So, I recently saw the Shannara Chronicles trailer, and several points in it got me thinking.
1.) We see what looks to be the Space Needle from Seattle lying lopsided in ruins(15 seconds into the video).
2.) There's the ruin of what looks like an oil tanker(1:26 into the video).
That got me thinking: Is the Shannara world a post-apocalyptic version of today's world?
Answer
This is a massive spoiler for at least 4 different series of novels, so you might want to stop reading after this, but: yes. (And you see the entire thing unfold, sort-of.)
When originally published, the Sword of Shannara and it's sequels appeared to take place in a completely fictional world. However, with the most recent publication of the Genesis of Shannara series, it becomes clear that Shannara is our world, after a terrible apocalypse.
Chronologically, the story begins with the series Word and Void novels, which take place in the midwestern United States in more-or-less present day. Those novels were published in the late 1990s, much later than the original Shannara books, and don't seem to have anything in common with the Shannara world.
However, in 2006, the Genesis of Shannara series was published, picks up about a hundred years after the final book in the Word and Void series (putting it right around 2100 on our calendar). In that series, several characters from the Word and Void novels either appeared or were mentioned. At this point, the Demons of the Void are trying to bring about a world-wide apocalypse. This causes the creatures of Faerie to emerge from hiding, including the Elves and their Elfstones. What's left of the human and Faerie population eventually find refuge to wait out the ongoing destruction.
The most recent series, the Legends of Shannara, picks up ~500 years later, with the refugees emerging into the world. It's still a transitional period -- I don't think the Druids have emerged yet, for example, but it's clearly the beginnings of what would eventually become that world.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara series takes place about 450 years after The Sword of Shannara; in the novel Antrax, one of the few remaining Druids rediscovers a bunker containing a bunch of "old world" technology left over from the war, including what is obvious an AI.
The majority of the novels take place in the Pacific Northwest (this is made clear in the Genesis series -- they're in the Columbia River basin) which will eventually become known as the Four Lands. It's not clear just how badly the geography is messed up, but there are some hints about familiar places:
- There is a volcanic region, Morrowindl, found the west of the Four Lands, which Terry Brooks has basically admitted is Hawaii (which must have moved quite a ways North during the cataclysm)
- There is a vast ocean (called the Blue Divide), also to the west, that is almost certainly the Pacific Ocean.
- Across the Blue Divide is the land of Parkasia -- modern day Asia.
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