The technology thing.

 

 

I wrote Blightcross years ago. At the time I hadn’t seen any reference to Dieselpunk besides some obscure reference to the Dark Sun universe.

So there wasn’t a whole lot to go on, at least that I knew of. I admit I spent way more time writing than reading or being part of the scene. So maybe something went over my head. At any rate, I remember debating with myself over technology in that novel. I wanted to get away from traditional fantasy–far away–but still retain a lot of those elements and play with a modernist-era setting.

Oh, by the way–the fact that I wrote this novel years ago and it’s only just now seeing the light of day gives you an idea of how fast this particular trade moves for unpublished authors. For most it doesn’t even begin to start once you’ve finished the novel!

Anyway, I considered doing a direct transplant of what we had around 1920. But beside being too easy, I figured that while my world ended up with good artillery, flying boats, and electricity, the weapons you’d expect (rifled barrels, machine guns and so on) would possibly lag behind on account of the magic issue. Since much of the conflict in that world existed due to who had control of certain populations with those abilities, the development of infantry weapons wasn’t of much concern. They certainly would be right when the novel takes place, and there will be much more about that in the next installment. Actually there are some hints about that in my short story Tidal Tantrums, since the main character is the head of one of that world’s first corporations that would form a military-industrial complex.

Thinking about this also got me thinking to how writers always skip that hilarious few hundred years of our own history when war consisted of absurd, formal gatherings. You know, like 18th century type fighting. Stand everyone in a line, perform drill properly, and hope that one of those lead balls doesn’t hit you in the face. This is something I want to tackle in a fantasy novel. So maybe a prequel might happen someday. I mean I suppose once they closed the distance between the two sides, there might have been a lot of stabbing going on, but for the most part I think a lot of that type of battle scene would be hard to make interesting. War of 1812 but with people who have funny names, weird creatures, and other fantasy idioms. I’m so there.

What the hell would you call that, anyway? Musketpunk?

Another way I was thinking science would lag behind due to not being necessary would be medicine. If you have widespread use of healing magic, biology is likely not going to progress as fast. So that’s another thing I have to consider. In the Blightcross world, I think it would take some really bad epidemics to get people into studying medicine more deeply and figuring out vaccines and so forth.

This is the kind of thing I’ll be discussing in my upcoming workshop. To be honest, I’m terrified but excited. I can pull this stuff out of my ass in writing very easily, but we’ll see if I can do it verbally and not bore the audience to tears! I’ll have more details on when and where this will be soon hopefully. For some reason it’s not up on the writing group’s website yet.

And just in case nobody knew, I’ll reiterate that Tidal Tantrums, a short story of mine that appears in the anthology Ride The Moon, is sort of a Blightcross spinoff. The main character in that story will be a major player in the next book.