THE PLANET CONSTRUCTION KIT

by Mark Rosenfelder

www.yonagu.com • Chicago • 2010

© 2010 by Mark Rosenfelder.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever, except for review purposes.

Ed. 1.1 — Kindle

Contents
Introduction 7
E-Z Fantasy World 15
Storytelling 21
Astronomy and Geology 38
Biology 65
History 100
Culture 118
Daily life 152
Religion 189
Magic 218
Technology 224
War 243
Making maps 285
Illustrations 300
3-D Modeling 332
Further reading 351
Index 356
Introduction
What we’re going to do here is create worlds. You want a world for your epic
novel, or a movie or video game, or an RPG session, or as an artistic creation.
Or you are a mad scientist with an army of nanites who will construct your
world from the atoms up. Whatever, we’ll talk about how to make a
plausible, interesting constructed world— a conworld.
The companion volume, The Language Construction Kit, explained how to
create languages, so I won’t cover that that here. This book covers everything
else:
• Stars and planets
• Alien creatures
• Economics and history
• Daily life
• Religions
• Magic
• Technology and war
And more. We’ll also cover some of the technical details of creation:
• Storytelling
• Drawing
• Making maps
• Making 3-D models
I’ve tried to answer all the immediate questions you’ll have while
conworlding, from how to calculate the year (p. 42) to how far a horse can
run in a day (p. 142) to how early you can have iron weapons (p. 228).

Sources and extra reading

The Language Construction Kit served as an introduction to one subject,
linguistics. This book is an introduction to all kinds of stuff, and I’m not an
expert in all of them. And in some areas, no one is: magic or alien biology,
for instance.
On the bright side, one advantage of conworlding is that everything is source
material. Anything in the physical sciences could be relevant. Anything
historical or religious can go into fantasy; anything you learn about foreign
cultures can help you create new ones.
In some ways I should have written five books instead of one. But it’s useful,
and a lot cheaper for you, to have all of this material in one place. Plus, if any
subject interests you, you can always pursue it more. I’ve included an
reading list at the end with books I’ve found particularly helpful. These will
also supply the details and nuances I haven’t had room for.
You can be inspired by fiction, of course, but make sure you read real-world
sources as well. You may be able to write a convincing battle scene merely
by reading Tolkien, but you’d do better to read some military history. Or join
the army.
Websites: URLs rot too quickly to list in a book. I’ll list some useful pages
on this page of my own site:
http://www.zompist.com/resources/pck.html

The dire consequences of failure

What happens if you don’t follow the recommendations in this book? Well,
not to be too alarming, but that could well be part of a process which ends in
the heat death of the universe. But in the short term, the advantages of the
book are these:
• More options. All too often fantasy books are retreads of
medieval Europe, and s.f. books of contemporary America. It’s like a
painter who’s restricted to using yellow and orange.
• Greater accuracy and immersion. If you don’t know much,
you’re bound to write vaguely. If you write about a swordfight, you
want to go beyond just knowing that the combatants swing pointy
things at each other.
• Depth and allusion. As an example, my novel In the Land of
Babblers occasionally quotes the Cuzeian holy book, the Count of
 Years. This isn’t just a made-up name; this book exists and people can
go read it. Or people who’ve read it as an aspect of my conworld will
recognize the reference when they read Babblers. This is part of
Tolkien’s secret; we sense while reading that his world is larger than
the books before us.
• Memorability. A well constructed world is fascinating in its
own right; we want to go there. The underground London of Neil
Gaiman’s Neverwhere, for instance, is as much of an enticement as the
characters or the plot.
• Avoidance of distractions for the reader. You want the reader
following your story, not snickering at the cheesy or implausible bits.

Getting started
How do you start creating a culture?
There’s no obvious or necessary order, but I’d suggest something like this:
• Choose the big picture elements, if any, that have the biggest
impact on the world. If your people have three sexes, or live on a gas
giant, or all use magic, or live a thousand years, those things will affect
everything else you do.
• Look over the E-Z Fantasy World chapter (p. 15) to make some
basic decisions. This can give you a brief overview of your culture.
• Make a map. Don’t worry too much about names. It just helps to
know the geographical situation for your people: is it an island? is it big
or small? is it hemmed in by threatening neighbors?
• Write a culture test (p. 118). This is an easy way to cover many
aspects of what it’s like, day to day, to live in your invented culture,
and how it’s different from your own.
• Create a naming language— for how, see the Language
Construction Kit. You’re going to want names for characters and places
anyway.
• Write a biography of a characteristic person from your culture
(p. 30)— not the protagonist of your epic story or game, but an
 ordinary shmo. You’ll have to think about their childhood, what their
village looks like, how they make a living, how families and marriages
work, what rites they follow and what games they play.
If you created some unusual Big Picture elements, this is your
chance to see how they actually work. If they don’t really affect the
character’s story, they’re either not so major after all, or you didn’t
fully work out their consequences.
• Write an outline history. Don’t worry about lists of kings.
Ideally, the place used to be quite different, and there’s a story about
how it changed. E.g.
It used to be... and now it’s...
a vast empire a motley collection of
states
ruled by elves dominated by humans
two separate nations united, with cultural
remnants of the former
independent countries
a rich and prosperous nearly destroyed
planet
underwater reclaimed bit by bit into
a prosperous nation
a nation of bold a bunch of pedantic
warriors bureaucrats
full of magic mundane, with a few
exceptions
mundane transformed by magic
• Read this book, applying what you’ve learned chapter by
chapter. That is, systematically cover the astronomy, geology, biology,
culture, and religion of your culture.
Expect to have to revise as you work out details. You may toss in a reference
to “the gods” in your culture test and then discover that the people actually
worship ancestors and spirit animals.
Don’t worry if your first attempts are crappy. It’s always good to get
something down, and revising is easier than writing from scratch. Put the
crappy piece aside for awhile; then take it out and identify specific problems
— not “it sucks” but “the king is talking like a teenager” or “no reasons are
given for any of these events”. Then address those.

How to present it
Creating a language, there’s an obvious end product: a grammar. What do
you do with a conculture?
• One possible answer: nothing, it’s all background material for a
story or game, and once you’ve created that, you have no further use
for the background materials.
• Or you write appendixes, as in Lord of the Rings. These days,
you can post as much supplementary material as you want on the web.
• In some media you can use it as supplementary creations. The
games made by Bethesda (Oblivion, Fallout 3) and Bioware (Jade
Empire, Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect) are great examples: they
contain quite a bit of material players can find and explore if they like.
• A natural format for concultures is the wiki. For my conworld
Almea I’ve created the Almeopedia. You can post everything you’ve
created in such a format, and readers can explore it as much as they like
and in any order. Wookieepedia, the fan-created Star Wars wiki, has
over 75,000 articles.
The web resources page includes instructions on how to set up a
wiki.
• Conworld materials may make a good RPG scenario, especially
if you have a strong focus on specific locations. Add some monsters
and loot and it becomes a playable game!
• You can publish your material as a supplementary text.
François Bourgeon and Claude Lacroix, after creating two s.f. graphic
novels, Le cycle de Cyann, released a third volume which simply
 documented the amazing world they’d created. Star Wars has generated
a whole array of reference works.
• Some authors have created pseudo-nonfiction where a book
about the world is the main event. One example is the Italian artist
Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus, a brilliant and thoroughly weird
encyclopedia from an alien culture, profusely illustrated, with a text in
an unreadable alphabet. Another is Dougal Dixon’s After Man, a
gallery of animals from 50 million years in the future.
• With modern tools it doesn’t take a huge company to make a
video game. Zeno Clash, a game that shows off an impressively bizarre
conworld, was created by a team of ten people. A quality mod for an
existing game can be made by a single person.
One of the best ways of making a culture come alive is visually. Maps,
character portraits, and 3-D models help immensely in showing what your
culture is like. We’ll cover all of that in later chapters.

When am I done?
This question is also harder to answer for conworlds. Here too the most
honest answer is never. One individual can never fully work out all the
cultures of a planet, much less a galaxy full. There’s always more to do.
Or more usefully: you’re done when you have just enough material for the
uses you’re going to put it to. If you’re writing a short story, a brief sketch
will do. For a novel you might end up with pages and pages of notes. For a
series of works, you may easily end up with a book’s worth of supplementary
material.
A basic rule of thumb might be: you have enough material when you can
answer all the questions that come up when writing your story.
A warning: this stuff is addictive. Especially if you have another main goal
in mind— like writing a novel— you can overdo the conworlding. Eventually
you have to put aside the royal genealogies and the table of currency
conversions and write the damn story.

Skipping and faking

As with the LCK, you don’t have to read everything, much less work out
everything I talk about. I hope it’s all useful, but I realize that it can be
daunting.
Go back and forth between this book, the LCK, your own background
materials, and your stories. It’s fine to write a paragraph about your
conreligion now and flesh it out later. Or let the demands of the story drive
the process. If a character dies, think about your culture’s treatment of death.
Here and there I’ll give tips on faking it. The biggest tip: if you refer to fine-
grained details, it looks like you’ve worked everything out even if you
haven’t. Take the famous speech at the end of Blade Runner:
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the
shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the
Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in
the rain. Time to die.
It’s specific and memorable even if neither viewer nor screenwriter knows
what the fighting in Orion was about, nor what C-beams are, nor where the
Tannhauser Gate leads to.

But I like it implausible!

I’m going to talk a lot about plausibility— how to make realistic planets,
animals, aliens, cultures, and religions. To save space, I’ll give you blanket
permission here to ignore all the guidelines.
We’re making art here; art can take liberties. And of course you can always
fall back on magic, or engineering by highly advanced intelligences, or new
physical laws.
I talk about how things work on our planet for two reasons. First, you might
want to keep things realistic. And second, it broadens your options. The real
world is highly inventive.
Plus, if you know how things generally go, you know what to change or
reverse to create strangeness and fantasy. Take a general rule mentioned here
— e.g., humans posit supernatural beings they can ask favors of— then twist
it around. What about a culture where the spirits ask favors of us? Even the
rules of drawing can be purposely violated in order to create misshapen
monsters (p. 302).

Date conventions
For brevity I often write 5C for “the 5th century AD”, i.e. the 400s, and
likewise -13C is “the 13th century BC”, i.e. the 1200s BC.

Acknowledgments
Many thanks to those who read and made comments on drafts of this book:
James Miers, Samuel Lereah, Dave Townsend, Benjamin Buckley, Geoff
Eddy, Richard Weatherby, Carlos Verrecchia, Ugo Lachapelle, Michele
Moss, and Ian Samuels. Thanks to Richard Seal for help on Almean climates,
to Ken Hite and Mike Schiffer for a long alternate history lunch, and to
Samwise for the use of his head. And to my wife Lida who has been
incredibly supportive.

Mark Rosenfelder
September 2010
E-Z Fantasy World
Fantasy worlds in particular often seem all the same— usually, medieval
Europe minus Christianity plus magic.
Let’s take a pop quiz on your culture. For each item, choose one option. As
each is independent of the others, there are over 438 trillion possible cultures
— enough for every conworld to be different, and for each to have a full set
of differing cultures.
And there’s even more, of course, if you blend the options or come up with
new ones.
This alone isn’t enough to give a country a strong character of its own, of
course. We’ll get to that later. But the quiz is designed to break the habit of
always creating Standard Fantasy Kingdoms.

Government
• Absolute monarch
• King and council
• Oligarchy
• Theocracy (for any belief system)
• Elite democracy (a large electorate but still a minority)
• Full democracy (universal electorate)
• Warlord
• Clan leaders only, perhaps a king in wartime
• None at all
How is the leader chosen?
• Heredity
• By family council
• By the secondary powers (council, priests, voters— see previous
item)
 • By contests of skill, strength, and/or intelligence
• By the military
• By divine powers
• Randomly
• By a secret cabal
How unified is the country?
• Completely centralized
• Nobles govern their own lands but king is powerful
• The center has few uncontested powers
• No central power
How tolerant are people?
• No dissent allowed!
• Best to follow convention
• Eccentricity is mocked but permitted
• Do as you please
How do most people get their food?
• Hunting and gathering
• Fishing
• Garden agriculture (plots cleared, cultivated awhile, then
abandoned)
• Rainfall agriculture
• Irrigation agriculture
• Animal herds (pastoralism)
• Magic
• Algae vats and slabs of mutant ever-growing chicken meat
What’s the climate?
• Temperate
 • Tropical
• Extreme— desert, mountains, tundra
• Unusual— the sea, outer space, the spirit realm
What kind of economy is there?
• Communities are self-sufficient except for luxuries
• Command economy— industry controlled by the state
• Nationwide market economy
• The nation is part of a sophisticated international trade network
How does the army work?
• Professional standing army
• The powers that be each have their own army
• The citizens as a whole form the army
• There’s nothing we’d call an army
What’s the most-used weapon?
• Bow and arrow
• Sword
• Spears or pikes
• Guns
• Antimatter propulsors
• One’s own body
• Magic
What’s the literacy level?
• Nearly universal
• Only the elite
• None
• Writing is superseded by telepathy or high technology
How prevalent is magic?
 • Almost everyone can use it
• Restricted to a small, secretive class
• Rare— there are only a few wizards
• Nonexistent
What’s the essence of magic?
• A biological ability
• A natural power that can be harnessed like technology
• A natural resource (e.g. mana) which may be exhausted
• Communing with supernatural beings
• Accessing a separate dimension
• Special properties of some herbs or minerals
• Superstition and chicanery
What’s the overall technology?
• Tribal
• Bronze age (looms, kilns, chariots, spears)
• Classical (sailing ships, aqueducts, water mills, swords)
• Renaissance (telescopes, watches, windmills, artillery)
• Early modern (science, rifles, sailing ships, factories)
• Age of steam
• Contemporary
• Futuristic
• Godlike
What do people worship or invoke?
• God
• The gods
• Spirit animals
• Their ancestors
 • Another species
• Minor spiritual beings
• Nothing
What is the most admired class? Or to put it another way, whose values and
interests are paramount?
• Nobles and kings
• Priests and clerics
• The military
• Merchants or manufacturers
• Scholars or magicians
• Another species
What’s the lowest class?
• Slaves
• Serfs
• A motley collection of poor people
• Castes devoted to unpleasant jobs (e.g. gravediggers)
• A foreign community or racial minority
• Another species
How are women treated?
• Equally with men
• Men are completely dominant
• Men are usually the leaders, but there are powerful women and
some female-run institutions
• The sexes divide up work and control different institutions in
society
• Women are in control
What’s the attitude toward sex?
• Restricted to marriage
 • Marriage is one thing, romance/sex is another
• There are some accepted outlets besides marriage
• Freely indulged
• Restricted to an elite
What are the major species?
• Just humans
• Just humanoid cats
• Several species, but separated by region or habitat
• Several species, fairly intermingled
• Several species, separated by class or profession (e.g. one forms
the servant class)
What’s the most pressing problem?
• Other nations (barbarians or civilized states)
• Demons
• Another species
• Rebellion or civil war
• Tyranny
• A dangerous secret cabal
• Ecological collapse
• Just ordinary cussedness
Storytelling
Many conworlds are intended to be background for a story. So it’s worth
looking at how conworlding can serve storytelling.

The basics of story

Stories involve conflict and failure.
As my improv-trained friend Michele puts it, “Stories begin when things go
wrong. How I flew from Boston to Chicago isn’t a story. How I got to
Chicago when the plane never took off is a story.”
Once you get past the basics— this planet is 1.04 Earth masses, the elves
have pointy ears and the elven kings have pointy hair— conworlding is a
series of little stories too, and they need conflict and failure.
Bad! Good!
Ervëa was the greatest Ervëa was the rightful emperor
emperor of Caďinas, who of Caďinas, but deposed as a
conquered the ktuvok boy by his usurping uncle
empire. Sevurias. He was saved by the
local garrison, who defeated
the force Sevurias sent to
arrest him. The realm plunged
into civil war. Ervëa finally
defeated Sevurias, only to be
faced with a massive invasion
by the ktuvoks...
Morgan is the greatest Morgan arrived on Okura, only
agent of the Terran to be intercepted by agents of
Incatena, who was the dictatorship posing as
responsible for ending tourist guides. The canny agent
the dictatorship on evaded them and began to
Okura. organize a resistance. Just
when the resistance broke out
 into all-out war, Morgan was
betrayed...

