I’m a bit miffed by the lack of early modern settings in fantasy. Since most of the “medieval” tropes in your standard western fantasy series actually come from the Renaissance, you would expect gunpowder and other technological innovations to follow. Yet while shipbuilding technology tends to go the opposite direction, jumping far ahead, we’re often left with a noticeable absence of guns. For those, you’d best look to steampunk or gaslight romance; secondary-world fantasy often remains pre-modern in character in at least one aspect, an inability to discover gunpowder, even if early modern in others.
This isn’t a problem in historical fantasies, where we expect historical baggage to go along with the chosen time period. Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series has riflemen mounted on dragons, no less. And there are a growing number of industrial settings in fantasy (such as Mieville’s Bas-Lag) that allow for flintlocks, though by this point the early modern aspects are gone completely.
Sometimes we can muster up a reason. The nameless city of Ellen Kushner’s Riverside tales is a mix of various eras and places from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Among the nobles, life is much like in Regency-era England; among the poor, Renaissance-era Italy. I found the lack of pistols odd, but the focus on sword duels between hired swordsmen as an official means to resolve disputes in high society did, in fact, seem balanced on a lack of firearms. Pistols duels don’t require nearly as much finesse. As well, the country had united some time ago and faced no external threats; nothing appreciable in the way of wars would lead to military innovation.
More often than not, however, there’s a sense of societal and technological stagnation in fantasy. Lack of gunpowder is only a small symptom, really. Even during the Middle Ages there were times of great upheaval, and Europe in the early fifteenth century looked a great deal different than it did in the sixth. Yet I’m all to used to seeing a prologue tell of some event 1000 years prior the events of the main narrative, and by the time we reach chapter one, no appreciable change has occurred, not even a mouldboard plough. The world, as ever, has remained exactly the same.
Yet there is a draw towards the Renaissance and early modern period for a certain kind of romance (in the old sense of the word)—courtly intrigue, natural philosophy, swashbuckling rogues, pirates, voyages of exploration, war galleys, a remarkable variety of quite elegant swords, and even more elegant clothes. The advent of the printing press and the spread of ideas, the rising popularity of theatre, mass upheaval, revolution. The contact of various cultures at a scale unprecedented; galleons racing across the world.
And, of course, there were guns. The Ottomans with their giant cannons, Europeans with matchlocks, wheel-locks, flintlocks. The pike-and-shot era giving us a mix of pikes and halberds and swords and muskets. In Eastern Europe a rather glorious blend of eras out of synch: Tatars still using bows and arrows across the steppe, still carrying shields, Winged Hussars in heavy armour, sabres, ostentatious costumes, feudal magnates.
There’s a lot of fun to be had here, and I dub works that fall on this period for inspiration as “black powder fantasy.”
There’s been a bit of it. Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark trilogy had an Enlightenment flavour, and Dianna-Wynn Jones dabbled in introducing guns and printing presses. Patricia C. Wrede did some as well, though she veered more towards historical fantasy in that regard (Sorcery & Cecelia comes to mind). But in my reading, the rapport of guns has been strangely silent. I’ve seen some comments to the effect that the introduction of gunpowder is a no-no, a way to break immersion; though this seems more rooted in preconceived genre expectations than in anything incompatible with firearms or other innovation in fantasy itself. Even Tolkien included some explosions, after all.
Folks, this viewpoint must be rectified!
I’m kidding, of course, since taking on a renaissance or early modern-style fantasy does depend on the themes you want to express. My on-hiatus book centres on the ideas of intellectual upheaval and colonization, the fading of belief in the supernatural and the overthrow of an ancien regime. Naturally, my influences gravitate around the starkest historical period for these sorts of questions. Guns and printing presses are more than just window-dressing for what I’m trying to express. As always, authors should choose the milieu that fits them best.
Still…rapiers and wheel-lock pistols are pretty cool, don’t you think?
I think it stems from the concept that technology is the great equalizer. Guns allowed for a new form of professional soldier, not the mounted knight tide to land and lord, but peasant mercenaries who would fight for whom ever payed the most (or the fastest). At the same time, as you clearly pointed out, the evolution of firearms was slow and many technologies coexisted. Hussar wagon and cannon tactics may have broken the back of the mounted knight, but plate armor was still around even at the time of Cromwell’s New Model army.
It is also the old dilemma that if you have fireball casting wizards why build canon? That’s why I took out the classic spell slingers in my current WiP and concentrated on using magic to improve existing weapons and armors, such as swords, pistols or siege cannon. And brought alchemy to the forefront in such things as love potions, poisons and the old stand by, Greek Fire.
