Can Technology Evolve in a Fantasy World?

Discussion in 'Fantasy' started by AndrewB, Nov 21, 2017.

  1. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    Not according to google dictionary.
     
  2. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    Then I will find a better way to phrase my point. Thanks.
     
  3. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Jumping back into this one because I need a break from grading, I think it was Piers Anthony in one of the Incarnations of Immortality books who showed a world with both magic and science. There was a commercial war going on between the car manufacturers and the flying carpet....makers, with a series of billboards attempting to convince consumers of the basic merits of one kind of travel or the other. One billboard showed an arguing family stuck in a car in a traffic jam, with another, happier family soaring over their heads on a flying carpet. The opposing billboard showed a drenched and bedraggled group atop a flying carpet in a rainstorm, while their counterparts sat, warm and dry, in an automobile below. It's possible that two alternatives could occupy the same niche, at least for a while.
     
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  4. MythMachine

    MythMachine Active Member

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    In the rainstorm, you could just bring two flying carpets. One to ride and the other to fly above you and absorb the rain. I can't tell you where the headlights should go, and mold might be a problem... Also, don't bring the dog.
     
  5. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    So yeah, Springhole said it best :)

     
  6. Gadock

    Gadock Active Member

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  7. Forinsyther

    Forinsyther Member

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    My short stories and main book are all based in a fantasy world where technology modernises as it would normally. If you want to make it work you have to balance it and decide how the rules of science/technology mix with the magic of the world. You also should decide if there are opinionated conflicts, and how creatures engage with the technology etc etc

    My first short story is about a vampire who was born 2oo years before present day, and throughout the story the world progresses and changes around him. So the audience can understand the world and history quite easily thanks to the first edition :) That's the plan anyway :p
     
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  8. Fantasy/Action

    Fantasy/Action New Member

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    By all means have society excel. For instance in my novel gnomes are the primary inventors because of their tinkering interest. Many that write in the fantasy genre tend to enjoy having machinery and other advancements come along in a steam-punk manner in that they are fully unique and have their own personality per say instead of the generic that you find in our world.
    Advance the world as far as you want, but if you go so far as that the advancements turn into something that is a general commonality, then you have melded medieval fantasy and science fiction together. Nothing wrong with that, in fact that would be a marvelous mid-genre to write within.
     
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  9. Masema

    Masema New Member

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    One of the best things about the Fantasy genre is that you can make the world whatever you want it to be. I write fantasy, but set in a time when the people are roughly 300 years more advanced than we are. My magic users, however, are still very relevant. I think that is the challenge when writing futuristic fantasy. You need to make the need still exist for magic, or make it unique enough so that the users never loose their importance for a specific reason tied to the story.
     
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  10. Pandaking908

    Pandaking908 Member

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    I heard that in the Mistborn series by Branden Sanderson this exact thing actually happens. I think it can work if it's done right. Also, The Legend of Korra is a pretty good example of this happening.
     
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  11. TirelessSeven

    TirelessSeven Active Member

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    It does. The first 3 books have a pre-industrial setting with a (kinda) Victorian (?) feel. In the second trilogy - set later - the world is definitely industrial and it has a kind of post wild-west US feel.
     
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  12. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Obviously, technology can evolve in a fantasy setting. I think perhaps there's an issue with the question.

    Instead, I would ask: What is it about Medieval Stasis that readers and writers find so appealing as to make it so prevalent as a story feature? What need is it satisfying? What is its purpose?
     
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  13. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

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    I’d call it a failing of the educational system that so many people are taught A) to think of science as a collection of facts instead of as a process of discovery and invention and B) to think of people in other countries and/or earlier eras as being inherently primitive instead of as being people who are/were just as smart as we are here.
     
  14. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Mmmm... But other fiction that takes place in earlier times doesn't seem to be as addicted to Medial Statis (or whatever period is appropriate to the writing). This feature seems to be inherent to Fantasy, and it seems to plug in a very particular slice of supposed history. I say supposed because I don't think it necessarily draws from a narrow period of time with any exactitude, and instead, the props and features seem chosen more for a certain aesthetic than any real sort of technological timeline. That might sound disparaging as a description, but I don't mean it to be. The aesthetic is very clear when one sees it. And more than anything, it's the Stasis part that intrigues me as regards its function in the telling of Fantasy stories. They way it lasts for millennia, and that the people are aware of those millennia in a historical sense when the vast majority of them are described as illiterate and they've little beyond scrolls and physical books kept in secluded keeps.

    It's too particular to just be failing, imo. Like apocalypses in Science Fiction. They are rarely engaged with any kind of realism, are often vaguely in the long ago past, but they serve a very particular purpose in Science Fiction stories. They make for a clean break between The World as You and I Know Itâ„¢ and The World that Comes Afterâ„¢. It allows the writer (and reader) to sweep aside any preconception of where society would be headed. It has a purpose.
     
