Names change but ideas come around again. I can remember several stories with a similar premise from the way back, (such as "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller Jr.) but just shelved under fantasy or sci-fi, without all the sub-genres. So, without the appellations and hash-tags, people don't know how to search and find them. But, those stories also aren't as formulaic as what you are talking about, which I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
I’m an IT professional with 30 years at big startups & Fortune 5 firms dealing with legacy tech from the ‘60’s and cutting edge stuff that seems crazy.
And I’m a Catholic theologian at the same time.
I’ve seen flash storage RAID 30 storage devices with St Michael medals superglued on ‘just in case’.
You can find another example in ComStar (later the Word of Blake) from BattleTech. The whole setting is built off the foundation of a ruined empire whose corpse and technology is being fought over by nation-states and ideologies, one of which being the silly tech-wizards who make Mossad look like a joke.
The lore is pretty wide and pretty deep. Not as wide as Warhammer, but definitely much deeper in more places. The MechWarrior video games and BattleTech tabletop are the same universe, but they look different because of silly licensing quirks from a few decades ago.
The Fall of the Star League is a dense and somewhat complicated topic. A fuller synopsis is essentially that the rulers of Terra had a dream to unite humanity after hundreds of years of internecine warfare, brutally suppressed everyone who didn't comply, and fostered a golden age of technology, bureaucracy, and industry. It all came violently crashing down when the ruling dynasty's sins came back to collect. That was bad enough, but the enusing Succession Wars saw the member states look at the literal Sword of Damoclese, covered in the last guy's blood, and decide that it was worth nuking everyone else to sit on that throne. Trade routes broke down, billions died, planets withered on the vine of defunct supply chains. ComStar also had a very direct hand in this, secretly assassinating anyone who knew how to build high tech equipment (when the nukes didn't get them) and hording everything they could.
This aspect of the setting has admittedly kind of waned as the Inner Sphere eventually caught up to the Star League's tech level (even if it took oceans of blood to do so), but it was central to most of the franchise and the biggest draw for me.
So now I think there's a slight chance Sword of Cho Nisi might be reclassified. I never heard of this before but the natives in my story control the weather with their drumbeats...
Names change but ideas come around again. I can remember several stories with a similar premise from the way back, (such as "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller Jr.) but just shelved under fantasy or sci-fi, without all the sub-genres. So, without the appellations and hash-tags, people don't know how to search and find them. But, those stories also aren't as formulaic as what you are talking about, which I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
Also in my generation you had Lord of Light, Rendezvous with Rama, and even Dune
Maybe Evangelion, or some of the animes with priests in it.
SUBBBBBED! Thank you for the great article.
would A Canticle for Leibowitz be considered Incensepunk? Your description brought this old (but really good!) book to mind.
I’m an IT professional with 30 years at big startups & Fortune 5 firms dealing with legacy tech from the ‘60’s and cutting edge stuff that seems crazy.
And I’m a Catholic theologian at the same time.
I’ve seen flash storage RAID 30 storage devices with St Michael medals superglued on ‘just in case’.
Incensepunk is pretty close to dome of us.
*some of us, oops
Book of the New Sun?
If you're a Catholic , you understand the Warhammer 40k universe.
You can find another example in ComStar (later the Word of Blake) from BattleTech. The whole setting is built off the foundation of a ruined empire whose corpse and technology is being fought over by nation-states and ideologies, one of which being the silly tech-wizards who make Mossad look like a joke.
That is so cool I played the Battletech base board game recently with a friend. It involves lots of dice rolling haha.
Is that in the videogame lore where that is shared or is there more to it than that. I have only seen a little gameplay of BattleTech videogame.
If you're looking for BattleTech lore, TexTalksBattletech has some great rundowns.
The lore is pretty wide and pretty deep. Not as wide as Warhammer, but definitely much deeper in more places. The MechWarrior video games and BattleTech tabletop are the same universe, but they look different because of silly licensing quirks from a few decades ago.
The Fall of the Star League is a dense and somewhat complicated topic. A fuller synopsis is essentially that the rulers of Terra had a dream to unite humanity after hundreds of years of internecine warfare, brutally suppressed everyone who didn't comply, and fostered a golden age of technology, bureaucracy, and industry. It all came violently crashing down when the ruling dynasty's sins came back to collect. That was bad enough, but the enusing Succession Wars saw the member states look at the literal Sword of Damoclese, covered in the last guy's blood, and decide that it was worth nuking everyone else to sit on that throne. Trade routes broke down, billions died, planets withered on the vine of defunct supply chains. ComStar also had a very direct hand in this, secretly assassinating anyone who knew how to build high tech equipment (when the nukes didn't get them) and hording everything they could.
This aspect of the setting has admittedly kind of waned as the Inner Sphere eventually caught up to the Star League's tech level (even if it took oceans of blood to do so), but it was central to most of the franchise and the biggest draw for me.
With the fame system, I was planning on a positive themed space opera setting, where humanity explored the stars.
This is seriously giving me all kinds of ideas.
Humanity led by a tech born religion, going out to explore strange new worlds and meet new civilizations, boldly going where no man has gone before!
So now I think there's a slight chance Sword of Cho Nisi might be reclassified. I never heard of this before but the natives in my story control the weather with their drumbeats...
I was on the fence about ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE, but your recommendation just won Mr. Kordov another sale.
In the same vein. allow me to recommend Andrew Gillsmith's Desert Vinyard trilogy. It is excellent and begins with, OUR LADY OF THE ARTILECTS:
Did not know there was a name for this genre. I write in it sometimes by accident
Or as I like to call it Warhammer the genre!
90’s cyberpunk techno sorcery rebranded.
My book approaches your description. https://open.substack.com/pub/stephenmsanders?r=yw41b&utm_medium=ios
Its War Machine BTW. That fits the bill more perfectly than War Hammer does.
I don’t know… What is it?