Fantasy and Technology

[laurion]

Fall, Mortality, and the Machine: Tolkien and Technology - Alan Jacobs - The Atlantic.

The above link is to an article discussing one of Tolkein’s enduring bequeaths to Fantasy literature - that technology is the enemy.  This still plays out in literatures and stereotypes today.  How many boffer larpers talk about what they do as a chance to

Comments

[alexx_kay]

I think that "technology is the enemy" is an oversimplification of what's going on in Tolkien and his heirs. There is plenty of good-flavored technology in Tolkien.

What makes it *seem* like he is anti-technology is that he is expressing the much older idea of "descent from a Golden Age". The Past was Better, and we (especially the no-account-youth-of-today) can never live up to it. This trope is older than dirt. It's not technology he's against, it's *change*. Well, that's not right, either; he acknowledges that change is inevitable and maybe even sometimes good, but he laments that which is lost.

To speak in broad stereotypes, Fantasy is a conservative literature of consolation; Science Fiction is a disruptive literature about change. (This is another reason to call Star Wars fantasy.) So I don't think you're likely to find any "definitive" Fantasy works that embrace change.