Editing Industrial Revolution (section)

===Fantasy Relevance===
As a tangent from the historical to the literary, the Industrial Revolution is something which often looms in the background of Fantasy at a meta level (aka as Intertext) with various degrees of overtness. The implication is that sooner or latter as the elves in splendid cities and ancient forests weave their spells and loose their arrows, the dwarves delve and hold the line to defend their mountain homes, the orcs sound the drums of war and sharpen their blades for battle, dragons soar, necromancers scheme, kings reign, adventurers set out on epic quests and all that fantastic wonder, somewhere someone notices a pot on the boil rattling its lid and imagines how the force of pressurized steam could be used, setting in motion the end of that era. Yes, that's a gross oversimplification of a centuries long processes with many intermediate steps that culminated with Locomotives and the Crystal Palace. The point still stands that in a world where people like us exist, eventually observant souls, those inclined to tinker, those looking to make work easier and increase productivity and those who can see the work of such inventive souls as the keys to wealth and power will figure these things out and move a society beyond the 15th century with those which refuse to move with the times getting rolled over.

In [[Tolkien]]'s work this fact is dealt with mostly in subtext of disdain (the industrialists of [[Middle Earth]] were villains and the results of their labors were ruin and destruction) and a sense of melancholy as past ages end. In other fantasy settings such as [[Forgotten Realms]] there are forces working to stop this, ranging from organizations like the harpers to the Gods enforcing [[Medieval Stasis]]. Some settings, like [[Discworld]] and to a smaller degree [[Warhammer Fantasy]], accept that this will happen and have the transition woven into their worldbuilding. In fact you can see Pratchett's later works as an answer to Tolkien's criticism towards modernity, while oversimplified in some aspects the  Moist von Lipwig Trilogy makes some good explanations towards how industrialization emerged and how it works as well as its potential flaws and shortcomings without going full ludite.