Fictional Technologies

and their effects

But I know of no writer, fiction or non-fiction, who saw ahead of time the vast change in the courting and mating habits of Americans which would result primarily from the automobile (Robert Heinlein, “Pandora’s Box”)

That is a not-obvious example of the effect of technology on society. A more obvious one is the effect of oral contraceptives on sexual behavior and norms. The effects of the internet, not yet fully realized, may turn out to be as large or larger. Better communications technology makes it easier to live in your own bubble interacting only with those who agree with you, arguably one of the causes of the increasing political and ideological polarization of recent decades. Other possible effects include the destruction of the present system of higher schooling.

Those are real technologies; fantasy and science fiction describe a wide range of fictional ones. One of the problems in writing sf is figuring out what the effects of those technologies would be, how the world portrayed would be different as a result. For example …

Truthtelling

The magical technology of Salamander, my second novel, includes truthtelling. It affects the plot of both that book and its sequel but it did not occur to me in writing it to think through how its existence would affect the society.

Two areas that would obviously be affected are the political system and the legal system. The book’s villain, Lord Iolo, is the son of a prince who lost out in a succession struggle with his brothers some twenty years earlier. He is wealthy, powerful, and disloyal. His plot to seize the throne with the assistance of a foreign invasion depends on the assistance of border lords who supported his father. In a world with truthtellers it would be difficult for them to conceal their plans from supporters of the king.

I never go into much detail on the court system, besides noting the existence of royal courts and the survival of an older, decentralized, system used by the mages to enforce the bounds of magery, limits on what may be done with it, but truth telling should affect that as well since it provides a reliable way of determining guilt. One result in some societies might be more severe punishments, since one argument against severe punishments is that you might be punishing the wrong man. This assumes that the court has access to truth tellers it can trust.

One could imagine interesting plots in a setting where they didn’t but thought they did.

Healing

Magical healing is a common feature of fantasies. If it is readily available there should be little need for doctors.

“Mages make potions, to speed healing. Those are even more expensive; don’t ask me why. Our surgeons always have a few of those, but of course they don’t use them most of the time.”

Paks frowned. “Why not? If wounds could be healed so fast—”

“Because of the cost. Paks, the Duke will have spent the whole contract’s profit, I don’t doubt, just healing the few of you here. Noone could afford to have every wound magically healed.” (from Sheepfarmer's Daughter by Elizabeth Moon)

Economics matters.

That suggests one option for an author not willing to revise his fictional legal system to take account of truthtelling — make it expensive enough to be rarely used.

Religion

Fantasy is often set in worlds where religion is real, the gods exist, humans have souls. That has implications which not all authors allow for. The existence of known afterlives, facts of reality like, for us, the existence of Australia, alters the implications of both dying and killing. Heroism that risks your life is more likely and less impressive if you expect to go to heaven, murder a less wicked act if you expect your victim will. Killing someone expected to go to Hell is a more complicated issue, worse if you value his welfare but not if, in your morality, evil people don’t count.¹

Kill them all, God will know his own

The quote, attributed to the Papal Legate to the Albigensian crusade asked how to distinguish Cathars from Catholics in a city the Crusade had just conquered, is probably apocryphal, but it represents a real issue for an author of fantasy.

Another issue is abortion — does the fetus have a soul and, if so, where does it go? How are things different if the answers are a matter not of religious faith but of known fact?

And then there is the question of gods. Taken seriously, they should be not only more powerful than humans but smarter. One author who does it is David Duncan in the trilogy that starts with The Reluctant Swordsman; only at the end does it become clear that the hero protagonist has been maneuvered by his god into changing the world in a way in which he does not want it changed. More common but less plausible is the sort of story where the human outwits the gods.

Mind reading

Another relevant technology is mind reading, done by magic, pseudo-scientific telepathy or tech. How would courtship and seduction change if each partner could let the other read his or her mind — or refuse to? What are the political implications?

My favorite example of the latter done right is a tyranny ruled by an evil god where people routinely have their minds read, making it necessary to not only say and do the right things but to train yourself to think the right thoughts. When the tyranny is overthrown the liberators face the problem of undoing the effect.

Carissa Sevar is a talented Wizard raised in Asmodean Cheliax with the patterns of thought necessary to survive in that environment. Cheliax has been liberated, her mind has not:

Is she being accused of caring about her mother? Do people accuse people of that? But Carissa wasn't, in fact, saving for her mother's resurrection. She hadn't even considered it. Her mother's better off in Hell - no, the new regime holds that no one is better off in Hell. Is Carissa being accused of not trying to resurrect her mother, when a person who agreed that Hell is bad would do so? That seems more likely. 

Which makes sense, if Hell is bad, and Hell is bad, she's been told so. Only -

Later:

Carissa haaaaates the way paladins do loyalty tests, even though she knows it is the virtuous and correct way to do loyalty tests and also you're not even supposed to think they're loyalty tests and also they're not. 

An exchange on democracy:

Alfirin: "I know you've only been here a few weeks, and busy ones at that, but I was wondering if you're planning to apply for citizenship."

Carissa: "Do you think I should?" Is that an order?

Alfirin: "Well, it's really up to you. But if you're planning to live here for a long time it seems like a good idea. You'd get to vote."

Carissa: Translation: if you don't do it I'll think you're disloyal and planning to leave soon. It's how they do loyalty checks around here. "Of course," Carissa says, her heart sinking. "Can you tell me more about how voting works?" Most importantly of course who to vote for.

…

Carissa: "... if you make everyone 'vote' then you can tell who's loyal and who isn't? Cheliax does that with Detect Thoughts but Andoran doesn't have enough wizards, so it's clever, really. It's not as good as Detect Thoughts because you can lie but I think making people lie is still useful,”

... now she does understand the orthodoxy but has backed herself into enough of a corner that unless Alfirin is generous with her it will be difficult to extricate herself. The orthodoxy is that it's not a loyalty test. Everyone should vote whatever is in their hearts, and this will not be used against them at all, and so there is no reason for them to even want to know how their superiors would like them to vote.

"Right, of course."

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1. That is, at a considerable tangent, an issue in the economic analysis of law. If the objective is to construct legal rules that produce the maximum net benefit, do costs and benefits to criminals count? Some economists argue that they shouldn’t. I have argued that they should.