David Mamet has memorably explained the basic formula for drama:
Someone has a problem. They take action to solve it, and it’s going well. At
the last minute it fails. The bad guys advance— they’re about to win! They’re
stopped just in time. Then the pattern repeats.
Of course, we like heroes with extraordinary abilities, and we like to see them
walloping mundane challengers (muggers, tiny hunters with speech
impediments). But to keep the story interesting, extraordinary heroes need to
encounter extraordinary challengers.
You know this— it’s taught by every blockbuster epic and movie. But it can
still be tempting to have your main conculture the most advanced civilization
on the planet, happy and well-ordered, united under their noble monarch. If
it’s that well ordered, there’s few stories to be told there... your heroes will
have to light out for the wilderness to have any adventures.
Nick Hornby stated it nicely: as a reader, I want to read about the worst time
of your characters’ lives. If it’s only the second worst time, I’m going to feel
cheated.
That isn’t to say that all stories must be violent. A romance, like Pride and
Prejudice, is largely the story of obstacles that must be overcome before the
match can proceed.

Overexplaining
The easiest vice for a conworlder to fall into is overexplaining. You have all
this beautiful material to use; why not put it in?
Now, I’m a huge fan of detailed worldbuilding; but the best practitioners are
also great storytellers, and they never let exposition get in the way of the
story. And they know when not to explain things.
Tolkien is a good and bad example. A huge amount of his worldbuilding is
only alluded to in LOTR— you have to look elsewhere to understand what
exactly Gandalf is, how the Númenoreans fell, even what happened to God.
At the same time he can’t resist beginning with an explanatory
anthropological (hobbitological?) sketch, and the first book is filled with
people explaining things to each other.
Science fiction can be much worse. I wrote a little sketch to show what the
same approach would be like if applied to the contemporary world:

If most stories were written like s.f.

Roger and Ann needed to meet Sergey in San Francisco.
“Should we take a train, or a steamship, or a plane?” asked Ann.
“Trains are too slow, and the trip by steamship through the Panama Canal would take
months,” replied Roger. “We’ll take a plane.”
He logged onto the central network using his personal computer, and waited while the
system verified his identity. With a few keystrokes he entered an electronic ticketing
system, and entered the codes for his point of departure and his destination. In
moments the computer displayed a list of possible flights, and he picked the earliest
one. Dollars were automatically deducted from his personal account to pay for the
transaction.
The planes left from the city airport, which they reached using the city bi-rail. Ann
had changed into her travelling outfit, which consisted of a light shirt in polycarbon-
derived artificial fabric, which showed off her pert figure, without genetic
enhancements, and dark blue pants made of natural textiles. Her attractive brown hair
was uncovered.
At the airport Roger presented their identification cards to a representative of the
airline company, who used her own computer system to check his identity and retrieve
his itinerary. She entered a confirmation number, and gave him two passes which
gave them access to the boarding area. They now underwent a security inspection,
which was required for all airline flights. They handed their luggage to another
representative; it would be transported in a separate, unpressurized chamber on the
aircraft.
“Do you think we’ll be flying on a propeller plane? Or one of the newer jets?” asked
Ann.
“I’m sure it will be a jet,” said Roger. “Propeller planes are almost entirely out of
date, after all. On the other hand, rocket engines are still experimental. It’s said that
when they’re in general use, trips like this will take an hour at most. This one will take
up to four hours.”
After a short wait, they were ushered onto the plane with the other passengers. The
plane was an enormous steel cylinder at least a hundred meters long, with sleek
backswept wings on which four jet engines were mounted. They glanced into the front
cabin and saw the two pilots, consulting a bank of equipment needed to fly the plane.
Roger was glad that he did not need to fly the plane himself; it was a difficult
profession which required years of training.
The surprisingly large passenger area was equipped with soft benches, and windows
through which they could look down at the countryside as they flew 11 km high at
more than 800 km/h. There were nozzles for the pressurized air which kept the
atmosphere in the cabin warm and comfortable despite the coldness of the
stratosphere.
“I’m a little nervous,” Ann said, before the plane took off.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he assured her. “These flights are entirely routine.
You’re safer than you are in our ground transport cars!”
Despite his calm words, Roger had to admit to some anxiety as the pilot took off, and
the land dropped away below them. He and the other passengers watched out the
windows for a long time. With difficulty, he could make out houses and farms and
moving vehicles far below.
“There are more people going to San Francisco today than I would have expected,” he
remarked.
“Some of them may in fact be going elsewhere,” she answered. “As you know, it’s
expensive to provide airplane links between all possible locations. We employ a hub
system, and people from smaller cities travel first to the hub, and then to their final
destination. Fortunately, you found us a flight that takes us straight to San Francisco.”
When they arrived at the San Francisco airport, agents of the airline company helped
them out of their seats and retrieved their luggage, checking the numeric tags to
ensure that they were given to the right people.
“I can hardly believe we’re already in another city,” said Ann. “Just four hours ago we
were in Chicago.”
“We’re not quite there!” corrected Roger. “We’re in the airport, which is some
distance from the city, since it requires a good deal of space on the ground, and
because of occasional accidents. From here we’ll take a smaller vehicle into the city.”
They selected one of the hydrocarbon-powered ground transports from the queue
which waited outside the airport. The fee was small enough that it was not paid
electronically, but using portable dollar tokens. The driver conducted his car unit into
the city; though he drove only at 100 km/hr, it felt much faster since they were only a
meter from the concrete road surface. He looked over at Ann, concerned that the
speed might alarm her; but she seemed to be enjoying the ride. A game girl, and
intelligent as well!
At last the driver stopped his car, and they had arrived. Electronic self-opening doors
welcomed them to Sergey’s building. The entire trip had taken less than seven hours.

Some rules of thumb

So what should you do and not do?
• The big no-no: characters explaining things to each other that
they already know. You have several alternatives:
° Show, don’t explain. Is your transportation system bus-sized
angry yaks? Fine, describe what they look like, how big they are,
show them nearly biting someone’s head off. If any aspect really
doesn’t affect the story, leave it out.
° Have a viewpoint character that’s not from the culture. Then
you have an excuse to describe all the things that are as novel to
them as to the reader.
° Put all the fancy details in an appendix or web page.
° If your ideas are highly visual, illustrate them instead.
Comics, movies, and video games can easily show off an exotic
world. You can’t spend much time describing your huge yaks, but in
visual media the reader can directly experience them.
• If you have a really neat bit of conworlding, tailor the plot to
show it off.
° This is the essence of s.f.— the story is about the details of
the setting as much as it is about the characters and their conflicts.
Asimov’s robot stories, for instance, are explorations of robot nature
and the relationship between robots and humans. If your world is
permeated by magic, your story had better have magician characters
and plot situations that can only be solved by magic.
° The classic means of exploring a world is a quest. It just
happens that to solve her problems, your heroine needs to visit a
rogue in the slums, a princess in the capital, a magician in the Purple
Forest, and the cultists in the elven ruins.
 ° Another natural story form for exploration, and one that isn’t
as exploited in fantasy and s.f., is the detective story. Again, you
have an excuse to visit many locations and people of every class.
• Use just a few telling details. In an S.F. story, to get the
characters from point A to point B as in the above passage, all we need
is “Roger and Ann took the next shuttle to Lowell City.” But you can
certainly make it more flavorful:
Roger and Ann took the first shuttle they saw. The pilot was a
huge and malodorous Mollostoman, whose tentacles seemed to
fill the cabin and had to be constantly swatted away. Even
worse was his conversation, a mumbled rant about the
amoebizoids who’d forced him to seek employment among the
mammals. It was a relief to step out of the shuttle in Lowell
City.
• Just to please me, avoid this pet peeve of mine: characters who
face some aspect of their daily reality unfamiliar to us as if they’ve
never seen it before. E.g. a character in one of the Culture novels
spends multiple pages trying to get useful, human-tailored data out of a
massive AI. In this world humans and AIs have interacted for
centuries; this would be an old solved problem.

Evil and Eeeevil

I blame Tolkien for one of the hoariest clichés in fantasy and adventure
stories: the eeeevil warlord. Tolkien’s heroes have their failings, but his
villains are pure evil. Sauron never has any regrets, his agents never come
close to making you see their point of view, you never see a cute orc or
wonder at the morality of slaughtering them. They’re pure sword fodder.
This bugs me because the real world is never like this. Take the most evil
leader you can think of, and I guarantee he has his good points and could
make a case for himself. His supporters very likely consider themselves good
and your side to be wrong.
Chris Livingston puts it well:
Question: if the monsters ever did take over, what the hell would they
 do then? Stand around roaring? Do they have other marketable skills
besides stabbing villagers and operating catapults? Can any of them
grow crops or improve roads or manage an inn?
It’s always safe to write about these dudes— all your readers can be assumed
to hate eeeevil. But it’s also a huge missed opportunity. Moral dilemmas are a
lot more interesting and involving than just fighting.
We can do better. A neat example is the video game Bioshock, whose villains
are a twisted form of Ayn Rand Objectivists. Using a recognizable real-world
philosophy allows the game to serve as satire, and also allows the main
culprit, Andrew Ryan, to be a charismatic figure who has a good deal to say
for himself. His philosophy is dubious, but his determination and creativity
are admirable.
Bad luck for the Objectivists, of course, who will have to console themselves
with their positive press in Heinlein novels. No wonder most writers choose
eeeevil as a target: eeeevil has no constituency that might lose you sales or
send hate mail.
Perhaps authors worry that if the villain isn’t eeeevil, people might take his
side instead of the hero’s? But the open secret is, people love villains anyway.
Who’s the most iconic character from Star Wars? Darth Vader, of course,
with his creepy mask and elegant robes. Create the most evil creatures you
can think up, and I guarantee you that teenage boys will be naming
themselves after them in online games.
It’s probably a form of the escapism that fuels much of literature: we like to
vicariously experience lives of greater adventure than our own. Heroes get to
do things we can’t, but it’s villains who have the ultimate freedom, the
freedom from morality. We can’t choke the snotty guy in the suit using the
power of our minds— believe me, I’ve tried— but Darth Vader can.
As an exercise in making rounded beings, write a speech where your main
villain justifies himself as clearly as possible. Why is he doing these terrible
things? No one is purely destructive for the hell of it; even revenge is in
service to a virtue— justice or honor. If he wants power, what does he want it
for? If he’s creating orcs, why does he prefer them to humans?
A cute example from Rich Burlew’s online comic The Order of the Stick: a
girl allied with the bad guys explains why she hangs out with the undead:
Look, everyone knows that the undead are the antithesis of life, right?
Except people are jerks. Lying, untrustworthy jackasses, every one of
them. Everyone knows this, too. So logically, undead must be the
opposite of that: caring, sensitive honest souls who are oppressed by
the living majority and their negative stereotypes.
It’s not deep— she is a comic strip character— but she has a reasonable
motivation, something we can sympathize with.

Really using your ideas

In Mary Gentle’s Rats and Gargoyles, one of the characters has a tail. In
most fantasy books this would be noted and then forgotten, much like the
hobbits’ hairy feet. But Gentle tells us on almost every page what the
character is doing with her tail. This is the difference between world-building
and bringing a world alive.
Another example is the daemons in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. I
confess I don’t understand the connection to the idea of souls, but the idea of
a double consciousness, one manifested in an animal companion, is
fascinating, and Pullman leverages our knowledge of animals without making
the daemons into mere pets.

Know your genre

Before you get too far on your world it’s good to know what the goals and
conventions of your genre are. Fantasy isn’t just swords and dragons and
wizards; s.f. isn’t just robots and spaceships and rayguns.
What both have in common is the importance of the setting— that is, the
world we’re building, what this book is about. Both are an excuse to explore
a very different world than the one we live in. And both pay the price of
giving up the reader’s familiarity with our own world; the easy realism and
recognition gained by setting the story in contemporary times.
And in both cases, if there’s nothing about the world that differs interestingly
from ours, why is it genre at all? If you just want to write a novel of intrigue
among the “berons and dux” of “Ferrance and Ingilland”, you’d might as well
write historical fiction.
In general science fiction plays with the physical, fantasy with the
metaphysical. The quintessential s.f. story is about a neat idea—
teleportation, first contact, robotic intelligence, time travel, psychohistory,
telepathy, tesseracts— and rings the changes on it. The quintessential fantasy
story is a spiritual exploration: an everyman stumbles into a strange and
perilous world and has to develop to meet its challenges.
You can mix and match, of course. Star Wars is essentially fantasy with s.f.
trappings. Many a fantasy game treats magic exactly like technology, with
fixed and predictable rules.
Genre conventions are tools to use, not rigid laws; but you need never
apologize for following them. For instance, fantasy typically takes place on
earthlike worlds, with main characters who are human. I emphasize this
because making a world more realistic, as I’ve done with Almea, sometimes
raises questions: if it’s a different planet, why are the humans nearly identical
to Earth’s?
The answer is that Almea is fantasy, not s.f. It’s informed by astronomy and
biology but it’s not an attempt to create a science-fictional planet with a
thoroughly alien flora and fauna. It’s more like an alternative version of
Earth.
The genres have different attitudes toward realism. Both can cheerfully
violate physical laws, but s.f. expects a greater bow toward science. You can
invent a new physical law for each short story or episode, but you’re
expected to treat it consistently. If you’ve established that blasters can cut
through metal, you can never imprison a blaster-wielding character in a metal
cell. It’s more acceptable in fantasy that (say) a newly introduced villain has
previously unmentioned powers that counteract the hero’s.
But even in fantasy, don’t cheat the reader. Magic can be unreliable, but
don’t let it get out of hand. If you can always invent a spell to get out of any
difficult situation, the reader’s involvement drops, because there’s no real
danger. Supernatural powers should be limited, and the reader should
generally know what those limits are. There’s a reason Gandalf casts fewer
spells per day than the lowest-level wizard in a D&D game.
Biography as worldbuilding
A great way to help you figure out your culture and make it come alive is to
write a biography of a typical resident.
In this case you’ll ignore some of the usual restraints on stories: there’s no
character arc; the events don’t have to be notable— indeed, quite the
opposite, since you’re telling everyone’s story: the background condition in
your society.
Here’s the biography I wrote of a Lé peasant named Múr.

Birth and infancy

Múr was born in the house belonging to her jɔ (family): a large circular structure that
was mostly thatched roof, supported by wooden beams. Hammocks were strung here
and there for sleeping; dried meat and other stored food hung from the ceiling. She
was washed and handed to her mother in a hammock for feeding.
The household seemed to ignore her for three days, not even speaking of her; then it
exploded into a storm of activity, culminating in a huge celebration with many rituals,
gifts, and blessings. The birth of a daughter was a big event, but only once it was clear
she was healthy.
Her infancy was a sort modern developmental psychologists can only dream about:
plenty of contact with everyone in the family, nursing on demand, attention as soon as
she cried, almost no punishment. She started receiving masticated food early, at six
months or so, and wasn’t fully weaned till four.
She wore no clothes; she was taken outside the house to relieve herself, and was able
to do this on her own before the age of two.

