Technology and Eras in Fantasy

[D. Gray Warrior]

So, most fantasy settings seem to assume a vaguely mediaeval (or arguably Renaissance) level of technology. There are castles, knights with plate armor, trebuchets and long swords.

However, this kind of setting has been done to death, and the real world provides us with tons of examples of other cultures and historical eras, like the Stone Age or Bronze Age. One of my earlier, now defunct projects was loosely based on the Iron Age.

I'm wondering how one should approach historical eras and tech levels in fantasy?

Since it's a fictional world, the setting doesn't need to follow the same trajectories our world took. They might not even fit neatly into any IRL era, instead being a mish-mash of various tech. That's one of the things I always liked about post-apocalyptic settings. They often feature a world with an inconsistent level of technology do to societal collapse, loss of knowledge and infrastructure.

If there's magic, then that throws a wrench into things, since there is now magitech. Alternatively, magic delays the progression of technology since the magic can do a lot of stuff technology in our world can do anyway. Why invent firearms when you can just yeet a fireball at your target instead? Or, instead of inventing the automobile, you could just cast teleportation on yourself.

How do you approach technology and time periods in your setting when worldbuilding?

 

[ThinkerX]

Technological and social change is a key element in my 'Empire' series. It began with Emperor Fabius, who encouraged the innovative artisans of Equitant and the learned sages of Carbone. This resulted in a slew of clever clockwork mechanisms, telescopes, the invention of the printing press, and a network of semaphores that eventually spanned the Empire.

Later emperors understood these devices as a threat to their authority and sought to suppress or confine them. The mechanisms became toys for the rich, and printing presses were confined to the church and state alone. But the innovations continued in Equitant and Carbone. Experiments with food preservation and crude vaccines. More experiments with electricity.

Then came the Demon War, which put the empire in a drawn-out death match against a rival backed by Lovecraftian demons. To survive, the empire pulled out all the stops, including the blocks on technology. Troops pedaled to the battlefields on bicycles. Catapults hurled explosives. Balloons floated overhead. And millions of people across the empire had a front-row seat.

The empire triumphed - barely. Faced with a million unpaid soldiers and an empty treasury, the emperor awarded all the veterans with land and citizenship, increasing the middle class tenfold overnight and sparking a social revolution, one that traditionalists resorted to extreme measures to suppress. They failed. The transformations continue in later books. Crude steam locomotives. Still and motion cameras. Simple lightbulbs. Legal and social reforms. One giant glorious mess.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

An under-rated point of view is to consider how environment affects society and culture. The ancient egyptians were, in a lot of ways, far more advanced than most of the cultures that have come between them. Five thousand years ago the egyptians had doctors, engineers, arcitects, and even lawyers. This came about because the nile valley produced a huge surplus of food.

Compare to the Iron Age in Europe, where people starved to death every winter. Or froze.

But your setting also has magic. So I think what you need to do is take a step back and look at your magic system, and determine what that is going to do to the tech/societal level.

 

[D. Gray Warrior]

An under-rated point of view is to consider how environment affects society and culture. The ancient egyptians were, in a lot of ways, far more advanced than most of the cultures that have come between them. Five thousand years ago the egyptians had doctors, engineers, arcitects, and even lawyers. This came about because the nile valley produced a huge surplus of food.

Compare to the Iron Age in Europe, where people starved to death every winter. Or froze.

But your setting also has magic. So I think what you need to do is take a step back and look at your magic system, and determine what that is going to do to the tech/societal level.

I'm going for a more mythic feel for my setting, like Sword and Sorcery or Beowulf.

So, the magic system consists mainly of rituals, making pacts with entities, and enchanted objects. I think stereotypical fantasy magic where a wizard casts fireball after waving his hands and uttering some funny words is kinda OP and can be overly mechanical.

I'm still in the brainstorming phase, so idk if the world is specifically European.

 

[Mad Swede]

So, most fantasy settings seem to assume a vaguely mediaeval (or arguably Renaissance) level of technology. There are castles, knights with plate armor, trebuchets and long swords.

However, this kind of setting has been done to death, and the real world provides us with tons of examples of other cultures and historical eras, like the Stone Age or Bronze Age. One of my earlier, now defunct projects was loosely based on the Iron Age.

I'm wondering how one should approach historical eras and tech levels in fantasy?

Might I be awkward and challenge your suggestion that most fantasy settings are medieval in style. There are quite a few novels and series set in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, although I must admit that many of these date back to the 1970s and 1980s. Authors you may want to look for include Ken Follett, Cameron Johnston (The Last Shield, an absolute blast), Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Tiger and the Wolf), Matthew Stover (especially Iron Dawn and Jericho Moon) and Ursula K LeGuin (Annals of the Western Shore). David Gemmell also did something like this in his Rigante series.

I think the key to getting any setting right in terms of historical eras and technological levels is to first decide what you want your story to be.

• Do you want the story to be set in the real historical period?
• Do you want it to be an alternative history, in which case where, when and why does your setting diverge and what is different?
• Where, in geographical terms, are you setting the story?
• If you're intending that someone goes back in time without changing the future, how do they dispose of any technology they take back with them, and why does this not change history?

Once you've answered those questions you have the basis for any research you need to do. You've also set out some of the limits on your story, in terms of what the characters can and cannot do, what technology they have available, as well as some things they must do (eg take stuff home with them when travelling in time).

Examples of novels which build on these sorts of questions include Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle of the Ninth (based on a what if question following the discovery of a wingless Roman legion eagle in Silchester), Richard Cowper's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Road to Corlay (which are the first two parts of the White Bird of Kinship series, based on a scenario where mankind didn't deal with various events so the ice caps melted), Robvert Silverberg's The Gate of the Worlds (where the Black Death wiped out 75% of Europes population) and Keith Roberts Pavane series (where the Reformation didn't happen and the Church declared electricity heretical).