How The Fantastic Changes Your World

Welcome back to the blog, or welcome if you're new. 

Apologies for the gap in posting, as you can tell I'm struggling to be consistent at the moment and life got in the way last weekend. Thank you for bearing with me, and thank you for reading – I know the world is very strange and chaotic at present and things aren't looking positive. I guess, though, that when life is hard escapism is incredibly tempting... so we might as well dive into our creations, right? 

One thing we might wonder is how the world would look if things were different, if there was an element of the Fantastic within it. Magic, superpowers, advanced technology, supernatural creatures and other elements can, and must, alter the worlds they exist in – if we allow them to.  My feeling is that if they don't have some effect, why are they present at all? Let's talk about some things to consider when we introduce these elements to our creations. 

I've chosen to consider these elements through social, political and economic elements, even though I'm conscious that this is a bit of a false narrative. Real life, after all, doesn't really split into handy brackets and everything jumbles together in a mess. 

Think of the narrative about how nobody knows their neighbours any more, and then that we have pieces of technology in the form of computers, televisions, and phones. It's easier to interact with someone on the other side of the planet or entertain ourselves without partaking in local social interactions. We often overlook that when we think about the past or about fantasy worlds, mapping our own age's expectations onto what could have been the case in history. An example of this might be how lapis lazuli made its way to Europe. Does it seem more likely to you that a merchant from Kabul travelled to Tehran or Baghdad, sold the lapis to another merchant who sold it to someone in Istanbul and so on, or that they went all the way to Italy to sell it? 

There are a number of reasons why lapis lazuli, and also things like spices, were expensive in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, but one factor was that they travelled a great distance and passed through a large number of hands. In many respects the 21st Century has lost that as a factor because we have more sophisticated supply chains and capitalism works by producing products in bulk to lower costs. How fortunate we are, even if we don't really pause to consider the toll that takes on our planet. 

1)  Social Elements: One of the biggest areas where Fantastic elements can have an effect is socially. It's really not hard to think that if cybernetics or genetic modification were possible, there would probably be social consequences. This could manifest as an increase in hacking, new forms of shopping, and other elements – some of which are a bit too racy to discuss on a public blog. That's partly because I don't believe the cybernetic industry would survive if it was producing what we see in Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun. There's a need for other elements to be in play and for the street - which we know finds its own uses for things – to develop new elements and identities that would support the cybernetics industry, which means that there would need to be civilian uses. As a consequence, I think you'd get subcultures – some rebellious, some sexual – at the very least, that took the tech in its own direction. In a story I wrote, one "street" application of cybernetics was people having lights embedded in their skin, to pulse in time to music. That felt – and still does – like something small but realistic, a sort of development from glow sticks and black light tattoos. 

In a similar way, if prayers were answered by the gods, what effect would that have? There might be more pressure to be part of a church or faith because you know that the gods are real – you can point to things they've actually done because the local priest healed someone or blessed the fields and made the crops quicken. That might produce a more conservative society, with a fear of offending the gods in case they withdraw their favour. 

You could also extend this across to other genres too. Without naming names, your boy wizard world where magic appears to be incredibly powerful should probably have more impact on the wider world than a hidden street in London and a weird bus. It is a little strange, for example, that dragons could exist and not be common knowledge, simply because they're so big and hungry. I think Kim Newman's Anno Dracula's series handles this better, considering how the middle classes start to aim to become vampires as that becomes seen as the only way to advance in society. 

When we think about this, we can look at things like the Internet or mobile phones and how they've made changes to our own world. Drawing out analogies for these things and switching genres, we can see how equivalents would alter a fictional world. These might be disruptive as well, leading to more crime or changes to families. Anything that increases freedom will do this, of course, just look at how the railways liberated people to travel in the 19th Century. If we apply that to the Fantastic, we might see some truly alarming changes. 

2) Political Elements: As magic, cybernetics, or even space travel take hold and they change society, the knock on effects would be seen in the political world. Take dragons: if they were hostile to other forms of life, they'd quickly become a political issue. You'd see farmers protesting in the cities because of their livestock being eaten and, potentially, crops being burned. Trade routes would be disrupted, merchant caravans would definitely be looking for sell swords and adventurers to protect their wares, wagons, and horses. They'd also be placing pressure on politicians to help with the problem. Even if we leave aside the fact that one thing humans have proven to be very good at is killing mega fauna, we can see that dragons – perhaps even a single dragon – would create serious political ramifications. There'd be fewer face eating leopards and more house burning dragons, for one thing, and life would become significantly more expensive as a result.