Childhood
When she was four her mother had another child; this was a huge and unwelcome
change in Múr’s life, since she saw her mother much less and wasn’t allowed to nurse.
She was hardly ignored, though; she was looked after by almost the whole family,
though most often by her father, her older sister, and her grandfather.
Her family farmed in a plot (brɔ̀ŋ) cleared from the jungle, adjoining a little stream. It
was a quarter hour’s walk to the nearest neighbors— though this and longer walks
were routine; there were frequent visits for business and pleasure, enough that she
soon had friends in other settlements. She learned how the farm worked and began to
help out with cleaning, weeding, removing stripcorn and tengbean husks, gathering
eggs from the gallenes, watching babies.
The whole family was about 20 people in all; all the females were descendants of
Grandmother Lâ, who had died before Múr was born. Her older daughter Prɛ̀n, Múr’s
grandmother, was the new matriarch (háɔ). Prɛ̀n’s younger sister Trâo and her
descendants were still part of the jɔ as it wasn’t large enough to split.
The family had a number of amusements: music, dancing, storytelling, games played
with a wooden board and a set of tokens. The children also had toys, often carved for
them by the adults: wooden animals, or small representations of adult tools or
weapons.
Múr still went about naked, except for various decorations— earrings, beaded
necklaces or bracelets. She wore a braided leather band around her waist that was
useful for hanging things from, such as her prized possession, a knife. When she was
eight, the family dog had puppies, and for some time she carried a puppy around in a
sling, the way women carried babies.
By this time she was trusted to go about in the jungle by herself or with other children.
They explored quite a bit, sometimes finding a clearing to create their own miniature
brɔ̀ŋ, complete with a flimsy but serviceable house; or they might walk to another
settlement and spend the night with friends. They were safe so long as they didn’t
stray too far from established trails. Large animals rarely came close to human
settlements, and the minor dangers of the jungle (from poisonous slugs to stinging
vines to army ants) they had long ago learned to recognize and avoid.

Adolescence
Múr’s life changed when she was eleven. First, Prɛ̀n and Trâo decided it was time to
move. A brɔ̀ŋ could only be cultivated for ten years or so. This involved a lot of
exciting novelties: hiring a geomancer (insùŋdlán) to consult on the right spot; asking
the neighboring families for help; trips to the market town for supplies; building the
new house; hiring a pair of nawr oxen— frighteningly large and fierce-looking
animals— to clear the land.
Secondly, this year marked Múr’s transition from girl (rɛ̀) to maiden (dǎr). In part this
meant that she had to work a lot more. Unlike her brothers and male cousins, she’d
always be part of this jɔ, so she had to know how to do everything from midwifery to
horticulture to trading to knowing a hundred or more local plants and what they were
good for.
She also began to wear skirts, at first truca fronds hung from her belt, and later a petay
loincloth. She continued to wear decorations: bracelets, large earrings, flowers, bright
feathers.
There were also family traditions to learn and genealogies and stories to memorize.
There were religious practices, so diverse that it’s hard to consider them one thing:
 • Various taboos, superstitions, cantrips, and rituals, passed on without
much rationalization. Why was it forbidden to eat brains? No one really knew
(though the practice prevented the spread of certain diseases, and preserved the
supply of brains for tanning).
• Stories about goddesses and gods, as well as rituals of appeasement or
supplication. People mostly gravitated toward a deity whose personality
matched their own; Múr chose the cheerful and helpful Ŋisú.
• Several times Múr was awakened in the middle of the night, dressed in a
robe (an uncomfortable sensation), blindfolded, and taken into the jungle,
where she was given secret instruction (sârpáɔ) that she was not allowed to
repeat to males or children. Sometimes this was cosmological tales, or
information about sex or the afterlife; sometimes she was given drugs and
experienced strange visions.
• Shamans had access to the nɔŋǎ, the spirit realm. They were consulted on
grave occasions, such as when someone was sick and ordinary herblore and
rituals failed, or when it was necessary to speak to the late Grandmother Lâ.
Múr and her friends indulged in some amount of sexual play— generally when they
were alone, as adults discouraged it if they saw it. It wasn’t considered very serious
before menstruation; once this began, when Múr was about fifteen, she was strongly
discouraged from actually having sex. This was the subject of one of the more
frightening sârpáɔ, and Múr was careful to follow the prescription. (The boys she
played with were younger and followed her lead.)

Marriage
When she was eighteen, the family began to seriously look around for a potential
husband. Everyone older than Múr had advice or had a candidate to propose. There
were a number of rather awkward visits to neighboring families or to the market town.
Múr knew many of the boys already, but it was one thing to play or talk with them,
quite another to be evaluating them as husbands. Nonetheless she made her opinions
clear to her family afterwards, especially negative ones.
The final choice, after nearly a year of looking, was a boy named Nàŋ— an old
playmate and a cheerful fellow who got along well enough with the family. He was
about three years younger than Múr.
The marriage started with a big meal in Nàŋ’s brɔ̀ŋ. A priestess offered rituals and
blessings, and Múr’s family gave generous gifts to Nàŋ’s. Then the whole party
walked to Múr’s brɔ̀ŋ for another meal, lubricated with plenty of heady bǎɔsa wine
and milky ŋássa. There were many embarrassing jokes, till finally, at sunset— with
the whole family watching and laughing— the two newlyweds removed their
loincloths and got into a hammock together.
Fortunately, they weren’t expected to perform for the onlookers. Without lights,
people didn’t stay up long after dark; soon most everyone was asleep except for Múr
and Nàŋ. Lying naked together in the darkness, the couple found it not so difficult to
have sex for the first time.
The first few weeks were fun; it was like an extended sleepover with the added
novelty of sex. Then it sank in that Nàŋ was here for good; for a time he missed his
family and she missed her freedom. After a quarrel, Nàŋ set up his own hammock.
She was upset to learn, a few months later, that Nàŋ was sleeping with her cousin. Her
mother and her sister were sympathetic, but pointed out that that was just how men
were. This alerted Múr to observe more carefully what happened after dark, or who
disappeared into the bush during the day, and she realized that almost no one stuck to
their spouse, though they did keep to their age group. She looked at her own father
with new eyes, wondering if he was really her biological father. She decided she’d
rather not know.
She was embarrassed now when the newer men in the family— her sister’s and
cousins’ husbands— looked at her frankly and even flirted with her. But finally she
realized that nothing would happen unless she showed interest back. Perhaps
inevitably, she ended up sleeping with her cousin’s husband— the partner of the
cousin Nàŋ had slept with. He was older and stronger than Nàŋ and had a beard,
which fascinated her for some reason.
Just a week after this she found she was pregnant. When she confessed her worries to
her mother, she asked for some details, then laughed; the baby could only be Nàŋ’s.
Even if that weren’t the case, social custom dictated that he was the father.
The pregnancy and birth repaired her relationship with Nàŋ. He was a comfortable
presence and helpful with the baby, while her cousin’s husband was clearly just a
fling.

Adult life
Múr was now a lɔ, a married woman, a full member of the family. It wasn’t
appropriate to wear flowers and feathers any more— those were for unmarried girls.
Instead she wore jewelry, made of metals, gems, or shells— all things that couldn’t be
found locally and had to be acquired in trade, thus emblems of wealth.
She nursed her baby, often carried it around in a sling, and slept with it, but in a short
time the baby spent more than half its time with other people: Nàŋ, Múr’s sister and
younger brother, older relatives.
Múr welcomed this, as there was plenty to do. Tending the plot wasn’t that laborious,
but preparing food was an endless chore, and there were other things to make: pots,
baskets, rope, mats, hammocks, loincloths, sandals, musical instruments, toys for the
children. The heaviest work, such as cutting trees and erecting the pillars and beams
for houses, was done by the men.
Both sexes could go fishing, or hunting for small game, using bow and arrow.
Occasionally there was a large predator around— mostly boars or jaguars— and the
men gleefully took the lead in hunting these. This could take a few days, and often
more jugs of ŋássa than animals were disposed of.
Periodically there were trips to the market town, a welcome change of pace. There
was always something to sell— extra petay cloth, yams, keng oil, ŋássa, dried fish,
herbs and spices, gallene eggs— and there were things to buy as well, from leather to
cheese to salt to medicine to metal tools. There were people to see, novelties to watch,
sometimes specialists to consult.
The major crops— sorghum, stripcorn, and tengbeans— were sold here too, but this
was more complex, not only because they were harder to transport (often a wagon had
to be hired), but because they were taxed. The family’s land wasn’t their own; it
belonged to a jinlɔ or noblewoman, and she was entitled to a tenth of the produce. She
had a representative at the grain merchant’s who accepted this share and gave out
tokens indicating compliance.
In Múr’s region, the usual currencies were salt, seashells, or glass beads— easily
transported and hoarded items not produced locally. But many transactions were more
easily handled with barter.

Elderhood
Life wasn’t always calm; one year the łɛ̀ or monsoon didn’t come and most of the
crops failed. The family subsisted mostly on dried food and hardroot; half a dozen
children and two adults died.
Sometimes family life flared up as well. While she was bearing children Múr mostly
stayed with Nàŋ, but in later years they drifted apart; he bonded most closely with the
cousin he had slept with years ago. Múr didn’t really replace him, but when she
wanted sex she often ended up with her sister’s husband. But this was minor
compared to the problems of one of Trâo’s daughters: her husband couldn’t get along
with her or with anyone and he ended up leaving the family. That was traumatic
enough, but it also offended his birth family, and that was a problem because it was
their nawr ox that Múr’s family usually hired.
Grandmother Prɛ̀n finally died, in her late sixties. She was buried quickly— bodies
don’t last long in the jungle— and a few days later there was a funeral service
attended by a large crowd.
After a decent interval, it was decided that the jɔ should split. Prɛ̀n’s and Trâo’s
lineages felt a little more distant now that Prɛ̀n was gone; and the acrimony over the
departed husband didn’t help. But the main reason was the size of the family. There
were five women in Múr’s generation (Múr and her sister, and Trâo’s three
granddaughters), and all had children— there were more than thirty people in the
family, more than the house and plot could easily support.
The split was a major undertaking, as two new brɔ̀ŋs had to be established; it was also
necessary to get approval from the goddesses, deceased Grandmother Lâ, and the
landlady. The family had to go into debt to cover its expenses, though this was partly
offset by a gift from the jinlɔ.
It was difficult for Múr to move away from people she had known all her life. Nàŋ
faced an even harder decision, whether to live with Múr (and his children), or the
cousin he had bonded to. He ended up choosing the cousin; fortunately, another
cousin-in-law made the opposite switch as he preferred Múr’s sister to his original
wife. The two new families could easily visit— they were just a half-hour’s walk
away— but further sexual mixing was discouraged.
Múr’s mother was now the háɔ of the new jɔ. In some ways this was the most
enjoyable phase of Múr’s life. She and her sister were respected elders and religious
authorities; the hard work could be left to younger people; she could relax as much as
she wanted, and spend more time with the young children.
There was no retirement in Lé life: Múr remained active, and grew only more
important with age, especially after her mother died and she was the second-ranking
family member after her sister. She grew arthritic, and hard of hearing, which simply
meant that she could give up tedious tasks like husking tengbeans, and could
continually insist that the youngsters repeat themselves.
She started to complain about pains in the abdomen; some medicinal herbs helped
with the pain, but the blood in her stool showed that she wasn’t cured. She died a few
months later, nearly sixty.
She was buried just outside the house, and while the family lived there they would
greet her or leave small offerings for her; but after the brɔ̀ŋ was next moved she
existed only in memories.

Notes
A lot of things are covered here: sustenance, clothing, sex, family life,
technological level, even something of the larger society (the market town,
the local noblewoman).
It should be clear that the Lé live in the rain forest, with a typical garden
agriculture system of clearing a plot, cultivating it for awhile, then moving on
(see p. 89).
The most striking difference from earthly societies is that Lé society is
female-dominant (for more see p. 158). The Almeopedia contains a detailed
explanation of how this works; but Múr’s story shows it in action. Hopefully
it gives an idea of what it’s like to live in such a society.
As this is background material, it can indulge in a certain amount of
exposition. Still, I tried to show rather than tell as much as possible— e.g.
instead of saying “Lé marriages are arranged by the family”, I describe how
Múr’s family found her a husband and how it worked out for her.
You don’t have to stop with a typical peasant’s lifestyle. To help work out the
continent of Arcél on Almea, where the Lé live, I wrote biographies of an
isolated fisherman, an evangelistic shaman, a barbarian lord, a grandiose
architect, a eunuch dictator, a magician defending his land, a sleazy
entrepreneur, a tea merchant, a couple of thief adventurers, a pirate queen,
and a princess who became a major philosopher. These are more like
miniature short stories— they’re individuals rather than generic types, they
make mistakes, they have reverses, not all their stories end well. (You can
find them all on the Almeopedia in the People category.)
This not only makes your planet feel like a populated, interesting place, but
it’s great practice for writing longer stories.
Astronomy and Geology

Conphysics
Most of this chapter is going to be about applying the known laws of physics
to your world. But of course you can create your own physics.
My favorite example along these lines is A.K. Dewdney’s The Planiverse, a
rigorous exploration of a two-dimensional world, from its quantum
mechanics on up. Another example is Stephen Baxter’s Raft, set in a universe
with a force of gravity far stronger than ours. For teaching purposes George
Gamow wrote about a world where the speed of light is just 15 km/h.
Sadly, much of the science in s.f. is outmoded or unlikely: faster-than-light
travel, time travel, new types of radiation. But these can still make great
worlds and stories. It’s tacky to simply invent all the consequences as in a
comic book; the elegant approach is to vary one or a few parameters and
work out the results consistently— a feat that requires good knowledge of
existing science.
Another approach is to adopt some previous level of science— Aristotelian
physics, for instance. The definitive s.f. treatment of phlogiston has perhaps
yet to be written.

Stars
In a hurry? Your star is “sun-like”; see you in the geology section. S.f. writers
may not be happy without a stellar class— fine, the sun’s is G2; vary the last
digit if you like.

Stellar classifications
Stellar class is essentially a scale of surface temperature. Here’s a table of
the classes, showing surface temperature in kilokelvins (degrees above
absolute zero; for comparison it’s 0.3 kK outside right now), color, mass
compared to the sun, and the fraction of all main sequence stars.
Class Temperature Color Mass Main sequence
O ≥ 33 blue ≥ 16+ 0.00003%
B 10-30 blue-white 2.1-16 0.13%
A 7.5-10 bluish white 1.4-2.1 0.6%
F 6-7.5 white 1.04-1.4 3%
G 5.2-6 yellowish white
0.8-1.04 7.6%
K 3.7-5.2 yellow orange 0.45-0.8 12.1%
M ≤ 3.7 orange red ≤ 0.45 76.45%

As a G2 star, the sun is near the top of the G class and its color is white. That
is, the range of colors it produces is largely restricted to our visual spectrum,
without skewing to any one color. This isn’t coincidence; our eyes are
adapted to the light from the sun. The sun appears yellow from the earth’s
surface for the same reason the sky is blue— blue light is scattered more by
the atmosphere; in space it looks white.
You were probably told at some point that the sun is an average,
unremarkable star. Not true; as you can see from the chart, it’s hotter and
bigger than 90% of all stars. Of the 50 nearest stars, only one is hotter than
the sun— Sirius A. (Alpha Centauri A is also a G2 star, very much like the
sun. The only other G star in the lot is Tau Ceti, thus its popularity in science
fiction.)
Stars are also classed by luminosity class, expressed as a Roman numeral;
these may be of any stellar class. The vast majority of stars lie either along
the main sequence (V), like the sun, or are giants (III).
Class Type Abs magnitude Lifetime
0 hypergiants -8 millions of years
I supergiants -5 to -7 < 30 million
II bright giants -3 to -5
III normal giants 0 to -5
IV subgiants +3 to 0 billions
V main sequence +20 to -5 depends on mass
VI subdwarfs +10 to +5
VII white dwarfs +15 to +10 billions

Absolute magnitude measures brightness; negative is brighter. The scale is

logarithmic: each magnitude is 2.5 times brighter than the next higher one.
Luminosity and hotness can be plotted on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram,
which allows us to see that the luminosity classes are really clumps in this
two-dimensional space.

