Norman French into the language.

 

[Lissar]

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
...............................................
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

Bifil that in that seson, on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.

------

This was written just over 600 years ago, maybe 300 years after Aegon William the Conquerer injected Norman French into the language.

And before writing was standardized as we know it.

"By the late 1500s, under the impetus of printing the tremendous variety of spellings in written English had shaken down into a far smaller set of variants, and a great part of the outlines of the modern orthography was in place. Changes in orthographic norms slowed considerably, and Modern English was left with a spelling system from an earlier period of its history: essentially it is a normalized Middle English system. The result is a set of letter-to-sound mismatches greater than those of elsewhere in Europe, even in some respects greater than those of French, whose spelling was codified a little later."

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html

But that's just our history, it could be different for any number of fantasy worlds. Just saying it is a possibility, not that it happened exactly that way.

 

[Duki]

ASOIAF:

Spoiler

I thought it was implied that the Maesters of the Citadel wanted to usher in an age of scientific progress, and that the reappearance of dragons runs counter to their desires, and so are scheming to destroy them again.

yeah, seriously, i thought that was kind of the whole point of the books so far, or at least how i read them

Spoiler

the tyranny of magic and dragons basically stagnated westeros since the arrival of aegon. anyone who wanted to change the system would fail because, you know, dragons, what the fuck you gonna do? in the last 200 years or w/e since theyve been around, shit starts changing

 

[Anticitizen One]

Actually the KOTOR era of Star Wars, as outlined by Kevin J.Anderson, was originally FAR more primitive than the eras shown in Episodes I-VI.

These books took place in a time long before starfighters and stormtroopers and were more in the vein of Conan The Barbarian/John Carter of Mars/etc. stories.

Unfortunately, fucking Bioware was asked to develop a star wars game and for reasons that I can't comprehend they decided to reboot the KOTOR era into an exact replica of the films:

Of course the game ended up getting huge critical acclaim and became really popular so now all material relating to that era (comics, novels, games, etc.) are based on Bioware's game rather than all the previous work that was established in that era.

For anyone that wants to get educated about the REAL ancient Star Wars I suggest you dig up the 90s Tales of the Jedi/Knights of the old republic comics and books.

 

[mcrae]

So i'm looking for some new books to read, and know gaf will have some good suggestions.

the whole 'random farmboy ends up becoming a demi-god' thing is a plot device i seem to love, but anything that involves some sort of user-controlled, intentional magic, and various interesting storylines

i also really love eragon, and the concept behind that magical system (you can use magic to do anything, but the limit is you can't exert yourself more than you physical would be able to. so you couldnt say a spell that would lift up a car, without killing yourself. to be effecient magicians would use spells to pinch nerves in your brain to cause death, as opposed to decapitating you. you can also store energy in gems like a battery.... the writing gets horrible reviews, but i enjoyed the content enough to like the series.

 

[Paertan]

I just always think of those worlds just having other physical laws than us.

Take away electricity. It just doesn´t work cause their laws of physics says so. Its fantasy. If you think this is odd and you have accepted magic I don´t really know what else to tell you.
Like complaining about Donald Duck having no pants but you accept that he talks.

Make fuel less explosive and you have no real engines. In the same way no gunpowder etc = no guns. Some writers vary this with cannons on ships an primitive guns. But hey maybe you can´t make the gunpowder small enough for modern guns.

The book "Dies the fire" does this backwards. An phenomena occurs and all guns stop working, electricity disappears and gasoline stops working. It´s not about the phenomena but how peopel survive after that. Our world thrown into a fantasy universe.

 

[Tideas]

All this time and no one posted this quote?

"When technology becomes advance enough, it is indistinguishable from magic"

Show our smartphone to someone 100 years ago. It'll be like magic to them.

 

[Paertan]

So i'm looking for some new books to read, and know gaf will have some good suggestions.

the whole 'random farmboy ends up becoming a demi-god' thing is a plot device i seem to love, but anything that involves some sort of user-controlled, intentional magic, and various interesting storylines

i also really love eragon, and the concept behind that magical system (you can use magic to do anything, but the limit is you can't exert yourself more than you physical would be able to. so you couldnt say a spell that would lift up a car, without killing yourself. to be effecient magicians would use spells to pinch nerves in your brain to cause death, as opposed to decapitating you. you can also store energy in gems like a battery.... the writing gets horrible reviews, but i enjoyed the content enough to like the series.

