Thursday, March 24, 2016

Is Game of Thrones post apocalyptic?


https://youtu.be/aTUbAK1DsOc
It's an interestin idea but it's going down the wrong track.

King's Landing, with it's mega-sept, it's Dragonvault and the Red Keep itself are great examples of engineering, all of them less than three hundred years old. I'm sure there are plenty of other castles, too. Winterfell is impressive mainly because of the hot water pipes; , well, Bandon the Builder was a heckuva builder, that's all.
The Titan of Braavos is another incredible feat of non-magical engineering and craft built in the (relatively recent past).
Storm's End? It's built strong to weather storms. It's got some magical protection because of magic.
And as far as Casterly Rock goes, I've seen tons of castles built in mountains. They look awesome! But it's not that impressive and doesn't need post-medieval engineering to do..
The Wall, however,  is explained ONLY by magic. There is no scientific explanation because it's just not possible. For somthing impossible, you don't really need hi-tech engineering. You need magic.
And anyway, the Wall has been build up by the Night's Watch themselves over thousands of years.
The ancient civilization being technologically advanced is a popular trope in fantasy: The Book of the New Sun, The Book of Swords and even, Shannara, if memory serves, focus on that.
But I don't see a lot of evidence for it in A Song of Ice and Fire. In fact, it seems that technology has advanced quite a bit--they went from Stone Age, to Bronze and now they seem to be in the early renaissance, especially in Essos.
If Westeros is comparatively backward relative to Essos, well, so was Britain in the 15th century compared to Italy.
Anyway, I imagine most of the castles were actually just made of wood and then as time went by have been built into stone.
TL;DR: It's fantasy. There's no need to try to make it science fiction: it would, in fact, depend on very bad science.

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