I’m embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, this particular type of story on multiple occasions… So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?
Assuming it’s a surprise, this is Earth All Along. Genre Shift is similar, but that’s more about tone than plot
Specifically the After the End variant
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TomatoSurprise is the wider trope
You maniacs, you blew it all up!
Flintsonian/Jetson
Thanks! I think this is it… because I guess the more important part to this trope is that “hehe this is actually the world that you - dear viewer - lives in”… the high-fantasy part is secondary and depends on the genre I guess.
I think the trope From Cataclysm to Myth actually fits better. It even says in the description "Cousin to Earth All Along, but a premise or a plot twist rather than a Twist Ending. "
What happens when the story is not set on Earth?
I have no idea the answer to your question, but I now know like 99% of people on lemmy have shitty reading comprehension.
Seriously. There’s a dozen links to TvTropes and almost none of them match OP’s description, but they’re all upvoted to high heaven. Not to mention the unrelated replies talking about their favorite stories which don’t actually match the trope either.
The TvTropes links are mostly right though? It matches the third variation of Earth All Along. The linked examples match what OP is describing except not being restricted to Fantasy.
Well OP didn’t specify Earth. I can think of some stories where it transitions from high fantasy into sci-fi but is not set on Earth, which is definitely not under the ‘Earth All Along’ trope.
Spoiler:
The Gods are Bastards is the first one that comes to mind, where it turns out the planet is a colony in an unstable part of space that’s been quarantined by the original science team who have ascended.
Pity, 'cause it’s a great question, and a great trope. I can think of a few good examples. Maybe it’s time to start a TVTropes account and get editing.
I… agree. Did get a lot of great recommendations tho!
Browsing responses here, you aren’t wrong.
People on here seem to not know what a trope is. Holy hell.
I knew a tvtropes link was going to be here as soon as I saw the question lol, here goes my next three hours I guess
How was your trip?
Oh you’re still going? Nice. Enjoy your stay!
Aladdin (1992). The Genie is the last survivor of the AI wars and has mental damage. The Cave of Wonders is another remnant. “Magic” is low level AI responding to human intent. Iago is an uplift. Agrabah is literally a generic Middle Eastern country because it was assembled from the fragmented records of what remained of the Middle East.
Do you think the genie got it from twitter war brainrot or just did too much of the sensory content back in his skibidi days?
You know, the modern remake of The Time Machine shares some of these elements. Orlando Jones was the broken AI lol
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. is my personal favourite of Bruce Campbell’s work. Starts off as any ordinary western, before getting very, very weird.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105932/
Come to think of it, Firefly might count, after watching Serenity at the end of the series.
Good shit.
I just saw a video on the show on the youtube channel Secret Galaxy, pretty interesting, as I remembered the show, but never knew what happened to it:
Yeah, Adventure Time
Not 100% sure, but these come to mind.
- Science Fantasy
- Dying Earth
- Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
These sound right to me, especially Dying Earth - a podcast I listen to covered Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun trilogy and they described it as such. Wikipedia calls it Science Fantasy. Great books by the way
Dying earth isn’t really a genre, it’s series of books by Jack Vance that popularized this trope and was also a major inspiration for DnD
You mean like Adventure Time?
They are pretty obvious about it being a post nuclear war reality.
Star Wars is fantasy, not sci-fi. (Technically it’s a space opera, it not at all about science or how that science might impact society.)
Just because there’s technology, or it’s post apocalyptic doesn’t make it not fantasy.
Shanara chronicles, too.
I really like the term “Science Fantasy”. It acknowledges the parallels with Science Fiction but respects how they differ as well.
Shanara chronicles, too.
Yep, they visit ruins in one series that is pretty clearly the ruins of Tacoma or some place like it.
Terry Brooks happens to live in that area. Coincidence? :)
Yeah, in my mind, Sci-fi is more than just space ships or aliens or futuristic tech (though those are loosely part of it), it’s more about exploring different questions, under the guise of some sort of new technology. “Hey, we invented this thing that can remove racism from people’s brains, but it also makes people love-obsessed and creates dependency issues in people. Should we use this on the population?” It raises moral/ethical questions about what we could or should do given the chance.
Star Wars is straight-up fantasy with high-tech aesthetics, but it has more in common with Lord of the Rings than it does with anything sci-fi. It’s about a hero’s journey and good vs evil.