Suitability for life

So which are the good ones? You’re welcome to imagine beings living in
Jupiter’s gases or the hell-hothouse of Venus, but most of us would prefer an
earthlike planet, and the type of star you choose affects that. Let’s look
through some relevant criteria.
• Stellar lifetime. Intelligent life took 4.5 billion years to evolve.
If a star is more than 1.4 times the sun’s mass— that is, classes O, B, A
— its lifetime is likely to be measured in millions of years; even F stars
only last two billion or so.
• Stars have a habitable zone based on distance and stellar mass.
For the weakest and commonest stars— M class—this is so close to the
star that the planet is likely to be tidally locked, and this would
 probably destroy its atmosphere. Stellar flares could also be a problem.
The habitable zone is where water and a greenhouse effect both
exist. Closer to the star, stellar radiation breaks water up into hydrogen
and oxygen; farther from the star you lose the greenhouse warming
effect. Venus and Mars are each just outside the habitable zone.
Main sequence stars brighten as they age. It’s expected that the
earth may be too hot for life in 500 to 900 million years— which means
that we evolved just in time, and terrestrial real estate is not a good
long-term investment.
• Number of stars. More than half of all stellar systems are
multiple, and this plays havoc with planetary orbits. Dust disks—
regions where asteroids and planets may form— have been observed in
binary systems, but mostly when the stars are either closer than 3 AU
or farther than 50 AU. (1 AU is the distance from the earth to the sun,
149.6 × 106 km.)
If the stars are far apart, it’s best to have your planet orbit just one
of them (and just use that star’s mass M for the calculations below). If
they’re very close it might orbit both, and M should be the total of both
stellar masses.
• Distance from the galactic core. It may not be coincidence that
we’re 30,000 light years out: if your star gets too close it may be fried
by supernovas, which are more common toward the core.
Calculating the habitable zone
There are numerous formulas for calculating the habitable zone; here’s a
simple one that depends merely on the amount of light.
Start with the mass M relative to the sun, which you can take from the stellar
classification (p. 38). Derive the luminosity L (also relative to the sun) with
the formula

Now the orbit in AU (earth-sun distances) where the luminosity is the same
as the earth receives is
The edges of the habitable zone may be calculated as 95% to 137% of this
distance.
Calculating the year
While we’re at it, let’s calculate the length of the year p, given the size of the
orbit d in AU. For planets orbiting the sun, we use Kepler’s third law p2 = d3
to derive the period:

(That’s easy to do on a calculator, but may be easier to grasp.)

For instance, a planet at 1.524 AU has an orbit of 1.5241.5 = 1.88 Earth year
— which in fact is the distance and year of Mars.

The general formula for an orbiting body is where M is the total

mass of the two bodies in solar masses. This works for other stellar systems,
for binary stars, or for moons orbiting planets; but the units are still Earth
years, AU, and solar masses; convert as necessary.
Planetary orbits are actually ellipses. The earth’s eccentricity is minimal
(0.0167); that of Mars is ten times larger, so that its distance from the sun

varies from 1.38 to 1.67 AU. The formula is where b is half of the
smaller axis and a is half the larger axis.
All the planets orbit counter-clockwise, as viewed from the Sun’s north pole,
and orbit in roughly the same plane— a relic of their common origin in the
flattened spinning gas cloud of the early solar system.

One planet to go, side order of moons

There’s a few basic decisions to make about your planet:
• Size. The Earth has a radius of 6371 km, and a meridional
circumference of 40,008 km. (The near-roundness of this number is no
accident; the meter was supposed to be 1/10,000,000 of the distance
from the equator to the pole, but they didn’t quite get it right.)
In case you’ve forgotten basic geometry:
circumference = 2pr
area = 4pr2
volume = 4/3 pr3
The Earth is a little flattened of course— the polar radius is 6357
km, the equatorial radius 6378 km.
• Mass. The Earth’s is 5.9736 x 1024 kg. As a rough estimate we
may say that mass varies with volume; comparing it to Earth’s, this
reduces to comparing r3. For instance, for Venus r = .9499, so its mass
should be (.94993) = .857 of Earth’s. In fact it’s .815— Venus is
slightly less dense than Earth.
Given the mass you can find the surface gravity
g = m/r2
where the values are again are proportions of Earth’s. E.g. for
Venus we get .815/(.94992) = 0.903 Earth gravity. To get an absolute
figure, multiply by the value for Earth, 9.78 m/s2.
• Rotation, the time it takes for the planet to turn on its axis— this
gets tricky, so I’ll come back to it below.
• Magnetism. Earth is unusual among the inner planets in having
a relatively strong magnetic field. (The gas giants have stronger ones
than ours.) The magnetic field deflects parts of the solar wind, which is
part of why Earth has kept its oceans. Some animals can sense the
magnetic field and use it for navigation.
More importantly, the magnetic field seems to be associated with
movements in the Earth’s molten core that also produce continental
drift. Venus and Mars therefore lack this phenomenon.
The poles of the magnetic field don’t quite align with the axis of
 rotation, and moreover move at up to 15 km per year. For unknown
reasons their polarity sometimes switches, the last reversal being
780,000 years ago.
• Axial tilt. Earth’s is 23.5° and produces a nice range of seasons.
This varies widely for the other planets, from nearly 0° for Mercury to
98° for Uranus, which thus rolls on its side: at the solstices, one pole or
the other faces the sun nearly head-on.
• Number of moons. Outer planets are richly supplied with
moons; Jupiter has over 60. Earth’s relatively large moon is unusual—
Mars just has a couple piddly ex-asteroids orbiting it— though Pluto
also has a large moon, Charon.
Our large moon (0.0123 Earth mass) has a profound effect.
Earth’s day was once 6 hours long; it has lengthened to 24 through the
moon’s tidal effect. The slowing of the planet’s rotation also affects its
wind patterns, allowing more north/south winds as well as east/west.
One consequence of all this is that there are three ways to determine north on
your world:
• According to the planet’s rotation: the pole that’s moving
counter-clockwise is north; the sun rises in the east.
• According to the sun’s rotation. In our case there’s no difference,
but Venus rotates clockwise compared to the sun.
• According to its magnetic field: the magnetic pole that attracts
the north end of a magnet is north. (But again, the polarity can flip.)
Neil Comins’s What if the moon didn’t exist? explores in much greater detail
the probable consequences of various astronomical factors on an earthlike
planet: no moon, closer moons, a vastly greater mass, and so on.

Rotation
The time it takes a planet to rotate with respect to the stars— i.e. the time
from when a star is on the horizon to the time it’s on the horizon again— is
the rotation period or sidereal day. The rotation time with respect to the sun
— the time from sunrise to sunrise— is the solar day.
Like most of the sun’s planets, the earth rotates counter-clockwise, matching
its orbit (it’s prograde). As the diagram shows, after it’s rotated once with
respect to the stars (thick line), it has to rotate a bit more to line up with the
sun (thin line). Thus our sidereal day is 23.93 hours, while the solar day is 24
hours.
For a prograde planet, the lengths of the sidereal day T, the solar day d, and
the year y are related as follows:

Mercury’s rotation period is 58.64 Earth days, its year 87.97 days, so its solar
day is 175.88 days— three times its rotation period!
Venus rotates clockwise, opposite its orbit— it’s retrograde. The sun rises in
the west on Venus. For such planets the formulas are:

For Venus y = 224.70, T = 243.02, d = 116.75, all measured in Earth days.

Thus its solar day is half its year.
Close orbits tend to produce synchronous rotation by tidal locking; i.e. the
rotation period is equal to the year, as in our moon and in fact all the major
moons in the solar system. This is also why Venus and Mercury have such
long rotation periods. Earth escapes this effect, and Mars’s day is very close
to ours.
Some s.f. writers have exploited the exotic worlds created by synchronous
rotation: the side of the planet facing the sun being blistering hot, the
opposite side freezing cold, with a habitable strip in between. But this seems
to presuppose an otherwise Earthlike atmosphere, which is hard to picture
developing on such a world.

On the moons
For a moon, this formula takes the orbit’s semi-major axis in kilometers and
the planet’s mass in kilograms, and gives the period in Earth days. (The
constant is the result of changing the units.)

E.g. for Callisto, with d = 1,882,700 km and (Jupiter’s) m = 1.8986×1027 kg,

we get a period of 16.69 Earth days.
As noted, the known moons are tidally locked to their planets. By moving
closer, you can get a fairly nice day— e.g. Io, at 421,800 km, has a period of
1.77 Earth days.
Making a moon habitable may be problematic— after all, our own is firmly
within the Sun’s habitable zone and is lifeless and airless. On the other hand,
some moons are intriguing, if not hospitable:
• Europa seems to have an icy crust over 10 km thick, then a
liquid ocean 100 km deep, containing twice the water of our oceans.
The water may be heated by tidal forces.
• Titan is the only moon with a dense atmosphere— indeed, its
surface pressure is 1.45 times that of the earth. Don’t break your
helmet, though; it’s mostly nitrogen and methane. Plus the surface
temperature is -179 °C, and there’s methane rain.
No planets for me, mater
Planets are so vulgar. Natural alternatives are hard to come by— stars and
deep space are challenging environments. But there are some interesting
engineered habitats:
• Ringworlds, memorably explored by Larry Niven. These are
enormous rings with a radius of 1 AU, rotating around the sun to
provide gravity, with an inner ring of shadow squares producing a
day/night cycle and high walls to contain an atmosphere. Niven’s ring
had a surface area of 3 million earths.
There are technical problems. There’s no known material that can
handle the tensile forces to hold the ring together, and the orbit isn’t
stable.
• A Dyson sphere is an arrangement of structures that capture all
or most of a sun’s energy. The simplest conceptually is a single huge
sphere, but we run into the same technical troubles as ringworlds and
don’t get gravity. A huge number of satellites, or stationary sails, would
be more practical.
• Or just build ships— either huge asteroid-sized ones, as in Iain
M. Banks’s Culture, or an enormous fleet, as in Mass Effect or the
French comic series Sillage. These have the advantage that you can
travel the galaxy, but they require some portable source of energy.
Banks also posits Orbitals, miniature ringworlds with a radius of
merely 2 million km or so. They still require unobtainium to hold
together.

Plate tectonics
The Earth’s crust is broken into tectonic plates, moving on top of the semi-
solid mantle. There are seven major plates— North America, Eurasia, Pacific,
Australia, Africa, South America, and Antarctica— plus a number of smaller
plates.
Oceanic crust is about 6 km thick, continental crust about 35 km; oceanic
crust is denser, which is why it’s submerged under the ocean. Beneath the
crust is a brittle layer of lithospheric mantle at least 100 km thick. A single
plate will be a mixture of oceanic and continental crust— The Pacific plate is
notable for being the only one without a continent on it.
The plates are all moving with respect to each other, which means there are
three basic types of boundaries:
• The plates are diverging. New crust is created at the boundary; in
the oceans this creates the mid-ocean ridges; within continents it
creates rift valleys.
• The plates are colliding. In this case one plate will slide beneath
the other— a subduction zone. If there’s a continent involved it’ll be
pushed up by the subducting plate, forming mountains; in the ocean
volcanoes can form into island chains. The Marianas and other ocean
trenches are sub-duction zones.
• The plates are sliding past each other; the San Andreas fault is an
example.

As we’re talking about huge plates of rock, the movement is really a matter
of increasing pressure punctuated by earthquakes and volcanoes. As a
comparison, the Mid-Atlantic ridge averages 2.5 cm of new crust per year,
while the 2010 earthquake in Chile moved some areas 10 feet in a few hours.
Volcanoes can also form from plumes of molten rock anywhere in a plate; the
Hawaiian islands were formed by one— as the plate moves the hot spot
creates new islands.
As we have only one planet to inspect— a regrettable state of affairs that will
plague our conworlding in many ways— we can’t say how much variation
there is in plate size and shape. Earth’s plates seem to be a good deal less
irregular than its continents, and many are roughly square; there are a couple
of odd protrusions though, such as the salient of the Eurasian plate between
Kamchatka and Japan.
Our plates can be traced back in time to a single super-continent Pangea,
about 250 million years ago. But Pangea wasn’t primeval; rather, there’s been
a cycle of continents forming supercontinents and then breaking up, at least
three different times. Such earlier events formed older mountain ranges such
as the Appalachians and the Urals.
The underlying mechanisms of plate tectonics— and why we don’t see it on
Venus and Mars— are controversial. Possible culprits include the size and
composition of the Earth, its magnetic field, its oceans, and the fact that we
have a large moon.

Creating your own plates

When a divergence zone pulls a continental mass apart, the resulting
continental edges will retain a similar shape; the usual example is the curve
of South America which fits neatly into the bow of western Africa. Similarly
eastern North America fits the northwestern coast of Africa. Note that it’s the
continental shelf, not the shoreline, that actually has to match.
For Almea, I drew the continents on a ball, which allowed me to create
shapes matching this process, without the distortions caused by projecting the
spherical surface onto a flat map. Once I had continental shapes I liked, I
copied them by eye onto a world map.
There’s a low-tech method for this you may not be aware of: draw a grid on
the globe, and one on your paper. Then look at the squares one by one and
copy what’s in them. Even if you can’t draw well, it’s easy enough to draw
the simple blobs within a grid square— if they’re still too complicated, make
the grid finer.
These days you might work instead with a computer modeling program...
though I doubt it’ll be as direct or easy as drawing on a ball! But see p. 293
for how to create a CGI model of a globe.
If you’re ambitious, you could simulate the last billion years or so of plate
tectonics and draw maps of the various supercontinents and how they
divided. This would give you a very realistic set of old and new mountains.
I’ll be the first to admire your perfectionism, but it’s overkill for most
conworlders.
Drawing your continents, think about how separated they are. On continents
isolated for millions of years, like Australia, evolution diverges from the rest
of the world. They may also be take longer for humanoids to settle, especially
if a long sea voyage is needed.
If you create an entire planet, you’ll avoid the silliness noted by Not the Net:
“All fantasy worlds are roughly square, i.e. the shape of the double page of a
paperback.” And that in turn is because the author started with a single sheet
of paper, and drew just the part of the world that interested him. This isn’t the
worst sin in the world, but it’s going to distort your world if you don’t know
what’s beyond the edge of the paper. The natural tendency is to forget it and
make the area of the map implausibly self-contained.

Climate zones
Once you’ve got your continents, you’ll want to know what the prevailing
climate is. These can be divided in three overall regions:
• Tropical, near the equator— the zone we evolved in
 • Temperate, farther from the equator, not so hot in the summer
but experiencing unpleasant winters
• Arctic, near the poles— very inhospitable to humans and thus
the last region settled
Plants and animals that evolved within each zone are unlikely to thrive in the
others, which creates ecological boundaries between civilizations. This is one
reason Europeans preferred to settle the temperate rather than the tropical
zones in each hemisphere.
For largely this reason, Jared Diamond suggested that a continent extending
largely east-west, like Eurasia, is more conducive to developing advanced
cultures: it provides a very large zone where people can share crops and
domestic animals— and also acclimate to each others’ diseases. The
Americas, by contrast, are oriented largely north-south; crops that developed
in Mexico or Peru couldn’t as easily diffuse to the other zone through the
tropical areas in between.
But such barriers are not absolute; e.g. maize did diffuse from Mexico south
to Peru and north to Canada. Perhaps the Old World did better just because it
was larger.
The “not enough planets” problem rears its ugly head here as well. Although
I’ll suggest modifications for earthlike worlds, like where you should put
your Mediterranean climates, the details would certainly vary on other
planets, especially if you’ve chosen any of the more dramatic options (such
as high axial tilt, much smaller world, no moons).
Still, there’s reason to avoid one cheap s.f. effect: assigning a single climate
to an entire world: a jungle planet, a forest planet, a desert planet. Planets
should have a lot more diversity than that.

The atmospheric engine

The tropical/temperate/arctic division just deals with heat; we need to
consider rainfall as well. This also depends on heat, but indirectly, by means
of the atmospheric engine.[1]
The lower atmosphere can be divided into three convection cells between
equator and pole: the Hadley, Ferrel, and polar cells.
 • Hadley cell: Warm air rises at the equator (more precisely, in
between the equator and where the sun is highest), moves at a height of
12-15 km toward the poles and eastward, becomes cooler and turbulent
and sinks at a latitude of about 30°, and returns along the surface
toward the equator and westward.
The air is very moist at the equator and dry when it sinks down—
so the overall pattern is rain forest on the equatorial side of the cell and
desert on the poleward side.
• Ferrel cell: The overall movement is opposite the Hadley cell:
poleward and eastward along the surface. This cell is weaker and more
turbulent: the overall pattern is frequently interrupted, leading to the
fickle winds and weather of the temperate zone.
On either side of the cell there are high-velocity eastward winds
high up— the jet streams. At any one time these are not straight but
meander north and south.
• Polar cell: relatively warm air rises at about 60°, move poleward
and eastward at a height of 8 km, sinks at the pole, and moves
equatorward and westward along the surface. The air is dry so that the
whole area has little rainfall.
The 30°/60° values are not constants; a faster-rotating planet, or a hotter one,
will have a larger Hadley cell. (Venus, whose surface temperature is a balmy
467° C, has a Hadley cell reaching 60°.)
The bands of Jupiter’s atmosphere may derive from a similar mechanism,
with light zones marking upwelling and dark belts marking downwelling;
there are at least four cells.

