Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

A while ago I read Magic Kingdom For Sale/Sold by Terry Brooks. I'd read the synopsis and I thought it sounded interesting. A fairly normal lawyer guy from Chicago, to escape his dead-end life, finds himself purchasing the rights to the throne of a stereotypical fantasy kingdom that exists in a different dimension. Naturally, the kingdom has problems of its own.

What I was hoping to find was a story where classical fantasy world problems are solved by modern-day thinking. To my disappointment, what I found was a rather mediocre sword-and-sorcery adventure.

I think the closest to what I had in mind are some of the latter Discworld books such as The Truth, Going Postal and Making Money, which are about such themes as professional journalism, communications infrastructure and economics, applied to a fantasy setting.

Can anyone recommend other books that do this sort of thing?

Lest Darkness Fall by L Sprague de Camp i think it was, sez the old phart...time travel back to Roman Empire, get stuck, now what? Why, prevent the Dark Ages of course (anyone rember something along these lines by The Good Doctor? Foundation series maybe?)

i now need to eat my egg mcmuffun and drink my decaf...you kids better not be playing on my lawn when i get home....

lol

Have you read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court recently? That's one of the best books in this vein that I've ever read.

Brian Daley is a similar author & his The Doomfarers of Coramonde is good. Magic users pull an APC squad out of Vietnam to fight a dragon. Later, one comes back & helps fight the rest of the war. I think this is exactly what you're looking for. I just listened to it as an audio book & enjoyed it quite a bit. My review of it is here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

An old favorite of ours is The Warlock in Spite of Himself by Christopher Stasheff. High galactic tech & robot horse with a quirk meet medieval witches, sort of. He's on par with Brooks as a writer, but this book is a lot of fun & pretty good. Ditto with Her Majesty's Wizard, the first of his Wizard in Rhyme series. Later books in both series pretty much sucked, IMO. These are more like 'Magic Kingdom' though. Fun, quick reads.

The Cyborg and the Sorcerers & The Wizard and the War Machine by Lawrence Watt-Evans might work.

Simon Hawke's Time War series is another set of quick reads that are kind of fun. It starts with The Ivanhoe Gambit. It's been a long time since I read any of them, so I can't speak for the writing or much else about them, though.

And many of the works of Tom Holt would do you. EXPECTING SOMEONE TALLER is a great book.

There's an interesting "Seventh Sword" trilogy by Dave Duncan, starting with The Reluctant Swordsman, that's one of those very old-school "modern man pulled into alternate world" stories. The hero, Wallie, finds himself in a pre-literate society where he's designated a champion swordsman. One catch is that whatever magic dragged him into the world also prevents him from explaining modern concepts to the local denizens. I found it a very entertaining read, unless you're specifically looking for stories where the hero introduces new technology to the past.

I've always liked Spearwielder's Tale by R.A. Salvatore. The main character Gary Leger gets pulled into a fantasy world, and is chosen to wield a legendary spear. My favorite part about these books, is that the spear is sentient, and has a different opinion on right and wrong, and how battles should be fought, opposed to Gary who thinks more modern and looks to win his fights any way he can. This sometimes lands him in hot water, because he's done something the spear doesn't approve of. When he needs the spears help the most, it refuses. The book is classified as " Young Adult " but I'd say it holds up to all ages.