Tevun-Krus #17 - CandlePunk

Candlepunk in Magic Screen - An Article by @angerbda

Candlepunk in magic screen: Medieval cultures and civilisations interpretation in scifi shows

What sparks the imagination with Science Fiction is that it brings the curious mind almost every time in an interstellar journey, lets you travel across dimensions and meet with advanced alien species, sometimes allied and sometimes foes.

Though with the head in the stars, one can find a feudal interstellar society. Giving a glimpse of the dark ages outside of a time travel plot, is what candlepunk is about, a sort of "technologically driven alternative course of history"[1] or an alternative set in the future based on "retrofuturistic instances, which use [the Middle-age] period as a starting point"[2].

Looking for candlepunk literature, one can think about Connie Willis' Doomsday Book[3], Michael Crichton's Timeline[4] or Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series[5]. The Medieval cultures and societies make recurrent intrusion in science fiction literature and on the big screen[6]. A film like Outlander, where Vikings fight against Alien[7] while merging the low tech iron technology to the more advanced Alien knowledge is a good illustration of candlepunk. In the small screen also numerous introduction of the subgenre can be found. In December 1973, The Doctor was already making an incursion in the Middle Ages[8].

There are three obvious ways to plot the Dark Ages intrusion in a Science Fiction story: the Time Travel plot, the Alternate Universe plot, the Faraway Galaxy plot.

The Time Travel plot can vary slightly, but, essentially, it consists to bring a future character and/or object in the past. With the "Time Warrior" episode, the Doctor investigate the disappearance of scientists, who, in fact, had been brought back eight hundred years in the past by an alien who had crashed on Earth during the Middle Ages.

Crichton's Timeline is a more classical rendering of the Time Travel plot. Group of researchers are sent to Dordogne, France, in 1357, by the way of quantum technology. There, in the past, they are confronted to a lot of misadventures, they are almost trapped in the past as the device to bring them back is destroyed, and they are almost miraculously returned to their period when the device is finally repaired. In between, they lived a series of action filled adventure, and one of them even remains behind as he found the life he wanted to live.

Though the Time Travel plot is an easy way to plot a candlepunk story, the Alternate Universe and the Faraway Galaxy leaves more room to imagination and fantasy than the former which requires to be more accurate on the historical facts.

In an Alternate Universe, one can bring elements of the past and the present or the future together, having them fit in an equilibrated way to build a whole sensible world. No historical precision is required as it is all a new World.

The Faraway Galaxy plot gives even more way for an introduction of "retrofuturistic instances". One just has to think about the 'Star Trinity' to find those instances. Star Treck, Stargate and Star Wars dabbled in candlepunk here and there, either by presenting worlds with a Middle Ages flavour, with societies closer to an interpretation of the Dark Ages, or showing more SCiFi-ish worlds including medieval aspects.