Winds
The prevailing winds within the Hadley cell— trade winds— blow towards
the west. To be precise, they also blow somewhat toward the equator. You’re
likely to get a rainshadow on the west side of continents if the wind is
blocked by mountains; thus the arid west coasts of Mexico, Peru, and
Australia.
The surface winds in the Ferrel cell go in the opposite direction— towards
the east. Winds are named for their origin, so these are called westerlies. One
consequence is that there’s a natural cycle in the North Atlantic: you can go
west from Europe in the southern latitudes, and go home using a more
northern route. Winds are more variable here, but there can be a rainshadow
on the eastern coast— Patagonia is an example.
The black arrows show prevailing surface winds in January; the grey arrows,
where different, indicate winds in June.

There are some areas where the trade winds reverse direction part of the year;
the best known are India and Indonesia, where winds blow northeast in the
summer, bringing the monsoon. They depend on the differing heat capacity
of oceans and continents; so they’re likely where you have ocean at the
equator and a continent to the north or south occupying the 30° line. The only
region in the southern hemisphere that fits this configuration is the northeast
coast of Australia.
Currents
In the tropical and temperate zones, each ocean largely has warm currents
(shown in black) flowing in a circle: clockwise in the northern hemisphere
and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere. The Gulf Stream is an
example, giving a pleasant warm bath to northern Europe.
Cold water (shown in white) flows in from the poles. In the southern
hemisphere, where there’s a lot more ocean, the effect is important. Major
cold currents cool the western coasts of South America, Africa, and Australia.
In the former two continents, the cold current colludes with the coastal
mountains to reduce rainfall.

The great swirling currents in the northern hemisphere turn cold in their
eastern portion, as cool northern waters are pulled south and cold water is
drawn up from the depths. When these hit the mountainous southwestern
coast of North America they create a similar low-rainfall zone.
There’s not much room for big cold currents in the north, though small ones
come down to say hello to New England and Hokkaido.

Köppen classification
The Köppen climate classification system is widely used; it has five overall
categories:
A Tropical moist 0 to 20° from equator
B Dry climates 15 to 35°
C Subtropical 20 to 55°
D Continental 40 to 70°
E Arctic climates 70 to 90°

If you look at the climate maps below, these areas make fairly nice bands in
the big low flat areas of continents, as suggested by the last column.
There’s a color version of this map on the web resources page.
The latitudes discussed here apply to present-day Earth. On a warmer planet
(e.g. closer to the sun, or Earth when it’s not in an ice age) the tropical and
dry bands will extend farther north; on a colder one the continental and arctic
ones will extend farther south.
These zones are subdivided according to their seasonal variation. Here’s an
overview:
Temp—Code—Temp—Rainfall—Typical flora—Prototype

Tropical
Rain forest—Af—27 °C—heavy all year—very dense forest—Amazon
Monsoon—Am—20 - 27—long wet season—dense forest—India
Savanna—Aw—24 - 28—short wet season—scrub—East Africa

Dry
Desert—Bwh—13 - 35—almost none—cactus, shrubs—Sahara
Cold desert—Bwk—-6 - 28—almost none——Gobi
Steppe—Bs—2 - 25—minimal—grassland—Central Asia

Subtropical
Subtropical—Cfa—10 - 26—all seasons—deciduous forest—southern US
Mediterranean—Cs—11 - 25—wet winters—forest or shrubs—S Europe
Marine—Cfb—6 - 18—wet summers—deciduous forest—NW Europe

Continental
Humid—Da/b—-4 - 24—all seasons—forest, prairie—northern US
Taiga—Dc—-20 - 18—low—conifer forest—Siberia

Arctic
Tundra—ET—-28 - 12—minimal—no trees—Arctic fringe
Ice caps—EF—-80 - 15—almost none—almost none—Antarctica

The temperature column gives the seasonal variation; it was calculated by

averaging several different locations within the region.
These finer distinctions aren’t the ecological barriers of the major zones.
Mediterranean crops, for instance, grow quite nicely in Marine or Humid
Continental climates. (On the other hand, rice, which requires a good deal of
water to germinate, isn’t suited to semi-arid climates.) The zones do help
determine what crops and animals are available. Grains are characteristic of
grasslands or scrub; horses evolved on the steppe; pigs in forests.
The map shows high mountains— the Rockies and Andes, the Himalayas,
Ethiopia— as a separate zone; you can take these as cold and arid in general,
but divided into a plethora of sub-zones. High mountains are also important
because they block rain-bearing winds.
Below I’ll give brief descriptions of each zone and suggestions on where to
put it.

A – Tropical
These hot, largely wet climates occur in the equatorward half of the Hadley
cell.
Rain forests (Af) have heavy rain all year long, and little variation in
temperature. There’s not much underbrush, and poor soil. These are the areas
of greatest biodiversity— no one type of tree or animal predominates.
Location: Low continental areas along the equator, out to about 10°,
excluding the monsoon zone.
Monsoon (Am) areas have a long wet season and a short dry season; this is
determined by the reversing wind pattern described above (p. 53). The forest
is not quite as dense, and there’s more ground cover.
Location: Low continental areas off equatorial ocean, out to about 20°.
Savannas (Aw) have a long dry season and a short wet season. The typical
vegetation is scrub, with isolated trees. This should sound homey, because
it’s our ancestral environment— we still prefer its average temperature.
Location: Bands on either side of the rain forests and monsoon areas,
out to 15 or 20°, or as far as 30° on the east side of continents.

B – Dry
Deserts (Bwh) are areas of minimal rainfall; plants are cactus, shrubs, and
ephemerals that bloom during rare showers. Temperatures may become quite
cold at night.
Location: The poleward side of the Hadley cell. Storms travel west in
this region and deposit rain when they go from sea to land, so the
eastern coast of a continent won’t be desert.
 If the continent is thin at this point (as in South America and Africa),
only the western coast will be desert, and of a milder sort with fog.
Cold deserts (Bwk) are those in the temperate zone; they’re not quite as hot
in the summer and can get very cold, below freezing.
Location: In the temperate zone, shielded from rain by high mountains
to the west or toward the equator.
Steppes (Bs) receive a little more rain; they’re usually grassland or scrub.
They really come in two variants, hot (e.g. Damascus, Laredo, or Mogadishu)
and cold (e.g. Denver, Kabul, or Zaragoza).
Location: A thin transitional band between tropical and desert areas,
and between cold deserts and more temperate regions. Also the eastern
coast of continents in the desert zone.

C – Subtropical
These are climates in the equatorward portion of the Ferrel cell.
Subtropical (Cfa) areas have hot muggy summers and cool winters. The
typical vegetation is forest with some grasslands. The southern U.S. and
southern China are examples.
Location: On the eastern sides of continents between about 30° and
45°. They may also, as in eastern Europe, form a transitional zone
between Mediterranean and Continental.
Mediterranean (Cs) areas have dry summers and mild, rainy winters. The
vegetation includes evergreens and deciduous trees, fruit trees such as olives
and citrus, shrubs and grasses, all adapted to survive summer droughts. Large
parts of the southwestern US and southern Australian coasts have
Mediterranean climates.
Mediterranean climates are particularly important in the development of
agriculture; many of the world’s major crops were developed in the Middle
East. These were crops adapted to the summer drought: their seeds were
resistant, and thus easy to store, and annuals, which meant they put their
energy into producing seeds rather than inedible stalks.
In a wetter world— e.g. during the Pleistocene— these regions had a
different climate, humid subtropical or laurisilvan, without the summer
drought. The typical vegetation was evergreen hardwoods. This climate is
still found on the Azores and Canary Islands.
Location: On the western sides of continents between about 30° and
45°.
Marine temperate (Cfb) areas have mild and rainy summers and relatively
warm winters; they’re typically covered by forest. Britain and Northern
Europe are the prototypical case, though they’re so modified by agriculture
that only portions of the primeval forest remain. The Pacific Northwest is
another example.
Next to strong polar currents, a variation called Magellanic may occur, with
frigid winters; an example is the southern tip of South America.
Location: On the western sides of continents, poleward of the
Mediterranean climates to about 55°. On the eastern side as well, on
continents too narrow for Continental climates.
Some tropical highlands are cool enough to fall into this zone; in these
areas (e.g. Mexico City) winters are very dry.
Note that all of these areas are blocked by high mountains, which is why the
examples from the Americas are narrow, as opposed to Europe where the
region extends thousands of miles inland.

D - Continental
Humid continental areas are characterized by warm humid summers and
very cold winters. The vegetation is largely deciduous forest, giving way to
grassland in some areas. The area may be subdivided into hot summer (Da)
and warm summer (Db) regions.
Location: the eastern lowlands of large continents, poleward of the
subtropical, up to about 55°; the band trends a bit southward.
Taiga (Dc) has a brief mild muggy summer and very cold winters. It’s
mostly covered by conifer forest, though there are some deciduous trees such
as birch and aspen. Soils are poor and there is little undergrowth.
 Location: Between the humid continental areas and the tundra.
Parts of Siberia are classified as Dd with extremely severe winters, even
colder than the tundra; e.g. winter temperatures in Verkhoyansk average -46°
C.
There’s no suitable areas for continental climates in the southern hemisphere
on our planet. The only area at about the right latitude is Patagonia, which
however is a desert with little rainfall, perhaps due to the cold currents
offshore.

E - Polar
Tundra (ET) is defined by permafrost— i.e. the soil is permanently frozen—
and by the absence of trees. Vegetation consists of shrubs, grasses, mosses,
and lichens. Winters are cold and dark; in the summer the top layer of soil
melts, forming bogs and lakes.
Location: Along the poleward coast of continents above 60°. High
mountains also have tundra conditions.
Ice caps (EF) are areas covered permanently by ice. Vegetation is limited to
lichens and mosses.
Location: Polar oceans and continents, and the interior of large islands
above 60° (on our planet that means Greenland).

Ice ages
Before you get too excited about the descriptions and rules above, remember
that they’re quite wrong about at least one earthlike planet... namely ours,
20,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum.
At that time the continents were in virtually the same position, but ice sheets
covered Canada and Northern Europe as well as the Andes. The southern US
and central Europe were taiga, like parts of Siberia today; northern China was
steppe; much of today’s rain forest was arid grassland instead.
Ice sheets have geological effects: they depress the terrain, which takes
millennia to spring back during the interglacial— Scandinavia is still
depressed, which is why it has those lovely fjords, which are essentially
sunken river valleys. Retreating glaciers leave moraines, rounded hills
formed from rocky debris carried by the glacier. The larger lakes, such as the
Great Lakes, are also the results of glaciation.
During a glaciation the amount of water locked up in the ice sheets greatly
lowers sea level, exposing parts of what is now continental shelf.
Technically we’re still in an ice age, meaning an alternation of glaciations
and interglacials. It started about three million years ago; before then the
planet was ice-free, with a correspondingly different pattern of climates—
generally warmer and wetter.
The distribution of continents may affect ice ages, if they prevent the flow of
water from the equator to the poles— e.g. a continent resting on the poles, or
a polar sea being land-locked, both conditions that obtain today.

Land and sea imbalances

What if your planet is mostly ocean, or mostly land?
A mostly oceanic planet should be, well, awfully wet. You’re unlikely to
have very arid regions, unless you have an island big enough and with
appropriately placed mountains to produce a large rainshadow.
If there’s not much ocean, there’s also not going to be much rainfall. Look at
your major bodies of water and follow the prevailing winds to see where the
rain will go. Everything else will be dry.

An example: Almea
Here’s a map of Almea which attempts to follow the above rules, with one
major change: the planet is warmer than Earth, so I extended the Hadley cell
to 35° and the Ferrel cell to 70°.
Almea doesn’t have much land above 55° north or south, so there’s little
room for continental zones. There’s not a lot of land along the equator, and
what there is tends to be mountainous, so rain forest is limited. There’s also a
good deal less desert; Almea doesn’t have the large rain-blocking land
masses that produce the Sahara desert.
In the southern hemisphere, the east coast of both Ereláe and Arcél proceeds
from subtropical to marine. Usually we see marine climates on the west coast
in the Ferrel cell, but these are relatively small continental regions facing a
large ocean; a terrestrial analog is the east coast of Australia which has the
same progression. In the far south of Ereláe we’d get Magellanic climate.
The southern coast of Arcél would be Mediterranean according to the rules
given, but since it’s next to ocean I’ve made it Laurisilvan instead, largely
meaning that summers are dry rather than parched.
I actually worked out the above map while writing this book, and it differs
significantly from earlier versions of Almea. That’s typical of conworlding:
as you learn more, you find things that you want to redo. However, you need
to balance two opposing tendencies:
• Impatience— the urge to get it all done in an hour. If this
describes you, slow down and accept that good work takes time.
• Perfectionism— the urge to tinker with it forever. If that’s your
besetting sin, learn to recognize when you’re thrashing, making
changes without improvements. Instead of remaking something, make a
 variant: e.g. rather than redoing your main language, make a sister
language.

Rivers
Rivers flow from the mountains downward to the sea. You know that, but
I’ve seen plenty of amateur maps where the water flow just doesn’t make
sense— rivers cross high regions, there’s no high ground between separate
river basins, rivers wander down the middle of a peninsula.
Let’s look at an actual example. Here’s a map of Borneo, with rivers and
relief indicated; darker shades are higher.

Some things to note:

• There’s a lot more rivers than most conworlders would care to
supply. Rivers are roughly 10 km apart. You don’t need to provide this
level of detail, but don’t assume that the only rivers are the ones you’ve
drawn.
• There’s 70 separate river basins, though most of them are quite
small. Four basins (their mouths are starred on the map) are pretty
large; the largest of them, the Kapuas, is shown in white. The largest
rivers will drain the largest area.
• The smallest rivers run perpendicular to the mountains, feeding
into the big rivers that lie along the valleys.
• If two river basins are separate, the ground in between must be
higher.
Biology
Now that you’ve got a world, let’s populate it.

Sapients
Sapients, the class to which so many of my readers belong, are egotists—
they want to read about other sapients. Let’s review your options.

Humans
Your default. You can stop right there if you like.
If you add others, it’s fun to show what humans look like to them. You can
use this in a backwards way to help define the other species. E.g. the elves
might see us as volatile, bulky, terribly serious, and pitifully short-lived.
Many alien races see us as dinner.
It’s a common trope of s.f. that humans are special in some way— they
somehow disturb the interstellar order. This strikes me as conceited or even
speciesist on the part of these human authors… though we’re going to be
galactic noobs at first, and new elements can trigger change.

Humanoids
These are humans with minor changes... a somewhat cheesy way of adding
additional flavor. It’s completely hopeless from a scientific point of view; its
respectability comes entirely from convention, and that’s mostly because it’s
the easiest thing to do for TV, especially before the CGI era. A forehead
prosthesis, pointy ears, and body paint, and you’re in business.
But go ahead with it, if you like... how your sapients look is only the least
important thing about them anyway. Though could you perhaps avoid another
of my pet peeves: breasts on non-mammals? Mammals at least have the
excuse of needing something to nurse with, though no other mammals, not
even our relatives among the apes, have human-like breasts. Reptiles and
birds don’t nurse.
There’s another reason humanoids are popular: our visual systems,
understandably, are designed to react strongly to other human beings. We
immediately understand their body language and facial expressions; they
trigger our social and erotic responses. If one of your characters is a gorgeous
female, for instance, it’s very hard to show this visually except by making her
resemble a human girl.
For Almea, I enumerated a number of little differences from terrestrial
humans— e.g. their lips don’t have a philtrum, they have just four toes, they
have some odd skin and hair colors, and they aren’t as tolerant of dry and
cold environments. These are really just nods to the idea that Almea is not
Earth. I purposely kept their psychology and physical powers the same,
figuring that special powers would feel like a cheat— in a fantasy, readers
expect humans to act like humans.
If your characters are furries, consider giving some love to animals besides
foxes, cats, and wolves.