I tackled this one in “Where There Is Smoke” (which you can find in Sword and Sorceress XV). Let us say that in a magical setting perhaps gunpowder has more consequences than you might expect.
Good post, I’ve often wondered myself why there aren’t more variations to settings in secondary world fantasies. Personally, I’ve been working on stuff set in a twentieth century inspired secondary world, so concerns about medieval stasis is an issue.
I think Ralfast and Mary have good points- depending on how the magic is used, would that not argue for the non development of certain technologies? Take Naruto or Fullmetal Alchemist for example.
It is also the old dilemma that if you have fireball casting wizards why build canon?
This is true; technological development would be stymied in a high-magic setting for the same reason the Romans didn’t bother developing a steam engine despite having all the know-how to do so. I tend to be more interested in intrusions of supernatural influence in fantasy rather than out-and-out spell-slinging–visions, adeptness towards certain skills (music, healing etc.), rare encounters with supernatural beings out of myth and legend…in other words, settings in which magic is an abnormal thing (or once was normal, but is no longer), or else, as in sword & sorcery, quite dangerous.
Martha Wells used a setting inspired by Austria-Hungary in the 19th century that did include pistols and cavalry officers and all the rest, but the level of magic involved was so high you had to wonder is society would actually develop in such fashion. Only those attuned to magic could use it, however, so that was probably an out. I’m sure there’s a book or short story somewhere about a magic-using autocracy toppled by innovators in the lower class.
I suppose I’m most annoyed by low-magic settings also going the “medieval stasis” route (the Middle Ages, as I said, were anything but static).
There are arguments for and against so called “medieval stasis” (at the technological level at least, not the cultural one). For once, just because technology developed the way it did in Euroasia the way it did, doesn’t mean it would do in a a fantasy world.
One: Material sciences. One of the aspects that separates the modern world from times past are not the tools or even the basic concepts, but the material sciences that make modern technology work. Without it the integrated circuit, or the jet engine could exist (and the availability of cheap energy to boot).
Second: Cultural Paradigms. Technology comes about because people feel there is a need for a tool to solve a problem. Ironically a successful technology can stymy other technological advances. Think Battleship vs. Aircraft carrier. The plane was a direct challenge to the battleship and therefore rejected by many admirals in the Royal Navy and the USN. Yet it was embraced by the Japanese who saw the need to project power over long distances (the Pacific and the East Asian coastline). The opposite is also true in that an obsession with technological advance can blind the user to it’s weaknesses (what I like to call the God’s Eye Illusion/Delusion syndrome).
Warhammer Fantasy has certainly embraced the magic (ho ho) of black powder: just look at the Empire, the Old World equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire in the time of the Thirty Years War. Handgunners, cannons, pistoliers, and troops modelled after landesknechts. Kislev resembles early modern Poland, complete with winged hussars, boyars and cossacks. The Vampire Counts are pretty much what you’d expect if Wallachia under Vlad the Impaler was a kingdom of vampires. The Skaven just go nuts with guns, cannons and other Leonardo-esque contraptions.
I haven’t read any of the novels based on the franchise, unfortunately, so I can’t speak of their quality.
Ranked musketeers and cannons means less place for individual battlefield heroics. When any barely trained farm boy in the king’s army can shoot Conan in the head from 75 yards it’s a little deflating. I suspect that’s a large part of the neglect of stories set in black powder environments.
“Goblin Moon” and its sequel, “The Gnome’s Engine” by Teresa Edgerton are set in a sort of 18th century off-kilter European setting. Lots of fun with muskets, pistols and ship mounted cannons. The magic is mostly limited to charms, rituals and alchemy.
@ Al: I have not had any good experiences with tie-in fiction, so I tend to avoid it these days. I also suppose you’d need a certain amount of investment in the franchise beforehand. I couldn’t afford those Warhammer figurines back when it was a Thing in Elementary school, so I have no nostalgic memories to fall back on.
@fltechav: Solomon Kane seemed to get on just fine, and I can rattle off just as many battlefield heroes from the 16th/17th centuries as from the middle ages, but I can see your point for the sort of epic fantasy that demands armies a-clashing. How many times do heroes fall to a flight of arrows in fantasy novels, after all? (Well, except Boromir, of course)
Medieval stasis is more plausible if you don’t ramble over time. The memories of peoples are not, in fact, very good; even with trained professionals, oral history’s accuracy doesn’t last much over 150 years. And the change was not as fast as it was later.
Rambling over time — Pern, I think, is the worst. Centuries had past. The purported changes were a big plot point. And yet they were trivial and cosmetic.