Let's talk about Dragons

[Lisnpuppy]

Nice post Vin....and I completely understand that you can appreciate the Pern books but that not be your thing. I read them in the late 70s, early 80s and at the time...Sci-Fi was not en vogue at all (LoTR not withstanding.) Up to that time a monster was a monster...Sci-fi and Fantasy had a long way to go to be developed and widely accepted. To say Pern was one of the only games in town isn't pushing it much. Anne did two things very well...one was the dragons and the other was strong female characters.

 

What I think these books helped do is show a different side of things and show that you could do more with a dragon than just have them fly about, burning things, eating sheep and taking the occasional virginal sacrifice. Next step in these books..go toss a few canned lunches knights at them or an occasional crunchy wizard, kill the beast (maybe) save the virgin and the townsfolk all cheer!

 

I agree that these current books (and all things) about dragons make things that are very...gloomy and almost apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic in style. I find it depressing though I suspect it is supposed to make one feel better as it shows humanity surviving. As you said and I said....these things are cyclical and will turn around soon enough.

 

p.s. Good choice of silver pen. Try a nice aqua next time. lol There is a reason we use a blaring ugly color to moderate. :thumbsup:

[Vindekarr]

Cycles is spot on; look back through history and you'll see themes, styles, they come and go in popularity. They're never gone for good(except maybe blackface, for which we can all be grateful) My addition would also be-they seem to change, over a period of decades, and reflect the mood of the times. One good example is Star Trek, from the late '60s painting space in a very optimistic sense-while War Hammer, from the mid to late '80s, paints an extremely dark, depressing image.

 

Star Trek is perhaps the most optimistic view you'll get of the future, especially the original series. It portrays Earth as a utopia, with thoughts of internecine warfare, poverty or disease forgotten and humanity free to explore the galaxy. Most other sentient species are progressive, innovative and peaceful, and the vast majority exist in peaceful alliance with humanity-the United Federation Of Planets. Certainly, space is portrayed as dangerous and there are violent, aggressive species(IE, Klingons, Jem'Hadar) but they're the minority, and the overall impression is one of adventure and hope.

 

It's technology is a similar story. StarShips are capable of travelling vast distances quickly and run on renewable, safe antimatter/warp power systems. They're light, airy, and almost art-deco on the inside, and for the most part look genuinely comfortable to inhabit. Armaments are slim, but extremely adaptable, with variable-lethality Phaser and Photon weapons, powerful energy shields, and the common sense and diplomatic ability to rarely need either.

 

I won't comment on the times around when Star Trek originated-I wasn't there-but this was just after the Moon Landings, and many other scifis of the era portrayed similar bright, positive futures.

 

War Hammer, originally of the mid '80s then revived to enormous success in the 2000s, follows an almost polar opposite perspective. It's a very ugly future indeed. Earth is a true dystopia; a planet wide slum piled kilometers deep, the entire biosphere killed off by centuries of warfare and the atmosphere a barely breathable, heavily irradiated fog left behind after centuries of nuclear winter. It's governed by the Imperium, which began it's life very similar to the Federation, but has been turned into a vicious, theocratic, borderline fascist state in which mass poverty, mass conscription, and fanatical religious practices are the norm.

 

War Hammer's technology is very low by comparison. It's ships are purely for military use, as warp travel is so dangerous and costly that only the military uses it, and only when absolutely necessary. It's ships are dark, brooding, monolithic structures often dozens of miles long, with cast-iron hulls, dark, dimly red-lit interiors, and tend to look more like gothic cathedrals and castles than space-going vessels. They use Warp jumps to travel-tearing a hole in space-time to enter the Warp, an infernal plane of existance below our own, and infested with demons. Hence why space travel is a "only when absolutely positively necessary" undertaking.

War Hammer grew out of the mid '80s-gulf war, collapse of the Soviet Union, oil crisis-ugly times. And interestingly, became popular again during the early 2000s-second gulf war, global recession, more ugly times. It was hardly the only dark series of the '80s-Aliens, Judge Dredd, I could make a list longer than my leg(and I'm around two-meters tall, so it's a big hairey pork-chop of a leg, too) of dystopian, often brutally violent sci-fis of the mid to late '80s.

 

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/7808/bibc.jpg

 

A decent cross-section of how War Hammer does star ships. Ugly, eh? it's like an Ironclad got it on with a Star Destroyer or something.

[spyro1201]

My favorite video game series of all time is Spyro the Dragon. Doesn't follow the trend, at least in the original trilogy, which i am a die hard fan of.

 

As for other cases where this theme exists. I'm assuming this happens mostly for ease of building up the dragons. It's easier to write about them being extinct/been extinct/whatever than have them as common species, but that's just me.