Different Technological Eras for Your Fantasy Novel
When we talk about worldbuilding in fantasy, people often jump straight to magic—its rules, its cost, its place in society. But the quiet foundation beneath every compelling world is something far simpler: its technology. How your society builds, travels, communicates, eats, fights, and sustains itself determines the shape of the story long before your protagonist lifts a sword or casts a spell.
This guide explores the full range of historical and stylized technological eras used in fantasy. Each section breaks down the era’s inventions, its limitations, and the narrative possibilities it opens. As you read through these eras, consider not only when your world resembles history, but how magic either supports, disrupts, or replaces the technology of its time.
Please note that history is vast, and these are general overviews of each era. This does not encompass everything happening in the world at these times, but rather shows eras, their technologies, and the coordinating fantasy subgenres.
Don’t miss the downloadable cheat-sheet at the end of the blog!
I. Pre-Industrial Ages: Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age Fantasy
Before cities rise or nations border each other, societies live close to the ground. Communities rely on what they can make with their own hands and what the environment allows. Knowledge is oral, carried from one generation to the next. Danger comes not from distant armies but from storms, predators, and scarcity. Setting your fantasy here gives you a world shaped by endurance, tradition, and intimate connections between people and land. Magic—if it exists—feels primal, tied to survival and ancestry rather than scholarly study.
Available Technology
Stone or bronze tools
Simple shelters, pit houses, and early farming structures
Pottery, weaving, tanning
Basic boats or rafts
Herbal healing traditions
Fire as the central technology
Key Innovations
Agriculture
Metallurgy (bronze → iron)
Domestication of animals
Early irrigation
How It Shapes a Fantasy World
A world rooted in this era moves slowly, shaped by tight-knit communities and limited travel. Trade happens in small, carefully maintained networks, which means news and ideas spread unevenly. Magic often emerges from ancestral memory, land stewardship, or spiritual belief rather than scholarship or institutions. Power concentrates in those who control metal, food, or sacred knowledge—so even a single iron blade, or a healer who knows how to read weather and soil, can shift the balance within a community.
Example Fantasy Books
The Faithful and the Fallen by John Gwynne
The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver
Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker
Common Fantasy Subgenres
Mythic Fantasy
Low Magic Fantasy
Sword & Sorcery
Tribal or Survival Fantasy
II. Medieval Fantasy (500–1500)
Medieval-inspired worlds remain one of the most recognizable frameworks in fantasy because the limitations are intuitive. Horses determine the speed of travel, letters take weeks to arrive, and the seasons dictate survival. Power tends to concentrate in castles, churches, and guilds. Most people live and die without traveling more than a few miles. Setting your world here means embracing a slower pace—one where rumor spreads faster than truth, and societies lean heavily on heritage and superstition to explain what they can't understand.
Available Technology
Iron weapons and armor
Castles, mills, bridges
Water and wind power
Simple clocks (late-medieval), hourglasses, sundials
Candle and lantern light
Limited medicine (herbs, surgery without anesthesia)
Key Innovations
Metalworking advances
Agricultural improvements (crop rotation, heavy plow)
Siege machinery
Growing literacy (in upper classes)
How It Shapes a Fantasy World
A medieval-inspired world grows from slow communication, localized politics, and regional identities. Most people rarely leave their home villages, allowing rumors, fear, and superstition to shape culture as strongly as written law. Magic can become the subject of institutional power—feared, regulated, or ritualized depending on the beliefs of each region. Because scientific understanding is limited, magic often fills the gaps, influencing everything from healing to warfare to religious authority.
Example Fantasy Books
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
The Inheritance Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
Common Fantasy Subgenres
High Fantasy
Epic Fantasy
Medieval Fantasy
Sword & Sorcery
III. Renaissance & Early Gunpowder Fantasy (1400–1700)
This era signals a shift toward curiosity and exploration. Navigation improves, literacy spreads, and trade networks stretch across continents. People question long-held truths, sparking ideological conflicts and scientific leaps. Gunpowder appears, destabilizing old military structures and redefining how battles are fought. A fantasy world inspired by this era gains a sense of momentum—cultures reaching outward, ideas traveling quickly, and rulers racing to stay ahead of change they can no longer fully control.
Available Technology
Early firearms (matchlocks, arquebuses, muskets)
Printing presses
Advanced shipbuilding (caravels, galleons)
Mechanical clocks
Scientific instruments (telescopes, lenses, astrolabes)
Early banking and credit systems
Key Innovations
Gunpowder weapons
Oceanic navigation
Humanist philosophy
Surge in artistic and scientific experimentation
How It Shapes a Fantasy World
This era pushes your world outward. Diplomacy becomes more layered, cities expand, and new ideas cross oceans faster than rulers can control them. Magic may start evolving from myth into discipline, studied with the same curiosity applied to astronomy or anatomy. Borders shift through exploration, conquest, and exchange, which means characters must navigate new alliances, cultural clashes, and technologies that threaten old systems. Magic and innovation often collide here, creating tension between tradition and discovery.
