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Ilona Andrews Innkeeper books are a great example of a Blended universe. There is magic and science. If you understand it, it's science. If you have no clue, it's magic. There is also a great explanation for space knights. The Law of Bronwyn: “Once a species is introduced to interstellar spaceflight, it will advance technologically but not socially,” The societies' individual standard of living may drastically improve, their technological progress will continue, but their social construct mostly stays the same. The ability to travel between the stars removes some of the pressure factors known to drive societal change. Once you get interstellar spaceflight, suddenly population density is no longer an issue. Geographical limitations are gone. The competition for the natural resources is largely gone, at least in the initial stages. Different splinter groups within the society no longer have to learn to coexist; they can simply move apart from each other. Societal change is hard, because a society is made up of the individuals. These individuals learn how to be successful in that particular social construct, and they resist change, because it threatens their survival. To really implement a change, one must convince the population that their survival as a whole is in doubt unless they alter their course. Because interstellar flight removes a lot of these survival factors, the society in question generally stays as it is once that interstellar flight has been achieved. If they were hunter-gatherers, they remain so. If they were a republic, they remain a republic, and so on.
If you're interested in peeking at a setting with absurdly high magic, but where that magic effects the world believabky while still being fantasy and not just scifi with glowy orbs and swords, then I HIGHLY recommend the setting fir Runequest, Glorantha. It's a world where mythology accurately describes the reality of the people living in it. Why doesn't a farming god who gives fertility magic to farmers completely break the world with suoer farming? Because farming only exists BECAUSE of that God and his farming magic. Why do we die? It's a curse all descendants of Grandfather mortal are afflicted with. But that's just when magic majes the world work familarly. Magic dues regularly cause catastrophic changes to the world in unique and bizarre ways. For example, the West I'd full of incredibly diverse and isolation it's nation's, some being literal utopia and some being hell on earth. Why? Because trade gods maintain roads and allow people to speak different languages. So when some guys killed the local trade god, it magically isolated most the polities in the region. The Lunar Empire gets more powerful magic within the "Glowline" so strategically expanding the Glowline is basic military strategy. Crossing over into the God's realm (hero questing) can allow one to dramatically change the world, so the greatest hero quester of all time put guardians the the God's realm to keep that from happening. And magic isn't the only thing the setting knocks out of the park. Horse Nomads look and act like horse nomads, most societies don't have Christian values so LGBT people are relatively normal and divergent gender identities are excepted (there's even an explicitly non binary god, and this setting was made in the 60s!) and when multiple fantasy races occupy the sane land, multi ethnic empires are relatively normal. Some historical empires with majority human populations were ruled by troll elites, and vice versa. And despite all this the setting goes even further by having it's own people study and question their own reality as much as we do in our world. The God Learners, Bright Empire, Empire of Wyrm's Friends, Lunar Empire, all these groups studied and challenged their reality to the limit, breaking and bending the rules where ever they could. It is, in my opinion, the best high fantasy setting ever made, and it's also one of the main inspirations for the Elder Scrolls and Elden Ring. Bonus point, the setting is also acedemically rich with realistic depictions of mythology, anthropology and philosophy.
The aspect of how the availability of magic affects societies is one of my favourite bits of my favourite fantasy/science fantasy. In my nebulous fantasy world, taking farming as an example, farmers buy growth-enhancing totems (which in my laid out magic system have a limited charge) instead of buying fertiliser. Light-emitting totems are also available, but go through charge much faster, making them far rarer. A farm may also hire a regional hydromancer in times of drought, but that hydromancer can probably only keep a few acres hydrated per day, and will need food, housing and a salary.
The issue with magic, is that regardless of everything else, Magic is ultimately energy. It has to be gathered and utilized in one way or another, but how it is utilized is entirely dependent on the particulars of the magic system of the given universe. I recently read the magi-tech chronicles, which uses magic on a galactic scale. It does go super hard into extremely powerful beings (gods), but even without those it showcases the power and limitations of magic even in a sci-fi setting
@Keemperor40K Oh I agree; I'm not a fan of magic as just another 'handwavium'-style non-answer, and I hold some pretty unpopular opinions about popular franchises because of that. The system I'm writing has magic ultimately use food-derived energy just like normal exercise (not a unique idea, I know). Some individuals can cast more before needing a rest than others, but no individual can level a hill or fly across a continent in a single day. Also, on the space magic front, I very much recommend Alex White's 'The Salvagers' trilogy.
I wanted to add to the discussion we can also view "High Fantasy" from the lenses of Soft World Building as opposed to Hard. You are right, people can find immersion and depth in a world with realistic/logical detailed explanations. Though to others all those "logical details" can also remove feeling of awe and mystery of magic that a worldbuilder might want preserve. Also other's can find appeal with worlds because they have a good thematic that evokes certain ideas, feelings, and imagination, but we can suspend our disbelief because they are consistent with that theme, its own "logic" within that world from a more narrative/philosophical standpoint. Hello Future Me pointed this out in Harry Potter and Studio Ghibli that are enchanting and immersive from a soft world building POV as we can have "believability" due to that evocative thematic consistency and experience. Aspects of the world that are amazing/surreal to us but still align with the "thematic logic" handwaving. Then things can get jarring if they get overexplained or overthought of when its brought outside of that scope. Examples of this is The Force in Star Wars. Initially a mysterious all-powerful and all encompassing magic system that gets portrayed as spiritual in nature, then midi-chlorians get introduced that breaks this thematic and becomes an explainable biological/science phenomena that can be measured that many can found jarring. Or the enchanting appeal of Harry Potter's world gets shattered when analyzing it from Hard Worldbuilding, outside the scope of the original narrative. As Templin said, this is absolutely a spectrum its just depends what aspects of the world you want to flesh out and focus on thematically, systematically, or both. I'm trying to homebrew an East-Asian High Fantasy for DnD so I'm handwaving hard anthropological/economic aspects to maintain Spiritual, Philosophical, and Feudal thematic along with the fact that certain society changing DnD 5e spells exist. (And suffering as I lean hard worldbuild mentally) Would also love to see Templin investigate the Hard and Soft world build angles as I see both can potentially add immersion to a world in different ways. Seeing how it gets incorporated into decisions of aesthetics vs realism or how to balance the two. Along with examples where it gets misapplied.
In my fantasy novel magic propped up society and allowed people to go into space, have a version of the computer, trains, tall cities, and magical armor that functioned like power armor might in a science-fiction setting, but it's highly, highly dangerous, akin to radiation. So you cannot grow food with it, healing with it is the equivalent of trying to heal a wound by packing it full of cancer, but the society needs it so they've learned to control it, but they don't really know the true breadth and scope of what it is capable of because their understanding of magic is limited, but their materials science in how to control it and keep it safe for use is leagues better than those magical races that came before. (I wanted a setting that was s space-aged fantasy instead of mediaeval and I wanted to subvert the idea of a thousands of years old sword somehow being better than the magical equivalent of an AK-47.)
This is actually the setting I work on in my spare time, pure unapologetic fantasy eventually moving towards science fantasy with an internet god and mass produced robot bodies that hold people’s souls. As the eras march on technology solidifies; magic is science, science is magic.
Did that for my story, but I kind of cheated by starting off with a main character in an alternate history of our world, though the "alternate" part more-or-less begins around the fall of the USSR. There are a few other details that separate this alternate world from ours, allowing what comes next in the story to happen, but you can easily recognize it as Earth, differences aside. Plus, some events of our world post-2000 still happen in this one (9/11 being the most obvious). The MC learns of another, more magical world, and he is initially surprised to learn that it does indeed exist, and he learns of it because he stumbled across a denizen of that world that had come to this alternate Earth. However, he does not end up in one of those "You discovered what I am, so you must either marry me or die" kind of scenarios. Instead, he initially tries to part ways after demonstrating just how big of a secret he can keep (black ops-level kind of secret, and no, the MC was never any kind of intelligence operative). Eventually though, he decides to join this denizen in crossing over to this other world, and he, one close friend of his, and the animal companions he has, along with all of his personal belongings (which includes a particularly unique houseboat) are brought over, where they come to spend most of their lives. This other world, at the time of the MC moving, is going through a magical version of the Industrial Revolution - think those earlier factories but without any of the billowing smoke or the stacks they spew from, where mechanization and technology is gaining ground but magic is still the powerhouse. However, with the massive database of scientific knowledge and technology he brings with him, quite a bit of which is military tech, that he shares with the biggest noble family of researchers, technology catches up with magic, but it never evolves into magitech, though there are cases where it comes close. While he is involved in the initial phase of this world's new scientific revolution, he otherwise stays out of its further development. Basically, he acted as a seed crystal: the start of the process but otherwise not involved in it at all. Despite the more magical nature of this world, they do not shun the tech he brought, largely due to the knowledge that he brought of the potential dangers of some of it, and this research family being instrumental in the widespread adoption of the tech (that, and religion in this world is pretty basic and unobtrusive, what with their ruler being a goddess-queen). Over the course of about 20 years after the MC arrived in this world, they advance into modern and then future tech - not quite Jetsons, but not devolving into Blade Runner or CP 2077. Of course, the culture of this other world is wildly different from Earth, both ours and the alternate one, but that is a whole other topic. The story more-or-less ends with this other world crossing back over into this alternate Earth, with the (currently) final chapters covering how this other world, for all intents and purposes, goes to war against the US, with the main focus being the other world's one and only aircraft carrier facing off against two of the US's. I wrote quite a few scenes where this other world flies X-wings (to be precise, what I think is a more likely "realistic" version, but undoubtedly X-wings) against F-35s... and winning. The epilogue has this other world - plus one more - leading Earth and humanity into the stars, and this is where I cheated the most, "borrowing" very heavily from Templin's Antares Confederacy for their civilization at this point. Oh, and during their unofficial war against the US, while they flew X-wings, they also flew A-wings (I basically went with heavily altered and smaller YF-23s for the template)... and I went most blatant with them having the UC-67 Mistaya as their main utility aircraft (I did try to come with a smaller slender version of the Mistaya for their version of an attack helicopter, but still, I, uh, stole the Mistaya for it, and renaming it does not do me any favors). Was it wrong to have the final plot thread happen? Maybe. Was it wrong to "borrow" Templin's work for myself with barely any alterations to them? Probably, and while I have been doing solely text work, which gives me some measure of defense (albeit a very flimsy defense), if possible, I would like the Institute to be involved in illustration; like they do with concept art, I would like to have what I "borrowed" properly credited to them. Did that make X-wings and A-wings shooting down F-35s any less awesome to picture? How about the Mistayas fulfilling many roles, such as deploying SWCC boats like how the LAAT carries and deploys the AT-TE or performing as AWACS and even focused electronic warfare? To me at least, f^^^ no. I am hoping to start getting this published somewhere soon. The whole thing started mainly as a way to fight off boredom, but now, after years of writing (really, I start four years ago) and so many edits and full-on rebuilds, I might as well see how it does. I doubt it is actually good, but I hope it will be at least fun to read. Oh, and if you want a clue as to what this other world is supposed to be, I think my current working title for the story gives it away: _A Chance in Hell_
I'm 49 years old, kind of gave up on my creativity early in life despite being a promising writer. I finally feel its pull and have been planning to take a creative writing course this fall. I'll definitely be referring back to these as they're really helping me find focus and motivation.
I wanted to write fantasy since I was a kid. Tried it in my late teens, early 20's but it was garbage. Intellectual popcorn. The problem is I didn't have much to say, and didn't know how to say it. Now that I've lived more life, am in my 30's and have decided to write for me, and not for fame, fortune, or glory, I finally have something to say.
You got this, my friend! You deserve to follow your passions and what calls to you, and still, it is an extremely courageous act to do so, especially after having somewhat silencing the call for some time. Keep following your heart and dreams, everyone. 🖤🤘✌️
What you say about magic in Low Fantasy feeling more impactful when is few and far between can be very true. Look at Conan the Barbarian, for example. Mages of his era are few and far between, and the source of their magic often relies on powerful ancient relics and manuscrits that they themselves only understand some aspects of. Objects brought by beings of the outer edges of creation, or made by much more ancient wizards with a much grander knowledge of their craft, when their art was at their peak, and most of the knowledge hadn't been lost. But even those fragments allow them to gain an influential seat on the courts of all kingdoms of the Hyborian Age. And you can see that during Conan's lifetime, in 2 ocassions was a wizard from millenia ago resurrected, and brought to that modern era. And in both ocassions, and within mere months, those wizards were setting the foundations of a new empire that threatened to topple most Hyborian nations under their feet. Making fools and tools of some of the most intelligent military commanders and statesmen of Conan's time.
