Friday, May 19, 2017

Fantasy World-building and the History of Technology



One of the things I love about writing fantasy is that you get to create a different world. Since you’re making it up, you can fill the world with all sorts of interesting things that are impossible in the real world. Pet dragons, floating cities, dust that gives you prophetic dreams, … things that would make life very different if they existed.

However, too many imaginary things would overwhelm your reader—and strain your power of invention—so most of the food, clothes, and everyday objects will be borrowed from reality. But even here, you get to choose from a world’s-worth of civilization. Do your characters live in an agrarian kingdom, or are they part of a nomadic tribe? What is the climate where they live—temperate, tropical, or positively arctic? And what sorts of objects and technology do they possess?

But you can’t mix-and-match just any details you like. Cars don’t make sense in a stone-age setting. Where would they come from? How would they be fueled? Similarly, if you have horse-drawn carriages, you need carriage-makers, and they need leather-workers, wood-workers, and blacksmiths. These trades don’t have to play a role in your story, but their existence has to make sense in your setting.

One way to get a sense of what objects and activities can reasonably be combined is to choose a historical period—say, France in the late 1700s. Things that went together in reality are plausible together in fantasy.

For example, in the story I am working on now, The Slipper Ball, the MC’s family traditionally made and sold a really excellent pear preserve. Fruit preserves have been around for a long time, so that aspect isn’t a problem, but being able to bottle and ship them without spoilage is another matter. What equipment is needed? How non-industrial can I make this world while still making the sale of specialty jam plausible?

Glass jars could be hand-blown, but the rings and lids I use for my own jam are probably stamped out of big sheets of metal in some enormous, highly automated factory.  Hmm… a system using wax rings and metal discs existed in the 1830s, and that technology seems within this world’s capabilities. That doesn’t mean I’m going to bore the reader with the details of how the jars are sealed—the technology isn’t wildly out of reach and that’s all I’m looking for. For that matter, I could just have specified that one of the fictional ingredients, lemonroot, has amazing preservative properties.

That brings me to a related point—I want the world to be plausible, but I don’t want to go into a lot of unnecessary detail. I have scenes set in the kitchen, and some baking takes place there, so I probably have to decide whether there is a free-standing oven or just some sort of shelf set into a great hearth. I don’t need to discuss where they get the wood for the fire, since there are trees and forests nearby and the reader can just assume the existence of woodcutters or some equivalent tradesman.

Even if you do simplify your world-building by tying it to a historical period, inventions that coexisted in reality don’t necessarily have to go together in your world. The American colonists had both guns and printing presses, but maybe your world has extensive libraries and no firearms at all. Or maybe there are enough guns for the Wild West, but all the wanted posters and news-sheets are laboriously hand-lettered. Your imaginary world, your choice.

Furthermore, different geographic areas can have different levels and kinds of technology (within reason). The Fourth Kingdom needn't be particularly industrialized if they can import their jam jars and iron stoves from the Second Kingdom. Since the story doesn’t take place in the Second Kingdom, I can skip over exactly how the Second Kingdom has organized its industry. The silk for their ball gowns comes from the First Kingdom, perhaps, which is known for its textiles. But whether that silk comes from silkworms raised on mulberry leaves, or domesticated spiders, or fields of silkweed doesn’t matter—it just matters that the reader knows their finest gowns have the texture and shine of silk.

And finally, no matter how much work you put into it, no imaginary world is going to be perfectly consistent and it isn't worth the time to try to make it so. The important thing is to avoid having the reader stop in the middle of the story and say, "What the heck? You don't weave on a spinning wheel!!* Even I know that!"

*Yes, I really saw this--and in a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, no less.

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