[Dragaera] Centuries and Centuries of Dragaeran history and no one has invented a steam engine?

[Jonathan Carey, CHRL via Dragaera]

Often, in fantasy literature, the author likes to allude to the hundred if
not thousands of years that this world/society etc has been going on,
possibly in an attempt to create the feeling of a Tolkien-esque level of
world-building without all that pesky "world-building" nonsense.  But
throughout all that history, the society seems to be stuck in a template
time period.  Middle Earth is stuck for thousands of years in an Ancient
Roman type society.  Dragaera seems to revolve around a Renaissance-type
time period.  I could list more examples, but as it's a very common issue,
I'll leave it to you to come up with more if you don't believe me.  It
shouldn't be too hard.

The reason for this in OUR world is obvious; the author likes to write
about something cool; or on a subject that they are very passionate about.
Not a little (sub) conscious nostalgia/sentimentality sneaks into the work
as a result, but the difficulty arises when the fans try to answer their
question WITHIN the fantasy world's limits.

The question is, more or less, "how the hell has science not progressed
beyond x in all that time?"

The answers to this question are often unsatisfactory, since a satisfactory
answer would require a truly creative mind, able to imagine a world
entirely different from our own.  We use fantasy and other types of fiction
as an escape; but we are limited in our flight by the confines of our
experience in many unavoidable ways.  Ultimately, I think readers tend to
find a series that they like, and then ignore this most glaring problem in
favour of enjoying a good story :)

Unfortunately, I'm one of those minds that likes to
explain/compartmentalize; despite my cognitive awareness that neat and tidy
explanations are actually the exception and not the rule, my mind seeks to
tie up loose ends; and consequently, I spend quite a bit of time trying to
explain this and other plot holes.  I find that "filling in the gaps" makes
the story, for me, more enjoyable.

But my mind is not one of those truly creative minds that I mentioned
above; I must make due with a moderately creative mind as I seek to
surround myself with an impenetrable illusion of fantasy and magic.

So, there are a number of more common explanations for the "Time-Period
Lock" effect, and I will enumerate them, and why they're not particularly
satisfying, specifically as it concerns Dragaera:

1) Magic is a matricide; ie, if Necessity is the mother of invention, then
Magic drove a 6-inch stiletto into Necessity's left eye.  This explanation
is perfectly fine for the noble classes and other magic using Houses -- but
it falls apart when you consider the lower Houses, particularly the
Teckla.  Their lives are so labour-intensive that Necessity gets revivified
and is most likely quite irate at magic.  There's bound to be a social
disincentive for Teckla to get too uppity; but the problem there is that
many inventions/discoveries such as might be found in Terran Society around
the 16th-17th Century are too damn useful to ignore; and moreover, there's
still the society in the East; presumably with little to no contact with
Faerie, their technological advancement would describe something similar to
our own.  But as far as I can tell, they've been there for *hundreds of
thousands of years* without progressing beyond a more or less feudal level
of technology.

One of the most unavoidable drivers of a society's progression is its
relationship to the outside world; and many Dragaerans are aware of the
fact that they are a planet hurtling through the galaxy.  An argument could
be made that this knowledge is only among a select few of the big and
powerful; but those are usually the type of people who say to themselves
"hmmm going to other places can get me more power" so that objection kind
of falls apart.

2) The Natural Maturation cycle of Dragaerans:  they take almost a thousand
years, give or take a couple centuries, to reach adulthood.  This is BOUND
to have a retarding (read: slowing) effect on the speed of their daily
lives.  Psychologically, this is very sound, but there are precious few
examples of this actually being the case in the books themselves.
Dragaerans, for all intents and purposes, seem to live as "quickly" as we
do, just over a far longer period of time (which seems to be, very roughly,
34x the length of an average Easterner's life).

The implications of this would be, to my mind, that technology would
advance even FASTER than our own since the "productive" period of any
innovator would be longer.  Even in the presence of magic as an alternative
mechanism for doing work, this effect should still be noticeable.  It also
seems that Dragaerans learn approximately as fast as Easterners do, so
another question arises: why isn't every Dragaeran a "renaissance man" with
expert-level qualifications in almost every field?

3) The problems presented by 1) and 2) might be answered to some degree by
examining the effects of the genetic experimentation of the Jenoine.  I
think, to a certain degree, that the middle/lower classes are terrified of
Dragons and Dzur because, to them, it is as if a real, actual predator is
nearby.  Maybe there's a scent Dragaerans pick up off of each other or
something.  But a Teckla could never not be terrified of a Dragon; and that
fear would be all-consuming; the idea of developing something that would
bring a Dragon's attention to them would be as suicidal as walking up to
one of your natural predators with a sign on your neck reading "Tasty".

In my opinion, that fear can only go so far to explain the "culture lock"
of Dragaeran society.  A future fear/pain will often be de-prioritized in
the presence of an actual, present pain.  And regardless of the fact that
the future pain is a deadly terror and the current pain only an annoyance,
sooner or later there's going to be a guy who laughs off the fear in favour
of making something to reduce the labour-hours required by a task; thereby
allowing him to spend more time on other productive pursuits as well.  This
is one of the foundational realities of class oppression--if you keep a
population so busy with the simple task of surviving, they won't have time
to think about how unfair it all is; and certainly won't have enough time
to get around to doing anything about it.

Eventually, someone's going to transpose the fear/threat represented by
attracting a Dragon's attention with the fear/threat posed by a society
that considers it ok to kill you for no good reason as long as the killer
is a noble and the victim is a peasant.

So the genetics explanation, as I said, can only go so far.

4) Sethra Lavode and the Gods.  She exists to protect the Empire.  The
Empire is a direct manifestation of the Cycle.  The Cycle is...what,
exactly?  Unknown, except we know that it's incredibly important to not
only Dragaerans, but also their Gods as well.  It is very
conceivable--indeed, I would go so far as to say that it is
*probable*--that the Gods themselves are maintaining an otherwise unnatural
status quo; choosing to corral the tides of change with a dam that they use
to power their Halls.  They were clever enough to recognize that water too
strictly controlled tends to erode the container, so they built into the
Cycle a natural progression of social evolution; while limiting the
technological evolution by a variety of means.

In the end though, none of these answers, individually or as a group
together, satisfy the problem, in my mind.  But they provide a decent
surface veneer that will bear the weight of a gentle scrutiny...one that
perhaps is really only interested in enjoying a good story.


Regards,

Jon Carey, B.A.(Hon), CHRL, CHRP