Great Fantasy, Common Flaw

i once wrote a fantasy short story in which advanced future modern man and machines was pit against the ancient society, wielders of magic and elemental powers, and all kinds of sharpies in the story the ancients were massacred, but a lone survivor bent on revenge awakened an ancient evil to gain immense power that could overcome the greedy resource hungry humans. was quite epic.

Ditto.
I like my fantasy to be fantasy. I like my sci-fi to be sci-fi. I like my contemporary to be contemporary. Never shall they meet. Well, almost never.

i dont like steampunk at all

You want to blend science with sword'n'sorcery? I've got four words for you: "This is my BOOMSTICK!!!"

OK, seriously though I'm not too fond of blending the two genres. Some like "A Song of Ice & Fire" pay a lil' bit of lip service to the idea that technology advanced a bit - Martin does mention that the first men came to Westeros with Bronze weapons and armor. But then I think he tries to explain the lack of progress through the destruction Valeria and the long winters - 'cause when you're fighting with mini ice ages every couple of years you're going to be too occupied with survival and then rebuilding too much to care about advancing technology.

I think, in general, a lot of epic fantasy writers seem to lack a good concept of time and apparently doesn't realize just how much time a millenia really is. And, as usual, I expect Tolkien is to blame.

Seriously, there is over 2900 years between Isildur losing the ring and Bildo finding it, and virtually nothing really changes in between. That is ridiculous. That's us, today, still fighting wars by poking each other with bronze spears. 290 years would have been more then enough.

Now, Tolkien was a smart and very educated guy. He must have realised what he was writing, meaning he probably did it deliberatelly. I think his intentions was to show that this world was timeless: Time does not bring change. Hobbits bring change. People with magical swords bring change. And if a hobbit with a magical sword shows up, well, you better hang on to something!

Then, most likely, everyone else just did the same thing he did until it became a standard convention of the genre.

Oh, and by the way: High fives for reading Zelazny.



I'm running an RPG now, and I actually tried to avoid that. The current history only goes back 1000 years - everything before then was lost in a cataclysm and everyone has been busy rebuilding their cultures since then. Things have really only been kinda stable for the last century or so. Plus, there has been advancement, it's just that the focus in on magic rather then science. (Magic in this world being more akin to alchemy, based on scientific princples.) Plus, there is one isolated steampunk type society that supplies simple technologies like clockwork, glasses, hot-air balloons, etc, but refuses to trade the more advanced stuff.

I also borrowed an idea from Zelazny: Guns are generally inefficient against armor due to gunpower having lower energy yeild then in our world, so there is little point in developing firearms.



Isn't steampunk it's own genre, though? It's only genre blurring if you mix it with Sword & Sorcery or whatever. Pure steampunk would be stuff like, say, the webcomic Girl Genius, where the only way you'll get a dragon is if you actually build one yourself.

And while on the subject, those of you who claim not to like steampunk should really try reading Girl Genius. It is sheer brilliance forged out of the finest awesome and win.

+1 to Vincent. The evolution of long-lived races (Elves mainly, Dwarves and Numenoreans to a lesser degree) is probably bound to be slower.
Also, I hardly think that nothing changes in Tolkien's Middle-Earth; each new Age marks the fall of a powerful Empire and its effects on the world could be considered akin to a large-scale global war, followed by the corresponding Dark Age:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Arda

I think the flaw in fantasy isnt really a flaw in the work but a flaw in the reader. we all tend to pick a favorite and form a scale of rating other works on it. the beautiful thing about fantasy is the creativity. I prefer when a writer creates something his own rather than base it off another work.

for example you could say the trolls in willow aren't really trolls because there different than the ones in lord of the rings.

another good example is vampires. there are so many types of vampires out there now with their own strengths and weaknesses different from the classic mythology. I tend to side with the classic vampire type over the modern anne rice/twilight type. which tends to make me bias when reading those works, and even those two are different themselves.

plus modernized fantasy would miss the genre completely. fantasy in a nutshell is primarily swords and sorcery. I think modern fantasy rolls more into sci-fi type genre.

yea, I don't think Twilight "vampires" are a flaw in the reader...

I don't mind the 'reluctant' or 'redemptive' vampire idea... but why they hell do they sparkle in the sun instead of going up in flames? Why, when secrecy is important to their existence, do they friggin go to HIGH SCHOOL? Why do they act like weird tween emo fruitcakes when they are old, powerful beings?

Gah. I hate Twilight.