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Does anyone else think ASOIAF takes place in a distant future?


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I've been thinking that, much like the Dragonriders of Pern series, that the ASOIAF series actually takes place on a distant world in a far distant future, where colonists who were tired of technology settled on Planetos with the hopes to establish a pastoral utopia, and that as time went on, it regressed to an agrarian feudal society. It would explain why certain "ancient" houses have normal-sounding names like, say, Bolton or Stark.

I can't recall if I've seen anyone else mention this theory before, and I know it's tinfoil to the nth degree, but does anyone else subscribe to this?

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Stark and Lannister are both plays off of York and Lancaster from the Wars of the Roses, which GRRM drew a lot of inspiration from. 

Yeah, I know that's where the names came from in terms of Martin inventing them. I'm talking about in-universe. The "Lannister" name came from Lann the Clever, but I don't know if it's ever explained where "Stark" came from.

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Their past would still be our future, because giants, mammoths, CotF and the like would all be native to Planetos when humans settled.

Ah, sorry, I misinterpreted your post.

But still, it wouldn't make sense that another planet had Earth's Ice Age megafauna like mammoths and dire wolves or giant humanoids able to interbreed with humans.

 

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Or what if it's actually taking place in the present? And then blind Arya would have to go beyond the Wall to get some medicine to heal Jon's stab wounds, and then she'd come across an Other, but it turns out the Others are just people in disguise to keep people from Westeros away, and in reality the Land of Always Winter is just like, Ottawa?

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I don't think.

I remember GRRM saying the planet is bigger than Earth. More like Jack Vance's Big Planet. The seasons don't seem consistent with any astronomy realism. And I would give credit to the Yi-Ti legends, with humankind beginning with the Empire of Dawn.

My feeling is that GRRM world is definitely imaginative and not related to our good old Earth. More like the Earth, but in another Universe, with different physics' laws.

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I think it´s something that GRRM may not have made his own mind up about. Planetos reminds me in some way of Kavalar in Dying of the light, his first novel, and could fit into the thousand world series. Kavalar is bombed by bio-weapons and they lose all of their history and rebuild society from the scratch. Are basically medieval when they are rediscovered. (And like the Boltons like to flay their enemies or mock-men).

Many elements go together:

Loss of technology through devastating wars (long night).
Races like the Hrangan who have a collective consciousness, not just hrangan but also mudpotts from Guardians and Shkeen in A song for Lya (with the protagonists Robb and Lyanna), there is the mind-controlling forest pyramids of And seven times never kill a man, so you can see the children of the forest are not alone in melding their minds together with something to store memories and dreams.

And then stories like This tower of ashes which features what might be a long lost civilisation. (Yes, with stone towers made of material that seems like black obsidian ... yet isn´t!).

But then, would we be pleased if in the last book spaceships appeared in the sky? I think not. I think GRRM is hinting at stuff like this to tease us, but will never really reveal it like so many other things. (And although a lot of the magic might be scientifically explained I´m not buying that all of the fantasy elements are secretly S/F).

 

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This is Earth of the future. All of the magical creatures -- everything from Dragons to Others to the children -- are the products of bio-chem projects conducted by our own military-industrial complex over the next, say 1000 years.

Then, along comes the ice age that wipes out every trace of our civilization and all these artificial creations go native, while mankind itself is thrown back to a prehistoric state. Civilization then re-evolves along the same lines as before, leading up to the feudal period we see now, except that the continents of Europe are slightly different due to glacial movement and plate tectonics, and there are all these strange creatures occupying space on the planet whose origins are lost to history.

 

 

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If you consider the Great Empire of The Dawn, then yes ASOIAF takes place in the future.

The GEotD was an advanced civilisation whose tendrils reached from Asshai to as far as the Iron Islands. 

They had built many advanced structures with Black oily stones. But then the Long Night happened which forced them to regress into a barbaric society.

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Or what if it's actually taking place in the present? And then blind Arya would have to go beyond the Wall to get some medicine to heal Jon's stab wounds, and then she'd come across an Other, but it turns out the Others are just people in disguise to keep people from Westeros away, and in reality the Land of Always Winter is just like, Ottawa?

Wow. My mind is gone. [emoji23]

Love M. Night Shyamalan though, despite...

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I think the existence of magic, in violation of all we know of our own universe's physical laws, can disprove this hypothesis. It is an interesting idea, and I admit that I did toy with it myself for a time, but I think the theory is irreconcilable with the above argument.

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It's definitely something that I have thought about, in a "tin foil crown" kinda way. My premise was that Westeros was inhabited by people, in such a fashion as The Scattering after the death of God-Emperor Leto Atreides. Obviously, very fanfiction, but I did think that it would be a nice twist, and homage, if Dune quasi-influenced GRRM in building his universe.

There is some similarities in the story that would make sense. Feudal-like societies, adherence to bloodlines, WMDs [worms N dragons!], and humanoid types, who could very easily be genetically modified, a'la The Honored Matres..

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