I’m embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, this particular type of story on multiple occasions… So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?
I have no idea the answer to your question, but I now know like 99% of people on lemmy have shitty reading comprehension.
Browsing responses here, you aren’t wrong.
Assuming it’s a surprise, this is Earth All Along. Genre Shift is similar, but that’s more about tone than plot
Flintsonian/Jetson
Specifically the After the End variant
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TomatoSurprise is the wider trope
You maniacs, you blew it all up!
What’s the etymology?
It doesn’t have one. I was making a joke.
- Hi = High
- Fanta = Fantasy
- Po = Post(-apocalypse)
- Dys = Dystopian
- Fut = Future
Hifantapodysfut = High-Fantasy-Post-Apocalypse-Dystopian-Future.
It’s in the title.
You maniac, you made up! God damn you all to hell!!
So that’s the etymology
Yeah, Adventure Time
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. is my personal favourite of Bruce Campbell’s work. Starts off as any ordinary western, before getting very, very weird.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105932/
Come to think of it, Firefly might count, after watching Serenity at the end of the series.
Good shit.
I knew a tvtropes link was going to be here as soon as I saw the question lol, here goes my next three hours I guess
How was your trip?
Oh you’re still going? Nice. Enjoy your stay!
Star Wars is fantasy, not sci-fi. (Technically it’s a space opera, it not at all about science or how that science might impact society.)
Just because there’s technology, or it’s post apocalyptic doesn’t make it not fantasy.
Shanara chronicles, too.
I really like the term “Science Fantasy”. It acknowledges the parallels with Science Fiction but respects how they differ as well.
Shanara chronicles, too.
Yep, they visit ruins in one series that is pretty clearly the ruins of Tacoma or some place like it.
Terry Brooks happens to live in that area. Coincidence? :)
You mean like Adventure Time?
They are pretty obvious about it being a post nuclear war reality.
Not 100% sure, but these come to mind.
- Science Fantasy
- Dying Earth
- Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
Dying earth isn’t really a genre, it’s series of books by Jack Vance that popularized this trope and was also a major inspiration for DnD
These sound right to me, especially Dying Earth - a podcast I listen to covered Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun trilogy and they described it as such. Wikipedia calls it Science Fantasy. Great books by the way
I don’t quite think that there’s a name for this genre (yet?) but I’ll take this opportunity to blast out my favorite story-focused game serieses
Xenoblade is a nice fantasy RPG if you really like Storytelling! And all 3 core games are available on Switch!
Generally speaking, Xenogears and Xenosaga have amazing stories too, but Xenoblade got translated and dubbed waaaay better
Edit: just thought of this the last couple of minutes, and, if there was a name for this genre, it would spoil the whole game/movie/book for you! Imagine watching Planet of the Apes for the first time (it’s old by now and I hope there’s no one here who didn’t watch it already) and exactly knowing what planet it is
Hmm not sure. I guess I’d call it post-apocoliptic fantasy lol. But I know exaxctly what you mean and I love that genre. The Horizon games and even the Witcher books/games fit into this genre.
You mean like “dwarves and elves are GMO humans” and “magic is actually tech gadgets” ?
Death Gate’s cycle says hello!
For a pure magic example
The Mistborn era 1 (books 1-3) are fantasty magic.
Mistborn era 2 (books 4-7) occur hundreds of years later in that worlds “industrial/steam” age. Still, with magic.
So, for example, some allomancers can push or pull on metals. In Era 1 that’s used for combat but also for rapid movement. An allomancer can fall from a wall, throw a coin and “push” off of it causing them to bounce forward and upwards. As they’re starting to reach the azimuth they “pull” the coin, catch it and repeat.
They also in combat throw and then “push” coins or metal fragments like shrapnel.
In Era 2. A sheriff (who’s an allomancer) leaps across a gully, aims and shoots a bullet into a wooden crate and then “pushes” on it to cross it.
Another time during a shootout one “pushes” gunfire away so it deflects around him. Not guaranteed to get all of the bullets but useful in situations like that.
There are other uses and other allomantic abilities but the entire shift of the format was just done phenomenally.
Can’t recommend the Mistborn series enough
Yeah, Sanderson earned the cred on the original trilogy. It’s a fantasy series, but the magicians are basically Jedi. Great stuff!
And the powers, as in all the cosmere series, has limits which balances it out.
No endless pushes, flying, etc. every world has some resources or constraint so you’re not left with a “Superman” kind of scenario.
To clarify, are you asking if there’s a specific genre to Planet of the Apes where there’s a big reveal that this is actually just earth after some society ending disaster? (And similar stuff but that’s the first that came to mind).
NK Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy comes to mind, fantastic series it that’s your thing
Where have you seen this? I’ve been looking for some stories like it
Yor: Hunter From the Future
The Broken Empire trilogy. Also Red War trilogy, which is spin-off (though uses these themes a bit less)
The YA book series The Tripods, is medieval dystopian.
The Wheel of Time does this.
Yeah, though clues are few and far between; the
spoiler
museum in Tanchico with the Mercedes hood ornament
is the biggest clue. From Jordan’s other writings, the
spoiler
First age was our time, then humans created an AI powerful enough to genetically engineer humans to be able to do magic,
and that led to the Age of Legends.
Yup. I think there are a few more, on a re read rn and Great Hunt they go to a parallel world where there appear to be Jet contrails and large swatches of burned ground where absolutely nothing will grow - nuclear fallout?
I hadn’t heard of the AI bit before but it sort of makes sense. sAIdin and sAIdar? No?
I’ve got to check these recs out
OG Planet of the Apes, Horizon Zero Dawn is too in a way
OG Planet of the Apes took place on Soror, a planet in the Betelgeuse system.
I’ve never actually seen, just the references. Guess it’s worth a go
Shanara chronicles are set after humanity fucked everything up, demons came and fucked more shit and got sealed away and are now coming back.
It’s otherwise your sword and horse fantasy, though.
The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein, though sadly she never finished it.