Robin Hobb starting with the Farseer Trilogy
Raymond E Feist starting with Riftwar Saga

 

[Tideas]

Robin Hobb starting with the Farseer Trilogy
Raymond E Feist starting with Riftwar Saga

err ? the riftwar saga is totally about farmboy becomes demi-gold...literally.

 

[mcrae]

err ? the riftwar saga is totally about farmboy becomes demi-gold...literally.

ya i wasnt saying i dislike it, just that its weird how much i enjoy something so cliche, i guess. so his suggestion was on point if your post is true.

 

[gollumsluvslave]

Generally fantasy is regarded as 'escapist' entertainment, where you are whisked off to vistas and worlds that are far removed from reality.

It's the point in many cases - trying to apply real-world logic to a something that is trying to escape from real-world constraints and restrictions is by it's very nature a flawed position.


Another thing you have to look at is the motivations of the author; if you take Tolkien for a good example, his stories were all a backdrop for languages; Tolkien was not interested in technology, but history (looking backwards) and language.

In fact if you read Tolkien's autobiography you will find that as much as he hated allegory, there was a fair amount of his distaste for the industrial and technological revolution in his writing. He bemoaned the rape of the Warwickshire landscape especially.

He was also irrevocably affected by his experience in WW1 (he lost nearly all his friends) and this obviously had a big impact on his personal view of technology.

Tolkien's Elves desired everything to be preserved unchanging and unstained, they did have technological advancements, but they all served the purposes of the race; languages and runes, The Silmarils (works of craft, but decidedly artistic/mystical).

At the point of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien clearly wrote about the passing of the Elves and the coming of Men (and the implicit inevitability of technology) as a thing to be mourned. Saruman's 'blasting powder' at Helm's Deep and The Scouring of the Shire chapter especially are quite clear negative commentary by Tolkien on technology.

Now modern fantasy in many ways was shaped by the template that Tolkien provided (as in the success of LOTR more or less dictated the tropes and what was commercially acceptable in Fantasy), and the introduction of 'technology' in stories back in the early 80s would probably have been viewed dimly by editors / publishers.

I prefer to believe that the author has very good reasons for how they deal with technology in their stories, and there is no 'broad generalisation' that can be applied.

 

[Paertan]

err ? the riftwar saga is totally about farmboy becomes demi-gold...literally.

Yes, and that is what he loves.

the whole 'random farmboy ends up becoming a demi-god' thing is a plot device i seem to love, but anything that involves some sort of user-controlled, intentional magic, and various interesting storylines

He never said he wanted something different.

 

[Carcetti]

So i'm looking for some new books to read, and know gaf will have some good suggestions.

the whole 'random farmboy ends up becoming a demi-god' thing is a plot device i seem to love, but anything that involves some sort of user-controlled, intentional magic, and various interesting storylines

i also really love eragon, and the concept behind that magical system (you can use magic to do anything, but the limit is you can't exert yourself more than you physical would be able to. so you couldnt say a spell that would lift up a car, without killing yourself. to be effecient magicians would use spells to pinch nerves in your brain to cause death, as opposed to decapitating you. you can also store energy in gems like a battery.... the writing gets horrible reviews, but i enjoyed the content enough to like the series.

Brandon Sanderson won't win any nobel awards for literature but he does entertaining stuff in the way you describe here and sometimes limits himself to standalone books unlike many trilogy-loving writers. Read Elantris for starters.

This thread is also making me think of starting a detailed thread about modern fantasy and best books available these days.

 

[Mr_Appleby]

Of course, I secretly think ASoIaF is a science-fiction series about human colonists thousands of years after they arrived on the world.

GETA is a good book in that vein, way after the colonization with legends about it etc. and a world inhabitated by genetically engineered cannibal offspring of the original colonists.

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
...............................................
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

Bifil that in that seson, on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.

------.

