World Building 101: Diversity and Darwinism

There may be some misconception about my childhood reading preferences. I mean, sure, Tolkien was one of the first big fantasy books, but before hobbitses I was also reading a lot of Richard Scarry and Dr Seuss. And of course – as I’ve mentioned a few times here, Spider-Man. But in between there I read a few lighter books, including “All Creatures Great and Small”, by James Herriot. I’m not sure what it was about the book that made me begin reading it, but I fell in love with the stories about his affection for the animals he cared for. And animals played a big part in my childhood – from Pretzel and RB, our dachshunds, to Kapu and Uno (just two of the many cats we lived with over the years), Ebony the Chow Chow, and… oh, all the various creatures we had on our farm: chickens, geese, cows, pigs, horses, sheep, and goats – and our zombie turkey that just could not ever die. Oh, yeah, there’s a story behind the zombie, but we’ll discuss that another time. The point is, I love animals.

And don’t get me started on red pandas. (the faithful reader may already know that the barrowisks in “Tales of the Dead” are based only somewhat loosely on the Ailurus fulgens) So fuzzy and so cute! I just wrote a whole paragraph on red pandas, but had to chop that because it was just gratuitous. Anyway. I did say not to get me started.

My point here is that this world is full – FULL, I tell you – of amazing animals, various and sundry. And many animal kinds have lived but are no longer among us. And there are many we have yet to discover – seriously, scientists are still finding new animal species and sub-species every so often, both on land and, with even more frequency, under the sea. (stop singing, that was not intentional)

Of course, we can’t forget the dinosaurs, either. Whether or not you believe they’re going to make a comeback (not going to lie, I’m ready for this), we can’t deny they were here, long enough ago to leave a fossil record and fill our tanks – and this helps us get a better grip on the relative age of this blue and green marble we call our home. And this ties very much to the conversation of world building.

Let’s imagine that this world – our Earth – is actually a fictional construct you were making for a series of books. You’re establishing the cities and the people, you’ve developed a natural language or two, and placed your story in the late decades of an industrial boom. Now, even if your story is about a pair of star-crossed lovers discovering how to avoid the wrath of their families so they can be together, one of the early scenes involves a vehicle race between the young man and one of the young woman’s would-be suitors. Now, it might not be too dominant a thought, but what powers these two vehicles? Are they powered by combustion engines? Oil? Fuel? Coal? Where, where did these carbon sources develop? Oh, right. Dinosaurs and other organic life lived and died millions of years ago and turned into what can now be collected and converted into combustible fuel. Are dinosaurs gonna be in your book? No, but they do have to exist in your world’s design framework in order to provide energy structure. Something has to, anyway. And if you don’t answer that question, it’s going to end up being a plot hole, large or small.

Specificity of animals is relevant when storytelling, because the proper names of animals - and trees, flowers, mountains, oceans and so on - give a narrative foundation to the storytelling. Is that a tree? No, it’s a european larch, a baobab, or the great California Redwood. Names of the things you mention in your books - even in passing - help graft the geography and presence of the setting without you having to write a whole additional bit of context. It places the reader right where you want them placed, and with only so simple a thing as a proper descriptive.

Now, yes. A lot of what I’m going to be writing up over the rest of this series isn’t going to be 100% necessary for every book – but it’s still important to at least understand how all the pieces of your reality work together. Gasoline doesn’t just magically appear at the gas stations. Chicken wings don’t poof out of thin air into your grocery store’s freezer compartment. Everything comes from somewhere.

My father was a hunter – some of the last hunts he went on before he passed were either bow hunts or black powder hunts. I mention this because he understood a morally essential point to the relationship between man and beast, which was that they are living beings too, and as such a hunter is obligated to take that seriously. It’s not about a trophy, it’s about taking the responsibility to treat that life with respect and humility. And he let nothing go to waste – every bit of the deer had a functional purpose. For example, slicing the antlers into small rings creates buttons; the tendons can be used as thread; the brain is used to help tan the hides (the line in my recent short story “Shadow in the Valley” about everything having just enough brains to tan their own hide was a quote from my father). Even though I never did much more than fish, I still have carried that sense of respect towards the animal kingdom. Or, like in the case of sharks, a combination of respect and blood chilling fear.