Elves and dwarves

If you like the Standard Fantasy Elves and Dwarves, fine. After all, you’re
simply following the footsteps of Tolkien. Or are you?
In many modern conworlds, elves are a type of humanoid as I’ve described
them above— humans with pointy ears and a Green Party membership. This
isn’t what Tolkien described at all.
Tolkien’s elves are literary descendents of the longaevi, the near-immortal
spirits of medieval literature. The longaevi or Fae are above all numinous
creatures— they should awaken awe and a little fear. They are depicted as
living in splendor and luxury, with immense vigor and lust for life (and
sometimes just lust; they might take humans as lovers). Their theological
status varies but seems to decline with the centuries; in the Renaissance
attitudes darkened and they were classified as demonic.
For more on the character and history of the longaevi see their chapter in C.S.
Lewis’s The Discarded Image.
You needn’t follow that tradition either, of course. But it’s a reminder to aim
high. If you have humanoid races at all, why make them nearly identical to
humans? What’s the point?

Orcs dark and dorky

The video game Oblivion has both goblins and orcs. Both are green and pig-
faced, but the goblins are evil monsters and the orcs are citizens of the
Empire— you can even play as an orc if you like.
Orcs are just a logical extension of the dubious fantasy trope that ugly = evil.
The evil counselor is bent and lame; the future betrayer is sallow and eye-
shadowed; the dark lord’s minions are slavering subhumans.
How do orclings become evil anyway? Are they taught to be cruel and
murderous by their parents, and if so doesn’t that make their teenage years
really rough? What happens if you take an orc kid and have it raised by
hippies in Berkeley?
It’s all pretty stupid and if you’re contributing to it, you should stop.
Following evil, or eeeevil, doesn’t thicken your skin and make your teeth
grow.
What can you do instead? Here’s some ideas:
• Follow human history. There have been some pretty scary
people: the Huns, the fascists, the Stalinists, the Assassins of Alamut,
the medieval free companies of pillagers, the Thuggee cult, the
Inquisition, the military juntas and warlords of contemporary Africa.
Some of these were doing what they thought was right; others were
pretty much villains taking advantage of the opportunities they saw.
• A variation of this is that orcs hate humans because humans hate
orcs. Perhaps humans are the real villains here. The orcs may treat
other orcs civilly... or try to; oppressed people can take out their
grievances on each other. I know this is sounding like an After-School
Special, but it’d sure beat another set of Butt-Ugly Badasses.
• Look at the animal kingdom. Dogs, for instance. In some ways
their character is highly admirable— they’re affectionate, loyal, and
brave. But rats and squirrels sure wouldn’t agree.
Would sapient species treat each other so badly? Well, look at
how humans historically treated the apes. Till relatively recently,
humans had no problem enslaving gorillas and chimpanzees, crowding
them out of their forests, or even hunting them.
• You can have recourse to some sort of degenerative magic or
 science. The classic zombie, for instance, doesn’t need much of a
backstory. His brain is fried, so all he wants to do is attack others in
order to spread the infection.
• Use symbolic or mythic associations rather than good/evil. For
instance, species based on the medieval humors (sanguine, choleric,
melancholic, phlegmatic) could be interesting. Or the five elements in
Chinese thought: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.

Is all this racist?

There may be a dark undercurrent to all the traditional fantasy races. The
same genre which produced fantasy species, and some of the same authors,
also talked about Africans and Asiatics in almost the same terms: the other
races were ugly, primitive, perverse, and at best cunning rather than
intelligent. There’s an echo of this in Tolkien’s description of Sauron’s
human allies.
You’re probably insulated by time from doing the same, but please think
twice about making your elves look like idealized Nordic fräuleins, and your
dwarves look and talk like miniature Celts.
This doesn’t mean I think that inventing humanoid species is forever tainted.
For some reason, humans seem not to like to be alone in the universe. All
cultures have told stories about other types of beings sharing the world with
us; in the scientific era we fill the sky with aliens. It seems like an innocent
and rather charming trait.

Would multiple sapients wipe each other out?

Some people have suggested that multiple sapient species are implausible,
because one species would wipe out the others.
As with just about everything to do with sapience, we just don’t know,
because we only have one example. You can’t reliably extrapolate from a
sample size of one.
Our own history suggests contradictory answers. It’s now believed that there
were multiple humanoid species on Earth at once, for hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions of years. So coexistence is possible. Only maybe not, since
in fact only homo sapiens sapiens survives today.
Species do tend to either crowd each other out, or separate or specialize such
that they don’t compete. This could work out several ways:
• Geographical separation. If a continent is isolated enough, it
could develop its own sapient species. (Though it’d better be awfully
isolated; there are unusual animal species in Australia or Hawaii, but
the same old humans.)
• Habitat specialization. On Almea, there are separate sapient
species that live in the seas and on land. On land, there are species
adapted to the mountains, to the forest, and to the plains.
• Niche specialization. Species might be so different in size and
eating habits that they largely don’t compete. Perhaps one species lives
as scavengers among another; or one is diurnal and vegetarian, the
other nocturnal and carnivorous. Less benign forms of symbiosis are
possible: predator/prey, master/slave, parasite/host.
Of course, once sapience evolved, mixing might develop. At this point you
have to decide if your sapients are separate species or not. That is, can they
have offspring together? If so one would expect widespread hybridization.
(The D&D system where only half-breeds exist seems short-sighted. If
interbreeding is possible, someone could easily be 3/8 human, 1/16 elf, 5/16
dwarf, and 1/4 orc.)

What makes a good sapient?

Here’s a formula for you:
sapient species = culture + biological differences
So most of the work is the same as working out a particular culture (see p.
116).
But sapients get some physical differences as well— hopefully not just some
tasks for the makeup department, but something more substantial:
• size
• lifespan
• number of limbs, digits, eyes, etc.
 • senses: are there extra things they can perceive? are there human
senses they lack? what senses do they use for communication? for art?
• food type: carnivore, omnivore, vegetarian, photosynthetic
• habitat: plains, mountains, forests, seas, outer space
• reproduction: number of sexes; does one sex dominate; how are
offspring raised
• unusual physical abilities: flight, probing tentacles, claws or
armor, infravision
• mental abilities, e.g. magic use, telepathy, healing, greater
conscious control over their own emotions or memories
Whatever you pick, think out how it will affect their life and culture. A
culture test or biography, for instance, should be very different than one for a
human... if not, either you didn’t pick a very exciting physical difference, or
you didn’t think it through.
• Thousand-year lifespans, for instance. How long does it take to
raise a child? Even if it takes a hundred years, that leaves 800 years that
an individual is neither a child nor raising one; what’s the effect on
family structure, on romance, on sex roles? How does the society keep
from being so conservative it never changes? Since they’re likely to
live with the consequences of any major mess-ups (pollution, global
warming, imperial decline), perhaps they deal with them more
responsibly.
• Or take flight. It’s not just a way of getting to point B faster; it’s
a way of escape. How could a dictator keep his subjects? There
wouldn’t be chokepoints where merchants could be charged tolls or
armies could be kept at bay. If flight is (say) five times faster than
walking, then settlements might be five times less dense. When do the
children learn to fly? This could greatly affect how families work and
what houses look like.
Even for fantasy, my preference is for plausible biologies. The dark elves are
said in some sources to live in caves. Uh huh. Even if the cave systems are
far more extensive than ours, caves just don’t contain much to live on,
because there’s no damn sun. I can buy them building their cities there, but
then I expect them to possess the lands above for hunting or farming or
whatever. Your goth spider-worshipping underground warriors are just not
going to thrive on the occasional blind cave fish.

Aliens
Aliens are really just sapient species plus an ecosystem. That is, a fantasy
species can just be tossed in the hominid bin— fantasy worlds are
unapologetically earthlike. But s.f. worlds are supposed to be entirely
different planets with their own evolutionary history. Instead of sapience
developing in the great ape line, it occurred somewhere else.

What can I steal from humans?

Humanoid aliens are easier to identify with and less of a casting hassle, but
they’re not biologically plausible. Look at the range of vertebrates from
whales to lions to kangaroos to snakes to velociraptors to owls to eagles.
None of them look remotely humanoid. And animals that occupy similar
ecological niches need not look particularly alike: compare kangaroos with
cows.
It’s true that some environments do produce convergent evolution.
Plesiosaurs, sharks, and dolphins belong to entirely different classes of
animals, but share a streamlined shape, heavy in the middle, due to the needs
of swimming long distances in the ocean. Birds, bats, and pterosaurs have
some similarities due to the nature of flight. But there’s no reason to believe
that sapience requires a body plan like ours.
Or more precisely, a case may be made that sapients could share some of our
features:
• Social structure. Animals do need a certain intelligence to hunt,
so predators are among the smarter animals... but they do just fine
without sentience. It’s fair to say that we use most of our own
intelligence for dealing with the most complicated actors in our
environment: each other.
(A puzzling partial exception: the octopus is extremely smart
while not being very social or even long-lived.)
• K rather than r strategy. These are terms from evolutionary
biology; prototypically r species reproduce quickly and disperse
offspring widely, while K species produce fewer offspring but invest
heavily in their care. These terms are relative: compared to humans,
rabbits are r strategists, but not compared to maple trees.
As intelligence implies socialization and acculturation, it seems
more compatible with the high parental investment of K strategists.
(Larry Niven’s Moties, who reproduce so fast that they’re a threat to
the whole galaxy, strike me as implausible, especially as the Moties are
said to have a K-like refusal to tone down their reproduction to avoid
problems with other species.)
• Neoteny, the retention of juvenile characteristics in adults. By
great ape standards we’re highly neotenous; or to put it another way,
we look and act a lot more like baby than adult chimps. Young animals
are exploratory and playful, characteristics that seem to feed into
intelligence.
• Omnivorism might correlate with high intelligence, since it
encourages quick adaptation, exploration, and extended local
knowledge. Carnivorism seems to require more intelligence than
herbivorism.
A corollary might be stereo vision, which is associated with
omnivores and carnivores. Hunting requires intense focus and perhaps
a more sophisticated view of the world, while prey animals instead
need wide vision to identify threats from all directions.
• Mobility. Though it’s certainly possible to imagine a sedentary
sapient— the Internet is full of them.
• Manipulator organs, such as hands. Dolphins may be smart, but
they’ll never get a technological civilization going with flippers.
• Since we live on land, we can accumulate goods, find shelter,
grow crops, discover fire, metallurgy, and chemistry. A purely marine
species might have trouble with basic technology. The sea also
constrains body plans more.
• It’s hard to imagine sapience without language, which allows us
 to organize our thoughts and speak about the past and future. We have
(and the apes don’t have) vocal tract adaptations that facilitate speech.
Another species might not communicate with modulated sounds, but
whatever medium it uses, its body will be adapted to modulate the hell
out of it.
• We need enough size to support an elaborate, energy-munching
brain. During our evolution from the other great apes, our brain size
increased threefold. That suggests that we passed the minimum
threshold for sapience somewhere in there, and that in turn casts doubt
on sapients the size of dogs, sparrows, or beetles.
Other human characteristics are, at best, tangential to our sapience:
• Our lanky frame— our long arms and legs— is shared with
other primates and developed for brachiation (moving quickly through
the trees). There’s no reason for canine or reptilian or insectoid sapients
to have our basic body plan, unless they also went through a stage of
brachiation.
• Bipedalism developed when we left the trees of the savanna, and
hunted by running after game. (Fun fact: humans aren’t the fastest of
predators, but they have awesome endurance— their prey get away but
can’t sustain the pace.)
• Our reliance on vision is also due to our primate heritage, as is
our fondness for vocalization. No reason another sapient species
couldn’t rely on different senses... though vision proved to be a
fortuitous choice, compatible with easy, permanent recordkeeping
(a.k.a. drawing and writing).
None of this is very limiting. I see no reason you couldn’t have sapient
creatures along the lines of large birds, velociraptors, tuataras, or most
mammals.
Not really our planet
One justification for all those humanoids is that some human-like precursor
race seeded the galaxy, somehow, with this shape. Larry Niven and Star Trek
have both played with the idea.
Though it adds an epic grandeur to galactic history, it’s poor biology; it’s
essentially creationism without God, a reflection of s.f. writers’ greater
interest in physics over biology. Our DNA confirms that we are very closely
related to primates, and primates to all other mammals; we’re clearly
products of this planet. Nor is there room to add secret instructions in the
mass of junk DNA in our chromosomes: anything not actually subject to
evolutionary pressure is thoroughly messed up by mutations.

Entire ecosystems
Just as another planet shouldn’t have hominids, it really shouldn’t have our
terrestrial classes of animals at all— even something as broad as mammals.
Another planet’s life forms should be at least as divergent as Australia’s.
So ideally, you’ll create an entirely new tree of life, and populate it with
several thousand new species, working out all their interactions.
Yeah, I haven’t done that either. (Though I know a biologist conworlder
who’s come close.) The usual expedient is to create a handful of species that
are compatible with your sapient aliens.
Life is awfully variable on our planet. At the same time, to an anatomist, the
similarities are striking. Limbs, for instance. As Neil Shubin puts it in Your
Inner Fish, the limbs of everything above the fish level— dinosaurs,
alligators, birds, bats, dogs, us— share a pattern: one bone, followed by two
bones, then little blobs, then fingers or toes. Such structural similarities can
be found all throughout the body.
And within those classes, the number of limbs maxes out at four. For all the
variation among vertebrates, none has six legs; none has even developed four
legs plus wings— wings have always developed from the front limbs. None
of these classes developed a third eye, either. All have about the same
digestive system, a linear track from mouth to butt. All have brains, spines,
and blood.
So most of your non-dominant species should have the same body plan as the
sapients. If you’ve got tentacled monstrosities in charge, their domestic and
wild animals are probably similar, with variations in size, color, and
proportion. Same story if your aliens have six limbs, or trilateral symmetry,
or antlike segmented bodies.
Insects, arthropods, and worms are different, of course— not everything on
the planet needs the same body plan.
An inspiring and informative sourcebook on inventing entire ecosystems is
Dougal Dixon’s After Man: A Zoology of the Future.
If you don’t believe in evolution...
Don’t sweat it; we’re not going to argue about it here. We’re talking
about conworlds, after all; there’s no reason your conworld couldn’t be
created by God, like Narnia.

Still, I’d suggest to you that God doesn’t create randomly and neither
should you. Cats are similar to lions, not just in appearance but in their
DNA. It’s a good idea to follow evolutionary principles anyway; just
think of them as God’s organizational system. Like an ideal
programmer, God re-uses patterns in a systematic way.

The environment and the body

Body details aren’t just arbitrary; they’re exquisite responses to the creature’s
environment.
• The most striking physical fact about us, compared with our
nearest relatives, is our lack of fur. This is a clue to our origin in the
warm tropical savanna.
• Animals in cold climates tend to be large, with small ears,
adaptations to conserve heat. Conversely, desert animals have large
ears to help radiate heat away.
Heat exchange is a function of surface area, not volume, which is
why the desert creatures need very large ears.
• I’ve referred half-jocularly to tentacles, but there’s a reason these
are largely limited to sea creatures— they’re heavy. What is essentially
a long, unsupported extra limb would be a liability on land (unless
they’re very light, like a monkey’s tail, but these are not going to be
lifting a lot of weight).
• Carnivores’ teeth are designed for attacking and cutting—
 they’re little knives. Herbivores’ teeth are designed for grinding and
chewing. Omnivores, like ourselves, get a little of both.
• As I’ve noted, predators often have eyes looking forward, to
provide close focus and stereo vision; prey have eyes facing sideways,
to provide near-360° vision to defend against threats.
• Thickness of limbs correlates quite rigidly with absolute size.
This is because weight increases by powers of three, while limb
strength depends on its cross-section, which varies by powers of two.
As you get heavier, the limb has to get thicker.
Sadly, this means that the creepy thin legs of insects are due to
their small size— you can’t scale them up to elephant size and keep the
thin legs.
All these guidelines must be adapted for exotic planets. For instance:
• A huge planet has higher gravity; animals are going to be
bulkier, and very large ones may not be able to exist. A tiny planet
conversely will have spindlier animals.
If you have sapients from such planets, they may be quite unable
to visit Earth without special suits.
• A dense atmosphere could support larger flying creatures; a very
thin atmosphere might support none.

