Great Fantasy, Common Flaw

Several novels I've read have brought up such a topic on occasion and usually use their own reasoning as to why they have few, if any, technological advancements. In the Demon trilogy by Peter V. Brett (incomplete, as yet, but highly recommended), people have tried innovation within the world, such as building a warded road between the major cities so that ordinary folk can travel without fear, but when you can only work during the day (demons called corelings come to the surface at night and kill anyone they can get at) and constantly have demons destroying your work, it's difficult to progress.

In the Mistborn trilogy, by Brandon Sanderson (extremely recommended), the Lord Ruler has lived for a thousand years and has halted progress in all areas for the sole purpose of controlling the human race and prevent them from rising up against him, which is always possible on account of his brutal regime. Again, there's a fear of the night ingrained in the people due to the mists that seem to spring from nowhere at night and fade away with the rising sun, so even then, progress is difficult; the fear is so deep in their bones that among the peasant class, anyone who goes out at night is more or less considered dead to their families. On the flipside, in his next up-coming stand-alone sequel to it, it has more of a steampunk aspect to it, showing a great amount of progress in only 100 years.

In the Obsidian trilogy, by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, progress has also been forcefully and purposefully halted by the rulers; in this case, mages. It's also for the purpose of controlling the populace, to keep them sheep for the mage's harvesting.

Conversely, in the Farsala trilogy, by Hilari Bell, it's slow, but there's progress in both swordsmithing and warfare, brought about when a nation called the Hrum, based on the Romans, devastate the Farsalans, themselves based on Middle Eastern cultures, destroying the entire sum of their army in a single battle. It was in part due to the Farsalan's poorly tempered swords that broke against the Hrum's better steel, called water steel (or something similar, which is quite obviously based on Wootz/Damascus). In the last book, the Farsalans perfect the forging technique of water steel and by improving their tactics to work as a group instead of individuals, they become a force that can harry the Hrum for the remainder of their 1-year deadline.

In the 5th Ring trilogy, by Mitchell Graham, in the last book to be exact, cannons are seen for the first time in perhaps a dozen millennia. This is mainly due to the fact that the setting of the world is that of one finally coming out of the dark ages after rebuilding from the apocalypse. Granted, it took 3,000 years, but it's still progress.

In the final book of the Ranger's Apprentice series, by John Flanagan, The Emperor of Nihon-ja (unsurprisingly based on Japanese culture), there's a massive innovation of warfare. Although, perhaps I should say a reinvestiture of tactics, since they were borrowed from a culture based, once more on the Romans. By using the Nihon-jan peasant class' natural teamwork to its fullest with Roman military formations, they devastated the warrior class who, once more, are used to fighting as individuals, as well as wielding the slashing katana against a tower shield and gladius.

Anyways! All those examples aside, there's a very simple reason why progress is rarely, if ever, shown in sword & sorcery books: it wouldn't be a sword & sorcery book if they were using guns, now would it? :lol:

I have had the exact same thoughts. As a game master in RPGs its fun to create these detailed worlds with rich histories, but when your done, you realize that after 10000 years, people are still killing each other with pointy sticks.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned here, is the Magic. In the more magic-rich worlds, magic takes the place of science. Most of the great thinkers in these worlds are usually some kind of "magic user". Imagine if mathematicians and physicists like Archimedes, Newton and Einstein had been able to do magic. Their research would have been into that field instead.

Edit:
Another thing that is used to explain it, is various kinds of apocalypses that throws civilizations back to the dark ages. In Robert Jordans the Wheel of Time they have legends of shock lances and flying machines, and the reader sees the birth of the steam machine (even though the characters only see a strange man with a metal machine that belches out steam from various holes and make a lot of noise).
Anne McCaffreys Pern series has a world that is periodically hit by something that destroys organic life, and forces the people to move underground for a period every 2. generation or so.

The magic if a great point. Who needs cannons when you have a few spellslingers. Also, things tend to advance with each generation as the younger people do things slightly differently than their parents. This gets a bit mucked up when you have races that live for hundreds of years, or in the case of Tolkien's Elves, forever unless killed. So in some cases it can be the same person fighting the same way for hundreds or thousands of years. Look at humans in most fantasy settings that have more than one race, they tend to be one of the youngest races, yet they tend to catch up and rival all the others. There is far less progress the longer the life span. Take say a human smith making a sword that would be his life's work, he spends 5 year on it, and it is a decent chunk of time for him.(assumibng 75 year life, it is 1/15th of his life) A Dwarf smith under similar circumstances(300 year life span) could spend 20 years making such a thing and it is the same relative amount of time to said dwarf.And an elf expecting a 1000 year life the equivilant would be roughly 67 years.

Progress is hard to gauge when non-human mindsets are involved. Look at the real world, in the last thousand years what humans have done. it is amazing how far we've come. But how many generations has that been? Where would we be if it had only been 10-15?

