The Gaming Den

So I'm reading yet another fantasy novel series (Demon Cycle by Peter Brett) and it's another of the fantasy stories that has a premise of "it's actually our world in the far future after an apocalypse, oh and magic is here now". And so now I've been thinking back to many of the other fantasy stories I've read / heard that had this same premise:

- Demon Cycle
- Shannara books
- Saberhagen's Book of Swords
- Greyhawk
- Shadowrun (kind of a stretch, but...)
- McCaffrey's Pern series
- Planet of the Apes (no magic, but still a "surprise! it's been our world all along!")

This is probably something everyone else in the world has seen and thought about and is over it and I'm years late to the party. But I'm curious, is this a commonly acknowledged "thing"? Is it talked about as a common trope like the Hero's Journey and all that? Why? Is it just easier/more effective to base a fantasy world on things that are familiar, like you don't have to draw a whole new map or whatever.

phlapjackage wrote:- McCaffrey's Pern series

From my memory, Pern was some random space world colonized from Earth.

The genre you would be talking about is often called the "Dying Earth" genre. It has existed for a while. An early D&D-like example is Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories, written in the 1920s and 1930s.

Edit: You also have stuff like Conan, CAS's Hyperborea, and even Tolkien I guess that nominally takes place in the distant past of our Earth.

Kaelik wrote:From my memory, Pern was some random space world colonized from Earth.

Yeah I think you're right, I couldn't remember if it was our world or some colonized world. I think my "common trope" idea would be better expressed as "finding out that this fantasy-world used to actually be advanced-science-world".

Blicero wrote:The genre you would be talking about is often called the "Dying Earth" genre. It has existed for a while. An early D&D-like example is Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories, written in the 1920s and 1930s.

Edit: You also have stuff like Conan, CAS's Hyperborea, and even Tolkien I guess that nominally takes place in the distant past of our Earth.

Cool, thanks, now I have some terminology to go explore!

As for Conan/Tolkien/etc, I thought about including those, but I don't think those fit in with the idea I'm ruminating on, expressed above as something like "fantasy-world that turns out to have been an advanced-science-world in the distant past".

Sometimes these sort of explanations exist as a hedge against the idea of having a fantasy world that is just like Earth in all the important physical and biosphere ways as being too much of a stretch. It seems to be a thing that was somewhat more common in older fantasy. I think D&D may have actually helped to break through that particular barrier.

Mechalich wrote:It seems to be a thing that was somewhat more common in older fantasy.

I had this thought too, but it was more a gut feeling and I couldn't come up with any concrete examples of it being more common back in the day than nowadays.

I guess at it's heart it's post-apocalyptic. Most older fantasy was set farther in the future after the apocalypse, far enough so that only very small hints remained of the previous world and there's a strong "lost knowledge" theme. Nowadays postapocalypse stories are set recently after the apocalypse, close enough so that it's very obvious where the story takes place (zombie movies, Waterworld, the Postman, Snowpiercer, that Denzel Washington movie, etc) and there's not as much of a lost knowledge vibe.

A bunch of D&D mechanics borrow heavily from the works of Jack Vance, and he is one of the big figures of Dying Earth fiction.

I'm biased to recommend it cause I enjoy his work for particular reasons but if you want another series to look into, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is worthwhile.

You see it in real world mythology too. Vedic, Abrahemic, Norse, Greek and so on have stories of an age of the awesome people that lived with fantastic monsters, then something happened and the age the audience lives in takes place far after that.

You also have apocalypse and post apocalypse scenarios like ragnarok, various denominations of judgement day, and so on.

The Legend of Zelda hints that "the world had a sci-fi civilization in ancient times"* a bit in several games, and rubs it quite heavily in Skyward Sword with sentient robots and your "magic" sword talking like an AI.

*dev word was that the first Legend of Zelda was planned to end with the triforce being a super computer.

Phantasy Star III seems like it starts on a fantasy land, but then you discover that the world you knew was actually a colony ship.

Phantasy Star I and IV kinda reverse the trope in that you start in sci-fi land but then the big bads are fantasy forces.

Phantasy Star II is sci-fi from the start but then goes into fantasy then flips around again with the final big bads being colonists from Earth.

Terranigma?
Arguably Cadillacs and Dinosaurs maybe?

The Might and Magic series of games all end with hard left turns into science fiction land. But really we're all harking back to Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny when we do our far future fantasy barbarism thing. The Dying Earth books and Lord of Light are extremely influential on D&D and thus on modern fantasy in general.

-Username17

The Swords series is an intersting example in that its predecessor, the Empire of the East books are much more firmly in the "seems like fantasy but is still obviously postapoc to the reader", with functioning tanks and shit.

late 80's 90's sci fantasy's one of my favorite aesthetics for RPGs

FrankTrollman wrote:The Might and Magic series of games all end with hard left turns into science fiction land. But really we're all harking back to Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny when we do our far future fantasy barbarism thing. The Dying Earth books and Lord of Light are extremely influential on D&D and thus on modern fantasy in general.

-Username17

Are they? I'm trying to remember anything that seems directly influenced by Lord of Light, and nothing comes to mind.

OgreBattle wrote:late 80's 90's sci fantasy's one of my favorite aesthetics for RPGs

I was about to ask you where that is from, but the image name gave it away. I was really thinking Shining force too but I could not remember either character displayed there.

OgreBattle wrote:late 80's 90's sci fantasy's one of my favorite aesthetics for RPGs

Yeah maybe this is why I like it too, 80's/90's was my growing-up years and I imprinted on this type of thing. And good point, besides books, there are tons of video games/movies/tv shows with this same trope. Most recent I've seen is that show being filmed in Louisiana called Into The Badlands.

I'm not sure this idea fits into the "Dying Earth" genre. Having read up on it, Dying Earth genre emphasizes, well, that the Earth (or wherever) is dying, with themes of "world-weariness, innocence (wounded or otherwise), idealism, entropy, (permanent) exhaustion/depletion". But the genre I'm thinking of has the "Earth" already dead, and now new life/culture is rising again, and it's a very different life/culture than what came before. Themes of exploration, discovery, old long-forgotten history, etc.

As OgreBattle said, I guess my idea is more like plain old sci-fantasy.

Dying Earth has so few elements of our Earth that is unrecognizable. All the peoples and place names are made up fantasy stuff.

The techno-magic artifacts of early D&D are more Lord of Lightish in their makeup, being as they are clearly of technological origin. The Machine of Lum the Mad is a thing that a character in Lord of Light might have, while in Dying Earth the future tech is basically Kryptonian power crystals and there's no real "super tech" vibe to anything. It's all indistinguishable from magic on a thematic level.

-Username17

shau wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:late 80's 90's sci fantasy's one of my favorite aesthetics for RPGs

I was about to ask you where that is from, but the image name gave it away. I was really thinking Shining force too but I could not remember either character displayed there.

The one with the wheels is Guntz in his promoted form of Steam Baron. He is from Shining Force One. He was pretty much a literal Tank.