I HAVE to make it work. Problems with sci-fi and fantasy!

Some kind of weird "worm hole" that forms temporarily in the universe and enables the earthling to be "sucked" to the alien planet.

A third race that transports someone from earth to the other planet. Maybe they picked up someone, probed a bit, then let him off at the first planet they came to. ;-)

Some sort of "natural magic" that the aliens don't even understand. Say, a complex crystal that accidentally transport a human to the planet. Something like that anyway.

CS Lewis has a story like this (Out of the Silent Planet) where the transporting is done by a couple of unscrupulous Earthlings developing a spaceship in secret and shanghaing the MC as a bargaining chip. This also leaves the baddies running around the planet as antagonists.

Of course, this may or may not work depending on when/where/what kind of earth-tech you're using.

It could be technology left behind by a much more advanced race - sort of like the stargates in Stargate. The aliens don't need to understand how it works, just be able to activate it accidentally

What era is your human from? If it's current time, then I'd recommend the malfunction of some prototype invention at an Area 51-style research lab---or maybe the supercollider getting hit by a tiny meteorite. If it's a past time, then it would probably be better from the alien side. If a future time, then Earth can have developed the beginnings of interstellar travel and get lost.

Your world could simply be the concieved subconscious of the human being who is being transported there.

It could also be a ley node...a rip in space/time/reality in which traveleres can walk between worlds.

If you are sticking with techonology...you could use the tech from the incoming humans...which is how he got there...but cannot get back (since your world doesn't have tech)

I hope those at least put ye on the right track.

I like the idea of ancient technology that starts working again. Whatever the case, make sure it is central to the rest of the plot or else it looks like a contrivance. Also, transportation stories like this, usually a 'fish out of water' scenario, are a lot of fun but beware of the inherent problems. Language, customs, breathable air, diseases, and most important: alien biochemistry (i.e. the food will be poisonous by its very nature.)

You say your world has a religion... could a god have transported the earthling?

Vaxil said:

The story involves a made-up planet, species, and religion in a medieval type world.

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This might be your first problem: "medieval type world." 98.87% of "fantasy" fiction involves a "medieval type world." It is no longer either very creative or fantastic. I'd suggest exercising your imagination a little further, and eschewing "medieval" trappings (which always mean European medieval).

caw

Just considering it, fantasy novels often include the use of magic of some sort. Why not a spell gone awry?

Suggestions:

Gets knocked on head by rock or car, wakes up in distant land (Twain, Donaldson)

Walks through magical furniture (Lewis)

Mystical cave (the guy who wrote the first Choose Your Own Adventure book)

C.S. Lewis' device of the main character of Out of the Silent Planet travelling between worlds as a kidnappee of others who built the spaceship reminded me of the far more entertaining (to me) device in the sequel, Perelandra: far superior aliens (akin to angels of the cosmos) provide the craft, which is a smooth white coffin sort of thing -- I pictured it like Spock's sleek rounded coffin from Wrath of Khan, only pearlescent white -- in which the MC is required to lie down for his journey to the next world. His destination -- a version of Venus called Perelandra -- is an ocean-covered world in which he makes a splash landing, during which his ship melts around him letting him dunk naked in the water just as he breaks the surface. What an entry into a new world!

I love such nonsense. This is an example of a scifi conceit that is played as sheer fantasy in which no scientific backup is necessary to excuse its elegance... like Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, who simply "spirits" himself to another planet without so much as having to size a pair of moon boots. Sounds like your story calls for something comparably whimsical, if you're sticking with the fantasy format. If that fits your style, you might as well let go of your concerns over what makes the most sense and lean more heavily on what sounds the coolest or conveys the deepest sense of old fashioned wonder in your reader.

Of the above suggestions, I like the one about some natural wormhole or dimensional portal existing free of technology the best -- especially if its location or trappings feed the story, e.g. it can be captured and controlled by someone (it's contained in an object) or it creates challenges by its location (mountaintop, cave at the bottom of the ocean, etc.).

In the 90s it was believed that microbes from Mars landed on earth in a meteorite, when what appeared to be fossilized evidence appeared in a meteorite of Mars origin. If I'm remembering the story correctly I think the concensus of the science world is that this interpretation was an error. Nonetheless part of the discussion involved theories of how microbial life could survive such a journey under special conditions -- seems that even if it was a mistake this time, it could have happened. What about the reverse? Wouldn't it be a hoot if the earth blew up and sent fragments of itself all over the solar system, and some piece of it had fantastic properties akin to the Genesis Planet on Star Trek (some radioactive mutation baloney involved) that would cause one of the previous humans to grow from some tiny genetic sample preserved in a rock hitting some other planet.

Nonsense, but you asked for ideas...