But even in the cold and almost inexplicable terror I have for those creatures (I promise, I’ll dedicate an entire blog to sharks one of these days – tl;dr, I blame Spielberg), I fully respect and recognize their place in the world. And all of this is a very long winded way of telling you that watching shows by National Geographic remains to this day one of my favorite ways to fill my heart with joy and gratitude for the animals that inhabit – and have inhabited – our world.

When I think of a world for one of my stories – even the ones that take place in what is more or less Earth – I cannot help but imagine all the life that dwells upon it. In my world of Aerthos, there are literally pages of animal descriptions I’ve never used, but I can picture there. The feranzanthums, the xavol, the barrowisks – these are just a few I’ve mentioned out of dozens and more that are never seen. But in my brain, I can hear them, I can imagine their lives continuing on in unwitnessed peace or gentle activity. When I need them, they’ll be there.

To populate a world to its fullest extent, it’s important to understand how animals are – how they live, feed, eat, sleep, die. How they evolve, for example, is something essential. Is it okay if we take a moment to clarify this, by the way? I know a lot of folks get hung up on evolution, and though I’m no scientist, I do have a bit of a grasp of it, so let me see if I can clarify it.

When my son was about four years old, we went to an exhibit here in Seattle celebrating the discovery of “Lucy”, one of the so-called “missing links” of human evolution. In one of the rooms, a panoramic mural was displayed depicting what scientists think Lucy and others of her tribe might have looked like. My son asked me why all the people looked like monkeys – a fair question. So we talked a moment about evolution and how, based on the evidence scientists had found, a lot of people believed that humans evolved from monkeys – granted, a simplified description of evolution, but come on, my kid was four. (this moment also turned into another teachable moment when a stranger approached me and berated me for telling my child that evolution was a “belief”. Author’s note: This is an incredibly stupid and dangerous thing to do, walking up to a stranger and telling them how to raise their kid. Don’t worry, though. I politely encouraged her to walk away and consider the wisdom of her actions, and she was polite enough to walk away.)  But this moment stuck with me, because evolution is a theory based upon evidence and shown to be mostly accurate based upon multiple lines of independent research and analysis. If different evidence comes along, we’ll adjust, but for now it’s the best theory we have.

Evolution is not as complicated or mystical as some believe – this misapplied mysticism, I think, is part of why some people reject the notion. But here’s where some people go off the rails.

Giraffes live in large part by eating primarily from the acacia tree, whose leaves, fruits and flowers are pretty high up. Now it’s not that giraffes saw the acacia and grew long necks in order to reach their preferred food. Evolution in their case means simply that the giraffes who had the longest necks were able to reach the trees and eat well, while the shorter ones could not get as much to eat and eventually died, while the taller animals survived. Over time, the offspring of tall giraffes continued to produce tall giraffes and so on, while the shorter ones did not survive and the lineage of tall giraffes endured. “Survival of the fittest” is a dramatic oversimplification of what Charles Darwin implied. The beings best suited to survive their environments endure, or they migrate to where they can. Make sense?

So of course evolution is a powerful indicator of species generational alteration. Humans are taller now, too. We also live longer, though we still struggle to live safely within our environments. And, like the dinosaurs, many have not. We humans have been responsible for many species dying, and, sure, we aren’t the only things that have made species go extinct – over the course of millions of years, things have come and gone. Some have left behind their footprints. Some have left their bones.

But so many have survived, have changed, have come to be radically distinct and varied, both in how and where they live, and yes, let’s take a moment to look at the platypus, the pangolin, the kangaroo and so on. Like, the axolotl, the mantis shrimp, the aye-aye, the blobfish, the narwhal, the pink fairy armadillo… these are some weird creatures. And I love them. I love the diversity, the differentiation between this habitat and that with all the countless beings that call them home.

The story you write will likely take place in a relative blink of the universe’s eye – but that’s no reason to ignore all the multitudes of living beings that exist there. Life may come and go, but, to quote Dr Ian Malcolm, it will find a way.

If you’re interested in learning more, I’ll happily point you to the BBC and Nat-Geo, and any of their Planet Earth series; those alone will keep you busy for days. And for homework, pick five animals at random that you’ve seen or heard of but don’t really know. Spend a few minutes discovering what is wonderful and beautiful about them, and come back here to share!

Have a great week, everyone!

Next week: Rome wasn’t built in a day – a modern look at cultural anthropology