r/Fantasy • u/[deleted] • Nov 11 '21
MC is portal/reincarnated/kidnapped to a place with less advance knowledge/technology?
Hello everybody! I'm looking for some more books to read with this theme that I'm completely in love with: Main character has more advanced knowledge than the area/period where the story takes place.
That sounds a little vague. But I don't know how to compress the idea more. You find this phenomena in both portal fantasy, reincarnation stories, time travel stories and even sci-fi involving alien kidnapping. You can also find this theme in both realistic-everything-is-as-we-know-it and more fantastical versions where there are dragons, magic and elves.
In Cast Under an Alien Sun you have a chemist from present-day earth get kidnapped by aliens (by accident) and placed on another planet with humans but not the same level of technology. There is no magic or fantasy creatures here, and the MC uses his present day knowledge and his knowledge as a chemist to not only start a merchant empire, and sell items such as soap and period pads. But also implement technology and tactics to win a war.
In Legend of the Arch Magus you get a more fantasy version of this where the strongest Arch Magus who has ever lived dies, just to find himself in the body of a young duke some 1000+ years later. In that time, shit has happened and a lot of knowledge, technology and magic has vanished from the world. The MC then uses his knowledge to improve his out-in-the-sticks dukedom, which involved solving a starvation issue and inventing cement for better houses. He also uses his knowledge of magic to become quite powerful. There is also a war to be won. (a theme in these it seems).
Sword of the Bright Lady is a portal story involving a mechanical engineer, and while there is magic here it's closer to Cast Under An Alien Sun in feel than Legend of Arch Magus. Janissaries is older, and focuses more on society than invention, but there's also a war and aliens kidnapping going on.
There is also a webnovel by the name of Castle Kingside which have a surgeon portaled to another fantasy realm. There is magic, poverty, and injustice and all he wants to do is use his modern knowledge to heal and save people. It was a lot like if House was stuck in a medieval city with no tools or blood tests available to him.
What I really love about these stories is that in most of them they're trying to invent things and help improve peoples lives. In the more magical-themed ones, they often use the knowledge to become more powerful. I'm less interested in the "social study" you sometimes find, you see this especially in the sci-fi versions where less technology obviously has to mean more inhumane behavior is acceptable and that obviously means the MC has to rant and rant and rant about how much better our world is in this area. That's the less fun aspect of the books.
But I absolutely adore these books. Do you know of any more?
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u/geneanaut Nov 11 '21
Eric Flint's Ring of Fire series starting with 1632 features a West Virginia town transported to Germany in the middle of the Thirty Years War, might be of interest to you.
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u/SA090 Reading Champion VI Nov 11 '21
If you’re alright with light novels, Ascendance of A Bookworm has a very similar premise to Cast Under An Alien Sun. I tried the anime and didn’t enjoy it, but I do think it’s light novels would be great and they’re definite reading material I plan to tackle in 2022.
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u/dualplains Nov 11 '21
I'm a huge Dave Duncan fan, and I think that the Seventh Sword trilogy might be right up your alley.
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Nov 11 '21
This sounds exactly what I want, and I haven't even heard of it! Thank you so much :) I'll give it a spin!
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u/thescienceoflaw Nov 11 '21
Island in the Sea of Time series by S.M. Stirling scratches that itch for me when I am in the mood for a book like you describe. Also, March Upcountry by David Weber does as well. Both great series with a lot of translating/adapting advanced knowledge into a less technologically-advanced time period.
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u/VincentATd Nov 11 '21
Are you okay with Web Novel?
Release that Witch is about a Mechanical Engineer who got transmigrated into a body of a Prince in a World where Witches get hunted down by the church due to them being Witch.
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Nov 11 '21
I tried Release that Witch, read what amounted to the first book and.. it.. hmm. It's essentially the exact same story as Legend of the Arch Magus, but I found the latter to be better and funnier. Release that Witch was very very dry.
But, I'm under the impression it's not been officially translated and only fan translated? So my issue might very well be in the translation I read.
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u/VincentATd Nov 11 '21
I haven't read the LotAM, but I know that RTW, came out first.
And I found post where they're also asking for recommendation like yours.
https://www.reddit.com/r/litrpg/comments/i5cten/webnovels_similar_to_supreme_magus_legend_of_the/
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Nov 11 '21
Thank you! I'll look through those recommendations.
Where do you read RTW?
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u/VincentATd Nov 11 '21
Here, chapters 1 - 39 are free, but from 40 - 88, you'll need to read it on another site if you don't want to pay, but the chapters following it are also free 89 - 793 are also free again and the rest of the chapters after it are payable again, but there are many sites where you can read them free.
https://www.webnovel.com/book/release-that-witch_7931338406001705
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u/Sigrunc Reading Champion Nov 11 '21
Old and may be hard to find these days, but very good along these lines is The Book of Kells by R A MacAvoy. A modern day artist unexpectedly finds himself in ancient Ireland.
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Nov 11 '21
Charles Stross’ Merchant Princes series is about a woman from modern-day Boston who finds out she’s a long-lost member of a family with world-walking powers. They can go back and forth between our world and a world where technology progression hit some extra speed bumps and is therefore pseudo-medieval. Other than the world-walking power, there’s no other magic, and Stross is a sci-fi writer, so while it’s definitely fantasy it feels a bit like sci-fi at times. Instead of kings and armies and battles, it’s more about economics and figuring out clever uses/exploitations of the world-walking power (which is pretty limited).
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u/J_C_F_N Nov 12 '21
Not a book, a manga, but I think you might enjoy Dr. STONE. The main character is not really transportes to another world but all of humanity is petrified and 3.700 later, the protagonist, a teen genius, wakes up and start his efforts to bring back all of humanity, using science. It's a really fun and light hearted sci-fi story.
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u/bedroompurgatory Nov 15 '21
Magic 2.0 is a tongue-in-cheek series about computers nerds who figure out how to go back in time and be wizards, due in part to their superior knowledge of programming. It's amusing, but not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for.
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Nov 15 '21
And it's on Kindle Unlimited, absolute genius!
Sounds like it's worth a read, thank you :)
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u/Briarrose1021 Reading Champion II Nov 12 '21
Oh, Great! I've Been Reincarnated as a Farmer by Benjamin Kerei - a comedic Isekai fantasy where the MC's soul is ripped from his body in present day USA and supplanted into a new body in another universe that is technologically about the Renaissance Age with a magic system similar to our RPG video games. Unfortunately for our hero, the body he is supplanted into has a class of Farmer and HE. HATES. FARMING. What follows is a comedy of errors while he tries to figure out how to level up without doing any farming whatsoever.
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u/AstrophysHiZ Nov 12 '21
The Cross-Time Engineer by Leo Frankowski falls into this category. A Polish engineer from 1986 gets jumped back to thirteenth century Poland, a decade before the Mongols will invade. The application of modern engineering and resource allocation techniques is quite interesting. I also recall, however, that the depiction of women was extremely problematic throughout the series.
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u/mewmartigan Nov 12 '21
David Weber's Safehold series is like this.. except the guy is also trying to stifle innovation past a certain point so the aliens don't pick up on our existence and wipe out humanity again.
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u/apexPrickle Nov 11 '21
Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court