In our own societies, sometimes it happens that education, cultural history and/or literacy are suppressed by an insane communist regime (Pol Pot?) or theocracy run amok (Taliban?) or more widescale breakdown (the so-called "Dark Ages") during which old knowledge and literature can pass away or get buried for later rediscovery. A human may be required to read or decode such a thing either as part of his own experience or something more natural and unwitting (like Douglas Adams' great computer that fit its answers into the evolution of the human brain).

Another thing to remember, make sure you have a compelling character and an idea for a story arc. Right now it sounds as if you have ideas for a bunch of cool scenes. That's important, but it won't carry the story.

If you're trying to bring an Earthling to another planet, possibly with a spaceship, it's sounding more like sci-fi than fantasy...of course when the two are mixed it can make for a great read, in my opinion, but sometimes it confuses readers who just want one or the other . . .

It's rather hard to build a castle without metal tools. So if you want that sort of a social structure you'll have to do some work to make it possible. Having said that-- good luck.

Make them summon him using voodoo magic That's always good.

Just because they don't have metal, doesn't mean they can't have spaceships. Witness the organic ships used by the Yuuzhan-Vong in the Star Wars: New Jedi Order novels.

Dave.C.Robinson said:

It's rather hard to build a castle without metal tools. So if you want that sort of a social structure you'll have to do some work to make it possible. Having said that-- good luck.

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This is so true! I and a friend built a world where one of the continents was incredibly metal-poor (except they had a lot of gold), and we had a lot of fun coming up with alternatives. Especially when you are dealing with a non-technological society, where you can't use plastics, you have to find alternatives for some pretty basic things... what do they cook in (pots are made of iron/steel if they are subjected to high heats)? What do they use for nails? How do they travel -- most saddlery, carriages, and carts all use iron fastenings of some sort. How do they dig trenches or move heavy objects? In some cases, you could probably substitute bone or wood, but both are too soft for most things. Also, you would need to always carry spare parts, because even if the substitution is strong, it still won't wear as long.

If we couldn't find a work-around or an alternative, we had to find a way for their culture to work without the specified technology. I think nails were our worst problem, and we never did figure out how to make a working carriage without any metal.... Of course, the plentiful gold was far too soft for their needs, so they didn't place any value on it. Unfortunately, they were also at war with the countries that DID value it. I wonder why?

As far as getting your poor human there... why not work with some of the tried and true methods? Christopher Stasheff, Andre Norton, Gordon Dickson and Stephen R. Donaldson have all had wizards of some sort drag hapless (but not helpless!) protagonists into their worlds. Read The Dragon and the George, Her Majesty's Wizard, The Warlock in Spite of Himself, Witch World, and the novels of Mordant's Need for some ideas. I know you don't want "magic," but wasn't it Arthur C. Calrke that said "[SIZE=-1]Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?" This would especially true when dealing with ancient technology... again, try reading Andre Norton -- The Beastmaster and Lord of Thunder.[/SIZE]

I hope this helps!

Vaxil said:

When I say 'medieval' I basically meant monarchy(sp?) and a castle-with-town-surrounding-it type setting. Nothing to do with knights or dragons or anything else.

So far, I'm still entertaining my idea. I'm just not one for magic, as I can't see it anywhere in the story. The anchient civilization is what I'm leading for. My only problem now would be why they haven't used it in x many years, and now suddenly they choose to bring a human to their place...

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You could always have some stargate doohickey that's guarded because it's sacred. Until one day a young, immature guard accidentally activates it and sucks a human through who was too close to the other side. That was my first thought anyway.

It's commonly overlooked that lots of fantasy is actually science fiction: Darkover, the Chthulhu Mythos, Tekumel, I think even Gor had a technological rationale.

Ok, first things first. Your ideas are NOT stupid. Stop thinking that, no more!!!

Second, every culture has its outcast geeks who are lost in their inventions. Think of our society, Galileo, Einstein, Aristotle, Da Vince etc. OF course, we look at them and think, wow!! Genius!! But back then, ahh, not so much. Nope, they were the mighty geeks, whom society hated. In fact, it was Da Vince who first came up with the idea to fly. It was his idea to make a helicopter. http://www.lib.stevens-tech.edu/collections/davinci/inventions/ (and do you actually think someone in his time jump up and down and yelled, Eureka!! A helicoptor!! Ah, no.) Someone else came along and took his ideas to the next level.

Look at electricity.

For centuries electricity has been a challenge to scientists. They have long known that it exists, and have discovered how to generate it on a large scale, but find it difficult to explain exactly what electricity is.

