Because it started with cyberpunk, which did .
The future of a Medieval Fantasy?
- Thread starter all fictions
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Because it started with cyberpunk, which did .
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
My point is that the "punk" in "cyberpunk" means something.
Which might have been influenced by the memory of an actual catastrophic collapse of civilization, the Bronze Age Collapse. It's interesting to wonder how much the resonance of apocalypse in Western culture has its roots in the memory of the collapse of the Mycenean civilization.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Maybe, but I think it's simply a facet of having a very conservative (in the ideological sense) outlook on things: The eons of history imagined by Greeks and Romans after all become gradually worse, bruter and shorter. Basically it's "everything was all right at the start, and each generation scews it up ever more". The Renaissance decried the decay of civilization in the Middle Ages, but the "ages of man" seem to mostly decry the decay of morals. Also, unlike the Renaissance, the Greeks did not really have any idolized precursor civilization to look up to; the previous eons are all mythological.
So, I'd really rather see this as a grumpy-conservative "kids these days" attitude, rather than a cultural memory of an actual collapse.
And with steampunk, it initially did, but it *also* had a specific look that was unique to it, so when stuff look liked steampunk, it got called steampunk.
There is some people who aim for new terms, like the Girl Genius writers preferring 'gaslamp fantasy,' but that's word evolution for you.
all fictions
I hate you! (it's not against the rules!)
- Location
- Mons Regius
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Revival!
So I read Peter Watts' Echopraxia recently, which I rather liked. I followed it up with Blindsight, the actual first book, which I liked a lot less (and strongly disagree with the conclusions, but that's YMMV). Anyway, for anyone not familiar with either of those books, it's (mostly) a First Contact story in which modified humans are sent to meet the alien visitors (that's the first book, which the author put for free on his site).
But what interest me here, and I think is tangentially related to this thread (close enough, I didn't feel like making another one), are the concepts introduced in those books, namely military zombies and vampires. To further explain: military zombies are dubbed "zombies", not in the flesh-eating sense, but as a reference to the concept of philosophical zombies. Human soldiers in the book's universe have "off switches" installed, which simply shuts down their self-awareness during combat, for extra efficiency in an emergency and leaving no room for second thoughts or emotion. The vampires are an ancient human subspecies adapted to prey on homo sapiens, litterally apex predators, with superior pattern-matching skills and general intelligence, better night-vision, and the ability to put themselves into suspended animation (since, being apex predators, they had to give human populations time to rebound else they would hunt them to extinction). But their super-intelligence came at the cost of their super-charged pattern recognition to get overstimulated when intersecting right-angles take up too much of their visual field, giving them epileptic seizures whenever they see anything with corners (thus explaining the origin of them being weak against the cross). They went extinct when humanity invented architecture, but brought back through gene therapy on high-functioning sociopaths and autistic patients.
Like I said, I liked it quite a bit, so it got me thinking. My train of thought lead me to remembering this thread (and because I was too lazy to make another thread for what is essentially a similar subject), and no, it's not reinterpreting fantasy races under a scientific lense, you have this thread for that.
I was thinking; what if humans modified themselves to fight against evil races? For example, the military zombies mentionned above created to fight against actual undead and liches. Or Watts' vampires as strictly a new form of transhumans (instead of recreated extinct species) against classical vampires the likes of Carmilla and Dracula. You see where I'm coming from? A sort of "he who fights monsters becomes one" deal, where humanity modify some of its members to be on par with the things that go bump in the night. Other vague semblance of ideas include:
Of course, this depends on the magic level of such a setting (as I'm not sure how you counter mages without basically creating psychics), and there is also the question of why not just use AIs and robots instead of modified humans.
So I read Peter Watts' Echopraxia recently, which I rather liked. I followed it up with Blindsight, the actual first book, which I liked a lot less (and strongly disagree with the conclusions, but that's YMMV). Anyway, for anyone not familiar with either of those books, it's (mostly) a First Contact story in which modified humans are sent to meet the alien visitors (that's the first book, which the author put for free on his site).
But what interest me here, and I think is tangentially related to this thread (close enough, I didn't feel like making another one), are the concepts introduced in those books, namely military zombies and vampires. To further explain: military zombies are dubbed "zombies", not in the flesh-eating sense, but as a reference to the concept of philosophical zombies. Human soldiers in the book's universe have "off switches" installed, which simply shuts down their self-awareness during combat, for extra efficiency in an emergency and leaving no room for second thoughts or emotion. The vampires are an ancient human subspecies adapted to prey on homo sapiens, litterally apex predators, with superior pattern-matching skills and general intelligence, better night-vision, and the ability to put themselves into suspended animation (since, being apex predators, they had to give human populations time to rebound else they would hunt them to extinction). But their super-intelligence came at the cost of their super-charged pattern recognition to get overstimulated when intersecting right-angles take up too much of their visual field, giving them epileptic seizures whenever they see anything with corners (thus explaining the origin of them being weak against the cross). They went extinct when humanity invented architecture, but brought back through gene therapy on high-functioning sociopaths and autistic patients.