This is an example of how a single element affects a number of elements at the same time, but eventually, everything will come back to the political sphere – simply because that's where decisions get made and laws are passed. While politics always – always – lags behind the world's developments because it's often something reactive and that's sort of the point of government, reacting to new developments to put parameters around new developments. We can see this, perhaps, with generative AI and the way that governments are trying to work out how to point it in a way that will benefit their countries while not letting it overwhelm industries (particularly creative ones). 

As a consequence, and this may be my autism presenting itself, we can look at things from the perspective of both structural politics and current affairs. Let's look at structural elements to begin with and the way that aspect relates to a question of control. At its heart, this is a question of who controls these Fantastic elements and can bring them to bear on the world? This can appear at either end of the power structure – cybernetics will usually be controlled by powerful corporations – though there'll always be people working to make or programme their own, or hacking complex elements to liberate the upgrades. A thriving black market would inevitably grow up that way – particularly if we assume that cybernetics would have tracking chips and be subject to planned obsolescence. The underclass characters would almost be forced to strip out these elements (though that would depend on the method of obsolescence). We would also need to consider medical elements, because health is always political too. If your underclass hero gets some cybertech tampered with, does that mean they're barred from receiving mainstream healthcare? 

Let's consider how political current affairs might be changed in a society with the Fantastic embedded. Staying with Cyberpunk (if only because it feels extremely relevant right now), let's consider what events might happen that governments might have to respond to. That might be the presence of "undesirables" with cybernetic enhancements, committing crimes or using the technology to expose them. It may be a veterans' rights movement who push for higher quality cyber implants for people who've had their military augmentation stripped out upon returning to civilian life. It may be deaths from botched in illegal operations run by black market clinics. These things would – in most societies – lead governments to legislate, similarly to the way that pharmaceutical companies had to stop using cocaine and morphine in their products or food standards were tightened up in the early 20th Century. 

3) Economic Elements: Money makes the world go round, or so they say. The effect of magic or other fantastic elements would certainly make changes to how the economy works. Alchemy could very well devalue the currency if it's one backed by gold, for example. In order to have value, money needs to be backed by something that's reliable, scarce, and durable. You can't base it on tin, for example, because there's too much of that. Gold is rare - and is always going to be rare because it wasn't made on Earth - so it's perfect for using to back your economic system. That's one reason why the Gold Standard lasted for almost a century. It was a predictable system, but increasing the gold supply would only have the effect of devaluing it. Working out what backs your monetary system is a worthwhile exercise, as is ways that you could break it. Fraud, be it through embezzlement or clipping coins, forging bank notes, or hacking into an account to artificially inflate the amount of money or credit score you appear to possess, is a great plot hook after all.

Outside that element, however, there are still a number of ways in which an economy could be affected by the introduction of the Fantastic. If your Steampunk world develops reliable and cheap steam wagons, suddenly you can get your goods to market that much faster. In a similar way, reliable dirigibles could transform travel, making it much more likely that the problems created by segmented trade routes like the one that would have existed between Afghanistan and Italy in the Renaissance are no longer relevant. Magical labour, like robotics, could destroy jobs and transform societies by making living workers obsolete, triggering a crisis as their earning potential vanishes. One horrific version of this might even involve zombies being used as labour, denying people even the rest of death. While you'd hope that this would be reviled, let's face it, we can't say for sure it would be. 

Returning to the example of fields that bloom because priests bless them, I think we can see that the economics of that sort of world might be entirely different. Say goodbye to boom and bust, indeed. When prices remain stable because there's no real spikes or slumps in supply, money would likely not be very important. As I said above, appeasing and pleasing the very real gods would be a much higher priority. 

That's it for this week - I'm breaking the five point tradition because this has ended up as a pretty meaty piece. Next week we'll talk more about technology, psychology, and identity, and how the Fantastic can be affect those elements of our worlds. 

How do you incorporate social changes into your worlds, is it something you factor in with the Fantastic? Let me know in the comments.