You know when it totally rains in april
after being so dry in march
is when people like to go on holiday
and churchy folk like to get about
and go see all the churches
from one end of the country to the other
everyone goes to canterbury

so around then this thing happened right
i was in this pub in southwark
getting ready for the pilgrimage
to canterbury all holy and shit
at night a busload came in
29 of them
sundry people, randomly met
fellow pilgrims travelling
all catching the bus to canterbury.




there's only 6 words in there they we have a radically different form for.

Spoiler

and you left the bit about the smalen fowles out

 

[Tacitus_]

So i'm looking for some new books to read, and know gaf will have some good suggestions.

the whole 'random farmboy ends up becoming a demi-god' thing is a plot device i seem to love, but anything that involves some sort of user-controlled, intentional magic, and various interesting storylines

Tried Dragonlance? One of the main characters, Raistlin Majere is a woodcutters son who gets into a magic academy, ends up physically crippled by the finishing exam but powers on through his unlimited want for power. He ends up

Spoiler

almost usurping the god of evil

.

 

[kottila]

So i'm looking for some new books to read, and know gaf will have some good suggestions.

the whole 'random farmboy ends up becoming a demi-god' thing is a plot device i seem to love, but anything that involves some sort of user-controlled, intentional magic, and various interesting storylines

i also really love eragon, and the concept behind that magical system (you can use magic to do anything, but the limit is you can't exert yourself more than you physical would be able to. so you couldnt say a spell that would lift up a car, without killing yourself. to be effecient magicians would use spells to pinch nerves in your brain to cause death, as opposed to decapitating you. you can also store energy in gems like a battery.... the writing gets horrible reviews, but i enjoyed the content enough to like the series.

the kingkiller chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss is the 'random farmboy ends up becoming a demi-god'-genre as well, mixed in with Harry Potter (magic school-hijinx)

 

[V_Arnold]

1) In Wheel of Time,

Spoiler

Rand

funds an Academy where people are submitting all kinds of interesting stuff - one of them is basically a primitive train running on steam. Also, later on,

Spoiler

Mat/Alundra

invent catapults that operate on gunpowder and is able to outrange every primitive siege engine before. The change is happening "before our own eyes". Also, there is mention of bottled, non-magical lightning. And I wont even talk about other spoilerish stuff regarding the technology of previous Ages.

2) When you have access to the untapped, unlimited power of the One, you do not really need mobile phone or cars, or advanced weapons. Just because in our reality, we have chosen to enslave the Earth and all that resides on it, that does not mean that every other civilization should do the same.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

So i'm looking for some new books to read, and know gaf will have some good suggestions.

the whole 'random farmboy ends up becoming a demi-god' thing is a plot device i seem to love, but anything that involves some sort of user-controlled, intentional magic, and various interesting storylines

i also really love eragon, and the concept behind that magical system (you can use magic to do anything, but the limit is you can't exert yourself more than you physical would be able to. so you couldnt say a spell that would lift up a car, without killing yourself. to be effecient magicians would use spells to pinch nerves in your brain to cause death, as opposed to decapitating you. you can also store energy in gems like a battery.... the writing gets horrible reviews, but i enjoyed the content enough to like the series.

One of the most revered names in sf and fantasy, the incomparable Roger Zelazny was honored with numerous prizes—including six Hugo and three Nebula Awards—over the course of his legendary career. Among his more than fifty books, arguably Zelazny’s most popular literary creations were his extraordinary Amber novels. The Great Book of Amber is a collection of the complete Amber chronicles—featuring volumes one through ten—a treasure trove of the ingenious imagination and phenomenal storytelling that inspired a generation of fantasists, from Neil Gaiman to George R.R. Martin.

Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber have earned their place as all-time classics of imaginative literature. Now here are all ten novels, together in one magnificent omnibus volume. Witness the titanic battle for supremacy waged on Earth, in the Courts of Chaos, and on a magical world of mystery, adventure, and romance.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Most fantasy stories have things like gods and naturally you can't have any progress or advancement with something as absurd as a god running the show. Also applies to the force in Star Wars.

 

[daviyoung]

Need help defining fantasy?

 

[A Black Falcon]

I entirely agree with this complaint, and yeah, usually fantasy stories have no explanation at all for why technology was unchanged for millennia. Now, sure, there are periods of history with little change for a long time, most notably prehistory, when humans lived pretty much the same way for tens of thousands of years. This is entirely true.

