Scfi Technology / Ancient World

As an idea of what has been done, you may want to look at Stargate franchise. There you have civilisations at several different [and mixed] technological levels in conflict with each other, especially in the TV shows.

 

This is the big question, right here. One component of the technothriller is overcoming a looming technological disaster through human agency, by which I mean something that we can do that the technology can't, whether it be something intangible like love or something objective like shooting an arrow through a robot's camera. The end of Independence Day when Jeff Goldblum uploads the virus. Jurassic Park when they manage to outsmart the velociraptors (or the movie, when they throw the breaker). It's the opposite of the deus ex machina ending. It's something that we had the capability to do all along, we just didn't realize it. Cracking that code as an author is really fun because it forces me to take a long, hard look at what it means to be human.