Another famous low-magic setting is The Lord of the Rings. In that world, magic was once more common, but now even those called wizards do more with lore, herbalism, chemistry, and engineering than with magic.
This makes even more sense when you consider the often forgotten fact that Conan the Barbarian is in the same universe as most of Lovecraft's mythos. Robert Howard (author of the Conan series) was a close friend of Lovecraft, so Lovecraft's works have a few references to the forgotten age of Conan and Howard's earlier work Kull of Atlantis. Most notably the continent Valusia and the serpent-people from Kull's stories. Conan stories feature plenty of cosmic horror too. So all those wizards are drawing their power from secrets of the universe that humans were never meant to know.
I think labelling a world/setting/story by genre is most helpful for the audience but potentially needlessly stifling for the creator. Starting by deciding what genre a work is simply creates artificial limits. Granted, sometimes having such limits can be helpful; such as for creators intentionally wanting to subvert certain expectations or conventions, or to constrain creators who have a tendency to go a bit too wild in their creative process. However, more often than not, it makes more sense to me for creators to develop their world _first_ and then figure out what genre it falls into / it is best categorised as after-the-fact. One example that comes to mind is the tabletop game of Shadowrun. Is it cyberpunk, sci-fi, or fantasy? People would argue that it drifts between the three depending on the edition and phase of the moon. If the creators had limited themselves by deciding which of the three it wanted to be from the get go, it would likely have resulted in a different work that misses out on some of its elements.
When you think it all fictional work Involves worldbuilding to a degree and genre can help with setting up needed boundaries or know where you can bend the rules. Think of a police procedural like Law & Order. Sure the world itself is New York City and the laws are the same in real life but that world and laws still effect the characters and the story. Then there are the characters themselves who have their own backstories and roles that effect how they act and think.
Exactly. I'm currently writing my 1st book and it's a unique blend of both genres but imo it feels more like an epic fantasy in a world that could be labled as sci-fi. It's hard to explain without spoiling it which I won't do, but essentially I definitely didn't think of a genre as a lane for my book world to be stuck in.
My excitement for this series is unbelievably high, this is a project I’ve been hoping that institute would do ever since I first started watching. I can’t wait to see what comes of all of this, but I know whatever it is will be great!
My favorite genre is genrepunk, where giant megacorps that mass-produce AI-generated books have created an infinite number of genres as a marketing scheme, until genres themselves became meaningless. Every book will say something about being the "hottest new pseudo-hyper-cybercloudpunk title," and nobody knows what any of it means.
Hyper-genrepunk where the ai doesn’t just sell them infinite genres but instead puts them in specialized cubicles where they become the story and don’t know anything else and are forced to invent more genres so the ai doesn’t get bored with the already stale genres
I'm not a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, but I actually coined a term for its specific form of low fantasy. I call it post-magic fantasy. Basically it's a world where all magic has become vestigial remnants but it can still crop up from time to time and when it does the medieval-style world no longer has to tools to handle it in any way.
Speculative Fiction is the academically defined genre of works that dwell on the society-wide effects of something. Nearly all science fiction and fantasy works are examples.
A note on High Fantasy - I would like to give a shout out to the prototypical example The Lord of the Rings. The setting of Middle Earth is generally of a High Fantasy setting where magic was once abundant, but is slowly fading away. And it's shown how great and mighty kingdoms have risen and fallen from this decay. It also narratively works as well, because more powerful magical beings are more susceptible to the power of the One Ring, the task of destroying it falls onto a group of small hobbits, not great and powerful wizards. And this helps balance out the power of magic in the world in a really nice way. After all, it could be used for both good and terrible evil.
With regards to High fantasy you should REALLY look into Brandon Sandersons Cosmere books. There is a very good reason why he is considered a master world builder and the primire example of "hard magic".
It is interesting to see how the superhero genre seemingly sits exactly in the sweet spot of being either fantasy, sci-fi, or alternate history. Looking at DC Comics, Superman is a sci-fi character (an alien), Wonder Woman is a fantasy character (a demigod), and Batman is an alternate history character (a vigilante detective).
@@fascilime I agree, it has enough of its own tropes to at least be a derivative genre of sci-fi and fantasy. Also notable is that the more realistic and/or deconstructive a superhero story is, the less fantasy it is and the more alternate history it is. Watchmen is a good example of moving towards alt-history, showing how superheroes affect laws, diplomacy, and war.
The failing of high fantasy you pointed out is very valid, but that problem is only caused by bad writers, the sub genre in itself has no fault, only the writing on the almost entirety of author has
For my part, I tend to use a two-axis scale for fantasy settings. High and Low, which is about how powerful the magic in the setting is, and Rare and Everywhere, which is about how pervasive and easily accessible the magic is. Usually low fantasy means the magic is rare, but sometimes it's everywhere.
That's what I enjoyed about the stormlight archives in terms of high fantasy, they had magicans create food for armies on the march. All the impacts of magic on the world were thought through.
Michael Anderle's Kurtherian Gambit series is a great example of this genre. Then you get all sort of sci-fi, urban fantasy, and even pure fantasy offshoots of the main storyline. Across the many authors writing in that universe, there are hundreds of books already. And it all starts with "Death Becomes Her"
Disco Elysium in a nutshell, extremely grounded world building with entangled history and politics with a pinch of fantastic elements (such asThe Pale).
Wheel of Time is an absolutely fantastic high fantasy series with some of the very best world building I've ever seen. They go at length to explain the effects of magic on the everyman, and there's so many "eye rolly" high fantasy tropes that are handled so well. I really didn't think I'd like it, but I'm so glad my girlfriend introduced me to it!
Discworld is very interesting. While the setting itself is intensely magical, I would classify a number of Discworld books (most notably the ones that take place in Ankh-Morpork) as Low Fantasy, because they deal with relatively lower-staked and more mundane (compared to your typical High Fantasy) subjects and themes such as murder mysteries, political intrigues, or how a newspaper/the post office/the economy works in a fantasy world. Then again, genres are more of a guideline.
@@gavinboyer4634 I am disappointed by this video's take on High vs. Low Fantasy, which is very reductive and boils down to "High Fantasy is not realistic enough". This ironically mirrors the words of detractors of Soft Scifi discussed earlier. The Low Fantasy - High Fantasy specture is actually a lot more complex, because these are also very ill-defined terms. Something that further complexes this is matter of Setting vs. Story Scope. One could argue that The Lord Of The Rings, THE quintessential High Fantasy, has a pretty low magic setting (Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age), but the grand scale of the story is anything but low. A Song of Ice and Fire, a low magic setting (in a different way) still has a story that is large in scope (the power struggles of noble families which spans continents). And of course, we have discussed Discworld, a high magic setting with relatively low-staked stories.
I did my Masters thesis on genre, within cinema (but this can be applied to other forms of media), and determined that there are two foundational, or tonal genres, they set the mood, comedy and drama. They reflect the comedy and tragedy of old, and represent a spectrum which reflect a work's tone. Second are the sensational genres, adventure, action, thriller and horror. They do not have predetermined themes but play on sensations, tapping into the likes of ambition, excitement, suspense and fear. Then there are the thematic genres, usually there are large umbrella genres within which lie subgenres based on smaller themes within the larger ones. Outside of this there exists genres based on stuff like format (short stories, anthologies, documentaries, sandbox games...), or technical aspects (animation for example, epistolary, fps games, or top down video games...). I also concluded that fantasy and sci-fi play unique roles outside of their thematic use as they determine the imaginary setting, or worldbuilding, of a work. Sci-fi usually takes place in an imagined future, whereas fantasy usually presents an imaginary past. It can be visualised as a triangle with each point representing realism, sci-fi and fantasy. Between each point lies a blend of both. Fantasy + realism becomes surrealism, or low fantasy, sci-fi + realism becomes dystopian fiction, or hard sci-fi. Fantasy + Sci-fi becomes science fantasy, or alternatively the space opera (which is often used for the likes of Star Wars, Dune or Flash Gordon for example). Almost all works, the exceptions being certain formats within a given media, can be placed within a tonal genre, or a balance of both (the dramedy or black comedy), one or several sensational genres (there exist crossovers, usually between adventure/action (superhero films for example), action/thriller (James Bond) and thriller/horror (Se,7en)), many thematic genres (this can be limitless, as a theme can be anything from Western to motherhood), and usually a format genre and one or several technical genres. A work will also feature somewhere on the above triangle, based on the setting in which it takes place.
This is the opposite of what you asked for but as a fellow low fantasy lover I have to mention the Black Company. It is my favorite example of low(ish)-fantasy. (Gets a bit more magicy as the series goes on)
Hard and Soft Sci-Fi, Low and High Fantasy - definitely helps me when looking for stuff to read. All of which are fun to read. Both are real sci-fi and real fantasy.
A fun genre I tripped over while perusing kindle recommendations is game-lit. Essentially like either Sword Art Online (trapped in the virtual game) or stuff closer to Ready Player One (can log out, sometimes even earn money from streaming content)
I think the thing that high fantasy has going for it is that it raises the bar of what's possible. While George R. R. Martin might be capable of writing a fascinating story going into extreme detail with the kingdom's politics, until it introduces stuff like the undead and dragons it's basically going to be a historical book with changed names. Let's take your farmers in skyrim example, how about farmers do use magic to grow crops? even better, we can make the plants themselves magical and thus sentient. So now farmers act more like a mafia, offering "protection from animals" in exchange for a culling of the population. Add that the farmers are from a distant land where plants don't talk for the added colonialism and we can make a story about a plucky teenager plant that raises their fellows in revolution. Or a dark story about survival in war, where even the food we consume is born of suffering. High fantasy expands the capabilities of what can be written.
I personally prefer the concept of "specualtive fiction", where you take the available information on a subject and base your story around it in some way. Most Alternate History falls in this category (what if the South won the Civil War, what if JFK survived, what if Bill Clinton knew how to exert self restraint), but I like it because it can be taken a step further. I really love Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising as a military fiction story because it actually sits down and explores what both sides were militarily capable of at the time, give or take a few Frisbees (it makes sense in context). It's also why I tend to enjoy it when a story sort of tries to both educate me on a matter while telling the story. To me, it adds a sense of detail that shows how the author did their research. It's not that other stories are lesser because they don't do the same research, one has to do a lot of research on a variety of subjects from characterization to descriptions either way for writing any story (if you want it to actually be well written at least). But to me, it does feel a little more fun if you can sit down and say "this is what this story might look like based on the research I've done and the characters I'm focusing on". Again, that's just me, though.
I think a good example of a “High Fantasy” story that handles magic pretty well is The Wandering Inn by pirateaba. Magic does exist, and while there are [Green Mages] and [Weather Mages] and whatnot, everyone has the capacity to gain reality-breaking “Skills” that completely change how work is done. I think the author does a great job in how various technologies, techniques, and cultures developed in that kind of world.
That's a really great point about people thinking that "scientifically accurate" means the spaceships move according to newtonian physics and that's it.
Ralph Baksi's poster for his movie "Wizards" really was its most memorable aspect. Which is a shame because it also shows how fascism cannot be defeated by magic or tricks, but by through the application of direct lethal force, i.e, when the good wizard pops a cap in the bad, facist wizard's ass.
knowing the genre your writing in is very helpful, especially with someone like me who really likes introducing conflicts. The genre can dictate the type of weapons used in the story, and how effective they are.
The general breakdown of writing as it has always been presented to me is: Non fiction and fiction are at the top. Fiction can be split into speculative and non-speculative fiction Non speculative fiction contains things like magical realism, and your more realistic novels, Jack Reacher, Tom Clancy, Great Gatsby, or historical fiction that lack some other speculative twist. Things that didn't happen in the historical record for sure, but aren't based on some presupposition that changes the status quo of baseline reality much further than the fact the events and people in the novel exist in the world. John Wick would fit into this category I would say. Speculative fiction contains the genres of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, post-apocalyptic fiction. Then it's granular genres all the way down and the word punk is used with beautifully malicious intent far, far too much to be healthy, but I love it.