  15. 18-Till-I-Die

    18-Till-I-Die Banned

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    I would argue not only CAN technology evolve in a fantasy setting, but it SHOULD and settings where it doesn't always struck me as unrealistic. Not the magic, since there are forces and cosmological models we have no idea about which could be covered by some blanket term of "sorcery", and not the dragons or gryphons or whatever since "big lizards" and "vicious prey birds that grew big" can totally work biologically--but a world where nothing more than like Viking Age technology was EVER developed by anyone ever is absurd.

    This came up off-handed in a different thread but there are several series which show that once genuine magic is presented into a world, the world advances forward, period. And the author can decide not to if they want to but that's at best a plot contrivance and at worst just stupid. Final Fantasy, Battle Chasers, Warcraft, Warhammer, Avatar: the Last Airbender, all of these and others are settings which demonstrate that technology, magic and science can evolve and SHOULD evolve as soon as actual forces and powers that make things possible is introduced.

    Or to quote my previous statement in that thread, if you have healing magic, magical wards, directed-energy magical attacks, enchanted armor and weapons, flying magic and interdimensional teleportation and they ALL exist alongside each other then there is no reason the basic soldier wouldn't look more like Master Chief than Jon Snow: i.e., an army of guys in magical powered armor carrying lightsabers with accelerated healing and magical energy shields, wielding magical flintlocks that shoot fireballs. Now imagine like ten thousand of those guys, supported by flying battleships with magical FTL travel. And I remember the statement by someone (@ChickenFreak I believe) was that this wasn't "subtle" enough, and maybe it isn't, but seeing as we HAVE a series that does that already, several in fact (Warhammer Fantasy. Battle Chasers, Warcraft, Final Fantasy and Avatar: the Last Airbender) it's not only plausible but entirely well-worn territory in fantasy fiction. In fact it's already a genre, which I believe is called "Castlepunk" or "Dungeonpunk".

    And even IF you argue magic would never be able to do this (who knows why not, again, other than a plot contrivance to keep the setting "medieval") the fact is technology would. Just as it did in our world. So eventually they would like our world have guns, armor, rockets, etc.
     
  16. 18-Till-I-Die

    18-Till-I-Die Banned

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    I guess one could argue, though again this is pure plot contrivance territory, that it would be too "big" or that it wouldn't "look" like fantasy anymore, but both of these arguments are frankly nonsensical. The fact that interdimensional travel and time manipulation would exist in say D&D and no one ever uses it for anything and everyone is still toiling away in disease-strewn medieval hellholes is absurd. Why? Just to "look" like fantasy? Just to rip off Tolkien? To avoid being too "big" or somehow not subtle enough?

    Forgetting for a moment that there is no such thing as "too much" as it is a purely subjective concept that varies wildly between two people, the only genuine reason things like that occur is cause people are trying to emulate D&D and they were ripping off Tolkien and he, God only knows why, felt that after hundreds of thousands of years of civilization we would all still be stuck in the Viking Era for...some reason? And that's the problem with the "fantasy is set in medieval times" trope is that it has no real logical basis. At best it could be argued to be the subjective choice of the author and at worst it is simply because they couldn't be bothered to sit down and think out what would happen if magic and technology coexisted on a real scale, i.e. 99.99% of all fantasy today. And if you DID, and again I said this before in a previous thread, but if you DID make magic SO immaterial and SO "subtle" that it does literally nothing to advance the plot then why in Christ's name introduce it? Why have transporters in sci-fi if you never use them, or they become useless the moment it would inconvenience the plot? Why have a universe with documented time travel (i.e. the bulk of all fantasy fiction, given how many magical systems work) but then NEVER explore this because it would make the plot implode? Don't want it, don't write it.

    I'm sorry if that seems too blunt but it's always bothered me. Not just me, there is a literal catch-all term for this, "Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale" but that can apply to basically ALL fiction. Maybe it's cause I'm an obsessive compulsive nutcase but I sit down, write out a genuine setting, logically explore what it would lead to, then come up with some steamy soap opera melodrama (because f-you I like that kind of storytelling, sue me) afterwards to match THE SETTING not the other way around.
     
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  17. Bone2pick

    Bone2pick Conspicuously Conventional Contributor

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    Are you actually confused as to why medieval-era fantasy is so appealing, or the commonly portrayed stasis of that era? Because if it's the latter, then I would offer the stasis allows for a world history where technology of the current era remains in play. That's more time to play with feudalism. More time to have questing knights strapped in plate armour. More time for castle sieges. More time for sword and shield combat. So on and so forth.
     
  18. Bone2pick

    Bone2pick Conspicuously Conventional Contributor

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    What? No... what the hell kind of take is this? :dry:
     
  19. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    First, not confusion, but curiosity. Second, as I mentioned earlier, it's the stasis portion, and specifically, the heavily protracted statis that intrigues me. It makes little sense when compared to real-world settings. ASoIaF taps histories known to the common man mucking about in wattle and daub houses that measure thousands of years into the past. It seems absurd that it would be so. In our modern world we know little in the way of concrete facts about happenstances 8000 years ago, yet in Westeros, these happenstances, their timing, their contemporaries, all seem to be common knowledge ensconced in the tales and songs of bards. We have bards today, and we benefit from modern methods of acquiring and storing data; we don't have tales from 8000 years ago as common knowledge among the people.