I wonder if you couldn’t do a reverse Fantasy/Sci-fi story? Basically a sci-fi sort of story with fantasy trappings. Like a fantasy story that looks at some new magic development and what the implications for humanity are of that new magic process. “We perfected an alchemical process to turn poop into gold! Should we flood the market with poo-gold and crash the medieval economy?”
And that’s why silver is better than gold.
(/j)
In any case I’d rage about the cross over with horror, it then we’d have to talk about Shelly pioneering sci-fi with Frankenstein’s monster.
And like. That is a classic.
That wouldn’t fall under a single trope, but would be a combination of several tropes. After The End would be a requirement, and for technology that is like magic to those who live in the world would be Lost Technology.
Nice, I think yours is the most relevant so far.
You mean like “dwarves and elves are GMO humans” and “magic is actually tech gadgets” ?
For a pure magic example
The Mistborn era 1 (books 1-3) are fantasty magic.
Mistborn era 2 (books 4-7) occur hundreds of years later in that worlds “industrial/steam” age. Still, with magic.
So, for example, some allomancers can push or pull on metals. In Era 1 that’s used for combat but also for rapid movement. An allomancer can fall from a wall, throw a coin and “push” off of it causing them to bounce forward and upwards. As they’re starting to reach the azimuth they “pull” the coin, catch it and repeat.
They also in combat throw and then “push” coins or metal fragments like shrapnel.
In Era 2. A sheriff (who’s an allomancer) leaps across a gully, aims and shoots a bullet into a wooden crate and then “pushes” on it to cross it.
Another time during a shootout one “pushes” gunfire away so it deflects around him. Not guaranteed to get all of the bullets but useful in situations like that.
There are other uses and other allomantic abilities but the entire shift of the format was just done phenomenally.
Can’t recommend the Mistborn series enough
Yeah, Sanderson earned the cred on the original trilogy. It’s a fantasy series, but the magicians are basically Jedi. Great stuff!
And the powers, as in all the Cosmere, has limits which balances it out.
No endless pushes, flying, etc. every world has some resources or constraint so you’re not left with a “Superman” kind of scenario.
you probably already know this, but for anyone else:
The Cosmere Series (of which the Mistborn Saga is a part of) does heavily feature Sci-Fi as well as post-apocalypse themes alongside (mostly) fantasy (Sci-Fi: the sunlit man, tress of the emerald sea; post-apocalypse: Stormlight Archives, Yumi And The Nightmare Painter), which made me think OP was talking about this series specifically.
In some of the other books it is mentioned that all of the powers originally came from a being called Adonalsium (basically God). what fuels all these manifestations of powers is called Investiture. Each Shard of Adonalsium manifests different Powers, Allomancy is just one of them.
so it’s a unique mix of classic fantasy, sci-fi, and post-apocalypse genres in a single gigantic saga, in which the sci-fi and post-apocalypse themes are intentionally kept vague and in the background.
highly recommend all of the other books!
they are great in their own right, and also give a LOT of extra bits and peaces of the overall lore!
what’s best about the series is, as you’ve already explained, the “hard-fantasy/sci-fi” approach to powers: all power requires some kind of source, everything comes from something.
best to do the Stormlight Archives after Mistborn (either order works), then the rest; order doesn’t really matter, although i recommend Tress of the emerald Sea and The Sunlit Man to be read last, because they contain a lot of sci-fi lore, which is best enjoyed last (imho)
also: Stormlight Archives Book 5 is coming relatively soon, i think it’s december?
That’s a great summary. I’ve really enjoyed all of his books.
I can’t wait for December 6th when Wind and Truth releases.
I’m finishing a reread of the Stormlight Archive now.
thank you very much!
also: ha! i’m doing the same thing! currently at book 2 ;)
Death Gate’s cycle says hello!
To clarify, are you asking if there’s a specific genre to Planet of the Apes where there’s a big reveal that this is actually just earth after some society ending disaster? (And similar stuff but that’s the first that came to mind).
NK Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy comes to mind, fantastic series it that’s your thing
Post Apocalyptic Fantasy and Post Apocalyptical High Fantasy are two phrases I keep seeing.
Star Trek comes to mind unless you disallow scifi (as high fantasy usually would iirc, though notably “space operas” really do seem to blur the line).