Where did it all begin?
Around 600 BC Greeks found that by rubbing an 'electron' (a hard Fossilised resin that today is known as Amber) against a fur cloth, it would attract particles of straw. This strange effect remained a mystery for over 2000 years, until, around AD 1600, Dr William Gilbert investigated the reactions of amber and magnets and first recorded the word 'Electric' in a report on the theory of magnetism.
Gilbert's experiments led to a number of investigations by many pioneers in the development of electricity technology over the next 350 years.
http://www.codecheck.com/pp_elect.html

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Then Ben Franklin went out in a thunderstorm, and years later, we're typing on a laptop.

What I'm trying to say is it took one person who had an idea and that idea was passed to another person then another, then another. Some stayed hidden away, others didn't. Think of Galileo, who was sent to prison b/c he said the earth revolved around the sun.

So what about this fantasy world of yours? Any geeks who looked up at the sky and thought, I wonder how lightening works? mmm . . . so they started inventing stuff, that stuff led to more stuff. Stuff that had to be hidden b/c the gov (As in Galileo's case) didn't approve. So it was handed down geek to geek until . . . what if one of those geeks invented a machine that somehow brought the earthman to them? Of course, it was hidden from the public, considered as 'magic'. Anyone who had 'magic' a.k.a science, would be burned at the stake. So you see, it isn't magic, but inventions hidden away and only understood by a few, the proud, the geeks. How's that??

Vaxil said:

Hi guys, I apologize if I've posted this hear before, but I certainly can't remember doing so.

I have recently started a fantasy novel. The story involves a made-up planet, species, and religion in a medieval type world. In developing the story, I have come across MAJOR problems with trying to get the idea to work, and before I begin, let me make it clear that I know how completely STUPID-sounding some of my ideas are. And out of my desperation, I'm just going to say them to get some advice.

One of the biggest elements in the story involves bringing someone from earth, to my planet. And how is this done? My idea was spacecraft, yet my aliens are ones who don't use metal based technology, or 'magic' for that matter. Thats where my problems mainly come in. While my story involves this medieval structure, I still have needed elements of some sort of advanced technology in order to make this story work.

My only idea for this was of some time ago, a another race came to my planet and 'left' some of their technology there, and until my story takes place, my species simply keeps it intact. When I think about it, my idea if I work on it a bit makes sense to me, but, I am the writer so I may hold a bit of a bias. Has anyone else ever had problems of combing fantasy with sci-fi?

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Vaxil said:

Hi guys, I apologize if I've posted this hear before, but I certainly can't remember doing so.

I have recently started a fantasy novel. The story involves a made-up planet, species, and religion in a medieval type world. In developing the story, I have come across MAJOR problems with trying to get the idea to work, and before I begin, let me make it clear that I know how completely STUPID-sounding some of my ideas are. And out of my desperation, I'm just going to say them to get some advice.

One of the biggest elements in the story involves bringing someone from earth, to my planet. And how is this done? My idea was spacecraft, yet my aliens are ones who don't use metal based technology, or 'magic' for that matter. Thats where my problems mainly come in. While my story involves this medieval structure, I still have needed elements of some sort of advanced technology in order to make this story work.

My only idea for this was of some time ago, a another race came to my planet and 'left' some of their technology there, and until my story takes place, my species simply keeps it intact. When I think about it, my idea if I work on it a bit makes sense to me, but, I am the writer so I may hold a bit of a bias. Has anyone else ever had problems of combing fantasy with sci-fi?

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You are overthinking this. The story - as you describe it - is about a human on alienworld. How he gets there is almost irrelevant, unless his trying to return home provides the arc. Just pick something which gets him there in one chapter or less then definitively leaves the story.

You've specified no magic, and a low-tech alien civilisation. How about have the hero abducted by crazed vivisection-minded aliens on a galactic rampage?

When they land on your alienworld to pick up more experimental subjects, hero uses his defining character trait to escape. In doing so, he frees one of the locals, thus giving him an entry into native society.

The aliens fly off, but - as a result of whatever he did - crash into a mountain and vanish in a puff of fire.

One of the biggest elements in the story involves bringing someone from earth, to my planet. And how is this done? My idea was spacecraft, yet my aliens are ones who don't use metal based technology, or 'magic' for that matter. Thats where my problems mainly come in. While my story involves this medieval structure, I still have needed elements of some sort of advanced technology in order to make this story work.

My only idea for this was of some time ago, a another race came to my planet and 'left' some of their technology there, and until my story takes place, my species simply keeps it intact. When I think about it, my idea if I work on it a bit makes sense to me, but, I am the writer so I may hold a bit of a bias. Has anyone else ever had problems of combing fantasy with sci-fi?

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Perhaps you could do a bit of a switchup. Some earthlings have made a spacechip and launched into the unknown, but it malfunctions and crashes on your planet, and only those humans who where hyper-frozen have survived. Something like that, maybe?