[Cedeos]

Hello all, I am new to the forum.

Reading through BH I stumbled over one kind of conflict I thought about before:
Why is a human society so old (at least 100.000 years of civilization) not more technological advanced?
Samar Dev explains this in the discussion with Karsa when showing him her inventions with magic, which made technical progress more or less obsolete.

I think this is more than arguable, at least when it comes to power.
See what the Malazans can do with their explosives? I think a technically well equipped army (just spin the explosive invention a little further) could be a match for every army (with as many High Mages, Cedas, Warlocks etc. you like), even the Edur.

[Cause]

Yes I agree the question always plays a role in fantasy genre settings. But would you enjoy the books if they just launched artillery at each other all day. And I think i would rather hate to be in an army saturated to the teeth with moranth munitions. just imagine a miss throw

[fan_83]

cos magic is an easier way to achieve their goals than through tech..
to get moranth you would require an industry whereas a high mage alone could do what it takes many peep to do..

also recall that with warren travel, and advance in tech that tilts teh balance towards tech, any high mage can travel there and accidentally set it on fire

[Cedeos]

Cause said:

Yes I agree the question always plays a role in fantasy genre settings. But would you enjoy the books if they just launched artillery at each other all day. And I think i would rather hate to be in an army saturated to the teeth with moranth munitions. just imagine a miss throw

Accepted. Fanatsy and technology does not really fit. But what strikes me is that SE touches this point more than once. When the Malazans invade Y'Ghatan, for example, Corabb is horrified by the awefulness of the Malazan explosives and asks himself which army can be a match for that. So SE seems to have a small issue there, too.

Just some random thoughts.

[Dark Mac]

Cause said:

Yes I agree the question always plays a role in fantasy genre settings. But would you enjoy the books if they just launched artillery at each other all day. And I think i would rather hate to be in an army saturated to the teeth with moranth munitions. just imagine a miss throw

Heh, Wheel of Time does this quite well. The artillery battles are my favorites of the series.

[Tiger_sword]

There has already been one technically advanced race, the KCCM. Prehaps others are wary of tecnology as they see it as alien or non-human? Just a thought. Plus there has been no real need for advancement though i do remember the Ceda in MT was keen on inventing, he had his glasses for example. In a world of people who are either happy as they are or have the power to do whatever they want it is little surprise their not tecnically advanced.

Though i guess some millitary advancments should have come along, something like a long range artillary type weapon. Though Fid has got that cool crossbow that fires explosives.

[Iguanaaa]

So, apparently "modern" humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, have been around on earth ~100,000 years. It's only in the last ~500 years that we have, arguably, had technology at a similar or higher level than the humans of Erikson's world. The relationship between time and technological advance is definitely not linear.

I know that we haven't had the same kind of major civilizations throughout that history that Erikson tells us about in the books, but it seems to me that most of Erikson's civilizations come to an end (usually a bloody one) and new civilizations that replace them almost have to start from scratch. Something similar happened to European civilization after the fall of the Roman empire. Or Mesoamerican civilization after the decline of the Maya.

Also, there are a lot of ascendants in the books, and one thing they seem to have in common is a desire and an ability to manipulate (directly or indirectly) human events. While I don't necessarily think that any specific ascendant/god is antitechnology, I would guess that they and their priesthoods (if they have any) would move eventually to quash any attempt to put too much power into the hands of average humans. This is something technology usually does (e.g. Moranth munitions). Now that the Malazans have started becoming more technological things may change. The leadership, at least, seem to want to challenge the gods themselves.

As for the non-human races, the Tiste Andii, Jaghut, and Forkrul Assail seem to have enough intrinsic abilities that they wouldn't really need technology as well.

Really, I just like the books and don't really care whether or not the lack of technology is realistic or not.

[Dark Mac]

Iguanaaa, our situation is hardly the same. We've only had writing for ~6,000 years, and the last Ice Age only ended 10,000 years ago. The First Empire, however, existed for 60,000 years, and the Letherii have been around since the end of that. Sure, the Letherii have awesome steel manufacturing techniques, but they should've been throwing nuclear weapons at the Tiste Edur.

[Serrat]

"I don't know what weapons World War Three will be fought with, but World War four will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein

Perhaps they did have nuclear weapons at some point...

For clarity sake: if you missed the point it is that this mysterious weapon that WWIII will be fought with(ie nuclear weapons or something even worse) will be so terrible that once we use them extensively we will tell ourselves "never again!" Perhaps the terror of such a war was so immense that all mention of it was stricken from records. A little extreme, yes, but what's a good crazy theory if it is not extreme?

[GingerBreadMan]

I think there are two causes for the low level of technology in the Malaz World.

A. There is no need, as we all know advancement comes through need. Since there is magic, gods, etcc the world relies on those rather than on advancing their technology. If we humans could have made light with a cantrip, or healed the wounded/sick with a spell, we would have had no need to develop those technologies.

