And on the Eighth Day >insert deity< made >insert
race/planet<
by
PR Pope
Part of the fun of writing
stories in the Science Fiction genre is the opportunity to play at being a god
(of course, many of the comments I’ll make here are applicable to other genres,
especially other types of Speculative Fiction such as fantasy; but I’ll be
concentrating on what I know best).
My current project is a trilogy set, mostly, on a planet
called Antares, far away across our galaxy (far far away but not long
ago!) It is, of course, imaginary – that
is, although the planet may actually be there orbiting a star that we call
Antares, nobody knows what that planet is like or if it is home to any form of
life (and at this point I must admit that, although my online biography
suggests otherwise, I do not actually come from Antares!).
There is a debate raging among science fiction authors,
albeit sotto voce [Ed: - how can it
be raging and sotto voce at the same time?], between what you might call the
‘risk-taking’ and the ‘cautious’ camps.
The risk-takers launch into their story and play it by ear, visiting a
planet here, passing a star system there, meeting interesting alien races,
getting their hero(ine) into a situation where they need some exotic technology
to extricate themselves. Along the way
they will introduce some suitable back-stories where necessary. The emphasis is on the fiction, the science
is merely a useful tool at times. By
contrast, the cautious authors – or perhaps more accurately, ‘organised’ –
ensure they have planned consistent worlds, races, technology etc. I am in this camp (you’d already guessed,
hadn’t you?). Some might be considered
to take this to extremes (okay, I’m holding up my hand to this too). I want to be sure that I know the geography,
history, flora, fauna, technology, culture and religions of my invented
worlds. Much of this needs to be established
long before the story itself is written, although inevitably it will get
expanded and refined as the actual story-telling gets underway. Hence, as the story unfolds – usually in
unexpected directions once the characters take over and begin to assert
themselves – throw-away references can be included without fear of earlier or
subsequent contradiction. Minor
incidents from one storyline can become crucial events in another – difficult
to manage if you haven’t laid down a consistent background in the first place.
Is it really that important, you might be asking
yourself. Isn’t this guy just being a
bit obsessive-compulsive, or anally-retentive?
Perhaps he’s just trying to pander to the popular image of extreme nerds/geeks
– portrayed in exquisitely caricatured detail by Jim Parsons as Sheldon in The
Big Bang Theory? Why does he keep
putting words in my mouth, and making me ask questions?
There are two pertinent responses to those
questions. The first, of course, is to
ask why you’re questioning a blog that’s already been written – it’s not
interactive, you know [Ed: - Uum, it IS actually, there may be comments and
you’re expected to reply]. The second is
to point you at a couple of landmark works of speculative fiction and suggest
you consider how significant consistent world-building was to their impact:
Tolkein’s Middle Earth had much background material that was never intended to
be published, but which ensured that the stories were internally consistent
(even to the extent of inventing languages and alphabets); while one of the
great pleasures of reading Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books is that minor characters
in one book can be the main characters in another (and vice versa), with
distant events from one story being related by a harper as part of the
atmosphere of another entirely separate story, all adding to the sense of a
real environment with concurrent events coloured by diverse viewpoints and
perceptions.
You might not have considered how much assumed or implied
background there is to any story. When
your characters have a shared culture with your readers, then words, concepts,
places, pets and even brands all contribute to the reader’s experience (and
hopefully understanding and enjoyment) of the story.
“Jack and Jill / went up the hill / to fetch a pail of water. / Jack
fell down / and broke his crown / and Jill came tumbling after.”
In most of the English-speaking world, readers know (or
think they do) that Jack is a boy and Jill is a girl. They have a mental image, probably, of a hill
as distinct, say, from a mountain or a tumulus.
They know what a pail is (although they might normally call it a
bucket). Of course, they may wonder why
the young (?) couple/siblings are going up a hill looking for water rather than
down to a river in the valley – perhaps there’s a spring on the hillside? Everyone can empathise with Jack when he
falls and injures himself (younger readers, though, may wonder why he’s wearing
a crown – is he a prince?).
One of my friends is an archaeologist who comes from
Libya. After meals when people are
sitting around telling stories, he often regales everyone with traditional
stories from his childhood. A different
culture, yet many of the themes are, of course, universal, although names and
other details may be unfamiliar.
“Nawaf and Nawel / went
to the tell, / to fill their girba / with maya / ...”
Okay, so I cheated slightly there, by not translating maya into water, just transliterating it. But without the proximity to the Jack and
Jill version a few lines earlier you may not have understood what was
happening.
Now suppose you have a story set on an imaginary
world. There can be no shared culture
with your readers, everything they know about your world will come from
you. What’s more (as every writer knows)
you have to show, not tell. So your
readers are experiencing an unfamiliar world through your characters. You may ask, how is that different from a
story set in an exotic location? (There
you go with the questions again...) [Ed: Stop it!] On the face of it, it’s much the same. Except that some of the things we can take
for granted anywhere on Earth might not be true on our planet: gravity may be
much reduced, with all sorts of resulting anatomical effects, not to mention
walking gait; daylight might be a very different mix of wavelengths, resulting
in colour perception being altered or even non-existent or other senses being
far more acute; the atmosphere might be thinner, or composed of different
gases, with radical effects on the likely flora and fauna; and so on... Then there’s the culture – just because
Western Europe was shaped by wars, conquest and powerful religions, that doesn’t
mean that your planet followed the same path.
The order in which certain key technologies are developed can be crucial
to the overall shape of the economy, industry and society in general. Steampunk is a genre predicated on the
radical alterations in society and history because of a slight variation in the
development of technology. Terry
Pratchett’s Discworld is the iconic world where technologies develop in
different ways – in his case with hilarious results – as well as being another
perfect example, like Pern, of a world where events in different books overlap
in a way that adds depth and realism.