For a high fantasy that does a great job with handling how magic affects the world is Ascendence of a Bookworm. What I love about the world building in it is that the author does a great job of focusing on the small details like how the common folk live in a world dominated by those who have mana. When reading the light novel, it’s actually a while before you even learn that magic is really a thing. The anime kinda botched that with a flash forward
Speaking of science fantasy, there's a genre I see getting thrown around almost as an equivalent: *Space Opera.* So many people seem to treat space opera as if it's on the hard-soft scifi scale, always on the softer end. Probably because it's most often used to describe Star Wars, which is the quintessential science/space fantasy. By that token, space opera is supposed to unrealistic and fantastical, right? ...But technicality isn't a rule or restriction to the genre! Wikipedia describes it as a genre "that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance." How many of those genre conventions are restricted by how technical or scientific accuracy? Very few. IMO, space opera is a genre that can go all up and down the scale. Star Wars is the science fantasy space opera. Mass Effect and Gundam are soft(er) scifi space opera. The Expanse is a hard scifi space opera.
For me, a space opera isn't a genre. It's a narrative style that can be found within several genres. When I think "space opera," the only criteria that comes to mind is: it must be set in space/span multiple worlds, and the narrative must be grand in scope. A space opera can fall under romance, fantasy, sci-fi, drama, thriller, horror, mystery, etc., or any combination thereof. The classic hero's journey is very much a space opera imo. It's an epic tale, there tends to be a lot of moving parts, and the journey takes us to foreign worlds (Hades, Hell, other variations of an afterlife/underworld). That fits the criteria of a space opera. Sure, stories like Dune, Mass Effect, and Star Wars are space operas, but so are things like Alien and Event Horizon, or Hitchhiker's Guide and Space Balls. Just because something falls under the horror or comedy genres doesn't make them less of a space opera. Warfare doesn't need to be the centerpiece, nor does it need to be a political drama, or even sci-fi in general.
I'm not sure if anybody has addressed this yet, but fiction started with two genres, fantasy and generic/historical fiction. Alternative history is a branch off for historical fiction and Sci-fi was originally a branch/sub-category of fantasy. Eventually Sci-fi became enough of its own thing that it was given its own genre, and then Star Wars came along and muddled the waters again, so people started to come up with various sub-genres and dual or multi genres to categorize everything. Please note that this primarily focuses on Sci-fi and fantasy and doesn't include things such as action, adventure, romance, or horror.
The way i tend to think about solving the problem of magic affecting high fantasy settings is to have powerful magic still be rare, even if less powfull magic is more common. To use d&d as an example, even if every 1 in 100 people can cast magic, the vast majority of these people should be low level casters. By the itme you get to high level spellcasting (7th,8th,9th level) the number of people who can do this should be extreemly rare, like limited to a handful of people. That way day to day society resembes what we know, apart from when these powerful individuals act.
Even this can have a serious warping effect. If one in a hundred people is a low level caster then one in a hundred people can cast a handful of cantrips an unlimited number of times, some of which are pretty busted. Considering how combat focused D&D is I'd expect armies (or at least the military class) to be heavily predisposed to being casters just for access to shit like acid splash or fire bolt. That's just cantrips, can you imagine how setting warping just third level spells would be? (I'm assuming that fifth level is still considered "low."). For example, clerics can literally pull food and water out of thin air, completely changing the calculus of sieges. Then there's all the shit wizards get, like blink or fly. D&D is probably a bad choice because magic there is so busted.
@@ttd0000 true, I was mainly using it as an example with a quantifiable magoc system. My main point is that powerful magic should be rare, especially the types of magic that can have long lasting effects on the landscape beyond just destruction.
There is this web series I'm currently reading on RoyalRoad titled Slum Rat Rising, seemingly cyberpunk at first look but later I realized was actually high fantasy, so high and advanced, it looped back into in-universe science fiction, and literally sci-fantasy to us.
I share your feelings on Fantasy, that's why I want to recommend the broken Earth by N.K Jemisin. It has this really cool interpretation of magic where the caster is drawing their power directly from sub-atomic motion. When they do this, they cause an area of space to freeze, because by taking that energy they have reduced it's kelvin. A caster must be trained to control how wide of an area this 'cone' or 'torus' affects. The primary source of energy they draw from is the tectonically unstable world they inhabit. The local populace is scared to death of magic users and are incredibly prejudiced against them. Young, untrained children frequently wipe out entire families or even villages by accident. A small society controlled by the government is tolerated because the magic users are the only ones who can calm the unstable planet, delaying what is known as a fifth season. A fifth season is a series of apocalyptic events that occur every few centuries that can wipe out empires, forcing civilization to constantly re-start. Underpin that with the story of a grieving mother who has lost one child and frantically searching for a surviving daughter that hates her, and you have absolutely excellent series of books. Deserve every Hugo they got.
At 17 minutes, you discuss the effect of common magic on the world at large. Switch genres to science fiction, and the same issues apply to robotics, automation, and AI.
For High Fantasy that addresses some (not all) of the concerns regarding magic, I recommend the underrated Immortals of Aveum. It is a super high fantasy world, that explores what happens when magic is super ubiquitous, when and where it is used basically everywhere and the impact such power has on the world. It is a lost gem of high fantasy, that came at a terrible time, but that in its world building explores all of this and more.
My universe is simple: It's a science fantasy with a firm focus on realism in terms of science, technology, and physics interactions on a small and large scale, with cosmic horror foundations that are expanded upon in broader, peripheral scope.
Your point about magic is why I use availability and cost to denote between high and low fantasy. If the availbility is high and the cost is low, it's high fantasy. If reversed, it's low fantasy. To your point about magic in Skyrim, magic must be learned and it isn't always cheap, this leaves it to the nobility for the most part, who aren't going to spend time as farmers because they cobsider it beneath them, or will only use such magic for times of crisis and disaster.
Honestly the Inheritance Cycle series by christopher paulini is a perfect example of a well done high fantasy book. Theres nothing wrong with a shit ton on magic as long as the rule system for that magic is well crafted and easily explainable. Issues arise when you cannot explain such things properly and it distors your perception of the book. The inheritance cycle does this well because everyone in the setting who can wield magic all follow the same exact rules.
There are two ways to subvert expectations: To surprise the audience and to disappoint the audience. Not understanding this difference has led to a lot of very expensive movies being absolutely terrible in recent years. It's really simple, the audience expects something, you instead give them something better than they were expecting or something worse. If you make it worse you might think it makes for an amusing punchline but while you make the movie thinking you're being clever the audiences will boo and you'll get a hundred thousand people telling you you suck at your job.
Something that my friends and I have been playing around with is this concept of Magic and Technology being in competition with each other. If some Wizard creates a flying carpet, a scientist makes the first 1-person airplane, and the only difference is ease of use and reliability. Magic items are reliable, but require years of training to use, while technological items are easy to use, but prone to malfunction. This also helps my other friends that are hard-line fantasy vs sci-fi coexist in the same setting.
Genre is a convention for finding similarities so more stories can be found. Which is why I’m trying to redefine hard, soft, high, and low genre. I think hard should be define on overall realism, from social structure to scientific accuracy. So a hard fantasy/sci fi/ alt history is one where it takes things like magic or technology or whatever in account for the world and does its best to be realistic it as can be which is basically lord of the rings, where soft is more focused on the story at hand rather than its believability, somehow also lord of the rings, like Harry Potter. High and low are of how close to our world it is. So a low fantasy I think would be things like a song of ice and fire, where most of it despite being in its own world with dragons and ice monsters could be thought of as similar to our own world. Where high is one where things are vastly different, like dungeons and dragons, which took every generic fantasy concept and said yes (though this was for gameplay reasons), where you expect to see a dragon person sitting next to you at the bar or the bartender to be a magic user. In the end things can be done realistically while still leaning into whatever genre it’s in. Or vise virsa. Now I’ve put my thoughts down, I need a little help of genre myself, to like I said, find more like it. I like familiarity mixed with the fantastical. One reason I like halo, high sci fi with still some similarities to our world I could see us developing in a similar way. But one I can’t seem to find is a hard modern mixed with fantasy and or sci fi, a favorite is the combined. I want modern soldiers having to fight demons from the underworld using real military tactics and equipment, or have a modern city in the middle of a alien planet where we also have kobolds as airline captains and dragonborns working at a Amazon warehouse. I like it Where we have things we could at least imagine being in our world now, but it’s in a fantasy/sci fi environment of some kind and mixed with it. You could even have it like carrier command 2 where while basically all your equipment is extremely modern, even for the drones, but we’re also on a alien planet that we needed to use space travel in order to get to it. What do you call that?
I recently endeavor, among a lot of my projects to create a world that is a combination of three genres that are often fused together but rarely at the same time: Fantasy, Science fiction and Horror. So far the twisted amalgamation is coming together just fine in it's Infancy.
I saw the placement of worlds on the hard/soft sci-fi and high/low fantasy sliders and my brain immediately switched into attack mode. How could someone be so close yet so perfectly wrong in their assessment. Surely I must join the Templin Institute, force them to accept my application if necessary, if only to obtain sufficient tenure to correct these grevious errors. The moment of pure indignation and resolve lasted 2.8 seconds, before my residual self awareness managed to jog me back to reality with the quiet realisation: 'that is the Templin Institute Subliminal Department at work'. In a cubicle somewhere within the bowels of the Templin HR apparatus, an operative reviews a biomorphic surveillance feed and clicks their tounge. Project Nerd Bait is delivering results, albeit not as many as the Director would like, but these are only the first increments.
Im a big fan of the kinda world that Andrew Rowe uses, specifically in his Arcane Ascension and Weapons and Wielders series, where exactly as you say, magic changes everything about the world. In this world, cities are protected by barriers which mean several characters have never seen snow, or heavy rainfall. There schools are dedicated to teaching about the towers from which people gain magic. Wars are fought with magic as the only tool, as one fighter who can use magic could kill a thousand who don't. Trains run using magic, and the start of the industrial revolution has come forward ridiculously far due to the ability to refine metals, and move great weights, all thanks to magic. Those in power, who hoard magical items and secrets, become monolithically strong, as how are you meant to rise up against a class of people who can incinerate entire neighborhoods with magic. And this is only with a small number of people who actually are magical. In Weapons and Wielders, magic is even more intrinsic. The most powerful combatants from all over the world journey to fight for a weapon, and in doing so, we see how much this weapon and its power have ingrained themselves onto the society that's king holds it. The divine right to rule is now a property of the weapon, not due to the actual calls of the goddess, but by the long term association of the weapon with the rulers. I could go on, but it'd be pretty pointless. Just thought I'd gush about my favorite fantasy universe
For high fantasy with very well integrated magic, I would recommend the Ascendance of a Bookworm light novel series. Long running, fairly well written, not generic at all in my opinion. It handles your issues with magic very well.
@@MonkeyJedi99 I highly recommend the books, as there are epilogues, prologues, and side stories written from other character perspectives that shed light on just how odd/ignorant myne is. While the anime does a fair job of adaptation it is still going at a fairly rushed pace and inevitably missing things.
@@MaxRavenclaw For me, the limiter is that I could only afford electronic versions sailing under the Jolly Roger, and I DEFINITELY can't afford to be caught engaged in trade with those fine sailors.
Since you asked about examples of high fantasy that consider how the magic affects the world's development, I've got one: The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin. The powers of orogene (earth magic, but it's more than that) are vital to both the worldbuilding and the story--the series won back-to-back-to-back Hugo Awards for good reason!
For low fantasy, I'd recommend The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee, whose "biogenic jade" grants seemingly supernatural powers and thus is a prized resource, but the rest of the world is slowly learning how to synthesize it.
I recently watched "Berserk," and I found the creator's approach to choosing the genre quite interesting. Initially, the medieval setting and focus on war were prominent, and then it took a sudden turn into dark fantasy in the last episodes. It was a random, yet smart move to add in the dark fantasy element.
