An historian's opinion of Fantasy timeline tropes

Agreed. There can be a lot of reasons for a lack of technological progress. It's just important to show the reason in your particular case.

In my debut novel, it was a lack of resources, for example, but even that's just on the surface - in subsequent novels I'll show that there are even more, hidden reasons. And that's the beauty of fantasy - there can be even more "magical reasons" for that.

Heck, I'd say that even LotR is alright in that regard - the magical races like elves and dwarves have as much tech progress as they need to have, considering that they have magic! I wouldn't care about cars one bit if I could live in Rivendell! And the humans - they've been making progress - ships, siege engines, even explosives. Plus, that was the ending of the LotR - "The Age of Man is coming, magic is withdrawing.", suggesting that even more tech progress is on the way. That the Middle Earth is becoming the Earth.

So... yeah. I don't really agree that the lack of tech progress is a huge problem. Sometimes it is, if there's no reason behind it, but fantasy - being fantasy - can give you lots of reasons, easily.

They went on for thousands of years in Europe before they discovered firearms and steam engines too. As others have said, however, this doesn't mean that there was no change in government, social organization, technology, religion etc. during that time. The Roman and Egyptian Civilizations lasted a long time, and the Chinese civilization even longer. But that didn't mean there was stasis during those thousands of years. And the so-called European middle ages lasted a thousand years, but there were plenty of changes in armor, weaponry, warfare, governments, agriculture, and culture in general during that time.

I think the cliched fantasy model, where things go on as if they were circa 1200 Northern Europe (but maybe with plate male, crossbows, ye-olde taverns, and chimneys) are rather unrealistic, unless there's a reason for the social stasis that's at least alluded to.

Another thing about some cliched fantasy, though, is that there are fewer cultures/countries in the world than in ours, and the history of the fantasy world and its gods are not debated matters of myth and belief that differ between cultures, but objective reality that everyone pretty much agrees on (except for the evil empire that worships the old gods of darkness, and maybe some superstitious but noble savages who worship something "quaint" like spirits or ancestors).

Roxxsmom said:

Another thing about some cliched fantasy, though, is that there are fewer cultures/countries in the world than in ours, and the history of the fantasy world and its gods are not debated matters of myth and belief that differ between cultures, but objective reality that everyone pretty much agrees on (except for the evil empire that worships the old gods of darkness, and maybe some superstitious but noble savages who worship something "quaint" like spirits or ancestors).

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That. Every book with a world that's poor culturally, religiously, ethnically, etc, immediately gets a -1 from me. It still can be explained, it's not impossible (to keep to the LotR example - it's clear why the races there are what they are), but it's much more common and much worse than the "lack of tech advances" trope.

Galumph_Triumph said:

It's not unrealistic.

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The problem seems to be you're fixating on a fallaciously narrow definition of progress and what's 'realistic.' If you're a history grad student, I have to call 'foul.'

The problem that people call out is the weird kind of technological and cultural stasis that persists for ridiculous lengths of time. It's not just technology, but also cultural stasis that has no sort of linguistic, behavioral, or social changes. The Meso American civilizations might not have had much use for the wheel and were hampered in their overall technological 'level' but none of them were anything remotely approaching static in their technological (especially in architecture) or cultural development.

I'm guessing some of the reason for showing a civilization that's relatively unchanging, or at least has been prior to the start of the epic, is that stories often focus on times of social upheaval and change. In fantasy, this is often a war, or the fulmination of a prophecy, or a time of darkness, or the discovery of a new kind of magic, or the loss of some kind of magic, or the coming of a new god or religion.

And some fantasy writers are very taken with the idea of objective, externally imposed reality by real, unambiguous gods. Those are a definite fantasy element from the perspective of our world. Whether or not you believe any particular religion or god in our world is real, most of our world's prophets and gods who walk among us seem to be comfortably in the past, and no one can prove which, if any, are or were real (doesn't stop us from trying, of course). In fantasy stories, it's often more like mythology, with gods showing up in physical form, or via magic, and begetting children, or turning the tides of battle, or gifting their favorite mortals with magic, or answering their followers' prayers in direct, unambiguous ways.

Unfortunately, the implications of living in such a world (or such times) are not always explored fully. Sometimes the active, real gods are an authors' excuse for social stagnation, but wouldn't they be just as likely to put things in constant flux as they used mortals as pawns in their own epic struggles?