Exotic biochemistries
If you’re ambitious— and savvy about chemistry— you can consider
changing the molecular basis of life.
On Earth carbon is key. Silicon, right below it in the periodic table, has some
similar properties. For instance, silanes (hydrogen-silicon compounds) are
analogous to hydrocarbons, and silicone (silicon-oxygen polymers) is similar
to carbon-based plastics and proteins.
A carbon-based life form oxidizes carbon, forming carbon dioxide as a waste
product— an easily dispersed gas. The counterpart is silicon dioxide, or silica
— a solid at earthly temperatures, and indeed the major component of sand.
Silica is a liquid above 1650° C, so perhaps silicon life is suited for
conditions of extreme temperature or pressure.
Silicon is the principal ingredient in semiconductors… so AIs could be
considered a form of silicon-based life.
Or life could be based on a solvent other than water. Ammonia (NH3) is a
possibility, though it’s a liquid only at low temperatures or very high
pressures. There are lakes of liquid methane (CH4) on Titan, which has led
to speculation about life that inhales hydrogen in place of oxygen.
The extremophiles are thought-provoking; these are organisms, mostly
microbes, that thrive in conditions of high acidity or alkalinity, temperatures
below the freezing or above the boiling point of water, etc. Hydrothermal
vents in deep ocean are an example, featuring bacteria that rely on
chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis. These in turn support a chain of
higher life forms.

Sexual display
All this sounds dreadfully utilitarian... isn’t there a place for pure flights of
whimsy? There is, in fact, approved by Darwin himself: sexual selection.
Basically, males and females just like certain species-specific body parts, and
those develop into sexual displays: spectacular colors, crests, horns, long
tails. If females like long crests, crests will get longer and longer. Human
breasts, so unlike that of our relatives and quite useless to the baby, may have
evolved in this way... in effect, because men liked them that way. (But there
are other theories. One is that the protruding nipple is more convenient to the
baby, especially as it has no fur to hold onto.)
There are theories that such displays advertise fitness— if a male can spend
energy growing an impressive set of antlers, he must be healthy. But this
doesn’t change the essentially arbitrary nature of the signal.

Predators and parasites

If you’re populating a D&D dungeon, or a horror level in a video game, you
throw in monsters by the boatload. This maximizes the challenge for the
player, but it’s nonsense as biology.
Predators have a tiny fraction of the population of their prey, and require a
larger territory. When humans were hunter-gatherers, population density
might be as little as one human for 3 to 10 km2. We have a population of
billions because we largely support ourselves on grains. A civilization of pure
predators would have a much smaller population.
We often project our own morality on predators— we picture them as cruel
and murderous, or as badass hunters. But from their own point of view,
they’re just hungry for dinner. They’re no more consumed by cruelty when
hunting than a man ordering a hamburger. It’s in a predator’s interest to kill
its prey cleanly and quickly... it can’t afford prolonged fights and the
inevitable injuries to itself. Likewise, most predators prefer prey comfortably
smaller than themselves (e.g. cats vs. mice); if they go after large prey they
do so in gangs. The biggest animals in an ecosystem will be herbivores.
Many writers assume that predator species would be particularly warlike and
aggressive. And they might well dominate the galaxy— if interstellar wars
were fought with claws and teeth. Technology equalizes individual
differences; just as a peasant with a rifle can kill a highly trained samurai, a
sapient herbivore with a phaser can blast a carnivore. The low numbers of
carnivores would be a disadvantage, if it came to war.
Another model might be parasitism. One can imagine sapients living inside a
huge beast or plant of some sort, but something big enough to be sapient isn’t
likely to be an internal parasite. More likely is something like the alien of
Aliens, which uses other creatures to host its offspring. But note, such
behaviors have to evolve in a pre-spaceflight context. Such parasitism again
implies a much larger population of hosts; and parasites that entirely destroy
their host species are foolish, since they will also wipe themselves out.
Parasites and hosts co-evolve to make the infection less than completely
devastating.
(Of course, the parasite might be in balance with its original host species, but
out of balance when it’s introduced into a new environment without those
natural balances. So the Aliens species might well be horribly dangerous off
its home planet. Our own history has many examples of diseases that
devastated populations not adapted to them.)
The take-home lesson is that monsters, at least in s.f., should have a
believable backstory. The classic bad example is the space slug in Star
Wars... how the hell did these things get up there and how can they sustain
their bulk merely on passing spaceships? Similarly silly are the D&D
creatures invented to let game masters penalize the players for ordinary
behavior: animated chests that eat people, worms that dive into the ears of
those who dare to listen at doors.

A few neat ideas

Here’s some ideas that (I think) haven’t been done to death yet.
Multiple sexes
You might be surprised to learn that we have these on Earth. An example is
certain slime molds, which have over 500 sexes. There’s a type of mushroom
that has over 20,000.
Don’t expect the individuals to come in 500 varieties— slime molds all look
pretty much the same. To biologists sex is determined by how many types of
reproductive cells (zygotes) there are, and by which can mate with each other.
(Zygotes of the same sex can’t mate.) Most species get by with two sexes, but
sometimes there are more.
Reproduction doesn’t require an orgy of 500 zygotes— just as in humans, a
new individual requires just two. One hypothesis about multiple sexes is that
they offer an advantage in low-density species, as it’s more likely that the
first other individual a zygote meets is one it can mate with.
Different sexes
Another possibility suggested by biology: two sexes that aren’t male and
female.
What we consider male and female is really a constellation of traits that need
not go together. Biologists use just one of them to decide the sex of a zygote:
the really huge ones (eggs) are female, the tiny ones (sperm) are male. But
some species have sex cells that are all the same size, so this rule can’t apply.
There’s a type of green alga, for instance, that have two sexes labeled plus
and minus.
There may be a reason we don’t see such things at the macro level; but at the
least we see that aspects of sex— zygote size, adult size, child-bearing,
nursing, child-rearing, aggression, social dominance— need not be allocated
between the sexes according to our own pattern.
We do see hermaphroditism among higher animals— a single sex, where
each individual can mate with any other. (This too might be a key advantage
for highly dispersed species, as you don’t have to search for the right sex to
mate with.) Sometimes it’s a spur to creativity to subtract common features
rather than invent exotic new ones.
One hermaphroditic species has a depraved, macho system: when two
individuals mate, they “penis-fence”... attacking each other with dagger-like
penises. The winner is whoever stabs the other first, injecting their sperm into
the loser, who will then bear the young. Wouldn’t that be great for a race of
warriors? On Earth we’re talking about flatworms, but you don’t need to tell
the warriors that.
A few species dispense with sex entirely, including some higher animals—
the whiptail lizard, for instance, reproduces by cloning. (Curiously, the
females mate with each other; this seems to stimulate egg production.)
Reproduction without sex has evolved many times, but it’s considered risky
behavior— the exchange of genes during sex produces more genetic
diversity, which is insurance against changes to the environment.
Colony organisms
The quintessential colony organisms are ants and bees, which in many ways
act like a single organism. Our bodies are cooperative assemblages of cells
which have almost entirely given up their struggle to reproduce— delegating
this to the zygotes. Similarly an ant or bee colony delegates reproduction to
only a few individuals, the queen and the drones.
But they’re an interesting model for more than reproduction, because they
suggest distributed intelligence: the colony as a whole is more intelligent than
its members. We can imagine a species where one individual isn’t sapient,
but two, four, or a hundred are. (I included such a species, the Rifters, on
Almea.)
Evolved humans
What would evolution come up with if allowed to work on humans for a few
million years? Or what might demented genetic engineers come up with?
H.G. Wells was here first, projecting English class divisions far into the
future with his Eloi and Morlocks; Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men
posits no less than seventeen further human species, while Dougal Dixon has
been here too with Man After Man.
The ideas of brutes and enormous brains are easy satire. Subtler variations are
more interesting: expanded memory, telepathy, greater adaptability to other
planets, greater control over our own body. Those with weak stomachs will
appreciate Iain Banks’ suggestion of a conscious bypass of the digestive
system.

Robots
By now robots are a hoary tradition in s.f., and every few months there’s a
new video showing some cute little robot mastering some new behavior. It’s
enough to paper over the fact that the s.f. stories are predictable— almost
every one, starting with R.U.R., explores the basic theme of robots rebelling
against their inferior status— and the basic idea is kind of barmy.
What’s the need for a general-purpose, man-sized robot? After all, anything a
human-capable robot can do, a human can do, at minimum wage. Humans
already are adaptable, self-reproducing, easily mistreatable, and rust-free.
What we need is more specific:
• Subintelligent robots— that is, appliances. You don’t need a
computer or an industrial robot that has full human functionality and
argues metaphysics with you. You just want it to be reasonably clever.
Many people want to talk to their appliances, but I’ll put it to you
that speech is a marginal UI, clunky and slow. I’m using a word
processor right now... I don’t want to have to say out loud “Move the
cursor three lines down” or “Count the pages”. I want to be able to do it
in an instant using a UI gesture.
You’re never going to program your appliances by talking to
them. Give emergency instructions, maybe. But determining day-to-day
operations— i.e. programming— is an enormously complicated process
requiring special skills and a particularly pedantic mindset. The basic
 problem is that our minds, and thus our needs, are situational. We can
describe the general principles of accounting or painting or quantum
teleportation, but there are always hundreds of details that we only
remember when they come up. Oh yeah, 501c corporations need a
different form. I forgot, when the wormhole is full of T quarks you gotta
use leftward denormalization. Programming requires a mindset that
systematically seeks out these situations and works them all out, and a
formalization that makes it fast and easy to record them.
A subset of useful appliances would be those that we incorporate
into our brains and bodies, forming cyborgs. You can probably think of
all sorts of useful applications, though based on past experience the
major uses will be gamebots, music bots, and sexbots.
• Specialist robots. An example is the drones used in the Middle
East: robots make sense here because they can go where US soldiers—
expensive and a political liability— can’t. It’s easy to imagine other
applications— deep-sea mining, exploration of Venus or Jupiter,
radiation cleanup— though note that complete autonomy isn’t always
needed here; a remote human operator can supply the intelligence.
What about child care or education? Perhaps everyone, as in Neal
Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, is supplied with an electronic super-
tutor? I can see this as a niche product, based on a certain
squeamishness about hiring help. Older societies had no such hang-up,
and I doubt the economics. Automation is only cost-effective for high-
wage jobs, and if you eliminate enough of those, humans become very
cheap.
• Massive minds. If you need to run a government, a starship, or
an interstellar megacorporation, you could use a mighty electronic
brain. But you don’t want human-scaled brains for that— you want
minds with far greater memory, reliability, multi-tasking skills, and
speed.
That raises the question of who’s in charge. In Iain M. Banks’s
Culture novels, the Minds are the masters— they essentially keep the
humans around as pets, or because their eccentricities occasionally
offer insights the ruthlessly logical Minds would never consider. Hans
 Moravec (in Mind Children) seems decidedly eager for AIs to replace
us.
But though it could be in particular humans’ interest to get rid of
most humans, it can never be in the interests of the species to eliminate
itself. The CEO of that interstellar megacorporation isn’t interested in
losing his job, either. Those massive Minds will probably be designed
as huge, amazing tools, with no more ability to supersede us than our
other grandiose projects, from cathedrals to nuclear power plants.
Of course you can have robots and robot societies if you like. What would be
their essential characteristics?
These will depend on their original purpose and subsequent history, as well
as their mechanical capabilities. They’ll be different, mentally and socially, if
they developed from military drones, domestic automata, or sexbots. (Charles
Stross’s delightful Saturn’s Children follows all of these in a world
transformed by the loss of the robots’ master, the human species.)
How are they produced? If they’re made in factories, they’re ultimately the
thralls of the factory owners, and of course they’ll have none of the biological
concern with reproduction. If they’re individually crafted, they’ll have more
autonomy, but will probably repair and upgrade themselves rather than
reproduce.
It might be interesting to set up some form of sexual reproduction— not so
much for the sex, though they might enjoy that, but to get the same
advantages biological life forms: the fortuitous creation of new abilities by
recombining existing progams and mechanisms.
It’s often assumed that robots will easily master human speech, but will
remain forever baffled by human emotion. This is quite backwards, so far as
I can see. Human language is immensely complicated, and sixty years of
intense effort hasn’t gotten us much closer to general purpose text handling,
much less speech handling. Emotion, by contrast, is simple and useful.
We’re enamored of reason, because it seems to differentiate us from the
animals— just see if you can create an industrial civilization, cat, without
knowing multiplication! But you have to admit, reason doesn’t prevent
people from doing or believing absurd things. If our basic needs— eating,
making a living, reproduction— could only be met by proper reasoning, most
people would starve alone. Instinct, by contrast, is single-minded and
reliable. Hunger makes you eat, lust makes you want to reproduce, fear
makes you save your skin, no matter what damfool notions you have.
Many emotions, positive and negative, help us as social animals. Love and
pity move us to help out others, especially the weak. Greed and envy help
keep the alphas from taking too much. Embarrassment dissuades behavior too
far from the norm. Gratitude reminds us to favor benefactors, resentment
raises the price for unsocial behavior.
It makes sense that robots should be built with deep, hard-to-alter urges and
failsafes that reinforce their purpose. If they’re servants, that might be a
slavish but envy-free devotion to human beings. If they’re military androids,
it might include a drive to seek out whatever meatbags— or enemy robots—
they’ve been designed to kill. If they’re corporation-running Minds, they may
feel pleasure from maximizing the bottom line, irritation at governments and
rivals, and benevolent concern for employees, graded by rank. Sexbots—
well, you can figure that out.
Perhaps the neatest aspect of robots is also less explored: they can
incorporate any technological ability. Here’s an easy way to explore what it
would be like to be a sentient being with computerlike memory, laser eyes,
wheels, telescopes, infrared cameras, chainsaws, pepper grinders, whatever.
Robots might retain the mutability of computers or early automobiles: a few
days in the shop and they’ve got a new ability. They would presumably retain
the immortality of computer programs: their data and software, everything
that composes their robotic personality, could be backed up and restored if
the robot itself was destroyed. On the other hand, perhaps they are also
plagued by the bugs and problems with interoperability that software is prone
to. (To a programmer, the Hollywood trope causing the most eye-rolling is
that any computer system, even an alien one, can connect to any other.)
Robots may not be a great practical idea, but they’re a powerful expression of
our age’s technophilia. We love— and fear— our machines. Robots allow us
to merge with our machines, to escape biological messiness, and at the same
time to worry about who’s in charge.
Animals and monsters
Creating alien animals and monsters is just like creating sapients, minus the
sapience.
For fantasy, no one will think twice if you copy Earth creatures, though it’s
common to tweak them: change the size or make them talk.
(Talking animals, from Aesop to Chaunticleer to the Monkey King to
Narnia to lolcats, are a perennial favorite. It’s an attractive notion if you love
animals, and also a great shortcut: if you see a talking dog or bear you can
guess their personality. As conworlding, it’s kind of incoherent... the animals
either live exactly as humans do, which makes them little more than humans
in costume, or they live exactly as non-talking animals, which doesn’t take
their new sentience into account.)
For s.f., I’ve already discussed the basic ideas: share body plans with the
sapients; don’t overdo the predators; bodies are adaptations to particular
environments.
Think about how species interact. Predators and prey co-evolve. To use a
silly example, if you give deer wings to get away from coyotes, then the
coyotes probably need wings too.
Keep sizes in sync. If the main grazing animal is size X, predators will either
be at least 2X in size, or they’ll hunt in packs.
Fanasy/s.f. designers love huge animals, but size is also affected by the
predominant vegetation: you’re not going to get elephants or apatosaurs in
thick forest. And the commonest animals will be small. Don’t forget to create
some vermin.