I think it's best to understand genre in the same way an insane engineer understands a car body. For example let's say you have a Mazda Miata. Small nimble little car popular amongst street racers and kit car enthusiasts. However you're unsatisfied with its speed so you trade out the engine for a Dodge Hellcat (remember you're loony you can't ask why questions only how, such as how can I do this and how awesome would that be). Now that she's faster and a diesel you realize your Miata would be a lot better if she could go off-roading. So you install a lift kit and absolutely massive tires. Right before you realize you need to widen the base of your tires so she doesn't flip. You can do the same with any genre of your choice. Remember the more important questions are how can I do this and how awesome would this be (Only start asking why if you you don't think something would be very awesome). If you decide that you're hard science fiction story needs a faction that uses straight up literal soft magic because that sounds like a fun way to cause conflict... Do it and remember to play it straight. What is the perfectly logical answer of a physicist encountering actual magic? How would a wizard respond to someone who doesn't even understand the basics of elemental conjuration? That is after all something they teach to children. How else would you get your ships to traverse the sea of night without a wind bubble? Literal bombs? LoL that's ridiculous (if you would like to know how ridiculous please look up nuclear propulsion rocket. No actually that idea's even dumber than it sounds). My point is take what you need and build what you want. Some of the greatest creations in the world were Jerryrigged, at least a little.
7:00 I think it should be noted that there are essentially 2 types of genre, foundational and narrative. The trichotomy of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Alt-History are the 3 foundational genres into which a setting can fall, but any one of these foundational genres, or combination thereof, can then be used to tell stories of any narrative genre, like horror and romance.
I'm not sure why, but when I watch videos like this, I am reminded that the age of explorers is gone. No longer is there uncharted waters to be discovered; generations of pioneers waste away in jobs they must do. One day when we reach the stars and touch the great starry night, I do hope that many will take that to explore. But like I once read in a UA-cam video, "Billions of planets, trillions of opportunity, and all we want to do is find somewhere like Earth, our home" Take care of this place yall, so one day we may reach that horizon. " There is always the one that must go first."
A recent fantasy novel that goes a good job of showing 19:51 effect on society is Nicholas Eames's Kings of the Wyld. Its a sendup of fantasy conventions but especially the D&D adventuring party. They become "rock star" with promoters, groupies and performing in arenas.
Fun fact: part of the reason why The Elder Scrolls doesn't have logical world progression is actually explained: the whole world -- nay, multiple worlds -- is simply the dream of a godlike being. If you want to go down a crazy metaphysical rabbit hole, look up the subject of "CHIM" sometime.
You really nailed the argument about hard and soft scifi boiling down to FTL travel explanation and starship fights. I had to pause and laugh because it really is that.
For an interesting take on more high fantasy settings i highly recommend the "Cradle" and "The Last Horizon" series by Will Wight. Cradle is a fusion of Western fantasy with Anime and Chinese Fantasy stories. The Last Horizon is his newest series that combines Fantasy and Sci-fi by having an adventure through galaxy where technology and magic have advanced together for untold years and civilization has spread among the stars.
As someone who does not use most social medias and is thus verifiably "out of the loop", "How many times do men think about the Roman Empire" was one of the most entertaining searches I have performed in a while.
I'm so happy you used that clip from Party Down. Everytime I hear someone talk about hard sci-fi, I think of that clip. I love hard sci-fi, but I've met that guy, I've talked to that guy at parties, and that guy suuuuuucks.
The Ten Realms does a great job addressing magic farming. They learn specialized skills to grow crops so they can increase yields and help get rid of famine.
5:35 oh hell yeah! I love that image here use for alternate history. For anyone who’s wondering where that came from, it is from the famous alternate history book trilogy “The Great War” which is part of a larger unnamed series of books often called “The Southern Victory series” or “Timeline 191”
A really good gritty, low fantasy series is Glen Cook's Black Company books. Primarily about a band of all-too human mercenaries, and definitely deals with the staggering effects magic can have on a society and the very land itself.
There's what the writer envisioned at inception. There's what the Publishers sold it as on the market. There's what the readers interpreted using their experience. None of these things are necessarily the same, right, or wrong.
The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee and The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson are excellent examples of magic having a realistically proportioned impact on human society. The first is a Cold War era story set on an alternate world where the only source of magic was geographically locked until now, and the struggle for control of it following scientific advancement unlocking its use abroad. The Stormlight Archive is as high fantasy as it gets and is set on a world where an enormous super storm circles the equator, periodically sweeping across the only landmass. The varios well-defined forms of magic largely dictate human society, politics, industry, economics, and warfare. The thing I really like about both of these is that they recognize magic as an asterisk on the laws of physics that humans would study and make technological advancements in just as we do with things like gravity and thermodynamics.
Great vid! A nitpick: understanding that high fantasy meant a story that took place in a fictional world (e.g Westeros/Essos) while low fantasy took place in our own but with magical elements. So you can have a high fantasy series with low magic e.g ASOIAF, but it still takes in a world apart from our own.
I think a large reason why magic doesn't have as much of an impact on the normal world in several high-fantasy works is because users of that magic are often a minuscule percentage of the population and usually have much better things to do with their time or energy than help out any single one of the thousands of farmers. In Skyrim for instance (even accounting for the game making everything downsized), there are effectively no mages outside the College of Winterhold or the Aldmeri Dominion. The Dominion has political reasons for not contributing to Skyrim, and the College of Winterhold is an isolated magical university focused on very much "ivory tower"-type pursuits.
An example of a fantasy series that uses a ton of magic but doesn’t just hand wave it is the Sufficiently advanced magic series by Andrew Rowe. I love the books and he takes a hard power system approach in which limits and rules are applied to the magic while also already having a societal culture that recognizes and utilized the people who are capable of the magic system. It’s a great read imo
Good job, adding alternate history, for me that is an imporant genre, it shows how our world might be different if certian events were changed or didn't happen at all. Endless possibilites.
You raise some good points about the problems of fantasy, I feel like one possible slider could be Mythic vs Mythopoeic, I argue that the difference between religous canon and mythology is time + distance, people argue about the canonicity of star wars media the way people argued about the canonicity of this or that book of the New testament, the importance is less about true realism and factual basis than it is about the emotional and Pseudohistorical consistency of the media connected to it, that's Mythic or Mythologized fantasy where the goal is about the consistency of the world with its own laws and with the emotional needs of the fan base, then with Mythopoeic Fantasy the concern is less about the world's consistency with its own reality and more about how grounded it is within the reader's perception of reality, Tolkien created a world grounded in his understanding and views about Linguistics, Historiography and Religion, for his time its a very cutting edge and Realist depiction of a Pseudo history especially a linguistic one, and where he was most experienced and passionate it still holds up, he's the grandaddy of modern fictional constructed languages for a reason, but aspects like the Essentiallist school of racial theory or the economics or political history are either utterly discredited now or were never as strong as some other writers of his time, so if you asked a philoliguist or linguist to read the lord of the rings they might say it is very realist but if you ask a modern historian or a political sciences major to read it as a serious realist work they would either have an epileptic seizure or laugh in your face, where I'm going with this is that the same way a ER Nurse might have a different view on Grey's Anatomy than an Accountant how much a work might try to present itself as grounded in a particular field or school of knowledge and how knowledgeable the viewer is can change the experience dramatically
Best advice I ever got: Ideas are cheap. Don't covet your ideas. Dozens if not hundreds, possibly thousands of people have had your great idea for a new books, movie, game, whatever. Focus on executing your unique vision for it. Ideas are cheap, execution is hard-won ground. Anyone, especially you, and find a way to reduce your idea to its most generic template or concept. I evented a whole D&D setting based on the idea of a world of various cultures built on the nigh-industrial concept of an ice-ball planet and what if fantasy Ice-road truckers was a thing. I'm currently working on a novel about what it would take to have characters actually act like how monks are presented in D&D. Both of these ideas are fundamentally pants-on-head stupid on the face of it, but how I execute on them (not to overly toot my own horn) has surprised both me and other people. Because when you actually go to work on the idea that's when the _you_ in it comes through, and you might not think you have anything new, memorable, or special to offer, but you might as well try because no one in the world has your perspective on a thing. I'm not saying it'll be good--God no--but it will be fundamentally all yours.
Only just found your channel, so don't know yet if you have any video which goes over this. One interesting thing I found is outside of genres, but targeted towards worldbuilding, there was a sort of quadrant system that really embodies this "hard and soft" or "low versus high" side of the genres(just need to place the more genre specific elements in). So, to make this quadrant system, there are two axis(as there should be), first is "rational vs irrational" and the second is "hard vs soft". For something to have "rational" world building there must be more laws, limitations, consequences and the like, while stories which are considered to have more "irrational" world building tend to just not really use the worldbuilding as the main point and more as a tool. While a story which has "hard" world building will have those world building elements as important factors of the plot, and a story with "soft" worldbuilding will tend to use the environment more out of what is conveniant for the character and plot(for better and for worse). To extrapolate a little more through examples, Lord of the Rings would be a Soft Rational world, there is a lot going on in the background within the trilogy, which you may learn through other books, but most of it is used to help faciliate the plot first, rather than the world first. A lot of "superhero" stories would be Hard Irrational, because the abilities are quite front and center, but how they got them, what their place in the world is, and "lore" of the abilities themselves and how things are connected, tend to not be the main point. Soft Irrational world building I have seen in things like Lovecraft, or other Horror, to basically make things far more unpredictable and vague, and raise the stakes and dread through that, focusing more on the characters or plot encountering these highly incomprehensible phenomina. While Hard Rational would be reserved for some of Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere, and some of those "Hard Science Fiction" stories mentioned in the vid. From what I have seen "High Fantasy" doesn't need to be "Irrational", but it does tend to be "Soft", and when its "Rational", it will allude to things which are in the background that play larger roles, but doesn't really make it the forefront of what is going on. To pull the Grandfather of Modern Fantasy out like I did in the previous paragraph, Lord of the Rings is a really good example of this, they are very High Fantasy, but because its the 3rd Age within the Trilogy, and the more mythical elements are slowly fading out of the world and going west or hiding its not really too obvious to the "little people" and most Humans. The larger and more mythical elements are left for the other stories, but they also don't "shy away" from it in the trilogy, instead just don't let it take front stage. The 1st Age of Middle Earth was insane, and so was the second age. I could argue that the closest equivilant in Science Fiction might be some of the Warhammer 40k books, in how they treat the more "absurd" elements.
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Ilona Andrews Innkeeper books are a great example of a Blended universe. There is magic and science. If you understand it, it's science. If you have no clue, it's magic.
There is also a great explanation for space knights.
The Law of Bronwyn:
“Once a species is introduced to interstellar spaceflight, it will advance technologically but not socially,”
The societies' individual standard of living may drastically improve, their technological progress will continue, but their social construct mostly stays the same. The ability to travel between the stars removes some of the pressure factors known to drive societal change.
Once you get interstellar spaceflight, suddenly population density is no longer an issue. Geographical limitations are gone. The competition for the natural resources is largely gone, at least in the initial stages. Different splinter groups within the society no longer have to learn to coexist; they can simply move apart from each other.
Societal change is hard, because a society is made up of the individuals. These individuals learn how to be successful in that particular social construct, and they resist change, because it threatens their survival. To really implement a change, one must convince the population that their survival as a whole is in doubt unless they alter their course. Because interstellar flight removes a lot of these survival factors, the society in question generally stays as it is once that interstellar flight has been achieved. If they were hunter-gatherers, they remain so. If they were a republic, they remain a republic, and so on.
If you're interested in peeking at a setting with absurdly high magic, but where that magic effects the world believabky while still being fantasy and not just scifi with glowy orbs and swords, then I HIGHLY recommend the setting fir Runequest, Glorantha.
It's a world where mythology accurately describes the reality of the people living in it. Why doesn't a farming god who gives fertility magic to farmers completely break the world with suoer farming? Because farming only exists BECAUSE of that God and his farming magic. Why do we die? It's a curse all descendants of Grandfather mortal are afflicted with. But that's just when magic majes the world work familarly. Magic dues regularly cause catastrophic changes to the world in unique and bizarre ways.
For example, the West I'd full of incredibly diverse and isolation it's nation's, some being literal utopia and some being hell on earth. Why? Because trade gods maintain roads and allow people to speak different languages. So when some guys killed the local trade god, it magically isolated most the polities in the region. The Lunar Empire gets more powerful magic within the "Glowline" so strategically expanding the Glowline is basic military strategy. Crossing over into the God's realm (hero questing) can allow one to dramatically change the world, so the greatest hero quester of all time put guardians the the God's realm to keep that from happening.
And magic isn't the only thing the setting knocks out of the park. Horse Nomads look and act like horse nomads, most societies don't have Christian values so LGBT people are relatively normal and divergent gender identities are excepted (there's even an explicitly non binary god, and this setting was made in the 60s!) and when multiple fantasy races occupy the sane land, multi ethnic empires are relatively normal. Some historical empires with majority human populations were ruled by troll elites, and vice versa.