The answer, really, is how do you show the reader how your world is and has been historically? I personally try to hint that my world has a history and it's evolving and changing and has been for thousands of years, even if no one agrees about the gods, or where and how humans and other intelligent beings came into existence there or got magic. And even if I only focus on 2-3 cultures (it's hard to find a word to replace kingdom, when one society is a theocracy, one a matriarchy, and one a sort of confederation of city states), I still drop hints that the world contains countless others.

But that's my taste, and there's a down side to that too. Sometimes even the casual mention of another country or religion will feel like a red herring to readers, and they'll get mad if it's not developed more in this book or their relationship to the others isn't explained fully (never mind that the pov character doesn't know all these things either).

Galumph_Triumph said:

Hi folks,

I'm a horror author and just beginning my very first fantasy novel. I've been reading all about common mistakes new fantasy authors make, which tropes and cliches to avoid, etc. One of them I keep reading about is, "Do not have a culture that has existed for thousands of years and made zero technological progress."
Lord of the Rings is one of these examples; "...For four and a half thousand years, nobody invented democracy, the steam engine, or the telescope." Etc.

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Not sure who you're quoting here, but it's not reflective of a good reading. First, how are we defining "technology" wrt LOTR specifically, and fantasy in general? Palantir, the seeing stones, the various rings, and writing that responds to spoken commands strike me as pretty nifty technology.

Secondly, the Shire is in fact a democracy; the mayor is elected, as are members of the Shire council. They are independent, and do not owe allegiance to the King of Gondor, the Elves, the Dwarves or anyone else.

Galumph_Triumph said:

So, what I'm saying is, I think it's actually fine if your fantasy world has existed for 40,000 years and they're still mulling around digging poop holes and using bow and arrows. It's not unrealistic. It's just not European.

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Europe did spend thousands of years using bow and arrows; people in the U.S. are still "digging poop holes." Moreover, in some cases, as in LOTR, the absence of things like steam engines (which aren't really absent if you look closely; they're part of the tools of Mordor) are because Tolkien was making a point about the demise of pastoral living and the open landscapes of the Midlands. That is, it was a knowing, deliberate choice.

Part of what you're getting at, I think, is the over-weening ethnocentricity of some writers; that is, Western culture über alles. That is a valid beef; another valid beef is readers who miss the actual indications of technology (forged weapons, say, accurate fletching, environmentally sound habitats) and indications of valid cultural choices.

Part of the issue here, I think, is that we are all embedded in a culture that for thousands of years has both accepted the validity of change (technological, social, etc.) and provided incentives of many different kinds to make change happen and happen again. Whether change = "progress" is a different question. But we all assume at a fundamental level that change is inevitable, that you can't fight it forever, and that it will probably occur within an observable timeframe.

In order to convincingly depict a society that is utterly static over thousands of years, the way some fantasy cultures are, you would have to establish a wholly different mindset for everyone in it that regards change as UNacceptable, even unimaginable -- where the only possible way to do things is exactly as they have always been done, the only way to live is the way people have always lived, and the very idea of rebelling against the natural and universal order of life, the universe and everything is inconceivable.

Recall that our early hominid ancestors used precisely the same toolkit for a million years or more. And that the Neanderthals used their somewhat more complex set of tools with only minor changes over 300,000 years. THAT's what zero technological progress looks like -- utter stability over unimaginable spans of time, then extinction.

Since about 30,000 years ago we've been technologically on an acceleration path -- by "we" I mean all humans of all cultures, globally. Despite popular belief, the European Middle Ages were actually an extremely fertile period of innovation and technological change; the stable timeless era of perfect medievalness that so many generic fantasies look back to never actually existed except as a few snapshots of memory. The technologies and the cultures of the "primitive" peoples colonized by Europeans are harder for us moderns to understand as the artifacts of their own historical trajectory because so much (both material and cultural) has been lost in the centuries since and so much of what remains has lost its context & continuity. But there WAS a story of change continuing over millennia in all the places it's been looked for. And change again: the Amazon rainforest turns out not to be a primal wilderness barely occupied by people, but the overgrown remains of a vast garden that was intensively cultivated -- one might say, terraformed -- to support the densest population in the Americas. We don't know much about who they were or what they thought, next to nothing of their history: but they had one (or more than one, that's something else we don't know).

