Creating a world where electricity is believed to be magic

Hundreds of years ago a great catastrophe has nearly destroyed the world. The power of lightning, once a force used by man to control was lost. The machines has lost its purpose and left to rot with buildings of man's glory falling apart. Now it is a new dark age, an age of wickedness and savagery, men had reverted themselves to farming and feudalism. An age of slavery, oppression, disease and suffering where it is common.

The people amaze in wonder of the old structures of mankind's former glory of building massive monuments, mechanical power and foremost, the power of lightning.

Cool, but what do you want from us? I can see a "wizard" with a tesla coil staff, but that's about it.

edited 22nd Jun '16 11:52:12 AM by dvorak

How to expand and build a world.

Come to think of it, it's arguable that electricity is indeed a real-life example of Sufficiently Analyzed Magic. IIRC, lightning and electricity in ancient Greece and China were thought of as having a lot of supernatural qualities (and in fact, we arguably still do).

The people believe that electricity is magic because it has special properties like powering lost technology and kills persons.

Most people believe that some technology are mythical of legendary like smartphones, nuclear reactors and other mythical or legendary technology powered by lightning.

Everyone believes that most of fiction and pop culture embedded of modern times in their society are treated as true myths and legends like Pokemon, The Simpsons, Dragon Ball, Mario, CSI and other modern entertainment stories are treated as true stories, designed to fit with the values and morals from a post-apocalyptic and post-electric society.

Here, how are those myths surviving? Word-of-mouth can only go so far.

That there would be so many myths born from the media of the Bright Times means that knowledge of them survived somehow, but in what form? Pokemon, I can see the game guides being rediscovered and read through - but those are pretty clearly not religious in any way.

...Huthman, just so we're on the same page, are you old enough to clearly remember a time before you could look everything and anything up online? If I was writing up a myth or legend for a post-electricity age, I wouldn't bother with IRL media; Google would be a God to such an age, all-knowing and such.

The combination of word of mouth with discoveries of old media from the Age of Lightning by the people of the Age of Darkness causes them to believe about these stuff. And also, were talking about a world and a society where electricity is believed to be magic.

The question would be, did any of them get working projectors, VCRs and gameboys? One concern will be, such devices permanently stop working after a certain point. (roughly twenty years, probably due to expired capacitors).

Logically, you will probably have a priesthood that controls the various sources of electricity, such as generators and batteries, and they would probably also collect old media and archive them in controlled facilities.

That's right, there is a ancient secret society called the Keepers of the Amber Light that collects, preserves, researches and reinvent ancient and lost technology within a benevolent conspiracy to bring the world out of the dark ages.

I still don't follow. What type of media would convince someone in this world (what's it called, anyway?) that a fictional entity in some largely-digital media is real enough to be thought of as having existed in some way? Did someone happen upon this◊ and interpret it as being a representation of something true?

Plus, if electricity is believed to be magic, what would commoners believe the Internet to be, seeing as how it runs on electricity?

A person in the Age of Darkness would be called a Petani and they treat it as proof of the myths and legends of the Age of Lightning (Read: Modern Times) as recordings of their stories. Sometimes when they find something that contradicts their stories, they often treat as is if its just a modification of a myth and legend from ancient times.

EDIT: The commoners would also believe the internet as some sort of a combination of Nirvana (Buddhism), Heaven, a world where humans connect and transcend their consciousness and a vast, great library of knowledge.

edited 24th Jun '16 6:32:05 PM by Huthman

Or some kind of Eldritch Abomination that can trap your consciusness, luring you with sweet promise and carnal pleasure, only to trap your soul in eternal limbo without release or way out....

Maybe, but its not a common interpretation.

Why nobody is there right here right now.

People are watching this thread, there is just not much to add.

Thank you, but I need continuing to expand and discuss the worldbuilding project.

Well, what kind of story are you looking to tell?

This is an admittedly biased opinion, but I believe that you should only work on world-building when:

• It's in the service of your story, or
• You're personally interested enough in the idea to actively research and expand it for the sake of realising your ideal design, and not for the sake of the audience's Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

If you haven't thought up a plot yet, then I guess you can try focusing on one of your core worldbuilding ideas and work your way from there. I'd really like to offer some plot ideas, but to be honest, the only major theme you've explained - the common people mythologising modern pop culture - isn't something that works very well as the focus of a serious sci-fi story. At most, you can maybe:

• Add it as a background flavour (e.g. WALL-E watching Hello Dolly in a ritualistic fashion) or
• Write a parody story out of it (the local Keeper of Amber Light is restoring a DVD box set of How I Met Your Mother and "preaches" it to the townsfolk every night as a parable of Lightning Age virtues, only to discover that the final season is missing and subsequently dispatch the hero(ine) on a quest to find it)

Now, I don't know if you'd be as interested in other plot ideas, but you might want to look up other potential plot points in a post-electricity society:

• Medical sciences have drastically regressed, and people are dying from injuries and ailments that would've been trivially easy to fix with modern technology. Warlords and chieftains build their strongholds in the ruins of Lightning Age hospitals, with their personal legions of Keepers studying and preserving the arcane powers of the dentist chairs and USG machines within.
• The Darkness Age communities live in complete isolation from each other, each one trying to piece together their knowledge of the past using painstakingly restored relics like DVD players and smartphones. The latter is especially revered, as the Keepers would periodically talk to it (using WhatsApp, which still functions thanks to locally-maintained cell towers) and receive answers and counsel from the "spirit world" (in reality other villages) in return. When one village is struck by sudden disaster, its Keeper sets out on a journey to find the guiding spirits and seek their help.

These are very bare-bones, and I'm sure you can think up many more on your own. Keep us updated and have fun!

Nitpick: Did you use the Malay/Indonesian word for "farmer" as your generic demonym? As a learner of the language, I find it rather distracting ^_-

A epic science fiction story where a young girl who is given a the Staff of the Amber Lightning which has the power to generate electricity and must save the world from the villains who want to use the electricity and lost technology for their own purposes.