And despite all this the setting goes even further by having it's own people study and question their own reality as much as we do in our world. The God Learners, Bright Empire, Empire of Wyrm's Friends, Lunar Empire, all these groups studied and challenged their reality to the limit, breaking and bending the rules where ever they could. It is, in my opinion, the best high fantasy setting ever made, and it's also one of the main inspirations for the Elder Scrolls and Elden Ring.
Bonus point, the setting is also acedemically rich with realistic depictions of mythology, anthropology and philosophy.
Wait a minute is this thumbnail based off of Ralph bakshi's wizards?
What if a Biopunk World of Giant Mage Kingdoms existed in a science-fantasy world?
Love the Wizards reference!
The aspect of how the availability of magic affects societies is one of my favourite bits of my favourite fantasy/science fantasy. In my nebulous fantasy world, taking farming as an example, farmers buy growth-enhancing totems (which in my laid out magic system have a limited charge) instead of buying fertiliser. Light-emitting totems are also available, but go through charge much faster, making them far rarer. A farm may also hire a regional hydromancer in times of drought, but that hydromancer can probably only keep a few acres hydrated per day, and will need food, housing and a salary.
The issue with magic, is that regardless of everything else, Magic is ultimately energy.
It has to be gathered and utilized in one way or another, but how it is utilized is entirely dependent on the particulars of the magic system of the given universe.
I recently read the magi-tech chronicles, which uses magic on a galactic scale. It does go super hard into extremely powerful beings (gods), but even without those it showcases the power and limitations of magic even in a sci-fi setting
@Keemperor40K Oh I agree; I'm not a fan of magic as just another 'handwavium'-style non-answer, and I hold some pretty unpopular opinions about popular franchises because of that. The system I'm writing has magic ultimately use food-derived energy just like normal exercise (not a unique idea, I know). Some individuals can cast more before needing a rest than others, but no individual can level a hill or fly across a continent in a single day. Also, on the space magic front, I very much recommend Alex White's 'The Salvagers' trilogy.
I wanted to add to the discussion we can also view "High Fantasy" from the lenses of Soft World Building as opposed to Hard. You are right, people can find immersion and depth in a world with realistic/logical detailed explanations.
Though to others all those "logical details" can also remove feeling of awe and mystery of magic that a worldbuilder might want preserve. Also other's can find appeal with worlds because they have a good thematic that evokes certain ideas, feelings, and imagination, but we can suspend our disbelief because they are consistent with that theme, its own "logic" within that world from a more narrative/philosophical standpoint. Hello Future Me pointed this out in Harry Potter and Studio Ghibli that are enchanting and immersive from a soft world building POV as we can have "believability" due to that evocative thematic consistency and experience. Aspects of the world that are amazing/surreal to us but still align with the "thematic logic" handwaving. Then things can get jarring if they get overexplained or overthought of when its brought outside of that scope.
Examples of this is The Force in Star Wars. Initially a mysterious all-powerful and all encompassing magic system that gets portrayed as spiritual in nature, then midi-chlorians get introduced that breaks this thematic and becomes an explainable biological/science phenomena that can be measured that many can found jarring. Or the enchanting appeal of Harry Potter's world gets shattered when analyzing it from Hard Worldbuilding, outside the scope of the original narrative.
As Templin said, this is absolutely a spectrum its just depends what aspects of the world you want to flesh out and focus on thematically, systematically, or both. I'm trying to homebrew an East-Asian High Fantasy for DnD so I'm handwaving hard anthropological/economic aspects to maintain Spiritual, Philosophical, and Feudal thematic along with the fact that certain society changing DnD 5e spells exist. (And suffering as I lean hard worldbuild mentally)
Would also love to see Templin investigate the Hard and Soft world build angles as I see both can potentially add immersion to a world in different ways. Seeing how it gets incorporated into decisions of aesthetics vs realism or how to balance the two. Along with examples where it gets misapplied.
In my fantasy novel magic propped up society and allowed people to go into space, have a version of the computer, trains, tall cities, and magical armor that functioned like power armor might in a science-fiction setting, but it's highly, highly dangerous, akin to radiation. So you cannot grow food with it, healing with it is the equivalent of trying to heal a wound by packing it full of cancer, but the society needs it so they've learned to control it, but they don't really know the true breadth and scope of what it is capable of because their understanding of magic is limited, but their materials science in how to control it and keep it safe for use is leagues better than those magical races that came before.
(I wanted a setting that was s space-aged fantasy instead of mediaeval and I wanted to subvert the idea of a thousands of years old sword somehow being better than the magical equivalent of an AK-47.)
Imagine a science-fantasy setting where it's just pure fantasy from the beginning, but the story starts shifting into sci-fi territory near the end.
It could be how magic slowly becomes a form of hard science after like a thousand years
Sounds cringe
This is actually the setting I work on in my spare time, pure unapologetic fantasy eventually moving towards science fantasy with an internet god and mass produced robot bodies that hold people’s souls. As the eras march on technology solidifies; magic is science, science is magic.
Did that for my story, but I kind of cheated by starting off with a main character in an alternate history of our world, though the "alternate" part more-or-less begins around the fall of the USSR. There are a few other details that separate this alternate world from ours, allowing what comes next in the story to happen, but you can easily recognize it as Earth, differences aside. Plus, some events of our world post-2000 still happen in this one (9/11 being the most obvious).
The MC learns of another, more magical world, and he is initially surprised to learn that it does indeed exist, and he learns of it because he stumbled across a denizen of that world that had come to this alternate Earth. However, he does not end up in one of those "You discovered what I am, so you must either marry me or die" kind of scenarios. Instead, he initially tries to part ways after demonstrating just how big of a secret he can keep (black ops-level kind of secret, and no, the MC was never any kind of intelligence operative). Eventually though, he decides to join this denizen in crossing over to this other world, and he, one close friend of his, and the animal companions he has, along with all of his personal belongings (which includes a particularly unique houseboat) are brought over, where they come to spend most of their lives.
This other world, at the time of the MC moving, is going through a magical version of the Industrial Revolution - think those earlier factories but without any of the billowing smoke or the stacks they spew from, where mechanization and technology is gaining ground but magic is still the powerhouse. However, with the massive database of scientific knowledge and technology he brings with him, quite a bit of which is military tech, that he shares with the biggest noble family of researchers, technology catches up with magic, but it never evolves into magitech, though there are cases where it comes close.
While he is involved in the initial phase of this world's new scientific revolution, he otherwise stays out of its further development. Basically, he acted as a seed crystal: the start of the process but otherwise not involved in it at all. Despite the more magical nature of this world, they do not shun the tech he brought, largely due to the knowledge that he brought of the potential dangers of some of it, and this research family being instrumental in the widespread adoption of the tech (that, and religion in this world is pretty basic and unobtrusive, what with their ruler being a goddess-queen). Over the course of about 20 years after the MC arrived in this world, they advance into modern and then future tech - not quite Jetsons, but not devolving into Blade Runner or CP 2077. Of course, the culture of this other world is wildly different from Earth, both ours and the alternate one, but that is a whole other topic.
The story more-or-less ends with this other world crossing back over into this alternate Earth, with the (currently) final chapters covering how this other world, for all intents and purposes, goes to war against the US, with the main focus being the other world's one and only aircraft carrier facing off against two of the US's. I wrote quite a few scenes where this other world flies X-wings (to be precise, what I think is a more likely "realistic" version, but undoubtedly X-wings) against F-35s... and winning.
The epilogue has this other world - plus one more - leading Earth and humanity into the stars, and this is where I cheated the most, "borrowing" very heavily from Templin's Antares Confederacy for their civilization at this point. Oh, and during their unofficial war against the US, while they flew X-wings, they also flew A-wings (I basically went with heavily altered and smaller YF-23s for the template)... and I went most blatant with them having the UC-67 Mistaya as their main utility aircraft (I did try to come with a smaller slender version of the Mistaya for their version of an attack helicopter, but still, I, uh, stole the Mistaya for it, and renaming it does not do me any favors).
Was it wrong to have the final plot thread happen? Maybe. Was it wrong to "borrow" Templin's work for myself with barely any alterations to them? Probably, and while I have been doing solely text work, which gives me some measure of defense (albeit a very flimsy defense), if possible, I would like the Institute to be involved in illustration; like they do with concept art, I would like to have what I "borrowed" properly credited to them. Did that make X-wings and A-wings shooting down F-35s any less awesome to picture? How about the Mistayas fulfilling many roles, such as deploying SWCC boats like how the LAAT carries and deploys the AT-TE or performing as AWACS and even focused electronic warfare? To me at least, f^^^ no.
I am hoping to start getting this published somewhere soon. The whole thing started mainly as a way to fight off boredom, but now, after years of writing (really, I start four years ago) and so many edits and full-on rebuilds, I might as well see how it does. I doubt it is actually good, but I hope it will be at least fun to read.
Oh, and if you want a clue as to what this other world is supposed to be, I think my current working title for the story gives it away:
_A Chance in Hell_
That's basically the plot of final fantasy 9
Now I think we need a Templin video on the Conclave of Genre.
I'm 49 years old, kind of gave up on my creativity early in life despite being a promising writer. I finally feel its pull and have been planning to take a creative writing course this fall. I'll definitely be referring back to these as they're really helping me find focus and motivation.
Best of luck in your endeavors.
Its never too late brother start now and keep Going until your proud of your work 💪
This makes me happy to see. It’s never too late for your creative endeavor!
I wanted to write fantasy since I was a kid. Tried it in my late teens, early 20's but it was garbage. Intellectual popcorn. The problem is I didn't have much to say, and didn't know how to say it. Now that I've lived more life, am in my 30's and have decided to write for me, and not for fame, fortune, or glory, I finally have something to say.
You got this, my friend! You deserve to follow your passions and what calls to you, and still, it is an extremely courageous act to do so, especially after having somewhat silencing the call for some time. Keep following your heart and dreams, everyone. 🖤🤘✌️
Man I love the classic sci-fi/fantasy movie Star Wars: A New Hope, released in 1897
It's pretty understandable that people were confused about it since it was the first time any of them had seen such technology
I don't know what your mean. It followed on the herald of the very successful release of Battle Star Galactica in 1642.
George Lucas was truley ahead of his time
I was there and i still remember buying my first working lamp after watching star wars
Can't believe it's been 80 years since Star Trek first aired, how time flies
What you say about magic in Low Fantasy feeling more impactful when is few and far between can be very true. Look at Conan the Barbarian, for example. Mages of his era are few and far between, and the source of their magic often relies on powerful ancient relics and manuscrits that they themselves only understand some aspects of. Objects brought by beings of the outer edges of creation, or made by much more ancient wizards with a much grander knowledge of their craft, when their art was at their peak, and most of the knowledge hadn't been lost. But even those fragments allow them to gain an influential seat on the courts of all kingdoms of the Hyborian Age.
And you can see that during Conan's lifetime, in 2 ocassions was a wizard from millenia ago resurrected, and brought to that modern era. And in both ocassions, and within mere months, those wizards were setting the foundations of a new empire that threatened to topple most Hyborian nations under their feet. Making fools and tools of some of the most intelligent military commanders and statesmen of Conan's time.
Another famous low-magic setting is The Lord of the Rings.
In that world, magic was once more common, but now even those called wizards do more with lore, herbalism, chemistry, and engineering than with magic.
This makes even more sense when you consider the often forgotten fact that Conan the Barbarian is in the same universe as most of Lovecraft's mythos. Robert Howard (author of the Conan series) was a close friend of Lovecraft, so Lovecraft's works have a few references to the forgotten age of Conan and Howard's earlier work Kull of Atlantis. Most notably the continent Valusia and the serpent-people from Kull's stories. Conan stories feature plenty of cosmic horror too. So all those wizards are drawing their power from secrets of the universe that humans were never meant to know.
I think labelling a world/setting/story by genre is most helpful for the audience but potentially needlessly stifling for the creator. Starting by deciding what genre a work is simply creates artificial limits. Granted, sometimes having such limits can be helpful; such as for creators intentionally wanting to subvert certain expectations or conventions, or to constrain creators who have a tendency to go a bit too wild in their creative process. However, more often than not, it makes more sense to me for creators to develop their world _first_ and then figure out what genre it falls into / it is best categorised as after-the-fact.