It's possible to imagine a culture that frames change as unthinkable and smothers changes (and change-makers) as they occur.

But it's really not plausible to have a fantasy society that looks exactly like the most dynamic and aggressively transforming societies humans have ever produced, and then wave your hands and say "it's been exactly like this for the past X thousand years because Gods/Magic/whatever." That's just displaying a lack of imagination and a failure to think through the premise. IMO

I'm not sure I've read any particular fantasy that insists there was no technological change for millennia. Is it really a trope?

I remember in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books her pseudo-medieval culture had gone on and on for centuries without significant change.

None of the genres discussed here interest me but the topic does on a scale beyond fiction. So I was starting to read your mention of the "mistake" of showing old cultures not making progress, and I agreed that's not credible. Then I read your 2 cents on that, and found myself agreeing again as I had actually recently used this argument against a nutwing moron in (my) defense of Arab culture and countries. Civilized by whose standards? It's 2015 by whose calendar?
Development/progress are subjective and individual. You can see this in entire civilizations, you can also scale it down to individuals: some children enter university at age 15, others still depend on their parents at age 30 while perfectly sound. Others are dependant for disability and many give their parents the finger at 18. You can scale this up and down to any number of people, from 1 person to 1 species, and keep it plausible.

And while it's a cliché that makes me cringe personally because I hate anything that Hans Zimmer would write a cutesy, idyllic background melody for, I have observed both in reality and fiction, that those "less advanced" (by European standards) and who have less, seem to be happier as long as they're isolated from societies who throw "moreness" around as a living standard. Like those annoying Hobbits who dance and drink and laugh and hug all day (eeeeeew this is why I hate them, and why I hate the Dwarves - too f*cking happy), and what makes me hate the Hobbits more than the Dwarves, is their sugary modesty and happiness with just having a weekly feast and flowers and nothing else, and they frown on travelling beyond the Shire and discovering things. God I hate them. But they're happy, perhaps because knowing the things you could have "if only", makes you want them, and wanting stuff makes you miserable because you're dissatisfied.

Just my 2 rants.

Cobalt Jade said:

I remember in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books her pseudo-medieval culture had gone on and on for centuries without significant change.

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I believe the rationale there was that the Heralds themselves were the reason for this. Plus, Valdemar was a small, isolated country that was protected from foreign magic for a very long time. There was some implication later on that changes had happened, though, and they actually had some pretty clever technology (as well as allusions to older technology that had since been forgotten).

I still found it a bit strange, because they certainly did have a lot of wars, which have a tendency to push certain kinds of technology along, at least.

Another fantasy trilogy that had a backdrop of stagnation was Sanderson's Mistborn. But the premise was that there'd been an unsuccessful rebellion centuries (or something like that) before, and there'd been this evil overlord ruling with an iron fist since. Definitely nothing idealized or natural about the stagnant society portrayed there.

I agree that it would be odd to portray a society that has the kinds of things that fueled our own industrial revolution, however--relatively advanced metallurgy, labor relatively sought after, contact between cultures via trade, warfare, and exploration, universities or other institutions of learning etc., access to the kinds of resources needed, yet for society to suddenly just stop at that level without going on to discover gunpowder and steam power and so on.

It's another thing to portray a culture that's more like one that did persist for centuries without a lot of technological change because of no access to needed materials, but to still have sophistication and social evolution in other areas.

I think we have to accept that many readers like those tropes, though, because it's comfort food, and they're enjoying escaping to an idealized version of a bygone era that never was. Swords, armor, horses, knights, castles, monarchs, drinking ale in front of comfy (and definitely not 12th century style) fireplaces etc. hit their sweet spot. Not all fantasy is intended to be realistic. When I read a story like The Last Unicorn, or LoTR, or Leiber's Lankhmar books, or even Lackey's Valdemar books, I'm not looking for the same kind of world building I'd expect from a writer who creates a different kind of fantasy.

Bit of both a necro-bump and a tangent but the conversation reminded me of this: The ancient Greeks had a rudimentary hydrauic system and a prototype steam engine.

It's facinating to me to find out about tech that existed long before modern people thought it did and it's something I like toying with in worldbuilding given the chance.

themindstream said:

The ancient Greeks had a rudimentary hydrauic system and a prototype steam engine.