However, the problem that most fantasy series have is that they are set in the late middle ages. People who don't know better think of the middle ages as a thousand year long period of little change, but that was not true at all. First, the first half of the middle ages, the Dark Ages, about 476 - ~1000, is almost never mentioned in fantasy (or videogames). There was little writing in this period outside of monasteries, barbarians ruled Europe, and the place was a backwater (civilization, at that point, was strongest in China and the Middle East). There were some signs of recovery, sure, like Charlemagne, but games and fantasy stories just aren't set during this period in the vast majority of cases.

No, fantasy stories are almost always set in the second half of the period, the (High and Late) Middle Ages. The late middle ages to early renaissance period is particularly popular, because it gets you things like cannons and a handful of early guns, but also swords, armor, and chivalry. The problem is, the late middle ages was actually a relatively short period -- by 1500 or so it was gone, replaced by the age of exploration and the reformation. However, in fantasy stories, this transitional period, where a few have early cannons but most still use swords and armor, medieval kings rule (usually not later-style absolute monarchs), etc, goes on... forever, pretty much.

Why? There is generally no explanation given. It's kind of infuriating because once people have hints of these technologies, they ARE going to develop. If people don't know about something at all, and because of being cut off from other people, or from being in a resource-poor area and being cut off, or what have you, they never do discover them -- think the North American or Pacific Islander/Australia/NZ native peoples -- it makes sense. But when you instead set your story in a setting right on the edge of the beginning of Europe's rise to power (remember, the 1500-1950 (or so) period was the time when Europe conquered the world), it's just not plausible to say that they just stop there.

Oh, sure, there's usually some explanation -- "only dwarves know how to make gunpowder and they keep the formula a secret" seems to be a common one -- but seriously, that's kind of a weak defense, particularly for one you expect to hold essentially forever. It's stupid.

I mean, I can understand why writers do that -- they want a medieval setting, and they want a lot of history without breaking the setting, so they ignore realism and just have yet another permanent late middle ages -- but... really, I'd find a permanent early middle ages more plausible. Less technology then, less development, much less knowledge and writing... but the late middle ages? It's too late to freeze things there forever. Of course, as I said above, the early middle ages are kind of lacking from a traditional fantasy perspective, with so few people, so little writing, no nice gleaming knights in shining armor (yes, that was a high medieval development, for the most part; the plate mail armor they're usually in was too, on that note. Heck, even in the 1000s knights didn't dress that way. But anyway.), lots of giant gaps in the history because of how few people were actually writing anything about what happened during that period... I can see why it's avoided. But yeah, the "permanent late middle ages" thing so many fantasy series have is silly.

Occasionally fantasy series do try to justify it, though, which is appreciated; it's better to have SOME kind of explanation than nothing, I think, particularly if it's at least vaguely plausible. One example of that I can remember is David Eddings' Belgariad/Malloreon series (one of the first adult fantasy series I read, I loved it back in the '90s... ), where at the end you learn that

Spoiler

the villain, or magic, or something, had been holding the world in a no-progress pattern for a very long time now, and now that that is broken, as they do at the end of the series, things will begin to progress now.

I'm forgetting some of the details for sure,I haven't read those books in years, but it was something like that. I thought it was nice to have an excuse for it for once, anyway.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

GETA is a good book in that vein, way after the colonization with legends about it etc. and a world inhabitated by genetically engineered cannibal offspring of the original colonists.




You know when it totally rains in april
after being so dry in march
is when people like to go on holiday
and churchy folk like to get about
and go see all the churches
from one end of the country to the other
everyone goes to canterbury

so around then this thing happened right
i was in this pub in southwark
getting ready for the pilgrimage
to canterbury all holy and shit
at night a busload came in
29 of them
sundry people, randomly met
fellow pilgrims travelling
all catching the bus to canterbury.




there's only 6 words in there they we have a radically different form for.

Spoiler

and you left the bit about the smalen fowles out

Being familiar with the passage ahead of time is cheating >:-(

 

[cooljeanius]

No one's linked to the TVTropes article on Medieval Stasis yet? For shame: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis

Oh and Chrono Trigger is a fantasy story (told in the medium of video games) that has technological progress.