One example that comes to mind is the tabletop game of Shadowrun. Is it cyberpunk, sci-fi, or fantasy? People would argue that it drifts between the three depending on the edition and phase of the moon. If the creators had limited themselves by deciding which of the three it wanted to be from the get go, it would likely have resulted in a different work that misses out on some of its elements.
When you think it all fictional work Involves worldbuilding to a degree and genre can help with setting up needed boundaries or know where you can bend the rules. Think of a police procedural like Law & Order. Sure the world itself is New York City and the laws are the same in real life but that world and laws still effect the characters and the story. Then there are the characters themselves who have their own backstories and roles that effect how they act and think.
Exactly. I'm currently writing my 1st book and it's a unique blend of both genres but imo it feels more like an epic fantasy in a world that could be labled as sci-fi. It's hard to explain without spoiling it which I won't do, but essentially I definitely didn't think of a genre as a lane for my book world to be stuck in.
For defining Hard Sci-Fi, you should have had a clip from The Martian saying he's "Going to science the sh!t out of this."
My excitement for this series is unbelievably high, this is a project I’ve been hoping that institute would do ever since I first started watching. I can’t wait to see what comes of all of this, but I know whatever it is will be great!
My favorite genre is genrepunk, where giant megacorps that mass-produce AI-generated books have created an infinite number of genres as a marketing scheme, until genres themselves became meaningless. Every book will say something about being the "hottest new pseudo-hyper-cybercloudpunk title," and nobody knows what any of it means.
Hyper-genrepunk where the ai doesn’t just sell them infinite genres but instead puts them in specialized cubicles where they become the story and don’t know anything else and are forced to invent more genres so the ai doesn’t get bored with the already stale genres
I'm not a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, but I actually coined a term for its specific form of low fantasy. I call it post-magic fantasy. Basically it's a world where all magic has become vestigial remnants but it can still crop up from time to time and when it does the medieval-style world no longer has to tools to handle it in any way.
Post-magic fantasy. Stellar. 👏👏👏
Speculative Fiction is the academically defined genre of works that dwell on the society-wide effects of something. Nearly all science fiction and fantasy works are examples.
Horror, apocalyptic, post apocalyptic, utopian, dystopian, alternate history, superhero, and supernatural are also speculative fiction genres.
A note on High Fantasy - I would like to give a shout out to the prototypical example The Lord of the Rings. The setting of Middle Earth is generally of a High Fantasy setting where magic was once abundant, but is slowly fading away. And it's shown how great and mighty kingdoms have risen and fallen from this decay. It also narratively works as well, because more powerful magical beings are more susceptible to the power of the One Ring, the task of destroying it falls onto a group of small hobbits, not great and powerful wizards. And this helps balance out the power of magic in the world in a really nice way. After all, it could be used for both good and terrible evil.
With regards to High fantasy you should REALLY look into Brandon Sandersons Cosmere books. There is a very good reason why he is considered a master world builder and the primire example of "hard magic".
It is interesting to see how the superhero genre seemingly sits exactly in the sweet spot of being either fantasy, sci-fi, or alternate history.
Looking at DC Comics, Superman is a sci-fi character (an alien), Wonder Woman is a fantasy character (a demigod), and Batman is an alternate history character (a vigilante detective).
I'd argue that it's almost it's own genre given that superheroes are kind of depicted in a similar way to mythology
@@fascilime I agree, it has enough of its own tropes to at least be a derivative genre of sci-fi and fantasy. Also notable is that the more realistic and/or deconstructive a superhero story is, the less fantasy it is and the more alternate history it is. Watchmen is a good example of moving towards alt-history, showing how superheroes affect laws, diplomacy, and war.
The failing of high fantasy you pointed out is very valid, but that problem is only caused by bad writers, the sub genre in itself has no fault, only the writing on the almost entirety of author has
The thumbnail looks like Peace from Wizards(1977) He’s even holding his rifle the same way! That’s awesome!
formerly lnown as Nekron 99
For my part, I tend to use a two-axis scale for fantasy settings. High and Low, which is about how powerful the magic in the setting is, and Rare and Everywhere, which is about how pervasive and easily accessible the magic is. Usually low fantasy means the magic is rare, but sometimes it's everywhere.
That's what I enjoyed about the stormlight archives in terms of high fantasy, they had magicans create food for armies on the march. All the impacts of magic on the world were thought through.
Urban-Sci-Fi-Fantasy is about the penultimate in writing. You've multiple things to juggle, while also needing to be very well verse in these topics.
SCP writer be like:
Michael Anderle's Kurtherian Gambit series is a great example of this genre.
Then you get all sort of sci-fi, urban fantasy, and even pure fantasy offshoots of the main storyline.
Across the many authors writing in that universe, there are hundreds of books already.
And it all starts with "Death Becomes Her"
@@MonkeyJedi99 That franchise is insanely huge. It's kind of baffling that I don't hear much about it.
Disco Elysium in a nutshell, extremely grounded world building with entangled history and politics with a pinch of fantastic elements (such asThe Pale).
That's my favorite genre, also mix in alternative history and you have my story 🤹🏼♀️ 😅
Wheel of Time is an absolutely fantastic high fantasy series with some of the very best world building I've ever seen. They go at length to explain the effects of magic on the everyman, and there's so many "eye rolly" high fantasy tropes that are handled so well. I really didn't think I'd like it, but I'm so glad my girlfriend introduced me to it!
Loving the evolution of yall's content. Templin Institute is a great channel
The Discworld series is a very high magic setting, and the author, Terry Pratchett, does very much go into the impact of it.
Discworld is very interesting. While the setting itself is intensely magical, I would classify a number of Discworld books (most notably the ones that take place in Ankh-Morpork) as Low Fantasy, because they deal with relatively lower-staked and more mundane (compared to your typical High Fantasy) subjects and themes such as murder mysteries, political intrigues, or how a newspaper/the post office/the economy works in a fantasy world. Then again, genres are more of a guideline.
@@sinvector8020 fair point.
@@gavinboyer4634 I am disappointed by this video's take on High vs. Low Fantasy, which is very reductive and boils down to "High Fantasy is not realistic enough". This ironically mirrors the words of detractors of Soft Scifi discussed earlier.
The Low Fantasy - High Fantasy specture is actually a lot more complex, because these are also very ill-defined terms. Something that further complexes this is matter of Setting vs. Story Scope. One could argue that The Lord Of The Rings, THE quintessential High Fantasy, has a pretty low magic setting (Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age), but the grand scale of the story is anything but low. A Song of Ice and Fire, a low magic setting (in a different way) still has a story that is large in scope (the power struggles of noble families which spans continents). And of course, we have discussed Discworld, a high magic setting with relatively low-staked stories.
I did my Masters thesis on genre, within cinema (but this can be applied to other forms of media), and determined that there are two foundational, or tonal genres, they set the mood, comedy and drama. They reflect the comedy and tragedy of old, and represent a spectrum which reflect a work's tone. Second are the sensational genres, adventure, action, thriller and horror. They do not have predetermined themes but play on sensations, tapping into the likes of ambition, excitement, suspense and fear. Then there are the thematic genres, usually there are large umbrella genres within which lie subgenres based on smaller themes within the larger ones. Outside of this there exists genres based on stuff like format (short stories, anthologies, documentaries, sandbox games...), or technical aspects (animation for example, epistolary, fps games, or top down video games...).
I also concluded that fantasy and sci-fi play unique roles outside of their thematic use as they determine the imaginary setting, or worldbuilding, of a work. Sci-fi usually takes place in an imagined future, whereas fantasy usually presents an imaginary past. It can be visualised as a triangle with each point representing realism, sci-fi and fantasy. Between each point lies a blend of both. Fantasy + realism becomes surrealism, or low fantasy, sci-fi + realism becomes dystopian fiction, or hard sci-fi. Fantasy + Sci-fi becomes science fantasy, or alternatively the space opera (which is often used for the likes of Star Wars, Dune or Flash Gordon for example).
Almost all works, the exceptions being certain formats within a given media, can be placed within a tonal genre, or a balance of both (the dramedy or black comedy), one or several sensational genres (there exist crossovers, usually between adventure/action (superhero films for example), action/thriller (James Bond) and thriller/horror (Se,7en)), many thematic genres (this can be limitless, as a theme can be anything from Western to motherhood), and usually a format genre and one or several technical genres. A work will also feature somewhere on the above triangle, based on the setting in which it takes place.
This is the opposite of what you asked for but as a fellow low fantasy lover I have to mention the Black Company. It is my favorite example of low(ish)-fantasy. (Gets a bit more magicy as the series goes on)
Obligatory plug of our content for anyone interested in an expansive science fiction universe!
Hard and Soft Sci-Fi, Low and High Fantasy - definitely helps me when looking for stuff to read. All of which are fun to read. Both are real sci-fi and real fantasy.
A fun genre I tripped over while perusing kindle recommendations is game-lit.
Essentially like either Sword Art Online (trapped in the virtual game) or stuff closer to Ready Player One (can log out, sometimes even earn money from streaming content)
Definitely a fun genre, I've only read one book of the genre though.@@MonkeyJedi99
The only one of those four that I'm not a big fan of is hard sci-fi.
I think the thing that high fantasy has going for it is that it raises the bar of what's possible. While George R. R. Martin might be capable of writing a fascinating story going into extreme detail with the kingdom's politics, until it introduces stuff like the undead and dragons it's basically going to be a historical book with changed names.
Let's take your farmers in skyrim example, how about farmers do use magic to grow crops? even better, we can make the plants themselves magical and thus sentient. So now farmers act more like a mafia, offering "protection from animals" in exchange for a culling of the population. Add that the farmers are from a distant land where plants don't talk for the added colonialism and we can make a story about a plucky teenager plant that raises their fellows in revolution. Or a dark story about survival in war, where even the food we consume is born of suffering.
High fantasy expands the capabilities of what can be written.
I personally prefer the concept of "specualtive fiction", where you take the available information on a subject and base your story around it in some way. Most Alternate History falls in this category (what if the South won the Civil War, what if JFK survived, what if Bill Clinton knew how to exert self restraint), but I like it because it can be taken a step further.
I really love Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising as a military fiction story because it actually sits down and explores what both sides were militarily capable of at the time, give or take a few Frisbees (it makes sense in context). It's also why I tend to enjoy it when a story sort of tries to both educate me on a matter while telling the story. To me, it adds a sense of detail that shows how the author did their research.
It's not that other stories are lesser because they don't do the same research, one has to do a lot of research on a variety of subjects from characterization to descriptions either way for writing any story (if you want it to actually be well written at least). But to me, it does feel a little more fun if you can sit down and say "this is what this story might look like based on the research I've done and the characters I'm focusing on".
Again, that's just me, though.
I think a good example of a “High Fantasy” story that handles magic pretty well is The Wandering Inn by pirateaba. Magic does exist, and while there are [Green Mages] and [Weather Mages] and whatnot, everyone has the capacity to gain reality-breaking “Skills” that completely change how work is done. I think the author does a great job in how various technologies, techniques, and cultures developed in that kind of world.
1998's 'You've Got Mail' is the most important part of Templin Institute Lore thus far.
That's a really great point about people thinking that "scientifically accurate" means the spaceships move according to newtonian physics and that's it.
Ralph Baksi's poster for his movie "Wizards" really was its most memorable aspect. Which is a shame because it also shows how fascism cannot be defeated by magic or tricks, but by through the application of direct lethal force, i.e, when the good wizard pops a cap in the bad, facist wizard's ass.
knowing the genre your writing in is very helpful, especially with someone like me who really likes introducing conflicts. The genre can dictate the type of weapons used in the story, and how effective they are.
This series has been really helpful because I have been recently working on a sci fi comic series and I didn’t know where to start
The general breakdown of writing as it has always been presented to me is:
Non fiction and fiction are at the top.
Fiction can be split into speculative and non-speculative fiction
Non speculative fiction contains things like magical realism, and your more realistic novels, Jack Reacher, Tom Clancy, Great Gatsby, or historical fiction that lack some other speculative twist. Things that didn't happen in the historical record for sure, but aren't based on some presupposition that changes the status quo of baseline reality much further than the fact the events and people in the novel exist in the world. John Wick would fit into this category I would say.
Speculative fiction contains the genres of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, post-apocalyptic fiction.
