Temple of the Frog

[Ariosto]

What I'm really not big on is making trains, planes, automobiles, telephones, radios, etc., as commonplace in the fantasy world as in our own but with some supposedly "magical" explanation.

I have enjoyed, e.g., Randall Garrett's novel Too Many Magicians, and Mike Pondsmith's Castle Falkenstein game is lovely. It takes a careful touch, though, to keep from producing results that mainly evoke for me the parody and satire in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Not that I take my D&D with terrible seriousness, but some things I like to leave in the Dungeon Dimensions.

Maybe it's just that I got some kinds of wackiness out of my system in the early '80s during a heavily Arduin-inflected period.

I don't mind players getting a bit "Connecticut Yankee" with D&D spells and magic items and monsters, but they'll find out soon enough why Obviously Brilliant Scheme #9 was not already implemented centuries earlier ... or maybe what happened when it was!

 

[Voadam]

The teeth on the giant frogs makes them look more abberant to me, as if they are blurring into lizards/crocodiles.

 

[Erik Mona]

Give an example.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm wondering how you can be sure it's technology and not magic.

I presume you've not read The Dying Earth, then? I'm on vacation away from my complete works Jack Vance Integral Edition, but from memory there's a story in the first Dying Earth book (Guyl of Sefere?) in which the hero adventures into a "dungeon" that is essentially a modern museum, filled with all kinds of modern stuff from the (then) distant past.

This is a regular conceit of the Dying Earth stories, though many can be read as pure fantasies.

--Erik

 

[Erik Mona]

In fact, I'd say that most of Vance's fiction is Sci-Fantasy, not solely Fantasy or Science Fiction.

By extension, I'd add that MOST of the "fantasy" published in the pulp magazines at the time Vance was publishing his Dying Earth stories was in fact "sci-fantasy". Certainly most of the paperback books by, say, Henry Kuttner that were re-released by ACE in the decade preceding the release of D&D were science fantasy. Even books like The Mask of Circe and Valley of the Flame, which could have been written as pure fantasies, have technological elements in them. Monsters turn out to be robots, magic faces on walls turn out to be hypnosis machines from another dimension, etc.

--Erik

 

[grodog]

Yeah, but Expedition is one of those rare exceptions to the rule where Greyhawk is concerned (i.e., Greyhawk doesn't have much in the way of high technology save for in Expedition and White Plum Mountain). Sci-Fantasy in Blackmoor, OTOH, was the rule. The entire setting is built on it, explicitly.

The original campaign included more sci-fi and sci-fantasy than has been revealed in the published modules/etc.: in addition to S3 and WPM (? I don't recall any in there, FWIW), there were:

- robots and androids in the OD&D monster lists (along with ERB Mars creatures)
- laser rilfes in Expedition to the Black Reservoir (a level in Castle Greyhawk)
- the Machine Level of Castle Greyhawk (ditto, to be published by Rob Kuntz's Pied Piper in 2010)
- the D&D/Metamorphosis Alpha cross-over in "Faceless Men & Clockwork Monsters" (The Dragon #17)
- ERB's Mars
- Vance's Planet of Adventure
- and doubtless others that I've since forgotten about

as well as a nod to MA in C1 (the Warden II miniature ship).

 

[Harley Stroh]

While not science fantasy in the sci-fi sense, Beyond the Magic Mirror offered up some tech (along with a reference to Zagyg and his six-guns, if memory serves).

//H

 

[Chris Knapp]

Lucas's use of language supports this well. Blaster, not laser. 'Laser' is too precise a term, too scientific. It tells us too much about how the gadget works. 'Midichlorians' are a noteworthy exception, Lucas gets it wrong here. It's far too contemporary and technical a word.

Except when the called the large turrets on the original Death Star "Turbolasers."

 

[Twowolves]

It's all about the language. The references to Star Wars are very apt. It's fantasy (and, ofc, sci-fi). Science fiction tells us about the present, by extrapolation. Star Wars is different, it's timeless, an eternal Campbellian story.

Lucas's use of language supports this well. Blaster, not laser. 'Laser' is too precise a term, too scientific.

The Death Star had "TurboLasers"


I'm your
Turbo
LASER!!

 

[Glyfair]

By extension, I'd add that MOST of the "fantasy" published in the pulp magazines at the time Vance was publishing his Dying Earth stories was in fact "sci-fantasy". Certainly most of the paperback books by, say, Henry Kuttner that were re-released by ACE in the decade preceding the release of D&D were science fantasy. Even books like The Mask of Circe and Valley of the Flame, which could have been written as pure fantasies, have technological elements in them. Monsters turn out to be robots, magic faces on walls turn out to be hypnosis machines from another dimension, etc.

My understanding is that was because science fiction paid a lot more than "fantasy" (and also would probably have an easier time being published at all). Authors who wanted to write fantasy would dress it up as science fiction, in order to get a better check.

 

[the Jester]

Of course, that's just the word itself; the concept it represents (single-cell life forms living in your blood) is absolutely in keeping with your point that it violates Star Wars's otherwise "unexplained" sci-fi.

But I think it's fitting that, in the earlier years when things were more advanced, the Jedi understood much more about how the Force works.