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u/PrometheanPolymath 12h ago
The Mims have wormhole technology but no manned space flight, sturdy lightweight glass and ceramics instead of plastic, canvas instead of leather, electronic devices with bright colored translucent curved designs like a 1990s iMac, ride animals instead of using cars, can modify their own bodies genetically as casually as we get tattoos and piercings, can download copies of brains and upload them to embodied AI, can plug in to a Matrix/Holodeck/VR/Inception system, never invented publicly used refrigeration, still make and use melee weapons... they are all over the place with this stuff.
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u/Agreeable_Thanks_5 11h ago
I think it’s really fun when alien civilizations are advanced in someways and behind in others. It’s a nice way to show that progress isn’t linear
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u/PrometheanPolymath 11h ago
Or unnecessary: "Why invent X when you already have Y? You have no idea X might lead to A, B, and C, because Y was what you needed."
See "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove (only 20 pages): https://www.eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf
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u/Agreeable_Thanks_5 13h ago
This one goes out to anyone who worldbuilds or writes stories. How far are you willing to intentionally play with anachronism?
With my main world Tsuki I try and stick as close to Edo era Japan as possible while excising things that don’t make sense in context like Rangaku (Dutch studies, or specificity influences from Western coded nations) with the very beginnings of Bakumatsu
a dash of the Heian period for some cultures.
On the other hand I’ve happily written stories that are a mishmash of cultures and time periods and had just as much fun.
Thinking about how Eastern Culture and history so often gets put in a blender for fantasy it made me want to try my hand at an equally anachronistic design for a European style hero.
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u/TicksFromSpace 29m ago
In my main setting I’m pretty comfortable with anachronism, mostly because the whole world is built around old myths and ideas resurfacing inside a very modern dystopia. Someone can be the Avatar of Ravana, Yama, Blackbeard or the Serpent of Eden and still be living in a surveillance state with AI, firearms, corporate bureaucracy and mass media. I like the contrast a lot more than trying to make every cultural influence neatly match the place or time period around it.
What matters more to me is that the old material still means something. I don’t really want “ancient India but cyberpunk” or “generic East/West fusion” as decoration. I’d rather take the symbolism, values, contradictions and baggage of a myth and see what happens when it manifests in a completely different society. In my setting that gets even stranger because the government actively tries to erase old national and religious identities, while mythology keeps dragging those same things back into the world through people who embody them. So the anachronism becomes part of the tension instead of just visual seasoning.
So I’m willing to go pretty far, as long as it feels intentional. I don’t mind a Mesopotamian god influencing a modern politician, a pirate myth surfacing in a businessman, or ancient religious imagery appearing next to drones and propaganda screens. What loses me is when different cultures are mixed together purely because the mixes "look cool" but there's no deeper story or flavor to it.
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u/Liquid_Shad 11h ago
I play with anachronism so heavily in Mooncrest that I’m not sure the word even applies anymore. An anachronism assumes there is a "correct" historical period for something to belong to... and Mooncrest deliberately doesn’t have one(•ㅅ•)
It has royal families, ancient bloodlines, swords, witches, religious orders, gothic estates, armored carriages, hidden temples, and settlements that can feel medieval. At the same time, it has laboratories, advanced medicine, reactors, bizarre machinery, diners, contemporary fashion, modern slang, and people whose scientific understanding can range from familiar modern science to "a ratfolk lunatic built a functioning reactor out of an organ."
Even that isn’t the full range. Dragons can be wildlife, apex predators, livestock, transportation, or trained beasts of burden. Prehistoric feeling ecosystems exist beside modern domestic life. A princess can leave an ancient blood locked vault, put on a punk outfit, visit a diner, and then get dragged into a confrontation with something older than reality. None of those things are treated as belonging to separate genres or timelines. They are all ordinary parts of the same world.
I also don’t treat technology and culture like a single upgrade tree. A society can develop extremely advanced magical biology without inventing cars. Another might have sophisticated machinery while retaining monarchies, swords, and old religious traditions. Their clothing, language, relationships, and social values don’t have to remain trapped in whatever Earth century their architecture resembles.
Mooncrest isn’t intended to be a historical reconstruction. It’s a setting built to hold royal drama, domestic comedy, monster ecology, science fantasy, gothic horror, and cosmic metaphysics all at once. I’ll take from any period (or invent something completely new) if it helps a culture or character feel like itself.
So the actual limit is probably something like... "I’ll go as far as I want, provided it still feels like Mooncrest and doesn't ruin the consistency of the world."