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).

 

[hunterjwizzard]

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.

Are enchanted items common enough to have an impact on day to day society?

To borrow from your "waving hands and uttering funny words" analogy, is a "Bag of Holding" so readily available that a common man could run a freight company by owning ten or twenty of them and walking everywhere? Could an army get ahold of ten thousand of them and solve its logistical issues forever?



Circling back to your original eras - the other mistake a lot of writers make is "medieval status". In other words, we pick up the story in an epid Sword and Sandal setting, but come to find out its been that way for 10,000 years. Or worse, a story covers 10,000 years and in all that time nobody invents a steam engine. Just things to think about.

 

[Romy]

Going back too far makes it harder to imagine properly... But of course, that is where you as a writer pop in?
The medieval era is long, romanticised with perfect towers to lock up princessesses.

You can decide a lot with the type of rituals your mages perform.
Rituals and pacts sound like a slower process than hurling fireballs so they will probably settle somewhere. Might also require building temples.

Might not be as fast as a fireball, but having the only warm cave might make you popular. Until they find how to make fire themselves.
If they can have a reliable fire hot and precise enough they can create steel (how did they get that idea... and what do they do with it).

If they can make crops grow, you can stop traveling hunters from moving around. Growing crops in dry land or continuously the same crop without the problem of exhausting the land. With the bonus that it will become impossible if the mages can't or won't perform.


Just 'steampunk' like things happen when they get something that wasn't available to them in the real world.
Mages could also do it the other way, preventing something from being invented.
They don't have to be bad intentions, just taking away the need for one thing might create an avalanche of stuff that will not be possible or different.
If they cure people, we might not learn about microbiology.

Timekeeping might also be a nice one that requires a lot of tinkering. Having a mage on board that knows the exact position or even just the time advances sailing a lot.

Might be fun to check what defines the era you are in, usually a gradual change into the next era and could be interesting to move things around. With mages it is dangerous to move too much but they could stack stones into a medieval castle... (why would stone age people want that... medieval requires other stuff as well but at least a good looking cave...)

Printing press... one of the interesting inventions (biased opinion perhaps)... Might be mage stuff to make runes. Or to do mage stuff without mage approval...

 

[skip.knox]

There is a vast fantasy literature sent in the Victorian era. Nearly as much set in Tudor times, with another large helping set in early modern Scotland. There is, for this reader, entirely too much set in the British Isles and far too little set elsewhere on the Continent. Other continents have their own fantasy tradition.

That said, the initial question was how we approach technology and magic during world building. The question begs for elaboration. What is meant by technology? After all, the horse collar was a major technological innovation. Plenty of people have pointed out here in Scribes that "magic" covers an awful lot of ground as well. All that can be said is how each individual author handles this in each individual story.

 

[Prince of Spires]

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

To tackle the question from another angle, write what interests you.

Writing a novel is a big time commitment (500 words per hour gives 200 hours for a first draft). So I pick era's that interest me and build a setting based on those. Which partially explains why I gravitate towards medieval-esque fantasy. It's also an era I know a fair bit about. Enough at least to know when I have to look something up.

Another thing to consider is that medieval fantasy spans a huge period of time. I'd argue it goes from about the days of the roman republic right up to the end of the middle ages. And yes, there is a huge diversity of technology between early rome and late middle ages, but it's a more gradual thing. And you can probably squeeze it all in there. You could probably even start in late greece if you want and call it roughly the same idea. It starts changing when you head into the bronze age.

Of course you don't get the feudal systems and large castles of the high middle ages with jousting knights and longbow wielding pseudo-brits. But the difference between a roman infantryman in heavy plate armour wielding a sword and a shield and a medieval footsoldier wearing the same aren't all that big (though the footsoldier probably didn't wear plate...). It changes when you move forward into gunpowder or back to bronze weapons.

As for how to go about it. Pick a technology level that interests you, and a magic system (if that's your thing), and start thinking through your story and the consequences of your decisions. A fireball throwing mage will have an impact on a battlefield and on fortifications. But how common are they? Also, what else could you do with fireballs? If everyone can create fire out of thin air, but it takes a fair bit of effort, then perhaps internal heating in homes is common, but it's the low class staff that has to keep manning the furnace.

