Influences, Part 3

Today we'll tackle some of the influences on Shadows & Silver's style. Remember, theme (what we have mostly talked about thus far) is what you want to say; style is how you say it. I've already made the basic stylistic decision of having this setting be one of early industrial technology and have decided that this is one of the primary causes of the discouragement on which the main theme hinges. While I could rant on and on about how technology has made us forget our spiritual selves, I'll summarize with this statement: we err when we attempt to solve our problems with technological knowledge because we treat symptoms rather than the cause. I may explain a little later what I mean by this, but for now we'll see what has influenced me in my concept of the destructiveness of technology.

Nowhere is my point better made than in mainstream fantasy. Most of these works deal with generic medieval worlds where the conflicts are easily separated into us versus them, good versus evil. The hero is a shining knight going to rescue a fair maiden in distress. Or perhaps he is an outcast from an evil society who has thrown off the ways of his people. Regardless, the world of the Middle Ages is highly romanticized. Is that bad? No. If anything, it supports the idealistic view of the world that I'd like to promote in my work, even if it's the sort of idealism you just conjure up so the horrors of the real world don't drive you insane.

The height of this romanticism can be found in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which captures, in the struggle of the hobbits to destroy the One Ring, the necessity of throwing off the evils of modern society. Tolkien's work, while heavily influenced by Germanic and Norse folklore, was largely a reaction to Industrialization, culminating in the catastrophes of the second World War (hence the theme of the book, "How can the world return to the way it was after so much bad has happened?"). Though the Ring was destroyed, its influence was not removed from Middle Earth. Even the beautiful Shire was corrupted. We can liken the Ring to many modern ills, and many have done so. From Nazism to the atomic bomb, it's all been suggested. But for Tolkien, the Ring represented the machine and the way of life machines represent. He watched as England's lovely rural countryside was replaced by smokestacks billowing clouds of wretched smog, and all he could think of were the orcs tearing down trees and building their machines of war. How he wished we could return to the age when magic and beauty were bountiful, when men's lives were not dictated by the clanking of cogs and the beating of war drums!

I want Shadows & Silver to model this, to truly show the disease technology brings upon the world. And yet, there is so much good that it brings. It increases production, raises the standards of living, and increases health. Well, it does when it's used responsibly. But in the last hundred years we have seen our world racked with war, and the greatest advances of our time are those things designed as weapons. This is because technology is a means to an end, and if we devote ourselves to the end of obtaining wealth and power, then technology will only serve to increase our misery. The key, then, is to keep a spirit of childlike idealism, to use technology in a way that benefits mankind as a whole, to ignore our own selfish desires, and to hold the hope for a brighter tomorrow. In Shadows & Silver, as in our world, few are so enlightened.