Technology and Stories

A place to discuss what you're reading, your favourite authors and books etc. Everything from the Classics to Shakespeare and Non-Narnian Fantasy works.

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HermitoftheNorthernMarch
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Re: Technology and Stories

Post by HermitoftheNorthernMarch » Wed Jul 15, 2015 4:27 pm

Good points, Hansgeorg, when I originally began this thread I was considering whether the inclusion of technology lessens suspense in more modern stories that include it versus older stories written before the technology came about or in settings without technology.

Sherlock is a show that actually uses the technology to make itself more popular in the culture, but do all modern stories work like that? I know I've seen at least one movie where they had to come up with an excuse not to have cell-phones in order to heighten the plight of the characters (Mom's Night Out).

Also, many popular children's movies do without technology altogether, (HTTYD, Frozen, Rise of the Guardians, Tangled, etc.) Yes, Big Hero 6 is a successful movie that has technology, but they have the story come first. (Hiro doesn't phone the team, it is Baymax who contacts them because he is concerned for Hiro; and it is the heroic aspects of the characters that save the day, not the technology.)
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Re: Technology and Stories

Post by Ariel.of.Narnia » Sat Jul 18, 2015 3:24 am

Besides the strength of the story itself being a huge factor in the success or bomb of the use of tech, I think it's also important to consider how the tech is used in the story, or another way of putting it, how central is it to the story?
Big Hero 6, at its core, does not need the tech to drive it nor does it attempt to make the tech front-and-center (aside from the very important robot). We'd have the same story (more or less) if their skills/superpowers were brought about by lightning striking chemicals or years of intense karate training. BBC's Sherlock would still produce the same sorts of stories if set in the late 1800s, but the modern take also allows it to move faster; this would, on the one hand, ease tension, but on the other, increase it.
However, something like Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit had plenty of tension and most of that was because of technology (eg: hacking into a computer in x amount of time, baddie taunting protagonist over the phone during a car chase, etc). Tech was so much a part of that movie that it would have been a different story altogether without it. Non-Stop wouldn't have had the effect it does without tech (the killer hacks into a federal network to text the marshal, which allows for greater anonymity (during a plane flight, anyway) than slipping notes in his pocket or luggage or leaving them for him to find in the lavatory, etc.).
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Re: Technology and Stories

Post by Ajnos » Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:16 pm

It's interesting hearing you guys talk about reading Left Behind now since I read it in the early 2000s (while some of them were still coming out....I had to wait for Glorious Appearing to come out to find out who had died at the end of Armageddon). So when I read it, the technology was current and even futuristic (especially since SA is often a couple years behind). Technology is always somewhat problematic for sci-fi set in the future (especially the near future) on Earth. And it's tricky, 'cause you can't really have sci-fi without it. Sci-fi further away in space and time fares a bit better (think of Star Wars or even Star Trek - the non-earth stuff). Doctor Who fares well too, 'cause his Earth visits often correlate with the decade in which those episodes were filmed. Watching out-of-date near-future stuff can be fun though, to see how people envisaged the future at the time (Star Trek: The Voyage Home is fun in that respect).

But I think it's true that it can be distracting. Possibly one of the things that has made Narnia and Middle Earth remain popular is their setting in pre-industrial times. We can relate to them no matter what technology today is doing.

One other thought I had reading your comments (sorry, I know I'm rambling) is that fantasy stories like these cope well without modern technology because they have "technology" of a different kind to fill the roles that modern tech has in other stories - I mean "magic". (I'm thinking of how Tolkien compared "magic" to "machinery" - both a way of subverting the natural laws to achieve things more easily - in his preface to the 2nd edition of The Silmarillion).
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Re: Technology and Stories

Post by Lily of Archenland » Fri Jul 24, 2015 7:17 am

hansgeorg wrote:
Lily of Archenland wrote:Hermit - I don't think having tech in the Chronicles would have killed it, although we would have lost the WW2 setting. I mean, Narnia was never meant to be in the same time-period as Earth, so I imagine it would remain medieval/neofeudalistic in nature, but if we had cell-phones on Earth it would lend a whole new level of impact to "worse than what Father says about being at the mercy of the telephone"! ;)
Ah, OK, you mean High Tech in the English part ... hmmm.

No, still no.

Blitz is so much the reason for evacuation, and WW2 plus subsequent years is so much into the story line, since Professor Kirke cannot keep his house when taxes rise (VDT).

It's as impossible as setting the farms of Enid Blyton's Famous Five into 21:st Century. It would be wrong episode of Emmerdale Farm. So wrong episode.

And Digory and Polly need to be in an era when collars were stiff and Sherlock Holmes was still in Baker Street. Especially since if Frank had been the other kind of cab driver (as in taxi rather than horse cab) there would not have been any Fledge.
My first instinct is to agree heartily on the timing of Digory and Polly.
My second instinct is to wonder vividly what it would be like - not for the Chronicles themselves, not to change the canon, but as an AU or a fan-art concept of sorts - if that was modern. If the cab was blessed by Aslan and given life with the woods and waters of Narnia - a sort of spirit of metal - a softly purring chrome beast unfolding its shell beetle-like to show off its new wings - a kind of magical Narnian Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. It wouldn't work I know. The Pegasus tugs a different sort of heart-string, and fits much better with this land of castles and centaurs and dwarves. But that idea almost sings to me. The thought of a humdrum car going Somewhere Else and becoming one with the Somewhere Else on the other side - changing into something wild and vivid and magical, but still somewhat mechanical and metallic at the same time - a fantasy world where tech brought over could be blessed by the lord of that land and become living and magitech and more than the sum of its man-made parts - it seems like a plotbunny someone should use somewhere, if not Narnia. Perhaps in one of the other pools in the Wood Between the Worlds.
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Re: Technology and Stories

Post by hansgeorg » Fri Jul 24, 2015 8:22 am

As you said, if there had been a world with a Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang given life, it would not have been really Narnia.

Also, there is a piece of tech, it does not go alive and intelligent, but it goes alive as a tree - the lantern, remember?

As there were gas lanterns back then, converting such a gas lantern into a tree would be not impossible, if the gas it lit with were some product of its metabolism.

I think CSL held to a metaphysics with "golden chain of being" - things can be improved one step (from beast to rational animal, non-extant from plant to beast, again extant from artefact to plant), but not two.
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Re: Technology and Stories

Post by Ariel.of.Narnia » Sat Jul 25, 2015 6:38 am

Ah, I see what you mean now, Lily. That's... an interesting mental image. :P Like you said, a Winged Horse has a different effect, but I'd have to agree with hansgeorg on the "aliveness" of a car - I'd have a much harder time with it unless it turned out to be something along the lines of Transformers. Humanoids and animals are so much easier to give life and personality to than other objects. ;)
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