Fantasy with Friends: Technology in Fantasy

Between a lack of time (one week) and a lack of anything to say (the others), it’s been a while since I participated in one of these. But I have some things to say about this one. I think I do, anyway. Let’s find out.

Fantasy with Friends is a weekly meme hosted by the good people over at Pages Unbound. Fantasy with Friends poses questions each Monday about fantasy, either as a genre as a whole or individual works.

This week’s prompt is:

What role do you think technology should play in fantasy? Some authors try to avoid it (ex. worlds set in an imagined past before modernization or worlds like HP where wizards simply do not use telephones or television even though they have been invented). Yet other authors try to imagine what a world with both technology and magic would look like (ex. The Legend of Korra, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series). Can magic and technology work well together? What questions does an author have to address to make it work?

Urban Fantasy is replete with examples of magic interfering with technology (e.g., The Dresden Files, The Rivers of London), as well as tech and magic both operating just fine together (e.g., Mercy Thompson/Alpha & Omega, InCryptid)–and I’m sure there’s plenty of things to say about them, but I’m not particularly interested in them right now. (there’s a first time for everything, right?)

When I read this prompt a few weeks ago, three books/series jumped to mind as ways to approach this idea. In short–I think the two can work well together just fine, depending on the author’s purpose in mixing them. But it can also be fun when they don’t work together. I’m sure I could also invoke Clarke’s Third Law here, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and do something interesting with that. Maybe I will one day.

The three types of approaches where they work well fall into three categories:
1. Magic and Tech Simply Co-exist. I’m going to submit J.C. Jackson’s Terra Chronicles as our example here. Taking place in a parallel universe to ours, it’s a typical fantasy series in that there’s a lot of magic, elves, halflings, Dark Elves, living next to humans — very standard kind of thing, but their technology matches ours (actually, it’s slightly more advanced). Our primary character is an Elven mage who works as a CSI-like lab tech for the Terran Intelligence Organization (an FBI-like organization). Her strength is in finding ways to use devices to do forensic investigations of magical elements of particular crimes. Some other TIO agents use magic, supernatural abilities, or firearms to apprehend criminals, while relying on tech like ours as tools. Think of Middle Earth post-Industrial Revolution and post-Digital Revolution. It’s the kind of thing that’d make Tolkien cry into his beer, but…

1. Tech Looks Like Magic. Robert Jackson Bennett’s Shadow of the Leviathan series is our exemplar here. I’m just going to quote from my post about the first book in the series here:
   This is a very technological society, but nothing we’d recognize, really. There are no circuits anywhere, no electricity…horses and carts are the primary means of transportation for those who are going too far or need to go too quickly to walk. But they practice all sorts of engineering feats, genetic manipulation, medical marvels, and so on.

The source of their raw materials? The Leviathans that threaten them all. When these Leviathans die/are killed, the Empire’s scientists harvest blood, tissue, and bone for all sorts of things to accomplish the above. Leviathan bone is difficult to shape, but it results in tools and swords that are beyond the strength and endurance of metal. Tissues can be manipulated and applied to humans to extend their abilities (augmenting strength, enabling them to have memories that are like eidetic memory to the nth power, control of their pheromones to alter the behavior of those around them, and so on).

Especially when it comes to the abilities that some of these people have, or the freakish contamination that the murderer is using, in a Fantasy book featuring people on horseback using swords, this looks like magic.

1. Magic Fuels the Technology. Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang leapt to my mind before the others when I saw this prompt–although The Last Rift Dragon by Shami Stovall and Crownfall by Michael Vadney would also work well here. Bright Haven isn’t as technologically advanced as the above worlds, but it’s more advanced than your typical Fantasy work. Now, I won’t talk about the magic at all–you need that on your own. But essentially, power is extracted and brought into the use of the city of Bright Haven. It provides heat, enables kitchens and vehicles to operate, and more. I really should’ve written something about it so that I could quote it here like I did above, because my recollection is so dim that Edison’s first bulb was likely brighter. Oh well. Those who’ve read the book know what I’m talking about, and those who haven’t…well, you should. I thought it was great–and I’m on the lower-end of its fandom.

Of the three, I think there’s more promise for Fantasy novelists here in this third one–SF is leagues ahead when it comes to commenting on our dependence on energy sources and the abuse to people/environment that can come from it. General Fiction and some Crime Fiction is also working on it. But Fantasy doesn’t get into it much–or when it does, it’s things like deforestation or the like. WHich is all well and good–but Vadney and Wang both do a good job of showing what happens when magic is used for the benefit of some, but not all–and can be twisted for destructive ends. Honestly, we need a lot more of that.

Go read some of the other responses to this prompt, they’re likely better thought-out and consider different works/angles.