Then it's granular genres all the way down and the word punk is used with beautifully malicious intent far, far too much to be healthy, but I love it.
For a high fantasy that does a great job with handling how magic affects the world is Ascendence of a Bookworm. What I love about the world building in it is that the author does a great job of focusing on the small details like how the common folk live in a world dominated by those who have mana. When reading the light novel, it’s actually a while before you even learn that magic is really a thing. The anime kinda botched that with a flash forward
Speaking of science fantasy, there's a genre I see getting thrown around almost as an equivalent: *Space Opera.*
So many people seem to treat space opera as if it's on the hard-soft scifi scale, always on the softer end. Probably because it's most often used to describe Star Wars, which is the quintessential science/space fantasy. By that token, space opera is supposed to unrealistic and fantastical, right?
...But technicality isn't a rule or restriction to the genre! Wikipedia describes it as a genre "that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance." How many of those genre conventions are restricted by how technical or scientific accuracy? Very few.
IMO, space opera is a genre that can go all up and down the scale. Star Wars is the science fantasy space opera. Mass Effect and Gundam are soft(er) scifi space opera. The Expanse is a hard scifi space opera.
For me, a space opera isn't a genre. It's a narrative style that can be found within several genres. When I think "space opera," the only criteria that comes to mind is: it must be set in space/span multiple worlds, and the narrative must be grand in scope. A space opera can fall under romance, fantasy, sci-fi, drama, thriller, horror, mystery, etc., or any combination thereof.
The classic hero's journey is very much a space opera imo. It's an epic tale, there tends to be a lot of moving parts, and the journey takes us to foreign worlds (Hades, Hell, other variations of an afterlife/underworld). That fits the criteria of a space opera.
Sure, stories like Dune, Mass Effect, and Star Wars are space operas, but so are things like Alien and Event Horizon, or Hitchhiker's Guide and Space Balls. Just because something falls under the horror or comedy genres doesn't make them less of a space opera. Warfare doesn't need to be the centerpiece, nor does it need to be a political drama, or even sci-fi in general.
I'm not sure if anybody has addressed this yet, but fiction started with two genres, fantasy and generic/historical fiction. Alternative history is a branch off for historical fiction and Sci-fi was originally a branch/sub-category of fantasy. Eventually Sci-fi became enough of its own thing that it was given its own genre, and then Star Wars came along and muddled the waters again, so people started to come up with various sub-genres and dual or multi genres to categorize everything. Please note that this primarily focuses on Sci-fi and fantasy and doesn't include things such as action, adventure, romance, or horror.
The way i tend to think about solving the problem of magic affecting high fantasy settings is to have powerful magic still be rare, even if less powfull magic is more common.
To use d&d as an example, even if every 1 in 100 people can cast magic, the vast majority of these people should be low level casters. By the itme you get to high level spellcasting (7th,8th,9th level) the number of people who can do this should be extreemly rare, like limited to a handful of people.
That way day to day society resembes what we know, apart from when these powerful individuals act.
Even this can have a serious warping effect. If one in a hundred people is a low level caster then one in a hundred people can cast a handful of cantrips an unlimited number of times, some of which are pretty busted. Considering how combat focused D&D is I'd expect armies (or at least the military class) to be heavily predisposed to being casters just for access to shit like acid splash or fire bolt.
That's just cantrips, can you imagine how setting warping just third level spells would be? (I'm assuming that fifth level is still considered "low."). For example, clerics can literally pull food and water out of thin air, completely changing the calculus of sieges. Then there's all the shit wizards get, like blink or fly.
D&D is probably a bad choice because magic there is so busted.
@@ttd0000 true, I was mainly using it as an example with a quantifiable magoc system.
My main point is that powerful magic should be rare, especially the types of magic that can have long lasting effects on the landscape beyond just destruction.
There is this web series I'm currently reading on RoyalRoad titled Slum Rat Rising, seemingly cyberpunk at first look but later I realized was actually high fantasy, so high and advanced, it looped back into in-universe science fiction, and literally sci-fantasy to us.
I share your feelings on Fantasy, that's why I want to recommend the broken Earth by N.K Jemisin. It has this really cool interpretation of magic where the caster is drawing their power directly from sub-atomic motion. When they do this, they cause an area of space to freeze, because by taking that energy they have reduced it's kelvin. A caster must be trained to control how wide of an area this 'cone' or 'torus' affects. The primary source of energy they draw from is the tectonically unstable world they inhabit.
The local populace is scared to death of magic users and are incredibly prejudiced against them. Young, untrained children frequently wipe out entire families or even villages by accident. A small society controlled by the government is tolerated because the magic users are the only ones who can calm the unstable planet, delaying what is known as a fifth season. A fifth season is a series of apocalyptic events that occur every few centuries that can wipe out empires, forcing civilization to constantly re-start.
Underpin that with the story of a grieving mother who has lost one child and frantically searching for a surviving daughter that hates her, and you have absolutely excellent series of books. Deserve every Hugo they got.
At 17 minutes, you discuss the effect of common magic on the world at large. Switch genres to science fiction, and the same issues apply to robotics, automation, and AI.
For High Fantasy that addresses some (not all) of the concerns regarding magic, I recommend the underrated Immortals of Aveum.
It is a super high fantasy world, that explores what happens when magic is super ubiquitous, when and where it is used basically everywhere and the impact such power has on the world.
It is a lost gem of high fantasy, that came at a terrible time, but that in its world building explores all of this and more.
My universe is simple: It's a science fantasy with a firm focus on realism in terms of science, technology, and physics interactions on a small and large scale, with cosmic horror foundations that are expanded upon in broader, peripheral scope.
Unsure if Easter egg or not, but around 7:20 in the video, the narrator states that Star Wars was released in 1897
That's just the opening to the "Conclave of Genre" bit he was doing.
Your point about magic is why I use availability and cost to denote between high and low fantasy. If the availbility is high and the cost is low, it's high fantasy. If reversed, it's low fantasy. To your point about magic in Skyrim, magic must be learned and it isn't always cheap, this leaves it to the nobility for the most part, who aren't going to spend time as farmers because they cobsider it beneath them, or will only use such magic for times of crisis and disaster.
Honestly the Inheritance Cycle series by christopher paulini is a perfect example of a well done high fantasy book. Theres nothing wrong with a shit ton on magic as long as the rule system for that magic is well crafted and easily explainable. Issues arise when you cannot explain such things properly and it distors your perception of the book.
The inheritance cycle does this well because everyone in the setting who can wield magic all follow the same exact rules.
This video is actually about "genres" not worldbuilding. Good video.
There are two ways to subvert expectations: To surprise the audience and to disappoint the audience. Not understanding this difference has led to a lot of very expensive movies being absolutely terrible in recent years. It's really simple, the audience expects something, you instead give them something better than they were expecting or something worse. If you make it worse you might think it makes for an amusing punchline but while you make the movie thinking you're being clever the audiences will boo and you'll get a hundred thousand people telling you you suck at your job.
16:11 another example is St. Vincent in the caribbean, they infuse the island's volcanic soil into the concrete which improves stability.
Something that my friends and I have been playing around with is this concept of Magic and Technology being in competition with each other.
If some Wizard creates a flying carpet, a scientist makes the first 1-person airplane, and the only difference is ease of use and reliability.
Magic items are reliable, but require years of training to use, while technological items are easy to use, but prone to malfunction.
This also helps my other friends that are hard-line fantasy vs sci-fi coexist in the same setting.
I'm not sure I would put Warhammer leaning towards the low fantasy side.
Genre is a convention for finding similarities so more stories can be found.
Which is why I’m trying to redefine hard, soft, high, and low genre.
I think hard should be define on overall realism, from social structure to scientific accuracy. So a hard fantasy/sci fi/ alt history is one where it takes things like magic or technology or whatever in account for the world and does its best to be realistic it as can be which is basically lord of the rings, where soft is more focused on the story at hand rather than its believability, somehow also lord of the rings, like Harry Potter.
High and low are of how close to our world it is. So a low fantasy I think would be things like a song of ice and fire, where most of it despite being in its own world with dragons and ice monsters could be thought of as similar to our own world. Where high is one where things are vastly different, like dungeons and dragons, which took every generic fantasy concept and said yes (though this was for gameplay reasons), where you expect to see a dragon person sitting next to you at the bar or the bartender to be a magic user.
In the end things can be done realistically while still leaning into whatever genre it’s in. Or vise virsa.
Now I’ve put my thoughts down, I need a little help of genre myself, to like I said, find more like it.
I like familiarity mixed with the fantastical. One reason I like halo, high sci fi with still some similarities to our world I could see us developing in a similar way.
But one I can’t seem to find is a hard modern mixed with fantasy and or sci fi, a favorite is the combined.
I want modern soldiers having to fight demons from the underworld using real military tactics and equipment, or have a modern city in the middle of a alien planet where we also have kobolds as airline captains and dragonborns working at a Amazon warehouse. I like it Where we have things we could at least imagine being in our world now, but it’s in a fantasy/sci fi environment of some kind and mixed with it.
You could even have it like carrier command 2 where while basically all your equipment is extremely modern, even for the drones, but we’re also on a alien planet that we needed to use space travel in order to get to it.
What do you call that?
I recently endeavor, among a lot of my projects to create a world that is a combination of three genres that are often fused together but rarely at the same time: Fantasy, Science fiction and Horror. So far the twisted amalgamation is coming together just fine in it's Infancy.
This question you present about fantasy is why I love eberron
I love how Wheel of Time is essentially fantasy but also sci fi but also alt history all mixed in one
I saw the placement of worlds on the hard/soft sci-fi and high/low fantasy sliders and my brain immediately switched into attack mode. How could someone be so close yet so perfectly wrong in their assessment. Surely I must join the Templin Institute, force them to accept my application if necessary, if only to obtain sufficient tenure to correct these grevious errors. The moment of pure indignation and resolve lasted 2.8 seconds, before my residual self awareness managed to jog me back to reality with the quiet realisation: 'that is the Templin Institute Subliminal Department at work'. In a cubicle somewhere within the bowels of the Templin HR apparatus, an operative reviews a biomorphic surveillance feed and clicks their tounge. Project Nerd Bait is delivering results, albeit not as many as the Director would like, but these are only the first increments.
Im a big fan of the kinda world that Andrew Rowe uses, specifically in his Arcane Ascension and Weapons and Wielders series, where exactly as you say, magic changes everything about the world.
In this world, cities are protected by barriers which mean several characters have never seen snow, or heavy rainfall. There schools are dedicated to teaching about the towers from which people gain magic. Wars are fought with magic as the only tool, as one fighter who can use magic could kill a thousand who don't. Trains run using magic, and the start of the industrial revolution has come forward ridiculously far due to the ability to refine metals, and move great weights, all thanks to magic.
Those in power, who hoard magical items and secrets, become monolithically strong, as how are you meant to rise up against a class of people who can incinerate entire neighborhoods with magic. And this is only with a small number of people who actually are magical.
In Weapons and Wielders, magic is even more intrinsic. The most powerful combatants from all over the world journey to fight for a weapon, and in doing so, we see how much this weapon and its power have ingrained themselves onto the society that's king holds it. The divine right to rule is now a property of the weapon, not due to the actual calls of the goddess, but by the long term association of the weapon with the rulers.
I could go on, but it'd be pretty pointless. Just thought I'd gush about my favorite fantasy universe
For high fantasy with very well integrated magic, I would recommend the Ascendance of a Bookworm light novel series. Long running, fairly well written, not generic at all in my opinion. It handles your issues with magic very well.
I've not read the light novel (or any light novel) but I have seen the anime.
I quite liked it.
@@MonkeyJedi99 I highly recommend the books, as there are epilogues, prologues, and side stories written from other character perspectives that shed light on just how odd/ignorant myne is. While the anime does a fair job of adaptation it is still going at a fairly rushed pace and inevitably missing things.
@MonkeyJedi99 Manga is pretty nice too. Goes into more details than the anime if anyone is interested but doesn't like LN.
@@MaxRavenclaw For me, the limiter is that I could only afford electronic versions sailing under the Jolly Roger, and I DEFINITELY can't afford to be caught engaged in trade with those fine sailors.
@@MonkeyJedi99 I read the manga on Tachiyomi. I don't recall which host though.
Really helpful to expand my universe which is Science magic fantasy world
Since you asked about examples of high fantasy that consider how the magic affects the world's development, I've got one: The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin. The powers of orogene (earth magic, but it's more than that) are vital to both the worldbuilding and the story--the series won back-to-back-to-back Hugo Awards for good reason!