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Not to mention the world's first analog computer. Cool beans.

I saw a documentary show about that and yeah it's cool, but I'm not sure if it's more a computer or a mechanical clock. One of the distinguishing features of a computer in my mind is the ability to give it variable input. But I guess if you think as the keying of the gears as an algorithm...maybe...

Still cool though.

benbenberi said:

It's possible to imagine a culture that frames change as unthinkable and smothers changes (and change-makers) as they occur.

But it's really not plausible to have a fantasy society that looks exactly like the most dynamic and aggressively transforming societies humans have ever produced, and then wave your hands and say "it's been exactly like this for the past X thousand years because Gods/Magic/whatever."

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I might have thought of a way to do this: different warring clans/whatever vie for the throne. Whenever one of them takes the throne and establishes a dynasty, they immediately destroy any advances in science/art/explorations that might be associated with the previous rulers. I think I remember reading that something like this actually happened in various earth societies, particularly China (and, in the case of sculptures, parts of Europe).

Galumph_Triumph said:

So, what I'm saying is, I think it's actually fine if your fantasy world has existed for 40,000 years and they're still mulling around digging poop holes and using bow and arrows. It's not unrealistic. It's just not European.

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Well, in fairness it's not Chinese, Indian, or Persian either. I wouldn't single out Europeans for putting their noses up at "primitive" people. That's a pretty standard prejudice with any literate centralized agrarian state. Anyone who is illiterate, doesn't farm, and doesn't live in permanent towns is a savage. But yeah I agree, it's not just a binary system of civilized or savage. There are lots of people who fall in the middle. And sometimes they stay in that middleground for a long time.

llawrence said:

I might have thought of a way to do this: different warring clans/whatever vie for the throne. Whenever one of them takes the throne and establishes a dynasty, they immediately destroy any advances in science/art/explorations that might be associated with the previous rulers. I think I remember reading that something like this actually happened in various earth societies, particularly China (and, in the case of sculptures, parts of Europe).

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That will definitely slow the rate of change, but it won't stop it. No matter how thorough the erasure attempted by a new dynasty, it's unlikely to succeed in completely obliterating everything that's happened under the previous rulers -- there will be the memory that things had been different before (and therefore could be different again) so the idea of change as a possibility will persist, artifacts and knowledge might survive the purge, and more importantly, it's virtually impossible for such an erasure to succeed completely and reset all aspects of society to precisely the previous baseline. Minor changes will inevitably accrue over time till they imperceptibly become something quite different from the original.

Long-term cultural stability requires not repeated cycles of change/destruction, but a strong cultural aversion to change, and powerful cultural mechanisms to absorb and neutralize change when it occurs. Egypt & China are 2 examples that come to mind -- but they also illustrate the impossibility of even the most stable culture remaining completely static over centuries/millennia -- they just have a much slower rhythm of change.

And if the fantasy culture being presented as having endured in the same form for many centuries/millennia is modeled on medieval Europe -- that's just missing the point of everything distinctively medieval: it was inherently an unstable, rapidly changing culture that practically invented the notion of progress.

benbenberi said:

And if the fantasy culture being presented as having endured in the same form for many centuries/millennia is modeled on medieval Europe -- that's just missing the point of everything distinctively medieval: it was inherently an unstable, rapidly changing culture that practically invented the notion of progress.

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Agreed, though I suppose it might depend on which elements of medieval society the writer has latched onto. A pre-industrial culture where people have swords and bows and iron but not firearms? That could work. But if by medieval, one means the precise political, architectural, economic, and military situation that was present in the so-called "high middle ages" in, say, England or Venice or France, some other part of Europe, then maybe not so much.

But it also comes down to the kind of story it is. Is it a fairy-tale type fantasy that's clearly taking place in a mythic world? Is it meant to be a simple adventure story that allows the reader to escape to the kind of heroic era people like to fantasize about, or is it a tale about an epic struggle between good and evil, or is it meant to be a serious exploration of a particular sociopolitical situation that's developed to a logical extreme or conclusion?

Many of the fantasies that have been popular in recent years seem to be set in somewhat "realistic" worlds, and fantasy set in cultures that don't resemble the European middle ages also seem to be hot right now. This includes fantasy modeled, loosely or tightly, after other real-world cultures or eras, or ones that are set in worlds where the fantasy elements create societies that aren't like ours at all.

