The Speculative Fiction Thread formerly Fantasy Thread

[zompist]

I don't think there's a lot of... carved wood scifi ? though I think I'd like to make some.

I'd say there is, but we call it "RPGs". I mean, the bright idea of D&D and Elder Scrolls etc. is to treat magic as a highly predictable and exploitable new forms of physics. Not coincidentally, many of the inspirations came from the early 20th century, when it felt like actual science was just inventing new forms of physics at whim.

But I may be mistaking what you want. Usually old tech bores us. You could write cutting-edge sf in 1872 about how exciting railroads and steamships were, but read today it's just an old-fashioned adventure story. You can write about things like "how does an empire fall" in either genre. Or maybe what you want is Gulliver's Travels, which is basically sf with the technology and ideas of 1726?

[Travis B.]

Usually old tech bores us. You could write cutting-edge sf in 1872 about how exciting railroads and steamships were, but read today it's just an old-fashioned adventure story.

Have you ever heard of steampunk?

[zompist]

Usually old tech bores us. You could write cutting-edge sf in 1872 about how exciting railroads and steamships were, but read today it's just an old-fashioned adventure story.

Have you ever heard of steampunk?

Let me put it this way: in 1872 Verne could write sf about the amazingness of using new or near-future technology to get around the planet. In 1949 Heinlein could write sf about the amazingness of using near-future technology to get to the moon. You can write sf today about the amazingness of getting to Andromeda. Sf loves transportation technology.

Is that what steampunk is? I don't think so; I think it's purposely retro, grooving on Victorian Britain precisely because it's outmoded. It's not much different conceptually from being enamored of thatch cottages and stone castles.

Or to try to put it even more briefly, Verne was forward-looking, steampunk is backward-looking.

(That's not a value judgment. But in general sf fans tend to overestimate how much science is in their fiction. The idea in an sf story doesn't at all have to be scientific or even realistic.)

[Torco]

I don't think there's a lot of... carved wood scifi ? though I think I'd like to make some.

I'd say there is, but we call it "RPGs". I mean, the bright idea of D&D and Elder Scrolls etc. is to treat magic as a highly predictable and exploitable new forms of physics.

hmmm... disagree? like, RPGs typically have *spells*, which are just specific, concrete, highly arbitrary effects that you can trigger: it's a lot more like batman's belt of gizmos, or 007's thingamajigs, or inspector gadget himself. science doesn't quite work like that, like, if I can cast the 'call my mum' spell, i can also use the principles of that spell to, say, send a signal from here to there, and send you bits of a computer file, and then make bitorrent or the internet. If i can cast the spell 'spark' through the lighter in my pocket, i can use it not just to light cigarrettes, but also to make a small light in the dark, or to melt plastic and shape it. this almost never happens in rpgs and/or fantasy i think.

I don't think that's like a new form of physics. and anyway, what's the idea there? 'what if people could throw fireballs' ? it's not even explored! or exploited, for that matter. there still exists a feudalistic society with peasants, presumably tilling the land with oxen as opposed to doing it with, I don't know, bigby's big hand or random skeletons which can be summoned from the ground. think about it, they'd make pretty sweet beasts of burden. I'm told Sanderson's works are more like this magic-is-alternate-physics, but I haven't read him.

plus, spells in D&D i think are more to do with the fact that it's a game, so you have to make rules for it in ways you don't need to for, say, Gandalf because you're playing gandalf: "okay you can cast fireball three times a day" is a rule. it's more of a necessity of putting a trope, namely wizards, into a game than an idea gygax (or bethesda, i suppose) want to explore.

[Travis B.]

Usually old tech bores us. You could write cutting-edge sf in 1872 about how exciting railroads and steamships were, but read today it's just an old-fashioned adventure story.

Have you ever heard of steampunk?

