So in one of my worlds, there is a technology mixture.

As far as living structures go, we're back in the age of castles. The EXTREMELY wealthy have running water, but that's about as far as it goes. no electricity.

However, they somehow know about cancer, DNA, cellular activity, and the like. Is this realistic? How would that kind of mixture be possible?

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And then my gap is this. In another story I have, there is no middle class. The poor live pretty much like the poor in Oliver Twist. The rich are better off than we are now in America. Technology is actually a lot farther along, but because of the government, only a select few have it.

Once again. Is this realistic? How would that kind of mixture be possible?

(the latter story is sci-fi and not fantasy, so the realistic part is more relevant.)

They are both unlikely, but perfectly possible. They couldn't be sure of cellular activity, but they could be fairly certain through experiments. It is almost like modern day atoms for us. No one has ever seen atoms, as they are to small for light to bounce off of, but we are nearly certain of their existence.

For the second scenario, there wasn't much of a middle class in the feudal age on earth. The feudal system prevented that.

Well, without electricity and electron microscopes it would be rather hard to know those type of things.

The first plant cells were discovered with a microscope that only used water and glass. It's entirely possible.

Also I don't see any problem with that, the government just has a tight hold on the people.

See, the problem I have with the first one, is that if you have medical technology, there are a lot of things that you can do to improve living conditions and such.

Why wouldn't you have that?

The Scientific/Rich community wants to keep the poor from getting technology that could dissatisfy them and lead to a revolt?

eruheran

Well, it could be possible. But unless you manage to explain how that could happen, it'd be very hard to believe.

But the Scientific/Rich community doesn't have that kind of comfort either.

Hmm... Maybe, like the elves in the community story, their mindset is when they discover something they just sort of archive it and never go anywhere with it.

Or, maybe, they have some kind of lifestyle, where they think you need to live hard to be a good person.

The medical advances of our day and age only came about with advances in technology. Before the development and understanding of the capacity of electricity, the so called 'proof' or concrete discoveries of DNA and so forth would not be possible. In fact, many of these studies relied on some sort of computerized system or chip to even be able to see the smaller elements of life and understand how it works. Thus, from an author standpoint, I would find it pretty difficult to convince the readers that in such a time, those medical advances where discovered. However, going back to the Medieval era, it was a time where the largest and most monumental break throughs in torture and methods of torture were developed. The physics involved in the torture instruments and the master minds that created them lead to the dark age. There was also the Renaissance age where massive discoveries in Art were found. Basically, the tying in of medical advances with castle like dwellings seems entirely improbable but it could be doable. You'd basically have to create a new era of discovery in history, something magical almost (good thing this is fantasy and not realistic fiction ).

If you really want your world to be like you described it, it is probably best that you try to explain it as little as possible. You can give enough explanation or hints at it being a scientific revolution of sorts, but the fact of the matter is, realistically, that day and age of society does not even have the tools to discover what knowledge you want them to possess.

You would have a hard time selling that one to me as a reader Willow. I think Lady Esmeralda made several very good points that don’t need to be expounded upon, so I won’t. As a reader though, you would have to bend over backwards and come up with some sort of really convincing reason why medically a community had made amazing advancements, but were still living in the, pardon the term, dark ages (no pun intended).

Oh...



This makes sense.

So is this the same story that has magic as an animate character? Maybe he could possess these advances gained through magic? And selfishly hold them to himself and only a few lucky adventures can leak these advances out to the world? Then advances are stilted and uneven and are sort of patchy in different parts of the world. The downside of that is basically that you're using magic as an escape (which I don't generally recommend )

eruheran

no, eruheran this is a story I haven't even posted on here. It has to do with mutants that control magic through their DNA and soul orbs.

I like the idea of mixing up different technologies and having a fantasy rennaissance.

If you alter the cobha of your world in a way that allows people to zoom their existence in some way, so they can manipulate and see nanoscale particles without using lasers and computers, you could very very easily know about DNA, cells, and whatnot. Actually manipulating DNA would still be impossible, however, unless you also shifted the cobha so that they could manipulate information on the level of super computers without super computers.

If they have a cobhaic technology like that, then they wouldn't be aided very much as far as macro structures go like buildings and etc., trapping them in a medieval level of technology otherwise.