BUILDING IMAGINARY WORLDS by Mark J. P. Wolf

Author:Mark J. P. Wolf
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-136-22080-7
Publisher: Routledge

Tying Different Infrastructures Together

While each individual infrastructure needs to be complete and consistent within itself, all of the different infrastructures must also fit together consistently if world gestalten are to occur. Story events already act as points at which characters, places, and specific moments in time are tied together, automatically connecting maps, timelines, and genealogies. These three structures, which work the closest with narrative structures (the topic of the next chapter), also connect to the structures of nature, culture, language, mythology, and philosophy discussed in the preceding text, and fitting them all together often results in the need for adjustments and revisions as well.

Maps must be created with Nature and natural processes in mind, as Lin Carter points out in Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy:

Geography does not just happen—natural features are where they are due to certain causes. It behooves the would-be author of imaginary-world fantasy to think a little before sketching out his map.

You cannot really have a lush rainforest smack up against a parched desert of burning sands, you know; it pays to do a bit of reading into climatology so as to understand the interplay of forces that create deserts and rainforests, jungles and grasslands, and so on. Nor can you stick mountains on your map in a helter-skelter fashion; mountains have a good reason for being where they are, and a fantasy writer should know something about them.62

Even Tolkien, careful as he was, admitted that he did not pay enough attention to geology when designing Middle-earth, writing in one of his letters:

As for the shape of the world of the Third Age, I am afraid that was devised “dramatically” rather than geologically, or paleontologically. I do sometimes wish that I had made some sort of agreement between the imaginations or theories of the geologists and my map a little more possible. But that would only have made more trouble with human history.63

Likewise, nature provides the raw materials from which culture arises, and thus determines much of what cultural artifacts and their societies will be like, which will in turn limit technologies and influence social structures. Subcreators must imagine how access to food, clothing, and shelter is obtained, and how they are found or made, considering the natural environment. In The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, Diana Wynne Jones satirically notes the lack of animals in fantasy genre fiction, and writes about animal skins:

Animal Skins are much in use and are of four kinds:

1. Trappers’ furs. These are occasionally brought south in bundles. As there appear to be no animals to be trapped, it is likely that these skins are either cunning manmade imitations or imported from another world.

2. Furs worn by NORTHERN BARBARIANS. It is possible that these are also false or imported. Another possibility is that the animals providing these furs are now extinct (see ECOLOGY)and that the famous fur loincloths are handed down father to son.

3. Leather for BOOTS, VESTS, etc. is again of mysterious origin. (See DOMESTIC ANIMALS.)There are not enough cows to go round, but the leather has to come from somewhere.

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