What's science fiction without the machines?
What's science fiction without the machines?
I mean, we could speculate and explore the strange future and stuff. Just without that tired trope of "well, science and technology progressed a bunch and then we got this really great machine".
I mean there's gotta be another way. Examples?
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I’ve wondered about a sort of fantasy story with all the hallmarks of science-fiction. Maybe a wizard grapples with the ethical problems that a new spell would unleash if he were to use it. He could end famine for all time for his people, but maybe it makes every other land in the surrounding area inhospitable to life. Or something along those lines where a new “tech” will cause a major disruption with moral/ethical dilemmas, it’s just that the “tech” is some sort of magical device or spell, something very fantasy-based. Everything would take place in a medieval era, nothing high-tech at all, but the whole thing is structured like a sci-fi story. After all, medieval tech is still “high-tech” depending on your temporal point of view.
You might enjoy N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy. The setting at first appears as fantasy, but there is a sci-fi-like depth to everything. The climate and periodic catastrophic Seasons, the tectonics, orogeny (humans' magic-like abilities to manipulate heat and tectonics), and "high-tech" of the world's past history.
I literally just started the second book a few days ago! I'm loving it so far.
I figure the main arc of the plot is "a mystery is revealed and its depths explored". That's basically Egan and Hughes right there.
Except we'd do it without the science/technology tropes.