But there are still plenty of popular series that take place in mythic or fairy tale worlds that may not make sense if explored too closely, but picking through the world building and history with a fine-toothed comb isn't what the story is about. Classic works of fantasy by authors like Tolkien, Leiber, Beagle, LeGuin (how did Earthsea change and evolve technologically or governmentally over its history. Did we even know)? and others come to mind.

As for more modern writers, Mercedes Lackey's work still sells well in spite of the "holes" in its world building. And from all appearances, even GRRM's world seems to be stuck in something that resembles the high middle ages with more colonialism, so maybe the early modern era sans gunpowder.

So it may come down to who your audience is. Not everyone with money to spend on fantasy novels are as nit picky about world building realism as most AW members are. Many readers are attracted to stories with a particular type of society or aesthetic, and they're going to be pretty accepting of any premise which allows such to exist.

Rather than have a sort of technological stasis, I'd like the issue of technological progress being an engine of plot and backstory of the world to be used more often.
Think about it, if a power gains an edge over another by a technological means, then they have, by historical comparison, usually not hesitated in using it.

A good example is the Last Airbender series, the fantasy world there has technological elements where they cross over with the magical ones, and it is the progress of the fire nation that drives them to a period of expansion. Rather than just someone wanting more power for the evils, it is a matter of pride by the collective nation, not an evil overlord, that drives the expansion.
And rather than resist with just the same old tech, the other nations developed over the course of the war.
Think about alternate history for a moment. What if the Romans developed steam power? Or the Chinese perfected gunpowder weapons to cannons and maybe even flintlocks? You can see how a technological change, not some magical artefact or resurgent evil god lord, could give a more complex and believable reason for strife in a fantasy setting.

What I find fascinating about this argument, which I've seen before, is that the examples people choose so rarely support the argument.

Dave.C.Robinson said:

What I find fascinating about this argument, which I've seen before, is that the examples people choose so rarely support the argument.

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Please elaborate.

How could we write fantasy novels that shows pro-gress (forward movement)? Or more widely, societies changing rather than static?
Most fantasy includes the idea that magic is a major force of nature. So magic users would use it for many of the same functions we use technology. Communication, transportation, medicine among others. As time goes by we could see improvement in those fields.

COMMUNICATION - Sending of visions or sound or thoughts might progress from manual transcription by the receiver to automatic transcription, by a magical machine or entity. Transmission from a single receiver to broadcasting to many receivers. Progress from still images to moving images.

And, very important, storing of the communications so that many people, including ones centuries in the future, could perceive them. This is the basis of progress, of later people "standing on the shoulders of giants." This is why printing is a crucial invention, as would be the magical version of it.

TRANSPORTATION - Seven-league boots, flying carpets, stepping into faery to travel far. Can't you imagine how that might progress to massive scales, where whole loads of people might step from continent to continent, to other planets?

MEDICINE - anesthetics, birth control, better diets and exercises. All could benefit from magical methods.
One thing lacking from the discussion so far is the understanding that hardware, physical devices, are just one kind of device. Just as important are software, written devices.

China has long used ideograms as a way to write; modern China supports the use of an alphabet called pinyin. There are thousands of ideograms. The pinyin alphabet is made up of just a few dozen elements, much easier to write, store, and send. This has made widespread literacy possible.

For a long time numbers were represented as hashmarks such as I, II, III, IIII, and a slash across IIII for five. Then came Roman numerals. Then Arabic numerals. And other special symbols used in higher mathematics.
Peopleware, or warmware, is another kind of device. Some posters have already commented on this.

The earliest form of warmware were bands: two to several dozen people. Then came tribes: hundreds or thousands of people. Then came higher organizations: counties, states, nations. Each required certain ways of thinking about how to work together.

Kingdoms were an early form of government. Extending that in size produces dictatorships and socialism: top-down control. Such control has advantages, such as quick response to emergencies - POTENTIALLY.

But for an economic system it can disastrous. Bottom-up control is more efficient: democracy and capitalism are much more adaptive cybernetic systems. However, they too have disadvantages, such as race conditions. Runaway feedback is another continuing problem of bottom-up control. It breeds gold rushes and depressions: boom-bust cycles.

How could warmware be affected by magic? SF/F writers practice speculation. Let us speculate!