Let me put it this way: in 1872 Verne could write sf about the amazingness of using new or near-future technology to get around the planet. In 1949 Heinlein could write sf about the amazingness of using near-future technology to get to the moon. You can write sf today about the amazingness of getting to Andromeda. Sf loves transportation technology.

Is that what steampunk is? I don't think so; I think it's purposely retro, grooving on Victorian Britain precisely because it's outmoded. It's not much different conceptually from being enamored of thatch cottages and stone castles.

Or to try to put it even more briefly, Verne was forward-looking, steampunk is backward-looking.

(That's not a value judgment. But in general sf fans tend to overestimate how much science is in their fiction. The idea in an sf story doesn't at all have to be scientific or even realistic.)

To me steampunk is somewhat different than how you conceive of it - it imagines a world in which the Difference Engine was not only built but widely adopted, where the telegraph and pneumatic tubes were used to do what we do with the Internet today, and so on. It conceives of a world where present-day ideas were transported back 150 or so years and implemented with the technology of that day. It is not mere nostalgia for the past, it presents a potential past that never happened because those in the real past at that time never had the foresight to think of what they could do with the technology they had already.

[Torco]

i think i agree with travis... steampunk and the other punks, i.e. atompunk a la fallout, are more side-looking that backwards-looking, at least in principle.

[zompist]

I don't think that's like a new form of physics. and anyway, what's the idea there? 'what if people could throw fireballs' ? it's not even explored! or exploited, for that matter. there still exists a feudalistic society with peasants, presumably tilling the land with oxen as opposed to doing it with, I don't know, bigby's big hand or random skeletons which can be summoned from the ground. think about it, they'd make pretty sweet beasts of burden.

Yes, I made exactly the same point in the Planet Construction Kit. This sort of thing is why I don't actually like the magic-is-technology idea.

[foxcatdog]

Necromancy is evil magic in most settings btw can't be using it for your most righteous good aligned kingdom.

[zompist]

To me steampunk is somewhat different than how you conceive of it - it imagines a world in which the Difference Engine was not only built but widely adopted, where the telegraph and pneumatic tubes were used to do what we do with the Internet today, and so on. It conceives of a world where present-day ideas were transported back 150 or so years and implemented with the technology of that day. It is not mere nostalgia for the past, it presents a potential past that never happened because those in the real past at that time never had the foresight to think of what they could do with the technology they had already.

This seems weird to me, like saying "gosh, the Victorians were stupid, they didn't think to use the telegraph and pneumatic tubes to send messages." Um, the telegraph was used to send messages; it revolutionized commerce and government. It enabled the modern corporation; it enabled the modern newspaper; it also enabled the British Empire.

People didn't think of what they could do with their tech? Did you never hear of Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy, 1888)? Among other things it basically predicted the Internet, using telephones. Global entertainment/communication networks were a staple of early sf, e.g. "The Machine Stops", 1909. Paris had a pneumatic delivery system with 427 km of tubes.

FWIW the difference engine is fascinating; they've actually been built and they work fine, but their cycle is about 1 second long, so about 500 billion times slower than a modern computer.

[foxcatdog]

Seeing as how this turned out i would like the rename it to the Speculative Fiction thread.

[bradrn]

Seeing as how this turned out i would like the rename it to the Speculative Fiction thread.

You can do so; just edit the title in the first post.

[Travis B.]

To me steampunk is somewhat different than how you conceive of it - it imagines a world in which the Difference Engine was not only built but widely adopted, where the telegraph and pneumatic tubes were used to do what we do with the Internet today, and so on. It conceives of a world where present-day ideas were transported back 150 or so years and implemented with the technology of that day. It is not mere nostalgia for the past, it presents a potential past that never happened because those in the real past at that time never had the foresight to think of what they could do with the technology they had already.

This seems weird to me, like saying "gosh, the Victorians were stupid, they didn't think to use the telegraph and pneumatic tubes to send messages." Um, the telegraph was used to send messages; it revolutionized commerce and government. It enabled the modern corporation; it enabled the modern newspaper; it also enabled the British Empire.

