3 ms·

The problem of fitting the Hubble Telescope into your fantasy setting is one of storytelling. You simply don't refer to it as the Hubble Telescope. It’s a bizar

The problem of fitting the Hubble Telescope into your fantasy setting is one of storytelling. You simply don't refer to it as the Hubble Telescope. It’s a bizarre artifact. The fantasy world is already full of bizarre artifacts, so that’s fine. It’s not magical, yet constructed using techniques and materials unknown to any artificer or wizard. To anyone in the world, it’s just a giant tube with a curved mirror in it and some thin sapphire plates on the side. Does it say “NASA” in giant letters on its side? Yes, but no one in the game knows that. It’s just some indecipherable script that literally no one, regardless of level, can decipher because not only does NASA not exist as a word, the Latin alphabet doesn’t exist. The real world and fantasy world interacting is a trope that has existed for centuries. A friend of mine played a D&D game where the party got sent to real world Earth. None of their magic worked. After they killed the first cop that stopped them, the half-orc barbarian promptly accident shot himself and died while examining the dead cop’s gun. My friend said the adventure was hilarious.

ultimafan 3y ago
This, I also feel like pop culture has forgotten overtime just how much inspiration (and in many cases ripping it out of the source material 1:1) early D&D took from science fiction / fantasy mashup classics like Jack Vance's Dying Earth. There's not much difference to a common denizen of a fantasy world between a wand that shoots bolts of lightning and polished chrome laser pistol tube, or between a flying carpet and hover car. It's all the same to them, and the whole "our ancestral civilizations were so knowledgeable in the lost occult arts that they could shape magic into common objects" when it's really just forgotten high tech sciences is always a fun bit of world building. This kind of material absolutely belongs in fantasy and I really hope that someday sci-fantasy makes a big comeback, some of my favorite reading books and inspiration for tabletop material have come out of them.
- pests 3y ago
  Interesting mesh, I know we are talking about table tops but do you have any suggestions for books with that kind of sci-fantasy theme?
  - livueta 3y ago
    The Book of the New Sun is the apotheosis of that subgenre, imo
    - ultimafan 3y ago
      Agreed, one of those books you wish you could forget completely and read all over again blind for the first time.
      - Pamar 3y ago
        I reread the whole series (plus the 5th book, that was written way later) after a 25+ years hiatus and trust me, it was great...
    - pests 3y ago
      Wow thanks, already grabbed the first book and came back to others strongly agreeing - looking forward to checking it out.
  - ultimafan 3y ago
    Dying Earth and the Book of the New Sun would be the big two I'd recommend, though their settings are very similar they're very different in tone. Book of the New Sun would be better if you want a more serious read about that kind of world while Dying Earth is more of a collection of (very) humorous and whimsical short stories about a bizarre setting and it's even more bizarre inhabitants. Hard to be a God was a good read I enjoyed and feels like it falls into this category as well, from the point of the "higher beings." A lot of famous early pulp fantasy didn't make as much of a concrete distinction between science fiction and fantasy either and tended to blend the two freely. I think most people would think of Conan as pure fantasy but there were a handful of stories about him encountering otherworldly alien beings and sci-fi technology, or ancient highly advanced civilizations whose progress is incomprehensible to (in Conan's world) modern inhabitants. IIRC there was at least one Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser story where they come across an interdimensional traveler. If other people have recommendations too I'd love for them to chime in. It's a genre I feel is definitely underrepresented.

ultimafan 3y ago

This, I also feel like pop culture has forgotten overtime just how much inspiration (and in many cases ripping it out of the source material 1:1) early D&D took from science fiction / fantasy mashup classics like Jack Vance's Dying Earth. There's not much difference to a common denizen of a fantasy world between a wand that shoots bolts of lightning and polished chrome laser pistol tube, or between a flying carpet and hover car. It's all the same to them, and the whole "our ancestral civilizations were so knowledgeable in the lost occult arts that they could shape magic into common objects" when it's really just forgotten high tech sciences is always a fun bit of world building. This kind of material absolutely belongs in fantasy and I really hope that someday sci-fantasy makes a big comeback, some of my favorite reading books and inspiration for tabletop material have come out of them.

pests 3y ago
Interesting mesh, I know we are talking about table tops but do you have any suggestions for books with that kind of sci-fantasy theme?
- livueta 3y ago
  The Book of the New Sun is the apotheosis of that subgenre, imo
  - ultimafan 3y ago
    Agreed, one of those books you wish you could forget completely and read all over again blind for the first time.
    - Pamar 3y ago
      I reread the whole series (plus the 5th book, that was written way later) after a 25+ years hiatus and trust me, it was great...
  - pests 3y ago
    Wow thanks, already grabbed the first book and came back to others strongly agreeing - looking forward to checking it out.
- ultimafan 3y ago
  Dying Earth and the Book of the New Sun would be the big two I'd recommend, though their settings are very similar they're very different in tone. Book of the New Sun would be better if you want a more serious read about that kind of world while Dying Earth is more of a collection of (very) humorous and whimsical short stories about a bizarre setting and it's even more bizarre inhabitants. Hard to be a God was a good read I enjoyed and feels like it falls into this category as well, from the point of the "higher beings." A lot of famous early pulp fantasy didn't make as much of a concrete distinction between science fiction and fantasy either and tended to blend the two freely. I think most people would think of Conan as pure fantasy but there were a handful of stories about him encountering otherworldly alien beings and sci-fi technology, or ancient highly advanced civilizations whose progress is incomprehensible to (in Conan's world) modern inhabitants. IIRC there was at least one Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser story where they come across an interdimensional traveler. If other people have recommendations too I'd love for them to chime in. It's a genre I feel is definitely underrepresented.