I'm looking for books that feature the main character(s) being transported to a lower technology society (either through time travel, dimensional travel, space travel, etc.) and uplifting them through inventions, policies, culture, etc.. This is one of my favorite premise for SFF. I will list the ones I know of or have read, and I am requesting any I've missed!
Probably the three best known examples of this are:
- Destiny's Crucible by Olan Thorensen: Joe Colsco boarded a flight from San Francisco to Chicago to attend a national chemistry meeting. He would never set foot on Earth again. On planet Anyar, Joe is found unconscious on a beach of a large island inhabited by humans where the level of technology is similar to Earth circa 1700. He awakes amidst strangers speaking an unintelligible language, and struggles to accept losing his previous life and finding a place in a society with different customs, needing a way to support himself, and not knowing a single soul. His worry about finding a place is assuaged when he finds ways to apply his knowledge of chemistry—as long as he is circumspect in introducing new knowledge not too far in advance of the planet’s technology and being labelled a demon.
- 1632 by Eric Flint: 1632: And in northern Germany things couldn't get much worse. Famine. Disease. Religous war laying waste the cities. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy. 2000: Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia, and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time. THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED…. When the dust settles, Mike leads a group of armed miners to find out what happened and finds the road into town is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell: a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter attacked by men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot. At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of the Thirty Years' War.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: One of the greatest satires in American literature, Mark Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' begins when Hank Morgan, a skilled mechanic in a nineteenth-century New England arms factory, is struck on the head during a quarrel and awakens to find himself among the knights and magicians of King Arthur's Camelot. The 'Yankee' vows brashly to "boss the whole country inside of three weeks" and embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot with 19th c. industrial inventions like electricity and gunfire. It isn't long before all hell breaks loose!
My favorites (excluding the above):
- Cast in Time by Ed Nelson: Pretty straight forward an army engineer gets transported back in time to the middle ages and immediately starts making changes. The book suffers from Gary Stu, but otherwise is some guilty pleasure goodness
- Imperium by Travis Starnes: A bit more complex, the main character is from a sci-fi future and is transported back to an alternate universe that takes place during the Classical Era right as the Roman Empire is about to fall (though this takes place in Britain rather than Rome, since this is an alternate universe). IIRC, Carthage wins the Punic Wars.
- Legend of the Arch Magus by Michael Sisa: A reverse uplift fully written in a fantasy world. An ancient mage is sent to the future where (magical) technology has decline and starts uplifting them to his time's standard.
- Matt Miller in the Colonies by Mark J. Rose: A modern chemist is transported to the colonial era (1762 IIRC), and proceeds to start an apothecary, find love, and integrate into the culture. Suffers a bit from Mary Sue this time and over-romanticizes the colonial period, but that seems to be a common theme.
Others I may or may not have read, but don't have much to comment on:
- Nantucket by S.M. Stirling: Most similar to 1632, this series transports the entire late 20th century island of Nantucket to the Bronze Age and follows the familiar pattern.
- The Uplift Saga by David Brin: Humans uplift Chimpanzees and Dolphins to become intelligent. The entire series follows the themes of technology and social uplift as I understand it, but I've not read it yet (it's on my TBR)
- The Cross-Time Engineer by Leo Frankowsk: Has some problematic themes, but otherwise a standard version of this premise.
- Contact by Carl Sagan: Humanity is contacted by an alien race in the solar system and is given technology to reach them. Perhaps a bit of a stretch, but pretty much along the same lines.
Alternate history stories with similar themes:
- Harry Turtledove: He has several stories with similar themes such as Guns of the South where the Confederate States are given AK47s.
- Destroyermen by Taylor Anderson: A WW1 Destroyer (during WW2 for some reason) gets transported to an alternate earth with primitive natives. I haven't read this one, and it's a bit different from what I want, but I'm very aware of it.
- Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham: A 21st century naval taskforce is transported back to WW2. I have read this and watched the movie, and quite liked it, but not exactly what I'm looking for here.
Please let me know of any I've missed!
by blandge
2 Comments
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen- H. Beam Piper
Lest Darkness Fall- L. Sprague de Camp
So I love Destiny’s Crucible and really want to check out 1632, but there’s like 40+ books in the series on Audible by multiple authors, and it doesn’t seem to follow any real kind of timeline? Are there ‘core’ books that follow the main plotline?