It also reduces the difference between living in a hot and a cold climate. Maybe greenhouses become a thing earlier or glass making or metal working. Look at the magic and how it impacts technology and think of consequences.

 

[The Dark One]

For me the key defining characteristic of fantasy is that the supernatural is possible.

That can happen in any setting - which is why urban fantasy is a thing and also sci-fi / fantasy blends (like Star Wars).

All you have to do is build your world consistently (unlike Tolkien, who refers to an express train and fireworks in Chapter 1 of TLOTR yet cannon are not used in the book).

 

[pmmg]

I would approach this along the lines of what seemed likely, and reasonable.

It is just neither likely, nor reasonable that one could get to a steel age without first going through an iron age. And so, the real-world example of moving through a stone age, to a bronze age, to an iron age, to steel...Just seems to me like the natural progression that would from just about anywhere outside of Earth as well. Some variable might change this, such as a world where copper is super rare and iron is abundant, that might put things in an iron age faster. But...I would need a reason to believe it.

Magic might retard the development of things, or maybe just some things. Something might get invented because of it as well. If the necessity becomes, how do I go to war with magic users and win, I might have to invent stuff to do it that we don't have here on earth. If fireballs are real, how does one contest them? Maybe shields would be larger or shaped like umbrellas. And battle tactics would change.

In a world with magic, I think there would still be a need for technology for those who don't have access to it. If only a few can cause teleportation to work, some might not want to pay their prices to travel and invent their own ways. Maybe it is slower, but cars might still show up. The wheel would also be somewhat universal, even if it had to get 'invented' in someplace distant from earth.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We've been writing 5 Minutes in the Future Urban Fantasy for so long that when we pulled up the next series, a 5 book Epic Fantasy series, I wanted to go full out Sword and Sorcery. When that got shot down by the two Lowans who are smarter than I am, I immediately did another dumb and decided I wanted to get ambitious.

Some may recall that the last time that twisted and hungry word fell from these lips, it produced a 640 page, 179k doorstop that flies in the face of shorter Urban Fantasy offerings in both length and style, but on the other hand can be used for self-defense.

So, I did the dumb, and then story started happening, and currently we're looking at a large, diverse continent littered with empires lost to history and those still standing strong. So, we go rolling into worldbuilding like a wrecking ball and now we have five empires, culturally distinct and each facing their own challenges as together they stand on the precipice of a technological revolution and try to scry who they will be as a people on the other side.

So, of course there's a sixth empire going through birthing pains and really wanting to share the fun. Taking empire-size bites out of the world fits them just fine.

I wanted to avoid the medieval tech freeze that works so well, and I wanted to make a bit of a mess... but remain true to the cultures we emulate. So, in our first empire, really more a high-kingship with nine sub-kingdoms, and technologically, culturally, and militarily around what we'd call the Rococo Period or Steampunk 5 minutes after the first die is cast. A generation or two before Victoria. We spend a lot of time here as our cast goes through the pain of grief and the thrill of being young and gifted in a culture that digs it, and as they learn spy craft and intrigue, all to guard the High King and his court.

On the continent we also have The Beloved of Aman, previously sketched as Techno Egypt. The Empire of Willow and Dragon was Steampunk China for a while. The Assembled are fiercely secular and militant, rather like Sparta with more diverse clothing choices. We have an empire to the furthest north that is ruled by three ethnically distinct peoples. There are the Lords of Fire and Ice, our Not!Russians, The Wave Masters of Kahilr, Not!Vikings who dominate the trade routes into their empire, and the Sangilak, the "Strong Ones" and our Not!First Nations. They alone can interact with the mighty leviathans that can engulf entire ships like a crunchy snack.

And as for magic... yeah, there's magic. And gods. And the sound of drums to set the pace for war. And in the middle of it all is a 17-year old autist who may be the greatest military mind of her generation, and her guardian and tutor, a 700lb talking Black pig named Rachelle, who has secrets of her own to keep.

 

[Gurtegbedi]

A quick question I want to posit is that when does one "Age" transition to another? And who exactly is making these labels?

In real life, the "progression" of civilization was a process, something was always lost and gained whenever a change occurs in a society. When the Western Roman Empire fell and the "Dark" Ages came about, it wasn't a place of complete lawlessness and anarchy, most of the former provinces of the Empire now had greater freedom and autonomy over their own affairs.... It only felt like a "Dark" Age to those who missed the authority that the Empire provided, namely the Early Church who was the State Religion.