Like I said, I liked it quite a bit, so it got me thinking. My train of thought lead me to remembering this thread (and because I was too lazy to make another thread for what is essentially a similar subject), and no, it's not reinterpreting fantasy races under a scientific lense, you have this thread for that.
I was thinking; what if humans modified themselves to fight against evil races? For example, the military zombies mentionned above created to fight against actual undead and liches. Or Watts' vampires as strictly a new form of transhumans (instead of recreated extinct species) against classical vampires the likes of Carmilla and Dracula. You see where I'm coming from? A sort of "he who fights monsters becomes one" deal, where humanity modify some of its members to be on par with the things that go bump in the night. Other vague semblance of ideas include:
- Fighter pilots taking awareness enhancing drugs while flying, modified with superhuman reflexes, multitasking, and resistance to G-forces to be able to fly at high speeds when hunting dragons. They temporarily become more "plane" than human, like the distribution of blood directed primarily in the brain to preserve the brain's funcionality, or mechanical augments interfacing directly with the plane's commands at the cost of their own normal senses being numbed, etc.
- Androids gifted with artificial superintelligence and great computational skills, so they can not only keep up with the advanced alien intelligence of the Fae, but also be mortal to them by being made of steel/iron. Also great against golems.
- Brain-Machine Interface helping staving off demonic possessions.
Of course, this depends on the magic level of such a setting (as I'm not sure how you counter mages without basically creating psychics), and there is also the question of why not just use AIs and robots instead of modified humans.
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AIs and robots might lack something humans have, like souls. That's how The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump handled the question of why magic outcompeted technology in that world; unliving machinery lacks any spiritual presence, and so tends to break down whenever some random wandering spirit comes across it. They have for example mechanical pocket watches, but they are regarded as cheap, inferior competitors to magical clocks because they keep breaking down.
If every time you try to build an AI it gets possessed by a demon, you'll probably give up on AIs pretty soon.
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
Another question came to mind for me: Why assume that an advanced fantasy setting will develop direct analogues of real-world technology?
Take guns, for example. Why assume that a fantasy setting is going to develop guns as a primary weapon rather than, say, mystically-attuned self-propelled flying knives, or halos that fire heat rays, or physically harmful evil-eye curse goggles, or whatever else?
Take guns, for example. Why assume that a fantasy setting is going to develop guns as a primary weapon rather than, say, mystically-attuned self-propelled flying knives, or halos that fire heat rays, or physically harmful evil-eye curse goggles, or whatever else?
- Location
- Luton Airport
An interesting one that came up on IRC was an expansion of the idea of the written word as magic in a fantasy world. Hand-scribed, calligraphical spells are a common concept, but how would such work when you get into things like the printing press? "The Daily Cantrip"?
This story brought up the concept of what would happen with low level magic type being dumped in the river in the same way, with the waters randomly rearranging such, potentially creating spells - a oracular river, writing messages in discarded magic type on the shore?
This story brought up the concept of what would happen with low level magic type being dumped in the river in the same way, with the waters randomly rearranging such, potentially creating spells - a oracular river, writing messages in discarded magic type on the shore?
Plot twist, this was exactly what the Fae wanted all along. They terrorize other civilizations into creating Peter Watts-ish transhumans equivalent in capabilities to themselves as the only chance to interact with them on equal terms. It's how they reproduce.
all fictions
I hate you! (it's not against the rules!)
- Location
- Mons Regius
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Reviving this thread again because this trailer is sort of what I would picture the modern world of a heroic fantasy land to look like:
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
Meanwhile, they'd find our wars of millions in military fronts spanning half a continent far more epic that their simple Grand Hero Defeats Great Evil situations. Similarly, the Roman era armies of tens of thousands would put their ancient history's scale to shame.A history class with young humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, andhobbitshalflings learning how the Chosen One(s) defeated the Evil Lord(s) centuries ago sounds way cooler than what I got in high school
My opinion is that it depends on the magic available. More specifically, what's the most versatile type and what is the easiest to use type?
In most conceptualization, runes are the most reliable and potentially accessible magic because it's very, very rules driven and transparent about it's rules. Particularly magical language forms of runic magic.
For instance, the olden days of masters driving history would have most runes translating to vague statements, leading to effects varying by location. For example, the line "Flames of Molten Stone" could have it's resultant temperature be based on the average of the area. Meanwhile, the line "Flames of Molten Bronze" is still variable, but actively controllable by varying the mixture of bronze you have the line on. If you use "Flames of Molten Iron," then you have a known, specific temperature with a valuable use in industry by having fires guaranteed to melt iron.
Of course, the type of language it is has bearings on what you can do with it. Chinese style character-words would be immensely inflexible and go out of date quite fast in an industrial revolution. Syllable languages are more flexible and can have constructed words for very new innovations. A phonetic language would be massively complicated, but if it's a complete one, like the International Phonetic Alphabet, then you can make anything Runic because you have every word you could ever need.
The best would be a phonetic version of the Inheritance Cycle's Elvish language, where you have a phonetic language as rules for creating word-characters. The Inheritance Cycle's Elvish written language actually has the interesting detail of being constructed to be as efficient for the form of runic magic the series has, which lets any form of writing be used as magical runes.