Example Fantasy Books
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Temeraire by Naomi Novik
A Tale of the Malazan Empire (select historical-inspired elements)
Common Fantasy Subgenres
Low-Magic Political Fantasy
Gunpowder Fantasy
Naval / Exploration Fantasy
Historical Fantasy
IV. Revolutionary Gunpowder Era
(American, French, Napoleonic, and Early Industrial)
This era blends widespread gunpowder weapons with the earliest signs of industrialization. It’s the age of revolutions—political, technological, and philosophical. Flintlock muskets dominate battlefields, chemistry evolves rapidly, and manufacturing begins shifting toward mechanization. Meanwhile, on the edges of empire, frontier cultures shape themselves around rugged terrain, resource extraction, and contested borders. Choosing this era gives your story a sense of upheaval: societies in the middle of redefining themselves, characters grappling with rapid change, and magic forced to find its place in a world that is beginning to embrace science.
Available Technology
Flintlock muskets and pistols
Bayonets, early rifles, and cannons
Improved metallurgy
Early steam engines (prototypes)
Spinning jennies, early mills
Better surveying and cartography
Expanding postal systems
Key Innovations
Revolutionary political theory
Rapid growth in physics and chemistry
Improved mass-production techniques
Public schooling movements
How It Shapes a Fantasy World
A world shaped by this era stands in the middle of upheaval. Armies modernize as flintlock weapons and new tactics redefine warfare, forcing nations to adapt quickly or collapse. Cities swell with workers, migrants, and shifting social hierarchies. Governments centralize power through regulation—sometimes extending that control over magic. Some societies weaponize it; others nationalize or outlaw it. Characters in this era must contend with movements demanding political transformation, scientific rationalism, and a growing belief that any force—including magic—can be measured, controlled, or repurposed for revolution.
Example Fantasy Books
The Shadow Campaigns by Django Wexler
The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan
Temeraire series (continuing influence of late gunpowder/naval tech)
Soon-to-be titled Helen of Troy Retelling by Eri Leigh
Common Fantasy Subgenres
Flintlock Fantasy
Gunpowder Fantasy
Military Fantasy
Revolutionary / Political Fantasy
V. Industrial Revolution & Victorian Eras (1850–1900)
The Industrial Revolution accelerates everything—production, population growth, and the spread of information. Steam engines shrink distance. Telegraphs collapse communication time. Factories reshape class structures. Cities grow faster than infrastructure can support, creating spaces full of innovation and unrest. Writing in this era means grappling with ambition, exploitation, scientific curiosity, and shifting moral frameworks. Magic in a Victorian-inspired setting often lives under scrutiny, commodification, or scientific analysis.
Available Technology
Steam engines
Railways
Telegraphs
Streetlamps (gas → early electric)
Industrial factories
Mass-produced goods
Early photography
Sewer and sanitation expansion
Key Innovations
Assembly lines
Advances in medical science
Telegraphic communication
Urban planning (imperfect, but progressing)
How It Shapes a Fantasy World
Industrialization reshapes daily life and social order. Steam, telegraphs, and mass production shrink distance and time, accelerating everything from commerce to conflict. Urban centers become dense hubs where wealth, poverty, invention, and unrest coexist in tight quarters. Magic in this setting often comes under scrutiny: governments may regulate it, scientists may dissect it, and industrialists may seek to profit from it. This era supports stories about ambition, exploitation, rigid class structures, and the price of progress—where magic must either adapt to mechanized society or resist being absorbed by it.
Example Fantasy Books
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Common Fantasy Subgenres
Gaslamp Fantasy
Steampunk
Industrial Fantasy
Some Gunpowder Fantasy
VI. Early–Mid 20th Century Fantasy (1910s–1960s)
As the twentieth century begins, the world shifts faster than most societies can comprehend. Cities swell with new arrivals. Women push against old boundaries. Jazz pours out of clubs and basements, reshaping culture as quickly as radios and telephones knit distant places together. Wars redraw borders, revolutions challenge empires, and industrial growth gives way to economic collapse and recovery.
This era offers something fantasy rarely taps into fully: magic woven through social upheaval, migration, and the rise of modern identity. It’s a period where tradition narrows its grip and people—ordinary, flawed, ambitious—build new ways of living in spite of the century’s violence and possibilities. Setting your fantasy here gives you access to complex, layered stories shaped as much by community and resistance as by technology.
This span of history stretches wide enough to divide into smaller arcs of its own. Across these decades, societies confront global wars, anticolonial movements, and civil rights struggles that challenge who holds power. Daily life transforms at a speed no previous generation had endured. The century opens with the first mass-produced automobiles, like the Ford Model T, rattling across dirt roads, and ends with machines such as the Ford Mustang racing down paved highways. Between those markers lies a surge of invention and upheaval that reshaped how people moved, worked, and imagined their place in a rapidly changing world.