The prequel trilogy to Pern is certainly sci-fi. It goes into the story of how the colonists got to Pern, what destroyed their colony, where the dragons and dragon-riders came from and Why they were developed. The entire series covers only a few hundred years and the dragonriders develope telescopes and attempt space-travel, among other things. But other than the prequels, it's clearly fantasy.

Shannara is another series that has a fantasy world devolving from a scientific one. There are hints that the nuclear apocalypse occurred in the distant past. However, while this series does span thousands of years, it most definitely does not remain static. Huge changes occur in tactics and technology. They develope trench warfare and flying machines and, if I recall correctly, there were even suggestions of firearms. Chemical explosives actually show up relatively earlier in the series. Of course, the deviation into science is likely caused by the one empire hunting down all the magic-users for hundreds of years and chasing the magical races away.

There's also the stand-alone Redemption of Althalus. That book by the Eddingses takes us through the stone age, the bronze age and into the steel age. Althalus spent his life around gold and copper coins and decides to check out the cities in the South, where there is real civilization (and, reportedly, the streets are paved in gold). He discovers ale for the first time, rather than mead, and paper money, among other things and just doesn't know what to do with it.

It's out there, after all. And keep in mind that Human history, real history, has over 4500 years of Recorded pointy sticks. Not to mention what went on in prehistory. And the worst cataclysm that occurred in the world in that period was the fall of the Roman Empire. Just imagine how much longer our "primitive" history would have continued with the occasional Extinction Level asteroid or if one of those so-called super-volcanoes had decided to erupt, or more frequent ice ages, or God's rampaging through the world fighting over who controlled it, leaving devastation in their wake, or magic users who occasionally got too powerful and broke the world (or blew themselves up) or...
Or how about if we had a manufactured plague or nuclear war today that caused the survivors to swear off technology as the Devil's work (the last book of David Weber's Empire From the Ashes trilogy has a world like that)?

10,000 years doesn't seem so bad. So long as you include a bronze age and iron age in there and it's not all steel, unless, of course, you have various cataclysms occurring relatively regularly. We all have a basic understanding of what I wrote out above, even if it's not conscious. That's why we accept Tolkien's world and all the others so readily.

This, except to say the crisis needn't be that big--the fall of a superpower is probably enough to do the job. Roman technology in many ways approached that of the 17th century, when it fell everybody regressed and nobody was able to combine the means motive and opportunity to innovate and improve until the late medieval period. Good technology requires a wide base of infrastructure and intellectual resources so if everyone's worried about serving the local lord and fighting off the neighboring lord it's not gonna happen.

The Mass Effect series also presented magic-like powers as derived from new scientific knowledge. :mrgreen:

Its also interesting to note that while the industrial revolution happened... and mankind invented nuclear power, got into space, and all the amazing things that have happened in an incredibly short period of time... other parts of mankind in other parts of the world continued (and to this day continue) to use the same primitive methods you would have found more common 5000 years ago.

Its so weird... I find it fascinating.

So true when comparing modernized first-world countries to those parts of the panet where oppression in one form or another has people living centuries behind. When you think of the human tragedies on the African continent, religious and tribal problems in the Middle East, we are truly lucky to be living as well as we are.

One of my favorite series of the last several years has been S.M. Stirling's Change series, both the first trilogy with "Island" and then into his "Dies the Fire" books. The way he developed his world with a reversal of the non-tech issue we are discussing was/is brilliant. (It was Dies the Fire and the Protector's War that got be back into sword and bow training after a long hiatus in which I focused only on modern arms and tactics.) It was a google search for a longswords similar to those he described that led me to SBG and the Forum.

I do see the points of our own tech. development coming and going while as a people we remain rather constant... One of the things that I often think about when pondering this topic is lecture I attended in college regarding readings from translated Sandskrit texts from Sumeria. The lecture presented what were purported to be quite literal translations of letters written to and from students at their "universities" and their parents. The issues between college kids and their parents, down to the tone and buttering up before asking for more money or better clothes, were exactly the same as you would expect them to be now. Much change and yet none.

Magic as a replacement for tech has always been an explanation for this in the classic fantasy worlds. But there is still that seeming stagnation in so many areas. I get that if guns and tanks were introduced it would no longer be Sword and Sorcery. But if you look at the great minds of our own Sword and Arrow past, there was constant improvement. Leonardo DaVinci tried to develop "tanks" that would allow rapid movement and protection of troops. The Romans developed covered siege engines and shield tactics.

I guess I would just love to see an AWC, (Armored Wizard Carriage) wheeled up with the Vanguard, with lightning bolts and magic missles flying from the turret.

Or maybe a novel/movie where the alternate Sword and Sorcery world invades OUR world. Hordes of orcs and trolls and Dark Wizards riding dragons meet an Armored Division with full air support, and SEALS and Delta operators infiltating their world to break their command and control. Hey... Who wants to write a screenplay?

Its a very interesting idea Falcon +1 from me. I have some experience with screenplays if that helps any.