 

[EatChildren]

Are there any fantasy stories that break this convention? Like one story that takes place in faux medieval times with wizards and magic and then later it's more hi-tech and sci fi?

My favourite RPG, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, imagines what the classic Tolkien-esque word of humans, elves and dwarves would be like in their version of the 1800's, complete with social and technological disputes.

 

[Dwight Schrute]

My favourite RPG, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, imagines what the classic Tolkien-esque word of humans, elves and dwarves would be like in their version of the 1800's, complete with social and technological disputes.

YOU ARE A GOOD MAN


(Plus, the story is actually kinda good !)

___


Back on topic, I I said earlier, books of the new sun from Gene Wolfe are settle in the Earth of the future, where civilization has regressed in some ways to a middle ages-like society.

I really can't describe it further as I would spoil many of the majors plot mindfucks.

 

[Kentpaul]

skyrim has steam/gas powdered shit.

 

[Dwight Schrute]

I entirely agree with this complaint, and yeah, usually fantasy stories have no explanation at all for why technology was unchanged for millennia. Now, sure, there are periods of history with little change for a long time, most notably prehistory, when humans lived pretty much the same way for tens of thousands of years. This is entirely true.

However, the problem that most fantasy series have is that they are set in the late middle ages. People who don't know better think of the middle ages as a thousand year long period of little change, but that was not true at all. First, the first half of the middle ages, the Dark Ages, about 476 - ~1000, is almost never mentioned in fantasy (or videogames). There was little writing in this period outside of monasteries, barbarians ruled Europe, and the place was a backwater (civilization, at that point, was strongest in China and the Middle East). There were some signs of recovery, sure, like Charlemagne, but games and fantasy stories just aren't set during this period in the vast majority of cases.

No, fantasy stories are almost always set in the second half of the period, the (High and Late) Middle Ages. The late middle ages to early renaissance period is particularly popular, because it gets you things like cannons and a handful of early guns, but also swords, armor, and chivalry. The problem is, the late middle ages was actually a relatively short period -- by 1500 or so it was gone, replaced by the age of exploration and the reformation. However, in fantasy stories, this transitional period, where a few have early cannons but most still use swords and armor, medieval kings rule (usually not later-style absolute monarchs), etc, goes on... forever, pretty much.

Why? There is generally no explanation given. It's kind of infuriating because once people have hints of these technologies, they ARE going to develop. If people don't know about something at all, and because of being cut off from other people, or from being in a resource-poor area and being cut off, or what have you, they never do discover them -- think the North American or Pacific Islander/Australia/NZ native peoples -- it makes sense. But when you instead set your story in a setting right on the edge of the beginning of Europe's rise to power (remember, the 1500-1950 (or so) period was the time when Europe conquered the world), it's just not plausible to say that they just stop there.

Oh, sure, there's usually some explanation -- "only dwarves know how to make gunpowder and they keep the formula a secret" seems to be a common one -- but seriously, that's kind of a weak defense, particularly for one you expect to hold essentially forever. It's stupid.

I mean, I can understand why writers do that -- they want a medieval setting, and they want a lot of history without breaking the setting, so they ignore realism and just have yet another permanent late middle ages -- but... really, I'd find a permanent early middle ages more plausible. Less technology then, less development, much less knowledge and writing... but the late middle ages? It's too late to freeze things there forever. Of course, as I said above, the early middle ages are kind of lacking from a traditional fantasy perspective, with so few people, so little writing, no nice gleaming knights in shining armor (yes, that was a high medieval development, for the most part; the plate mail armor they're usually in was too, on that note. Heck, even in the 1000s knights didn't dress that way. But anyway.), lots of giant gaps in the history because of how few people were actually writing anything about what happened during that period... I can see why it's avoided. But yeah, the "permanent late middle ages" thing so many fantasy series have is silly.

Occasionally fantasy series do try to justify it, though, which is appreciated; it's better to have SOME kind of explanation than nothing, I think, particularly if it's at least vaguely plausible. One example of that I can remember is David Eddings' Belgariad/Malloreon series (one of the first adult fantasy series I read, I loved it back in the '90s... ), where at the end you learn that

Spoiler

the villain, or magic, or something, had been holding the world in a no-progress pattern for a very long time now, and now that that is broken, as they do at the end of the series, things will begin to progress now.