The point being is that the idea of an "Age" is always political, and even in fantasy it is worth noting whose narrative is being expressed here.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

A quick question I want to posit is that when does one "Age" transition to another? And who exactly is making these labels?

In real life, the "progression" of civilization was a process, something was always lost and gained whenever a change occurs in a society. When the Western Roman Empire fell and the "Dark" Ages came about, it wasn't a place of complete lawlessness and anarchy, most of the former provinces of the Empire now had greater freedom and autonomy over their own affairs.... It only felt like a "Dark" Age to those who missed the authority that the Empire provided, namely the Early Church who was the State Religion.

The point being is that the idea of an "Age" is always political, and even in fantasy it is worth noting whose narrative is being expressed here.

We call it the Dark Ages because the Victorians hated complications like maybe they weren't the smartest, prettiest, and whitest people who had ever lived, and to prove it they grabbed at a cultural relationship with the ancient Greeks, who everyone knew were also the whitest, the smartest with the words and the plays, and super awesome because look at all that pretty white statuary! That they'd scrubbed all the paint from. But who could blame them, really? Those Romans used more paint than a 5th Avenue hooker.

As to "ages." When Team Lowan talks about Ages, we're talking about the 10k years that seem to cycle us through making civilization over and over. In the Books of Binding, there are three Ages we're concerned about. The Age of the Gods, the Age of Mages, and the Age of Humanity. 10k years, and then each blows themselves back to banging rocks. And we start over again.

 

[Gurtegbedi]

We call it the Dark Ages because the Victorians hated complications like maybe they weren't the smartest, prettiest, and whitest people who had ever lived, and to prove it they grabbed at a cultural relationship with the ancient Greeks, who everyone knew were also the whitest, the smartest with the words and the plays, and super awesome because look at all that pretty white statuary! That they'd scrubbed all the paint from. But who could blame them, really? Those Romans used more paint than a 5th Avenue hooker.

As to "ages." When Team Lowan talks about Ages, we're talking about the 10k years that seem to cycle us through making civilization over and over. In the Books of Binding, there are three Ages we're concerned about. The Age of the Gods, the Age of Mages, and the Age of Humanity. 10k years, and then each blows themselves back to banging rocks. And we start over again.

I mean you're technically right, but the term itself came from Petrarch an Italian scholar from the 1300s who believed that the western Roman Empire was the "light" compared to the period of supposed cultural stagnation and perceived intellectual decline he is apparently living in.... Then again, the idea that a medieval Italian will glorify the Roman Empire as a beacon of "light" in the world is obviously political....

As for the concept of Ages, I am confused as to how there is a hard line between when the Age of Gods ends and when the Age of Mages begins.... Is it when the last of the Gods leaves the mortal world after some apocalyptic world? If that's the case, then you're telling me there wouldn't be old grudges between the survivors that carry over to the next age? That's not how real life works, an "Age" transitioning happens slowly and gradually, because you need the culture of the living to change first.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I mean you're technically right, but the term itself came from Petrarch an Italian scholar from the 1300s who believed that the western Roman Empire was the "light" compared to the period of supposed cultural stagnation and perceived intellectual decline he is apparently living in.... Then again, the idea that a medieval Italian will glorify the Roman Empire as a beacon of "light" in the world is obviously political....

As for the concept of Ages, I am confused as to how there is a hard line between when the Age of Gods ends and when the Age of Mages begins.... Is it when the last of the Gods leaves the mortal world after some apocalyptic world? If that's the case, then you're telling me there wouldn't be old grudges between the survivors that carry over to the next age? That's not how real life works, an "Age" transitioning happens slowly and gradually, because you need the culture of the living to change first.

Well, in real life dragons don't often drive Lambos, Demon Lords mostly avoid eating people because that can be so negative, and unicorns are exactly how we all assume they will be... so there's that.

You don't know me, yet, but that won't last. Where do you go to school, kiddo? Whipping Petrarch out of your pocket is a bold move. As is trying to call me out with politics. Interesting choice, just joining a site.