LOTR could be argued as such - there was an earlier age of beings from which only remnants survived, and then we also watch live as a second epochal transition takes place, where the likes of elves disappear. I mean, either way it’s not “our reality” type of age - but then again you couldn’t ask for that from “high fantasy” by definition :-).
And it’s a very common trope in video games - e.g. Chrono Trigger that is arguably the best RPG of all time (shitty graphics, even for its time, but hands-down the best story I’ve ever seen, made btw by the creators of Final Fantasy who were given the freedom to do whatever they wanted for it). Edit: another one like that is Lufia - not a ground-breaking game but highly regarded for doing what it did so very well, at its time mind you.
And I’ve seen some others where like basically Earth is implied to have been destroyed (or at least it is unclear whether it survived a world-ending event), but the singular human remaining lives on, in space, but in something like a series of interconnected “worlds”, some having higher levels of technology than Earth ever managed to reach while others are set in earlier timeframes. And dealing with noncorporeal beings from like higher dimensions, and entities like a god inside the machine - so definitely once again mixing up heavy elements of “high fantasy” (with the likes of swords and magic) and sci-fi.
If you can dream it, someone has likely written it. Books are freaking awesome! 😎 So too are other mediums, when profits are not the exclusive focus.
Saying Chrono Trigger had shitty graphics for it’s time is the hottest take I’ve ever seen lol.
I loved Chrono Trigger! The very first example of this that I ran into as a kid was Crystalis. You are told at the beginning that it’s Earth after an end of the world event, but it’s a sword and sorcery overhead action RPG (think original Legend of Zelda with slightly more RPG, slightly more action, and slightly more varied combat) and ends with you shooting advanced technology with your magic sword.
Yes I played Crystalis! Not like, whenever it was when it first came out, but I like to study the evolution of gaming so I went back and played a bunch like Dragon Warrior/Quest, even the Japanese versions of Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, etc.
I definitely enjoyed Chrono Trigger more:-). But I was glad to have played Crystalis too, especially with it having been so unique (or at least like rare I guess).
And while I never played it, isn’t Baldur’s Gate also post-apocalyptic, with a high fantasy theme? There are indeed so many that use that trope.:-)
Chrono Trigger (and Chrono Cross for that matter) is a better game for sure but I played Crystalis as a kid when it first came out so it’ll always hold a special place in my heart. Chrono Trigger came out when I was about to become a teen so I had other things on my mind at the time.
As for Baldur’s Gate…kind of? Without going too far into it, most of the D&D worlds had some sort of apocalypse in their past. Faerûn’s apocalypse was so far back that they’ve completely rebuilt, and they were already fantasy so there was no serious genre shift (it’s high fantasy) and it doesn’t fall under the Earth All Along trope. The floating city that crashed when shit went wrong was held up by magic.
Ok, I went further into that than I meant to. I’m an old nerd.
I was poor and so played very few titles when they first came out, but at some point later on discovered emulation, and loved seeing the magical wonderland of all the best games from the past.
I particularly loved seeing the “development” of a genre. Like Dragon Warrior/Quest was a game where the player controls a single character, who only had 8 item slots (though I don’t recall if you could fit like 3 or 8 or sth medical herbs together - even if so it was extremely constraining), and keys were something that you used once but never again. Then Dragon Warrior/Quest 2 added two additional characters to your party - but they were “fixed”, both magic-users, a prince & a princess iirc, who kinda swapped between them which was more powerful at the time as they learned new things. Then Dragon Warrior/Quest 3 allowed you to roll your own characters with a character creation menu in a tavern, and you could reject them and reroll to attempt higher stats, choose their names, classes and even upgrade classes, some like Sage needing special items from the world. Somewhere in there keys became permanent forever-use items, though they also expanded to include different “types” - opening locked wooden, metal, gold, or prison doors.
And Dragon Warrior/Quest 4 was one of the most intricate, multi-interleaving storylines that I’ve ever seen, despite the constraint of having to fit onto an old NES cartridge!:-) Those graphics were NOTHING like the 3-d effects of the later installments in the series, yet so very much of what made those franchises great were there.
Chrono Cross I did not like so much - it was “fine” as a game, but it was not the spiritual sequel that I hoped for:-). I occasionally play through Chrono Trigger every few years, like re-reading an old favorite book - the music, the story, the themes, it relaxes me and I enjoy it, plus it’s so short that such is do-able:-).