I'm forgetting some of the details for sure,I haven't read those books in years, but it was something like that. I thought it was nice to have an excuse for it for once, anyway.

Not responding to the whole post, but I guess that in some books, where Magic is omnipresent and omnipotent (I kinda dislike those books, actually), we can imagine than there's no need for technology. So no one cares about research.

But you make valid points.

 

[AAequal]

My favourite RPG, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, imagines what the classic Tolkien-esque word of humans, elves and dwarves would be like in their version of the 1800's, complete with social and technological disputes.

Great game, also Thief series is good and has some similar themes. Still Arcanum is really in it's own level.

 

[delirium]

My favourite RPG, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, imagines what the classic Tolkien-esque word of humans, elves and dwarves would be like in their version of the 1800's, complete with social and technological disputes.

One of my favorite RPGs. I want Bethesda or Obsidian to make an open-world sequel a la Fallout: NV or Skyrim.

 

[RedSwirl]

For the most part I agree with this complaint. There are some examples (mainly JRPGs) that might have lost technology or lost civilizations, but I've almost never seen a single fantasy world progress from one technological "age" to another.

I understand that you probably don't need bullets when you can shoot fire out of your hand, but the only world I've seen take that to its logical conclusion is Harry Potter, in which wizards have developed magic to a point where their quality of life is at parity with the modern technological world. They, in a sense, have magic-based technology. It'd be cool to at least see other universes do that.

It'd be cool to at least see people develop more advanced spells, or more advanced ways of transportation and communication that may be based on magic. Even changes in fashion and culture between ages might be cool to see. One explanation I might accept though in cases like LOTR is that you have governing characters who are hundreds and thousands of years old who might be slow with or even discourage innovation. Technological advancement tends to come with new generations.

One interesting example from what I can see is The Witcher. I haven't read any of the books yet but The Witcher 2 kind of implies that it takes place at a time when its world is in the midst of deep social change. Witchers themselves are needed less and less and are thus becoming hated. Sorcerers are also in decline and from the beginning of the game new war technologies are being explained to the characters. It's even implied that sorcerers and sorceresses have exclusive knowledge about DNA and evolution.

 

[sohois]

The reason the world of the Elder Scrolls never advances is because it has a total population of about fifteen and all of the people that aren't farming are busy fighting off bears.

There used to be many scientists in the Elder Scrolls world, but then they all took arrows to the knee and stopped.

Anyways, probably the main reason why there isn't technological advancement in fantasy worlds is because most authors don't write worlds, they write stories which are based in those worlds. Really they only need to include as much mythology as is relevant to the story, if they spent all their time coming up with a logical and detailed history of advancement they would probably never getting around to actually writing a story. Which means that most worlds are just going to be kind of made up as they go along, or be constantly retconned to fit in with earlier writings.

Of course, there are some who write whole mythologies, Tolkien being a prime example given that he had vast swathes of material written before LOTR was published and he very much set out to create a mythology. However, there was certainly advancement on middle-earth, and much of the reasons why certain discoveries hadn't been made can be explained away if you cared to do so.

 

[The Technomancer]

It's one of the things that bothers me about A Song of Ice and Fire. Unlike most fantasy world, magic has mostly disappeared when the book opens, but there's still no appreciable technology gain. Personally, I like to believe that the culture is broken, leading to a decline in civilization and knowledge, because of the hoarding of information via the Maesters. There's some evidence of that mentioned in the books, such as references to automatons made in the past. Of course, I secretly think ASoIaF is a science-fiction series about human colonists thousands of years after they arrived on the world.

There's actually a small possibility of that. I don't know if what I'm about to say has ever been brought up by anyone before but Martin has a science fiction short story from the 80s that takes place on a planet with pseudo-medieval levels of culture and technology that experiences summer and winter in cycles lasting for years.

EDIT: Its called Bitterblooms

 

[Link Man]

You might want to give the Shannara series a look.

 

[Dr Zhivago]

I'd say that the rapid technological progress of the last 150 years or so is the abnormality.