The 10k length of our Ages - and we see Ages as being different from eras in our history, like the Renaissance or the Enlightenment - is just taking our own development from hunter-gatherers to agriculture to AI and robotic lawnmowers. There are suggestions here and there in the primary sources we have available are suggestions that this isn't the first time we decided that poking seeds into dirt is way cool.

"Plausible" is one of my favorite words. It makes all things possible, at least in Fantasy.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

A quick question I want to posit is that when does one "Age" transition to another? And who exactly is making these labels?

In real life, the "progression" of civilization was a process, something was always lost and gained whenever a change occurs in a society. When the Western Roman Empire fell and the "Dark" Ages came about, it wasn't a place of complete lawlessness and anarchy, most of the former provinces of the Empire now had greater freedom and autonomy over their own affairs.... It only felt like a "Dark" Age to those who missed the authority that the Empire provided, namely the Early Church who was the State Religion.

The point being is that the idea of an "Age" is always political, and even in fantasy it is worth noting whose narrative is being expressed here.

On the subject of transition periods being somehow gradual... that's not how real life works. So, homework. Search 536 AD. Geographics don't matter, here. And it should be noted that this was very far from the only time this planet who mothers us hasn't tried to shake us off.

Now, let's talk about gradual changes and then we can talk about how reality works and how we can fit it into Fantasy.

 

[ThinkerX]

I wanted to avoid the medieval tech freeze that works so well, and I wanted to make a bit of a mess... but remain true to the cultures we emulate. So, in our first empire, really more a high-kingship with nine sub-kingdoms, and technologically, culturally, and militarily around what we'd call the Rococo Period or Steampunk 5 minutes after the first die is cast. A generation or two before Victoria. We spend a lot of time here as our cast goes through the pain of grief and the thrill of being young and gifted in a culture that digs it, and as they learn spy craft and intrigue, all to guard the High King and his court.

On the continent we also have The Beloved of Aman, previously sketched as Techno Egypt. The Empire of Willow and Dragon was Steampunk China for a while. The Assembled are fiercely secular and militant, rather like Sparta with more diverse clothing choices. We have an empire to the furthest north that is ruled by three ethnically distinct peoples. There are the Lords of Fire and Ice, our Not!Russians, The Wave Masters of Kahilr, Not!Vikings who dominate the trade routes into their empire, and the Sangilak, the "Strong Ones" and our Not!First Nations. They alone can interact with the mighty leviathans that can engulf entire ships like a crunchy snack.

And as for magic... yeah, there's magic. And gods. And the sound of drums to set the pace for war. And in the middle of it all is a 17-year old autist who may be the greatest military mind of her generation, and her guardian and tutor, a 700lb talking Black pig named Rachelle, who has secrets of her own to keep.

This sounds a bit like the reasoning for my 'Empire' series. I didn't care for the static tech/static society thing, so that sory - and the others are set a few years after the 'epic war.' Common soldiers awarded land and citizenship. Bicycles going from 'never heard of them' to 'everywhere.' Cameras. Light bulbs. Social stress. Three imperial dynastic changes in less than twenty years. Ancient lien tech popping up....sometimes it works.

The current WIP, 'Game of the Gods,' gets into this from another angle. Three POV characters (or maybe four) separated by time and space.

One is a 20th-century human who was drafted into a 'black box' program that blew him and a bunch of others into what seems like a 'typical' fantasy world. He messes up and gets drafted into the 'Game,' played by Lovecraftian entities who sneer at space and time.

The second fought in the 'Sideswipe' in the late 21st-century, a Lovecraftian apocalypse that sort of fizzled. This is a post apocalyptic/dystopian time with ruthless corps taking over.

The third is a crewmember on a badly damaged starship using a poorly understood FTL drive based on salvaged alien tech. Much of her POV is hard SF. At stake: 200,000 colonists in suspension.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I love the smell of conflict in the morning. lol

Choosing the Rococo Period in our history to emulate has given us a lot of wriggle room, tech-wise, so we can bang on it and warp cultures and play the What If game all day. We're at the very beginning of what will become the Industrial Revolution, with the question of what would the world look like if Egypt and China had avoided colonialism, if the First Nations had been able to hold their ground when pushed, with the aid of monsters of incredible size that only they could control?

And what happens when a fractured family of royal companions and spies becomes the only force capable of concealing and guarding the heirs to a dozen thrones?