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<blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 1031978" data-attributes="member: 1106">Actually, I was thinking along those very lines when I wrote that.&nbsp; The difference is that a magical train or magical gun doesn't automatically follow the genre idioms of sword &amp; sorcery fantasy, whereas a flying carpet or magical sword does.&nbsp; We're willing to accept that wizards don't revolutionise agriculture in a faux-medieval S&amp;S fantasy world for the same reason that we're willing to accept that James Bond's gadgets always suit the situations he's going to get into perfectly - it doesn't make sense, but it's in-genre, and therefore acceptable in terms of suspending disbelief if we understand that genre.A flying carpet, with it's associations to magic and mythological basis, is accepted as genre correct material, if borrowing from Arabian Nights to a large degree.&nbsp; Magical trains cannot draw on any such mythological resonance to counteract the technological anachronisms they suggest, and therefore challenge suspension of disbelief under the expectations and norms associated with swords &amp; sorcery fantasy unless the context is clever enough to dictate otherwise.&nbsp; It could well be - we haven't seen said context.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rounser, post: 1031978, member: 1106"] Actually, I was thinking along those very lines when I wrote that. The difference is that a magical train or magical gun doesn't automatically follow the genre idioms of sword & sorcery fantasy, whereas a flying carpet or magical sword does. We're willing to accept that wizards don't revolutionise agriculture in a faux-medieval S&S fantasy world for the same reason that we're willing to accept that James Bond's gadgets always suit the situations he's going to get into perfectly - it doesn't make sense, but it's in-genre, and therefore acceptable in terms of suspending disbelief if we understand that genre. A flying carpet, with it's associations to magic and mythological basis, is accepted as genre correct material, if borrowing from Arabian Nights to a large degree. Magical trains cannot draw on any such mythological resonance to counteract the technological anachronisms they suggest, and therefore challenge suspension of disbelief under the expectations and norms associated with swords & sorcery fantasy unless the context is clever enough to dictate otherwise. It could well be - we haven't seen said context. [/QUOTE]

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