Available Technology
Widespread automobiles
Radios and telephones
Early planes; expanding commercial aviation
Electric lighting and modern city grids
Refrigeration and early household appliances
Trains, streetcars, subways
Early television
Typewriters, early data machines, and punch-card systems
Firearms: pistols, revolvers, automatic weapons, and rifles
Early antibiotics and surgical advancements
Expanding camera and film technology
Key Innovations
Mass communication (radio → film → television)
Aerial warfare and commercial flight
Modern policing and organized crime networks
Industrialized manufacturing
Early computing systems
Consumer goods becoming accessible to ordinary households
Expanding public education
Shifts in civil rights and women’s rights movements
Major Cultural and Social Movements That Shape the Era
The Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance
Prohibition and the rise of speakeasies
Mass immigration and diaspora communities
The Great Depression and economic instability
Anti-colonial resistance movements globally
World War I and World War II reshaping national identity
Post-war reconstruction and the beginnings of the civil rights movement
How It Shapes a Fantasy World
Writing fantasy in this era allows magic to intersect with modernity in ways no previous period can. Magic might hide in immigrant neighborhoods, whispered in languages carried across oceans. It might be exploited by governments trying to control populations, or used by revolutionaries resisting systems of surveillance and policing. In cities crowded with opportunity and fear, magic can slip into clubs, factories, alleys, rail stations, and tenements—intimate, lived-in spaces where secrecy is both protection and power.
Technology accelerates the pace of life, which means your story can move quickly: characters travel by train, call each other, and hear news minutes after it happens. Crime organizes, borders harden, propaganda spreads, and magic must navigate a world that values evidence and fears the unknown. This era is ideal for stories rooted in identity, resistance, glamour, corruption, migration, and the tension between progress and loss.
Example Fantasy Books
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee
A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid
Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
Common Fantasy Subgenres
Dieselpunk Fantasy
Jazz Age Fantasy
Urban Crime Fantasy
Post-Colonial Fantasy
Magical Noir
Alternate 20th Century Fantasy
Industrial/Urban Arcane Fantasy
War Fantasy (WWI/WWII–influenced)
VII. Modern Fantasy (Late 20th Century–Present)
Modern fantasy operates in a world where convenience and connectivity affect every part of life. Cars, planes, and global communication make secrecy difficult. Technology changes cultural expectations around privacy, community, and speed. Magic must adapt—hidden, integrated, or tolerated. A modern-inspired setting forces characters to reckon with a world that records everything and questions the supernatural at every turn.
Available Technology
Cars, planes, subways
Global telecommunications
Computers, digital systems
Modern medicine
Dense urban infrastructure
Key Innovations
Internet, satellites, AI
Renewable energy
Modern weapons
Global supply chains
How It Shapes a Fantasy World
A modern setting forces magic to coexist with surveillance, global communication, and a society that demands evidence. Secrets are harder to keep. Characters can move quickly across cities or continents, which expands the scale of conflict and conspiracy. Governments and institutions become major players because they can track, monitor, or attempt to suppress supernatural activity. Stories in this era often focus on visibility—who believes in magic, who hides it, and who wields it despite skepticism. The tension comes from living in a world where myth presses against modern logic, and characters must decide how to reconcile the two.
Example Fantasy Books
The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
Common Fantasy Subgenres
Urban Fantasy
Contemporary Fantasy
Supernatural Thriller Fantasy
Magical Realism
VIII. Futuristic & Science-Fantasy Futures
Beyond the present lies a spectrum of imagined worlds—some leaning on technology, others reshaping themselves through magic, and many blending both. This era becomes less about imitating history and more about exploring power: who commands it, what fuels it, and what it costs. Whether you're designing a shattered post-magic world or a shining, arcane-technological society, the future asks your story to define not only what the world looks like, but why it evolved that way.
Available Technology
Advanced materials, robotics, complex AI
Interplanetary travel or arcane-powered engines
Holograms, digital magic networks
Highly advanced medicine
Hybrid tech-magic systems
Or loss of technology, if the story is Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic
How It Shapes a Fantasy World
Technology might amplify magic, suppress it, or blur the line between spellwork and engineering. This era supports themes of legacy, control, and what happens when old power meets future ambition.
Example Fantasy Books
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
The Broken Earth Trilogy (technology-adjacent world-building inspiration)
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Common Fantasy Subgenres
Science-Fantasy
Futuristic Fantasy
Arcane Tech / Techno-Magic Fantasy
Distopian
Post-Apocalyptic
Your Compact Reference Sheet
Technology anchors your world. It defines how people travel, fight, communicate, and survive. By pairing the technological era with the appropriate fantasy subgenres, you can craft a setting that feels coherent, dynamic, and immersive.
To make this easier, we’ve created a downloadable cheat sheet that breaks down:
Each historical and stylized era
Available technologies and innovations
Coordinating fantasy subgenres
Use it as a reference while plotting, outlining, or worldbuilding—so you can focus on characters, story, and magic without worrying if your world feels real.