    I don't see your answer as really satisfying the need for these protracted lengths of stasis. You don't need 8000 years' worth of castle sieges in order to have castle sieges in one's story.
     
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  20. Bone2pick

    Bone2pick Conspicuously Conventional Contributor

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    You're prioritizing realism over escapism and fantasy. It makes little sense for unarmed and unpowered Batman to be able to continually get the better of armed opponents in combat. Yet that's what lots of folks prefer in their stories. I don't see how the same doesn't apply to medieval stasis.
    You need the stasis if you want an epic history of castle sieges. Audiences often want ancient castles, and ancient steel swords, and ancient thrones, etc. World building is a major selling point of fantasy. And an epic history is often packaged with fantasy worlds.
     
  21. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I'm not prioritizing anything. I have no pony in this race. I'm not trying to be "right". I'm trying to arrive at a train of thought that directly responds to the OP's question. These answers you just gave are more productive.

    Technological advancement surely can happen in a Fantasy setting - as most of us have already agreed - but it may well come at a cost with respect to a reader's expectation. The reader will have made allowances with regards to suspension of disbelief, and a setting that progresses into a more modern feel may leave the reader feeling bereft of that epic history you mention.

    That makes sense.
     
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  22. 18-Till-I-Die

    18-Till-I-Die Banned

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    @Bone2pick
    Batman, like Dr. Doom and several other "human" heroes, have a documented ability to conceive of combat strategies and tactics and employ them properly in a way that other heroes and villains can't. In other words, he's smarter. Dr. Doom is a perfect example, a normal man whose only ACTUAL power is superhuman intellect, and yet he also has demonstrated that this knowledge lets him use sorcery others can barely imagine, and outsmart and outmaneuver Reed Richards, one of the smartest men alive, time and time again and only his arrogance ever really leads to his defeat. In short, he can because everyone else isn't as smart as him. It makes no sense, theoretically, that a paraplegic should be able to kill an adult man but if the adult man has the mind of a six-year-old and the paraplegic is a genius and highly manipulative he can and does employ strategies and combat ideas the adult man can't imagine--which explains Batman, and most of his Rogue's Gallery, as they're normal people who happen to all be documented geniuses with vast wealth and resources. Also remember that Batman knows some magic too, is an expert combatant and the richest man alive so he has limitless resources and vast amounts of materiel to draw upon too. Is that implausible? Yes, but it's not IMPOSSIBLE. That is realism, a story that logically is possible even if implausible.

    And again, you can have ALL of that, castle sieges, swords and sorcery, dragons, ancient thrones, all of that and still have technology, settings and magic advance logically forward. The mere existence of things like Final Fantasy or Avatar: the Last Airbender prove this. Both are as deeply entrenched in fantasy as you could conceivably be, one involves FLYING BUFFALOES for Christ's sake, yet they also realistically show that tech and magic advance society. So they have all of that and lasers, giant robots, cyborg knights and railroads. And in both instances, it works flawlessly and in no way draws the viewer/player out of the setting, indeed it makes it MORE interesting and MORE escapist and fanciful than like Game of Thrones or LOTR.
     
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  23. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    While I enjoy some 'medieval-set' fantasy, I have often wondered why it all seems so samey-samey. It's very rare that something really unusual gets done with it. And fantasy is supposed to be the genre where the writer can do pretty much anything the writer wants to do. So why do we keep falling back on the same old tropes? Why are the unchanging, unrealistic medieval settings so attractive to us for storytelling purposes?

    I wonder (and this is just me thinking out loud at this point) if it's because most of us with a European background grew up having read or heard classic fairy tales? From books of fairy tales, to Disney films ...we've all more or less been seeped in these stories from a very young age. And nearly all of them are set in a situation where there are poor peasants in cottages, kings in castles, swords, sorcery, scary creatures, evil people, supernatural powers to mess around with, chosen ones ...and etc. Has this combination of setting, character and plot seeped into our subconscious, making us think 'story' whenever these images come to mind?

    I know when I was young, I made up an ongoing story (which I told verbally to my sister) containing an exiled princess, a terrible witch who hated her, elves and fairies and dwarves, and etc. My sister and I referred to this juvenile soap opera as 'The Princess Story.' It went on for several years, with me thinking up episodes, and her bugging me till I told them to her. Even at the time, I knew the story was quite derivative of the many fairy stories I had loved since I was old enough to understand stories. Then, as a late teenager, I discovered Tolkien, and remembered thinking, 'Hey here is a LONG fairy story! Yippee.' And I loved it because it took me into that kind of world again.
     
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  24. Bone2pick

    Bone2pick Conspicuously Conventional Contributor

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    In addition to that, I would add that a medieval stasis helps present certain conflicts as eternal. That the dragons in the northern mountains, have always, and will always be, a danger to the valley people. There will be no technological answer to that threat. Defeating them will always and forever require the bravest warriors to armour up, scale the mountains, and face the monsters in their lairs.
     
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  25. Nariac

    Nariac Contributor Contributor

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    Okay, now we really need a story where nuclear weapons are developed to fight dragons.
     
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