Of God-Kings and Adobe Strongholds (Bronze Age Fantasy Speculation/Brainstorming Part One)

 Of God-Kings and Of Adobe Strongholds:

Why Bronze Age Inspired Fantasy?

Foreword

When I wrote the first draft of this blog post, it was more clinical and acted as a guide on implementing Bronze Age within a fantasy framework.

However I realize about four hundred words in it that, a) I am not a historian, b)I don’t know enough about the Bronze Age to talk about it, and c) it was boring as hell for me to write. That produces terrible content for the reader and honestly, I want to be more emotionally true to myself, to write things I have put off writing for years now. Writing a blog post that anyone else can write is something I do not enjoy doing.
What I am interested is the narrative possibilities in fantasy from applying aspects of the Bronze Age to it, so that is what this blog post series is part of my voice. 

To start with, I argue why I think Bronze Age fantasy is one of the best settings to analyzing civilization, its rise, and

Enjoy.

-TheWanderingScholar

Why Bronze Age Fantasy?

In my opinion, the Bronze Ages from around the world is an untapped source of inspiration for fantasy settings. In the Mediterranean, it is when the Old Kingdom of Egypt built the pyramids, the mysterious Hittites were a strong regional power that challenged Egypt before collapsing into obscurity, and this is the time when the Trojan War might have happened, something still talked about today. We know so little of that time era in the Mediterranean despite all of our efforts. The Bronze Ages of other regions, such as Meso-america, South America, and East Asia, even less is known to us[1].

However from the little information we know, we can draw inspiration for themes and aspects that are not provided by the standard western European pseudo-medieval setting. The themes such as relationship of civilization to the natural world and attempts to stay connected to it, the experimentation of governance among the first settled, urbanized states across vast distances instead of the wandering clans and tribes, the rise of distinct classes within a society, and ultimately questioning how fragile civilization itself is, are all topics that come with talking about the Bronze Age.

At the time of writing this blog-post these themes are relevant for our time period. A time of increased globalization, a rise of billionaires and wealth inequality, looming specter of climate change, and the biosphere falling apart across the planet as the weight of nearly eight billion people begins to breakdown the ecological foundation upon which modern civilization is built upon. The parallels between the Bronze Age Collapse and the modern world have been made by others, and I do not see the point of reiterating something that more articulate and knowledgeable people have covered.

Instead, I want to focus on why I think Bronze Age inspired fantasy makes sense for covering these topics. To return to what I said in the earlier paragraph, a good story in opinion uses the setting as more than set dressing but instead being a character upon itself which forces the human actors to make decisions and act in ways, from minor things as in how they greet one another to major reasons such as obstacles in a protagonist or antagonists path that a story revolves around.

For the Bronze Age, that setting leads into these themes I discussed earlier of interaction surrounding civilization, as the Bronze Age is considered the foundation of modern civilization. The first attempts (and failures) to compensate for the struggles of creating large, relative urbanized, and sedentary proto-states from a specieswhose origins are as a nomadic generalists. The distribution of labor, how to govern the people, handling of borders, and many more questions must be taken into consideration.   

An argument I could see being asked, “What not the post-apocalyptic genre? Could you not ask the same questions within that framework?”

To which, I say: I view the main difference between fantasy and science fiction as the past and future, respectively. Which to say is that fantasy draws inspiration from myth, history, and action of the past to weave its tales and themes. Science fiction draws inspiration from the now, applying possible technology to the future to investigate a possible world and the themes around it, a popular theme being "Is AI sentient?"[2]. 

 

From the viewpoint, I see post-apocalyptic genre dealing with the question of “what happens after the apocalypse and fall of civilization?”. Questions such as how will the apocalypse come, how will people react, how society will function (or cease to function), and ultimately how to rebuild a new society are mainstay of that sub-genre of science fiction. Similar questions to the ones I want to explore, but different nonetheless. There is also cliches and tropes that comes with those questions as most follow.

Bronze Age Fantasy, to me at least, brings the opportunity to draw inspiration from building of civilization itself, to ask about its cornerstones, and what weaknesses it brought with it. By drawing from these first civilizations' to the forefront, to analyze their rise and how they did so then to distill those lessons into fiction is something that is not as possible with other parts of fiction.

Other eras of humanity popularly used in fantasy, such as Antiquity and the Medieval era, all carry with them tropes and clichės which creates expectations for the readers as what happens. Alongside it is the inherited themes coming from those settings are different from Bronze Age. Medieval fantasy is not going to be asking about foundations of civilization. Its themes are going to include the nature chivalry, honor, and critiquing a society where rule of law is based on contracts, relationships, and trust versus bureaucracy. 

Overall, the reason I want to use the Bronze Age setting is because the strength of setting to talking about relationship of humanity and nature, creation of governance, and to explore a world in transition from a nomadic to a tribal society. Well there be magic? Of course. Heroic fighters and wise shamans? You got it. But under that veil of heroic sword and sorcery, comments about society and world in which these character's live in will be there, being the catalyst for their stories. 

 A tribal who is leading his people in a world where their old way of life is changing and they can no longer be hunter-gatherers in a world of cities and borders. Bastards princes leading his people southward to safety as the Empire collapses around them, his crown dead in the water. City-Gods and spirits searching for a new purpose after most of their followers are slaughtered by roving tribes, while the survivors worship new gods offering them what their old god could not. A priest wandering the land trying to find out why nature spirits are feuding with the city-god and how to hammer out a deal between the two entities and come out with head still on.

Stories I describe are theones I want to tell, and in my opinion, the Bronze Age is the best era to tell those stories. Other eras are a detriment to the stories I want to weave. As to how I shall weave those tales and the world they shall take place in? Well that is the rest of the series.

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[1] At least to a western audience which is uneducated in those topics.

[2] Both of those are gross generalizations, and does not take into consideration Turtledove like alternate history and other speculative fiction that blurs the line like The Lord of Light by Roger Zelzany however that is general differences of how these genres are different, from my point-of-view.