People didn't think of what they could do with their tech? Did you never hear of Looking Backward (Edward Bellamy, 1888)? Among other things it basically predicted the Internet, using telephones. Global entertainment/communication networks were a staple of early sf, e.g. "The Machine Stops", 1909. Paris had a pneumatic delivery system with 427 km of tubes.

FWIW the difference engine is fascinating; they've actually been built and they work fine, but their cycle is about 1 second long, so about 500 billion times slower than a modern computer.

People's view of the past is based on how we moderns have misconceived it to be than how it actually was. We certainly do fail to understand the sheer impact of the telegraph, for instance, which in reality really was gargantuan at the time. People at the time did understand what could be done with the telegraph, something we today have a tendency to forget.

[Torco]

I don't know tho... the telegraph was huge, and very much used, but what it wasn't was a method to connect a number of brass analog computers into a vast network such that the messages could be used to coordinate the actions of the computers (as opposed to the actions of people, which seems to me the difference between how the telegraph was used, and how we use the internet). Like, we use the internet for more than 'sending messages'.... okay, I suppose strictly speaking, no we don't, all a network is is sending messages, but I think what travis meant was not "actually using the telegraph" but, rather, in the sideways-looking manner, something more like "a world where specific technologies continued in use into later ages and were used for more things than they were in our timeline".

[Travis B.]

I don't know tho... the telegraph was huge, and very much used, but what it wasn't was a method to connect a number of brass analog computers into a vast network such that the messages could be used to coordinate the actions of the computers (as opposed to the actions of people, which seems to me the difference between how the telegraph was used, and how we use the internet). Like, we use the internet for more than 'sending messages'.... okay, I suppose strictly speaking, no we don't, all a network is is sending messages, but I think what travis meant was not "actually using the telegraph" but, rather, in the sideways-looking manner, something more like "a world where specific technologies continued in use into later ages and were used for more things than they were in our timeline".

It was not long before the teleprinter was invented (as first seen with stock tickers and ticker tape), along with punching telegraphed messages onto paper tape and sending messages by telegraph which were punched onto paper tape. It took a while, until long after the Victorian period, for automatic routing of telegraphed messages to appear, which was introduced in the 1930's.

[hwhatting]

It's also a question of what of this back-projection of modern uses of technology into the past is realistic in the sense of that the uses would have been possible with the technology available and with the existing economic and social conditions. Sometimes this kind of modern use of technology in Steampunk reminds me of the stone cars and stone TVs in the Flintstones - it's fun as a parody, and Steampunk has a nice aesthetic, but it also can be a symptom of a failure to truly imagine a world not functioning like ours.

[Linguoboy]

It's also a question of what of this back-projection of modern uses of technology into the past is realistic in the sense of that the uses would have been possible with the technology available and with the existing economic and social conditions. Sometimes this kind of modern use of technology in Steampunk reminds me of the stone cars and stone TVs in the Flintstones - it's fun as a parody, and Steampunk has a nice aesthetic, but it also can be a symptom of a failure to truly imagine a world not functioning like ours.

I've sometimes called this "the Ren Faire effect" and it annoys me no end. The trappings are all period, but the way people talk (not necessarily the precise words they use but the conceptional categories which underlie their utterances) and interact are exactly like contemporary folk with only a minimal veneer of otherness. No less an author than N.K. Jemisin (another lefty for you, malloc!) did this with her debut novel and it annoyed me so much I never bothered with the rest of the series.

I think Zompist has pimped this before, but I love The discarded image for just this reason. C.S. Lewis takes great pains to research and reconstruct the mediaeval worldview for modern readers so they can see the people of that time as fully-realised human beings who nevertheless made use of conceptional categories quite different to our own--not "more primitive" ones (whatever that's supposed to mean), just very different. Honestly, it would be useful reading even for authors of speculative fiction set in future space colonies just for how much it makes you think about how much your own worldview is a product of the time and place in which you've been acculturated. (I think reading anthropological studies is useful for much the same reason.)