Another good example might be City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty, which is about genies and their politics during the 18th century.
For low fantasy, I'd recommend The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee, whose "biogenic jade" grants seemingly supernatural powers and thus is a prized resource, but the rest of the world is slowly learning how to synthesize it.
I recently watched "Berserk," and I found the creator's approach to choosing the genre quite interesting. Initially, the medieval setting and focus on war were prominent, and then it took a sudden turn into dark fantasy in the last episodes. It was a random, yet smart move to add in the dark fantasy element.
I think it's best to understand genre in the same way an insane engineer understands a car body.
For example let's say you have a Mazda Miata. Small nimble little car popular amongst street racers and kit car enthusiasts. However you're unsatisfied with its speed so you trade out the engine for a Dodge Hellcat (remember you're loony you can't ask why questions only how, such as how can I do this and how awesome would that be). Now that she's faster and a diesel you realize your Miata would be a lot better if she could go off-roading. So you install a lift kit and absolutely massive tires. Right before you realize you need to widen the base of your tires so she doesn't flip.
You can do the same with any genre of your choice. Remember the more important questions are how can I do this and how awesome would this be (Only start asking why if you you don't think something would be very awesome). If you decide that you're hard science fiction story needs a faction that uses straight up literal soft magic because that sounds like a fun way to cause conflict... Do it and remember to play it straight. What is the perfectly logical answer of a physicist encountering actual magic? How would a wizard respond to someone who doesn't even understand the basics of elemental conjuration? That is after all something they teach to children. How else would you get your ships to traverse the sea of night without a wind bubble? Literal bombs? LoL that's ridiculous (if you would like to know how ridiculous please look up nuclear propulsion rocket. No actually that idea's even dumber than it sounds).
My point is take what you need and build what you want. Some of the greatest creations in the world were Jerryrigged, at least a little.
7:00 I think it should be noted that there are essentially 2 types of genre, foundational and narrative. The trichotomy of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Alt-History are the 3 foundational genres into which a setting can fall, but any one of these foundational genres, or combination thereof, can then be used to tell stories of any narrative genre, like horror and romance.
Good kaiju story that subverts tropes is John Scalzi's recent work "The kaiju Preservation society"
I'm not sure why, but when I watch videos like this, I am reminded that the age of explorers is gone. No longer is there uncharted waters to be discovered; generations of pioneers waste away in jobs they must do. One day when we reach the stars and touch the great starry night, I do hope that many will take that to explore. But like I once read in a UA-cam video, "Billions of planets, trillions of opportunity, and all we want to do is find somewhere like Earth, our home" Take care of this place yall, so one day we may reach that horizon.
" There is always the one that must go first."
A recent fantasy novel that goes a good job of showing 19:51 effect on society is Nicholas Eames's Kings of the Wyld. Its a sendup of fantasy conventions but especially the D&D adventuring party. They become "rock star" with promoters, groupies and performing in arenas.
Fun fact: part of the reason why The Elder Scrolls doesn't have logical world progression is actually explained: the whole world -- nay, multiple worlds -- is simply the dream of a godlike being. If you want to go down a crazy metaphysical rabbit hole, look up the subject of "CHIM" sometime.
You really nailed the argument about hard and soft scifi boiling down to FTL travel explanation and starship fights. I had to pause and laugh because it really is that.
For an interesting take on more high fantasy settings i highly recommend the "Cradle" and "The Last Horizon" series by Will Wight. Cradle is a fusion of Western fantasy with Anime and Chinese Fantasy stories. The Last Horizon is his newest series that combines Fantasy and Sci-fi by having an adventure through galaxy where technology and magic have advanced together for untold years and civilization has spread among the stars.
As someone who does not use most social medias and is thus verifiably "out of the loop", "How many times do men think about the Roman Empire" was one of the most entertaining searches I have performed in a while.
I'm so happy you used that clip from Party Down. Everytime I hear someone talk about hard sci-fi, I think of that clip. I love hard sci-fi, but I've met that guy, I've talked to that guy at parties, and that guy suuuuuucks.
Rome, Letterkenny references? Talks about fantasy? This episode has it all!
The Ten Realms does a great job addressing magic farming. They learn specialized skills to grow crops so they can increase yields and help get rid of famine.
I liked that in Arcane Hextech is basically 'magical engineering', which is how I imagine magic existing in a (somewhat) realistic setting.
For the curious viewer, the technical sub-genre for that one is "futuristic fantasy", i.e. magic developed to the point of being a science unto itself
5:35 oh hell yeah! I love that image here use for alternate history.
For anyone who’s wondering where that came from, it is from the famous alternate history book trilogy “The Great War” which is part of a larger unnamed series of books often called “The Southern Victory series” or “Timeline 191”
A really good gritty, low fantasy series is Glen Cook's Black Company books. Primarily about a band of all-too human mercenaries, and definitely deals with the staggering effects magic can have on a society and the very land itself.
There's what the writer envisioned at inception.
There's what the Publishers sold it as on the market.
There's what the readers interpreted using their experience.
None of these things are necessarily the same, right, or wrong.
I would describe your series as looking at worldbuilding as a genre unto itself.
Shoutout to High-Hard Fantasy Sci-fi. Its prob gonna be one of my favorite genre when I get to it.
The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee and The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson are excellent examples of magic having a realistically proportioned impact on human society. The first is a Cold War era story set on an alternate world where the only source of magic was geographically locked until now, and the struggle for control of it following scientific advancement unlocking its use abroad. The Stormlight Archive is as high fantasy as it gets and is set on a world where an enormous super storm circles the equator, periodically sweeping across the only landmass. The varios well-defined forms of magic largely dictate human society, politics, industry, economics, and warfare. The thing I really like about both of these is that they recognize magic as an asterisk on the laws of physics that humans would study and make technological advancements in just as we do with things like gravity and thermodynamics.
I love the old-timey SFX straight from Alien Isolation for the intro slide.
This video was already getting a like, but you 10 billion% secured it with that Letterkenny reference!
Great vid! A nitpick: understanding that high fantasy meant a story that took place in a fictional world (e.g Westeros/Essos) while low fantasy took place in our own but with magical elements. So you can have a high fantasy series with low magic e.g ASOIAF, but it still takes in a world apart from our own.
as someone building up the ADF in MUV LUV,(due to that they don't say "much") your advice is so freakin great thank you so much!
I think a large reason why magic doesn't have as much of an impact on the normal world in several high-fantasy works is because users of that magic are often a minuscule percentage of the population and usually have much better things to do with their time or energy than help out any single one of the thousands of farmers. In Skyrim for instance (even accounting for the game making everything downsized), there are effectively no mages outside the College of Winterhold or the Aldmeri Dominion. The Dominion has political reasons for not contributing to Skyrim, and the College of Winterhold is an isolated magical university focused on very much "ivory tower"-type pursuits.
Thabk you for including alternate history.
I recommend Made in Abyss, never seen an anime/manga going so in depth into the world building.
I enjoy all of The Templin Institute videos
An example of a fantasy series that uses a ton of magic but doesn’t just hand wave it is the Sufficiently advanced magic series by Andrew Rowe. I love the books and he takes a hard power system approach in which limits and rules are applied to the magic while also already having a societal culture that recognizes and utilized the people who are capable of the magic system. It’s a great read imo
Good job, adding alternate history, for me that is an imporant genre, it shows how our world might be different if certian events were changed or didn't happen at all. Endless possibilites.
Love the series so far, great work!
Star Wars released in theaters in 1897? Damn they had good CGI back then.
You raise some good points about the problems of fantasy, I feel like one possible slider could be Mythic vs Mythopoeic, I argue that the difference between religous canon and mythology is time + distance, people argue about the canonicity of star wars media the way people argued about the canonicity of this or that book of the New testament, the importance is less about true realism and factual basis than it is about the emotional and Pseudohistorical consistency of the media connected to it, that's Mythic or Mythologized fantasy where the goal is about the consistency of the world with its own laws and with the emotional needs of the fan base, then with Mythopoeic Fantasy the concern is less about the world's consistency with its own reality and more about how grounded it is within the reader's perception of reality, Tolkien created a world grounded in his understanding and views about Linguistics, Historiography and Religion, for his time its a very cutting edge and Realist depiction of a Pseudo history especially a linguistic one, and where he was most experienced and passionate it still holds up, he's the grandaddy of modern fictional constructed languages for a reason, but aspects like the Essentiallist school of racial theory or the economics or political history are either utterly discredited now or were never as strong as some other writers of his time, so if you asked a philoliguist or linguist to read the lord of the rings they might say it is very realist but if you ask a modern historian or a political sciences major to read it as a serious realist work they would either have an epileptic seizure or laugh in your face, where I'm going with this is that the same way a ER Nurse might have a different view on Grey's Anatomy than an Accountant how much a work might try to present itself as grounded in a particular field or school of knowledge and how knowledgeable the viewer is can change the experience dramatically
I would say the Cosmere is the perfect High Fantasy setting for you.
Best advice I ever got:
Ideas are cheap. Don't covet your ideas. Dozens if not hundreds, possibly thousands of people have had your great idea for a new books, movie, game, whatever.
Focus on executing your unique vision for it. Ideas are cheap, execution is hard-won ground. Anyone, especially you, and find a way to reduce your idea to its most generic template or concept. I evented a whole D&D setting based on the idea of a world of various cultures built on the nigh-industrial concept of an ice-ball planet and what if fantasy Ice-road truckers was a thing. I'm currently working on a novel about what it would take to have characters actually act like how monks are presented in D&D.
Both of these ideas are fundamentally pants-on-head stupid on the face of it, but how I execute on them (not to overly toot my own horn) has surprised both me and other people. Because when you actually go to work on the idea that's when the _you_ in it comes through, and you might not think you have anything new, memorable, or special to offer, but you might as well try because no one in the world has your perspective on a thing. I'm not saying it'll be good--God no--but it will be fundamentally all yours.
Only just found your channel, so don't know yet if you have any video which goes over this. One interesting thing I found is outside of genres, but targeted towards worldbuilding, there was a sort of quadrant system that really embodies this "hard and soft" or "low versus high" side of the genres(just need to place the more genre specific elements in). So, to make this quadrant system, there are two axis(as there should be), first is "rational vs irrational" and the second is "hard vs soft". For something to have "rational" world building there must be more laws, limitations, consequences and the like, while stories which are considered to have more "irrational" world building tend to just not really use the worldbuilding as the main point and more as a tool. While a story which has "hard" world building will have those world building elements as important factors of the plot, and a story with "soft" worldbuilding will tend to use the environment more out of what is conveniant for the character and plot(for better and for worse). To extrapolate a little more through examples, Lord of the Rings would be a Soft Rational world, there is a lot going on in the background within the trilogy, which you may learn through other books, but most of it is used to help faciliate the plot first, rather than the world first. A lot of "superhero" stories would be Hard Irrational, because the abilities are quite front and center, but how they got them, what their place in the world is, and "lore" of the abilities themselves and how things are connected, tend to not be the main point. Soft Irrational world building I have seen in things like Lovecraft, or other Horror, to basically make things far more unpredictable and vague, and raise the stakes and dread through that, focusing more on the characters or plot encountering these highly incomprehensible phenomina. While Hard Rational would be reserved for some of Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere, and some of those "Hard Science Fiction" stories mentioned in the vid.
From what I have seen "High Fantasy" doesn't need to be "Irrational", but it does tend to be "Soft", and when its "Rational", it will allude to things which are in the background that play larger roles, but doesn't really make it the forefront of what is going on. To pull the Grandfather of Modern Fantasy out like I did in the previous paragraph, Lord of the Rings is a really good example of this, they are very High Fantasy, but because its the 3rd Age within the Trilogy, and the more mythical elements are slowly fading out of the world and going west or hiding its not really too obvious to the "little people" and most Humans. The larger and more mythical elements are left for the other stories, but they also don't "shy away" from it in the trilogy, instead just don't let it take front stage. The 1st Age of Middle Earth was insane, and so was the second age. I could argue that the closest equivilant in Science Fiction might be some of the Warhammer 40k books, in how they treat the more "absurd" elements.
My fav personal genre which I'm working on also is low fantasy setting with realistic but softer sci fi and pseudo sci fi elements.