Fiction Friction: Analogous and Alternative Technology in Fantasy Works
Thread starter Gary Oswald
Gary Oswald
It was Vampire Unions that got us Vampire Weekend
Sea Lion Press staff
Published by SLP
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Ricardolindo
One Piece has very inconsistent technology. There are cyborgs but no flight.
Several stories are set in the future and have unrealistic expectations of future technology. Sword Arts Online is supposed to take place next year.
fatal softener
Ricardolindo said:
It's been 6 years, and I'm still waiting for the flying DeLorean.
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Jared said:
You'll have to wait for the diamond jubilee of the first Back to the Future per my Illuminati contacts.
I should note I don't understand why some stories are set in the future just because of technology. As it's fiction, I don't see the point.
Alex Richards
A musical Hubble Space Telescope
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It's entirely down to the feel you want to give.
Flying cars in 1950 is a weird retro-future idea where the set up implies that you're looking at how a mid-20th century mindset would interact with futuristic technology.
Flying cars in 2050 is just a generic 'it's the future, it's more advanced, what are the issues if tomorrow.'
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Makemakean
Mr Makemean
Logical, unlike those in German
My favourite piece of One Piece technology is the use of telepathic snails for communication. Admittedly, Oda is very much just going with the rule of cool, or, whatever crazy idea he happens to have on a given week.
I've always been a bit perturbed by the eternal poses, though. It is early established in One Piece that compasses don't work because of the odd magnetic fields and currents in the Grand Line, but, err-... Like, an eternal pose, that is a compass. Granted, it is not a compass pointing North, but it is pointing towards a specific island. And you can get an eternal pose to lock onto pretty much any island in the Grand Line that you want...
...so, strictly speaking, you get yourself a couple of eternal poses for a couple of islands, do a little trigonometry, and you actually have yourself an alarmingly accurate GPS of the Grand Line.
But, I'm prepared to continue to ignore that as I have for the past fifteen years.
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Thande
The loathsome Zordrak, Lord of Nightmares
Doncaster/ Sheffield
Makemakean said:
I know nothing about The Anime as you know, but that's a pretty clever reference to a real-life early rival to the electric telegraph, which stuck around worryingly long.
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Thande said:
It's one of the most remarkable mangas of all time, and a truly insane exercise in worldbuilding.
Most amazing of all for a manga that's been running now for almost a quarter of a century is that it's all an integrated whole. It's not like he finished the main story he had in mind to tell several years back and has just continued to come up with new adventures for the characters to go on (like Toriyama Akira did with Dragon Ball, which he actually had in mind to end on a couple of occasions after having finished a big adventure, only his editor kept going "this is the best-selling manga in Japan, write another story!") no, this is the same bloody saga that it's been from the very beginning, he just still hasn't reached the planned ending yet!
Which is particularly remarkable, seeing One Piece was (and is) his first manga, and when he started out, he figured it would take a maximum of five years to finish it.
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There was a nice magic/tech bit in the Shadow and Bone show (I assume in the books too), that the use of witches used to be a major tactical factor where one witch was worth umpteen regular soldiers... and then humans invented basic 18th/19th century guns. And now the witches are still more tactically useful than a regular infantryman but far less so.
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In addition, cyborgs coexist with sail ships.