Looking for something like this (fantasy with a scientific mc)

I'm looking for a new read, and I was thinking that I have never read a fantasy book where a regular person from our world gets transported to a magical/medieval word, but the main character doesn't think the fantasy word is ok as it is and starts teaching people how to make gunpowder, new agricultural methods, new kind of ships, steam engines, etc.

tl:dr average joe gets transported to a fantasy word, instead of accepting the heroic swords, he says fuck this, we need cannons and cable tv.

Anyone knows any books with plots like this?

This probably belongs in the recommendations forum, but one book that instantly comes to mind is Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Everworld has a bit of that, from what I recall.

Well, in order to start introducing guns and electricity and stuff, they're going to need to understand that sort of thing themselves. How many regular people do you know who could teach someone else to make a gun or a steam powered train, let alone a TV?

Yeah, it did. Didn't they buy huge amounts of copper wire and set up a rudimentary telephone for Fairyland? But then again, they had access to several textbooks and had some technically-minded people.

I always found it cool how they give someone a blood transfusion using an ink cartridge from a ball-point pen.

The 1632 series is along those lines.

take a look at both Roland Green's Kalvan of Otherwhen books (a Pennsylvania State Trooper is accidentally sent to a parallel universe), and the "Conrad Stargard" series (an engineer of Polish heritage is transported back to medieval Poland) — both feature a modern guy transported to a medieval world. Kalvan is harder in both science and political and military theory; the Conrad Stargard series goes downhill really fast after the first book and Conrad becomes a complete freaking Mary Sue, but the first one is fun.

edited 30th Mar '12 7:41:32 AM by Madrugada

I have already read those actually, pretty fun, but I'm waiting for the direct sequel to The Saxon Uprising Thanks I'll look into those, and the one about the telephone lines mentioned above too.

Lest Darkness Fall seems to be a classic in this regard.

Lest Darkness Falls is the prototype.

There's also Dave Duncan Seventh Sword series (4th book out last month).

However, the voyager does very very little "introducing", the author being vastly more interested on his (kinda good) worldbuilding. Basically think samurais+poets+policemen

There is a (never continued unfortunately) low fantasy shared trilogy that follows a similar pattern (not alien from earth, but lost knowledge): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Knowledge

There is also the Darwath books by Barbara Hambly but those are more straight high fantasy. The only "application" of "science" comes from the research project from one particular character (one of the world travelers) who figures out the reason for the currently occurring invasion by pure logic on book 3.

The "all the weyrs of pern" book of the pern series is a almost self contained variant of this trope, with the discovery of a intelligent AI on pern left over from the original landing that plans a bootstrap of Pern's society into a space voyage for dealing with the thread.

I had another series on my mind, but forgot about it. Damn short term memory.

See also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GivingRadioToTheRomans

edit: S.M. Stirling the Islanders trilogy - though that guy political strawman's annoy the fuck out of me (like David Drake and most american alternate history authors - don't even try Turtledove and his obsession with "what if the CSA had..." and thinly veiled world war 2 analogues).

1632 (especially the grantville gazette) has some stories like that, but really, don't expect great writing ... or themes... or consistency of tone.

edited 17th Apr '12 9:26:09 PM by SCO

the Safehold series is sort of like this, no fantasy or demensional travel but it features a space colony that was forced into artifical Medieval Stasis by a bunch of technophobic meglomaniacs who brainwashed the colonists into worshipping them as "Archangels" and a Ridiculously Human Robot with the personality of one of the meglomaniacs' political adversaries who wants to break the Medieval Stasis.

Ohh, Ooooh! The Divide is very close to your description. It's a trilogy, and I've read the first two books in middle school, and I still remember them now that I've graduated high school. Even though there are 3 books, you only have to read the first one if you want; it doesn't end on a cliffhanger. Same for the sequel, I read it and it wasn't an obvious Two-Part Trilogy or anything. But you should read them in order, because the second book kind of spoils the first one if you haven't read it yet. I haven't read the third book because I only found out that there even was a third book untill I went to the trope page for The Divide to give you a link.

Drop the sorcery part and you can add Jerry Pournelle's Janissary series to the list. A bunch of people get kidnapped by aliens and dropped on a world they've been dropping humans on as forced labor for centuries. There's a plus: It's from the 70s and includes illustrations.

The newcomers say, "Fuck being the slaves of aliens" and revolutionize the technology on their new world.

edited 26th Jun '12 12:34:08 PM by Journeyman

Wizard's Bane is sort of like this, but with computer programming instead of cannons and so on. And the author put the first book online for free, which is nice.

The idea is cool, but I found the execution less than convincing, to be honest.

edited 26th Jun '12 2:31:40 PM by Carciofus