[hwhatting]

Yes; to see this, just compare LoTR and ASOIAF; Tolkien with his background in Old and Middle English studies understood the medieval mentality quite well and, say, Aragorn's or Theoden's ideas of virtue and honour would have been immediately understood by early medieval warriors or medieval knights, while Martin's protagonists are mostly cynical and materialistic moderns clad in medieval garb. (I don't mean to say that there was no cynicism or materialism in medieval times, but they would have been valued differently.)

[zompist]

Sometimes this kind of modern use of technology in Steampunk reminds me of the stone cars and stone TVs in the Flintstones - it's fun as a parody, and Steampunk has a nice aesthetic, but it also can be a symptom of a failure to truly imagine a world not functioning like ours.

This, many times this. It's undoubtedly a personal taste— I find the actual Victorian era more interesting than trying to make it a clone of today.

Tolkien with his background in Old and Middle English studies understood the medieval mentality quite well and, say, Aragorn's or Theoden's ideas of virtue and honour would have been immediately understood by early medieval warriors or medieval knights, while Martin's protagonists are mostly cynical and materialistic moderns clad in medieval garb. (I don't mean to say that there was no cynicism or materialism in medieval times, but they would have been valued differently.)

Also a great point. Though I think Tolkien is way better at emic than etic reconstruction. That is, he's good on what a medieval system felt like to its denizens, and not very interested on how it worked economically or politically. Aragorn is like "what if those ideas about noble kings were actually true?"

I feel like Malory, though he's also idealizing, is more honest about what medieval knights were like: big bruisers whose code of honor didn't keep them from causing a good deal of collateral damage to non-combatants. When his story temporary shifts to the religious point of view (during the very weird Grail quest), he's very honest about how many of Arthur's 150 knights were actually virtuous: three.

[foxcatdog]

French RPG nation scratchpad
Checklist
-Half elven heritage (optional)
-Distinguished military history
-Female hero who saves them from invasion in the past
-Great commander who gives them a large but temporary empire (alternatively gender swap them and the other hero)
-Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood somewhere
-Religously orthodox until LEB (here it results in more Air Dragoness worship and actually now that i think about it they don't even need to go back on this)
-Possibly crucial in spreading said relgion (but not here Air Dragoness worship is possibly the oldest relgion amongst humans)

Germany
-Industrious
-Good relationship with the dwarves

England
-Probably magical but i dunno the magicians nation of the region doesn't strike me as particularly anglo

Rome
-Dunno i put it near germany for some reason

Netherlands
-Trading Nation
-Also big on Air Dragoness worship since well it fits

[Moose-tache]

Sociologists use the terms "Flintstoning" and "Jettsoning" to describe the things you all are talking about. I think there can be some value in the superficial "X-punk" genres, where modern ways of living are superimposed over fun aesthetics. This can be good story telling, if you're writing an allegory of modern society. the movie Strange World, for example, has flying cars but also roads. Why would you have roads if you have flying cars? And why do they not use the flying technology to build more elevators? That seems like a lay up if you're building in three dimensions. But it's a story for tiny babies about climate change, so they can't build a truly alien world with alien ideas of what a community physically looks like. For more complex stories, Flintstoning and Jettsoning starts to grate. Most speculative fiction starts with one or two big "what ifs," where the audience is asked to suspend their disbelief. But then everything after that needs to proceed logically. Some people are born with invisibility? OK, says the audience, let's see what happens. Those people exclusively use their invisibility to make the world a better place? Suspension of disbelief canceled. It runs afoul of what the audience knows would happen next. That's one "what if" too many. I think for authors who are worried about asking too much of their audience, familiarity is a workable substitute to logic. People have a magic green energy source, so they use it to power flying Volvo-analogues, and the audience is expected to follow along without objection.