B.Those in power like to keep that power. I would not put it past the gods in Malaz to put down any technological revolutions. I doubt the Gods would like a world where any mere mortal could build a nuke or build airplanes that can take on dragons.

[Smiles]

Hopefully without this being to sweeping a statement, many major technological advancements have come about through war or have been accelerated through warfare.

Forging processes, composite weapons such as powerful bows and chariots, all the way up to gunpowder, communications, rocket flight etc.

On Wu/Malaz, magic does replace most of this and where technology has advanced it's through finding ways to defeat magic, such as Moranth munitions which are for killing mages. IMO technology would be slow and cumbersome compared to opening a warren for travel, healing or communication and would be probably be done out of curiosity rather than necessity.

Saying all that, I can’t wait to see what the K’Chain have in store for us.

[Tiger_sword]

They way that the KCCM object was described in BH and then as Mappo and Iccy were walking around just seamed as though it was incredably superior tecnology but (rather than have tecnology improve magic) they had magic improve tecnology. In other words i think that the KC were driven to become extremely advanced, prehaps so they could then stand up to others with more powerful magic. I can't see many mages (or ascendants for that matter) standing up to a gun or a bomb

[Malaclypse]

re-post from the Criticism thread:

ok, here goes...

the stagnation and/or repression of technological ‘progress’ in the Malazan world(s)....kya= ‘thousand years ago’

so what are we really looking for here? what's missing? the printing press? gunpowder? factories? fossil fuels? steampunk? techno-magic?

The objection is, I believe, one of consistency. By all means correct me if I'm wrong..the idea being that with all these hundreds of thousands of years of history, the more-or-less medieval technology level is ..inappropriate? A matter of opinion in the first place and the author's prerogative, as in he wanted to write fantasy and not sci-fi, some alternate Earth setting or, gods preserve me...steampunk. He doesn't actually have to explain it, just as GRRM doesn't have to explain why his planet has completely whacked seasons. I’m sure I can find numerous examples if anybody really wants to question it. The sympathetic reader will simply assume that are any number of reasons that might explain the lack of more advanced technology and move on, but since we’re talking about it…

The non-humans don’t count imo…it’s common in fantasy that elves, Ogier, green people or whatever, existed for a lot longer than humans and didn’t develop advanced technology, they just aren’t interested, or something…in fact SE does better than most on this front, for example we know the K’Chain had advanced technology of some sort, the Edur taught the Moranth about munitions (and seemingly lost the knowledge or perhaps access to the necessary materials) and the Barghast had far superior metal at some point in the past, whether of their own manufacture or taught/given to them by another group. Letherii steel is another example of superior technology in the Malazan past, perhaps surviving from the First Empire…without going into a lengthy treatise on the possible loss of technology after the collapse of a dominating empire, suffice it to say…’Dark Age’…we don’t really know how long humans have been around on the Malazan world, but their first civilizations were about 120 kya and that’s really the time frame we’re dealing with…as for the Imass, they are roughly analogous to the Neandertals on Earth, noted for the consistency of their material culture in the archaeological record throughout their tenure on this planet..Homo erectus (pseudo-Eres) even more so…On Earth, anatomically modern humans have been around for about 100 kya (look it up if you don’t believe me) and only invented agriculture and thus the possibility of civilization some 13 kya (roughly) and it’s widely accepted that this was a direct response to significant climate change, ie., the end of the last Ice Age and subsequent sea level rise, pushing groups of people from their rich, coastal environments into less resource-dense areas of the interior and forcing them to innovate or die in large numbers. The point I’m trying to make is that humans seem to be conservative with regard to their lifeways, ie., ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, which sadly ensures that it will break at some point, but that’s just my opinion. In the absence of significant and imminent pressure, people will tend to do what their parents did. The modern human situation isn’t really applicable, imo…if the impetus (and therefore the support) to start making machines, invent non-magical weapons technology, discover new forms of energy and locomotion, etc. isn’t there to start with , there’s nothing to build on. Not to mention the fact that coal, saltpeter, or other materials necessary to our particular technological development may be unavailable or scarce on the Malazan world(s).

With all this in mind, it’s not so hard to imagine how the availability of magic would stifle technological progress. Why would anyone spend the time and effort it takes to truly innovate if an existing solution is already at hand?

More could certainly be said on this topic if anybody wants to get into a serious analysis, but that’s it for now

[Smiles]

Just a thought, you would need mechanical technology if you were going places where warren magic didn't work or you had magic negating abilties (otataral like...)

But then it's not clear how the KC machine Icarium examined was powered, only that it was some form of stored energy.

[Cause]

Dark Mac said:

Heh, Wheel of Time does this quite well. The artillery battles are my favorites of the series.

artillery battles in wheel of time? I dont recall any