Sustenance
Peasants and nomads
Now that you have people, you need to feed them. Again, you may choose to
just give them beer, wheat and pigs. You can live on ham sandwiches
indefinitely.
Be aware that our crops are a mix of Old and New World. It bugs me that
Tolkien’s hobbits, in a mythical version of early Europe, are eating potatoes
and smoking tobacco, both New World crops. (Hot peppers, maize, squash,
and tomatoes are also New World and shouldn’t exist in a medieval or
classical European or Asian context.)
Agriculture developed in several areas, each with a distinctive package of
local crops. The Middle East started with wheat, barley, and peas; China with
rice, millet, and soybeans; Mesoamerica with corns, beans, and squash; the
eastern Amerindians with sunflower, sumpweed, and goosefoot.
The individual crops are not always nutritionally complete, but the package
is. Grains and beans each supply nutrients the other does not.
Often plants need some changes to be suitable for crops, and thus crop plants
differ from their wild ancestors. These changes include:
• Increasing grain size: crop grains are larger— in the case of
maize, spectacularly so
• Reducing bitterness— e.g. wild almonds are poisonous (which is
often what bitter taste signals)
• Increasing oil production and the fruit-to-seed ratio
• Inhibition of seed dispersal (e.g. popping pods) to facilitate
gathering
• Thinning seed coats
• Switching to self-fertilization, which allows plants to breed true
Plant genomes differ in how easily these adaptations are made. A single
mutation, for instance, prevents peapods from shattering; another single
mutation removes bitter amygdalin from wild almonds. The Middle Eastern
grains are particularly easy to adapt to cultivation. By contrast it took
thousands of years to produce large ears of maize, and oaks have never been
cultivated to remove the bitterness of acorns, which depends on a number of
genes.
For Almea, I created a package for each major climatic zone. For instance,
here are the packages for the continent of Arcél and points east:
Region Climate Food crops Textiles Animals
Belesao / Tropical stripcorn, sorghum,
truca nawr ox
Ȟaibalai teng bean
Kereminth Tropical streff, pigs
hardroot, yam
Uytai Temperate millet, pell, cotton, sheep, notseh,
ko bean, gram, huar cow, sammule,
potato piebird
Neinuoi / Temperate rye, meigrass, fluffleaf
Western Sea bigbean,
stoneroot, long yam

As you can see, these are all anglicized names, as I might use them in a
history or a novel— they’re the names English speakers might adopt if they
reached Almea. Sometimes they’re calques on the native terms (e.g.
‘stripcorn’ for Lé desú), otherwise loose phonetic adaptations (e.g. ‘gram,
pell’ are ħram and phel in Uyseʔ). In other cases I just used an English term
for a similar crop (e.g. ‘sorghum’ for Lé né).
Next I wrote a short description of each item and drew a picture, like this:
Pell (Uyseʔ phel). A tall branchy plant with
large, rough seeds. The seeds are dried in the
sun, which causes them to crack open; they
are then soaked, which causes them to
expand, shedding their shells, which float to
the surface and are removed. The remaining
porridge is cooked, or fermented into beer, or
added to millet bread. It’s higher-yielding
than millet, but grows only in well-watered
areas, such as river valleys.
None of this is necessary, but it allows at least as much realism as we’d
expect in a story about China or the Inca Empire. You wouldn’t buy a
description of a Míng peasant sitting down in his toga to eat fish and chips. It
should be just as jarring if your conworlders look, act, and eat like medieval
Europeans.
For textiles see the section on clothing (p. 169).
Which domestic animals you allow can have a large impact on your culture.
The Americas lacked horses or any large traction animals, which impeded
plowing, long-distance communications and transport, and warfare. They
lacked cattle and pigs as well, which reduced the opportunity to develop the
nomadic lifestyle.
Not all animals are domesticable— Africans, for instance, didn’t domesticate
zebras, lions, hippos, rhinos, hyenas, or apes. (Some of these have been
tamed but not domesticated: domestication requires breeding in captivity.
Technically elephants have never been domesticated; working elephants are
tamed from the wild.)
Jared Diamond notes the characteristics needed for successful domestication:
• Diet: carnivores have never been domesticated for meat; it’s
prodigiously inefficient. For one person fed on a carnivore’s meat, you
could feed ten on the animals the carnivore ate, or a hundred on the
plants they ate.
• Quick aging. Elephants, for instance, take a dozen years to
mature; no wonder it’s faster to tame wild ones.
• Easy breeding in captivity. Tame cheetahs were prized by the
Egyptians, but they refuse to breed in cages.
• Docility. This rules out obvious candidates such as the bear and
rhino, but also the African buffalo, the onager, the hippo, and the zebra.
• Herd structure. Most large domesticated animals live in herds,
with a dominance structure and overlapping ranges; these all make it
easy to keep them together in close quarters. Deer and antelope, for
instance, are fiercely territorial; males can’t be kept together during the
breeding season.

Types of agriculture
Though it’s technically part of culture or technology, it’s convenient to talk
about agriculture while we’re talking about crops, so you can tailor your
conworld’s crops to your sapients’ needs.
There are three main types of agriculture, which have profound effects on
culture.
 • Garden or shifting agriculture. A patch of land is cleared,
planted for a few seasons, and abandoned once the fertility goes down;
the farmers move to a new plot and nature reclaims the old. This
system is typical of tropical agriculture, partly because the rain forest
tends to have poor soil. When population is very high this leads to
desertification, but with medium populations it’s a sustainable,
effective use of resources.
• Irrigation agriculture depends on diversion of water from rivers.
The classic examples are the rice paddies of southern China, and the
intensive cultivation along the Nile and in Mesopotamia.
Karl Wittfogel argued that such societies naturally led to
hydraulic empires with a high level of state control, due to the needs
of maintaining extensive water management systems. Leaving the
system is difficult as the government controls the entire ecosphere, and
overthrowing it will merely change who’s at the top.
Wittfogel’s term “Oriental despotism” is unfortunate; Táng China
(p. 238) was far less despotic than contemporary European states. And
hydraulic states are certainly not eternal; China, for instance, hasn’t had
a dynasty that lasted more than 400 years. Ancient Egypt was despotic
not because the Nile was irrigated but because it was compact and
isolated, thus easy to unify and defend. As well, irrigation in such areas
started out small and local.
• Rainfall agriculture depends mostly on rain rather than on
irrigation; Wittfogel would argue that this encourages local autonomy if
not individualism, as self-sufficient settlements can easily be created in
new areas.
Agriculturalists are usually sedentary, but not always. The Apaches, for
instance, would farm in the highlands in the summer, and gather wild foods
in the lowlands in the winter.
Agriculture was preceded by the exploitation of wild grain, which also
facilitated development of a number of ancillary inventions: sickles with flint
blades, baskets, mortars and pestles, storage pits. This is typical of
technological progress— an invention can’t or won’t be exploited till
conditions are ripe.
Population
A major factor in the nature of society is population density. A land-rich
society allows easy expansion. It’s even argued that this correlates with
polygamy, as fertility can be encouraged.
A high-density region is subject to much higher stress— the genocide in
Rwanda was due not so much to ethnic tension as to desperation over land,
with 10 million subsistence farmers in a nation the size of Vermont. When
resources are limited, elites try to preserve their wealth by keeping their
numbers down; fertility is discouraged, leading to restrictions on women’s
rights. High population also of course leads to environmental degradation—
the majority of the population is likely to live barely above the starvation
level, and to be highly vulnerable to drought and plague.
As Thomas Malthus pointed out, in premodern societies increases in
productivity are soon eaten up by increased population. The average standard
of living is nearly a flat line from the earliest Neolithic to about 1800.
For reference, here are Colin McEvedy’s estimates of the population of
Europe and the nearer Middle East over the centuries.
9000 BC 250,000
5500 BC 1 million
2250 BC 10 million
1275 BC 25 million
415 BC 40 million
AD 362 65 million
1483 88 million
1648 100 million
1715 118 million
1815 200 million
1910 425 million
2000 690 million

And here are some representative city sizes and populations:

 Calah, Assyria 879 BC 358 ha 16,000
Athens 415 BC 225 ha 35,000
Classical Rome1 AD 1380 ha 250,000
20C Rome 1931 6780 ha 1,000,000
Tokyo 2010 219,000 ha 13 million

(One hectare = 0.01 km2 or 2.471 acre.)

Take care in comparing these to other sources, which are often inflated.
Bigger numbers sound good, after all. Very few historical numbers are based
on actual counts— Calah is one of the few that is.
Urbanism shouldn’t be exaggerated in ancient times. McEvedy points out that
a very misleading picture of Greece emerges if the name of a state, polis, is
translated as ‘city’ or even ‘city-state’. A typical polis was Megara, just west
of Athens; it had a population of 24,000, of which just 3,000 lived in the little
city (asty), also called Megara, that was its capital. That’s an urbanization
rate of just 12.5%.
(McEvedy’s estimate for Rome is contested, but figures of a million or more
make no sense; they require densities not seen anywhere on Earth, not even
in places like Calcutta.)

Nomadism
Eurasian society is dominated by the clash between agriculturalists and
nomads— going back to 2250 B.C., even before the horse was used in
warfare, when the pastoralist Semitic Akkadians conquered Sumer.
The Eurasian steppe, which extends across the continent from Hungary to
Inner Mongolia, has long been the power base for horse-riding nomads, and
for one empire after another: Aryans, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Turks. At
various times nomads conquered the Middle East, Russia, India, and China;
one group, the Mongols, created the largest empire ever. (See p. 248 on
nomadic warfare.)
Nomadism supports a much lower population density than farming, but the
nomads had a great military advantage: they were virtually nothing but army.
The entire adult male population was mounted, and trained in the bow and
arrow from an early age. Each man had several mounts, so fresh horses were
always available. It didn’t hurt that everyone was accustomed to butchering
animals and to quickly dispatching predators.
Peasant societies, by contrast, didn’t produce a natural cavalry, and peasant
levies produced a barely competent infantry. The medieval European
response was to turn its aristocracy into a professional cavalry; the Chinese
and Roman response was to co-opt the nomads— intimidate the nearer tribes
with raids, buy them off with tribute and titles, and if all else failed hire them
to counter the tribes farther off. The Chinese preoccupation with the nomadic
threat was a reason the capital ended up at Beijing, close to the steppe, and
why China was much less interested in the sea.
To the civilized states the nomads were “barbarians”, with implications of
cruelty, alienness, and primitiveness. Their fear and anger were not
misplaced; nomadic raids and conquests were enormously destructive.
Central Asia, for instance, never really recovered from the savage conquest of
Timur.
Civilized writers often fall into a pretentious disdain of their own society, so
sometimes “barbarians” have been idealized as everything urban civilization
is not— full of manly warrior virtues, free of urban luxury, corruption, and
softness. Creations like Conan tell much more about their creator’s values, or
dreams, than about actual nomads.
In fact nomads were very appreciative of urban luxury... after all, that’s what
they swept in on their horses to loot. They were a good deal more open to
agriculturalists’ religion than vice versa— Kublai Khan sent to the Pope to
invite scholars to explain Christianity to him; his descendants eventually
settled upon another import, Buddhism. And as conquerors, they generally
co-opted local elites and ran each country according to its customary laws.
As for machismo, it was urban and agriculturalist cultures that tended to show
the greater sexism. Khitan women, for instance, were quite powerful, and
even led armies; the Manchu ruling class of Qīng China didn’t practice the
foot-binding of the Chinese.
Nomads also co-opted the infantry and artillery of conquered agriculturalists
— cavalry alone had no advantage in siege warfare, which was needed to
conquer major nations. The Manchu had a good deal of help from Chinese
warlords... there’s always someone who prefers to be on the winning rather
than the ethnically correct side.
What ended the nomadic threat? Partly this was due to stronger states, which
however was merely a return to the efficiency of classical times. Gunpowder
was also key— peasant levies could become effective with guns much faster
than swords or spears.
The Arabs were not, as you might expect, nomadic horselords. Muhammad
was an urban merchant. Arabia produces excellent horses, but not in Central
Asian numbers. One of their great advantages was camels, which were used
to travel great distances across lands their enemies considered impenetrable;
but camels are unwieldly in battle. At Qadisiyya, the key battle in the defeat
of the Persians, their army of 30,000 included a cavalry continent of about
7000. Once the caliphate was established, it did make extensive use of
nomadic horsemen, but these were almost entirely Turks.
There is no steppe zone in the Americas or Africa comparable to that of
Eurasia, so nomadism has been much less important there. In addition, of
course, the Americas lacked the horse until European colonization.
Subsequently the “horse Indians” developed a horse-based nomadic lifestyle.

Hunter-gatherers
Let’s have some respect for the hunter-gatherers. They thrived for two
million years, without ever destroying or overstressing the planet.
Moreover, they were taller, longer-lived, healthier and happier than almost
any human society before our own. They were lean and fit, had a varied diet,
and didn’t work all that hard. Daniel Everett reports that the Pirahã, an
Amazonian tribe, work 15 to 20 hours a week— the men hunting and fishing,
the women gathering. Tool-making adds some time, but tools last for awhile.
The rest of their time is generally spent hanging around. Add in Internet
access and you’ve pretty much got the perfect lifestyle.
Living in tiny bands without animals, they avoid most of the diseases and
parasites of settled populations, and their social structure is loose. There’s
simply no great reason to tolerate a tyrant— he can’t provide greater
resources than anyone else, nor does he have a security apparatus to harass
dissidents. He can’t even steal people’s food, since it’s gathered as it’s
needed.
There’s one great drawback, but not one exclusive to hunter-gatherers:
warfare. Humans can be brutal to each other— as can apes, for that matter.
Marvin Harris suggests that warfare, by privileging the raising of fierce
males, degrades the status and lifestyle of women. This seems to be true in
some tribes, such as the Yanomamö, but not others, such as the Pirahã or
Bushmen.
Hunter-gatherer women nurse their babies for years, which seems to inhibit
conception; they bear babies about once every four years, while farmers may
have children every other year. The burden of child-rearing is thus lower, too.
Hunter-gatherers know their environment in extraordinary detail— they
know over a thousand plants and their uses, and of course all the animal life,
and they notice things like where a stand of melons is growing, so they can
go back to pick them when they’re ripe. They understand that plants
reproduce via seeds; why then don’t they take up agriculture?
The better question might be, why should they? The species was doing fine,
at least back when there were no agriculturalists to crowd hunter-gatherers
off their lands. Look again at those work hours— far less than in any
agricultural society. As one Bushman put it when asked why his people
didn’t grow crops, “Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts
in the world?”
So why did agriculture eventually develop? There are many theories, none
very satisfying. Climate change, for instance— agriculture started only a few
thousand years into the current interglacial. Hominids have gone through at
least five cycles of glacial periods and interglacials in the last half-million
years; the previous interglacial, the Sangamon, is dated from 125,000 to
75,000 years ago— well within the period of anatomically modern humans.
On the other hand, about 50,000 years ago— during the last glacial period—
we see a huge increase in tool complexity, and not long after that clear
evidence of art: sculpted figurines, cave paintings. So perhaps human biology
or culture reached some tipping point— we just wanted to tinker more.
Jared Diamond suggests that it was increasing population that led to
agriculture. Perhaps because of the general good times as the glaciers
retreated, populations started to rise. It may be significant that agriculture
first developed in a relatively marginal area, the Middle East, where a
scarcity of food might easily be felt.
Once the carrying capacity of the land was reached, people had to either limit
growth or increase productivity. Perhaps both strategies were tried; but once
agriculture started, it was unstoppable: the agriculturalists might be shorter,
unhealthier, plagued by diseases and kings, but there were more and more of
them. Fast forward 10,000 years, and the remaining hunter-gatherers have
been crowded into lands useless for crops or herds.
Some environments are rich enough to support a high density of hunter-
gatherers. The classic example is the Indian tribes of the American
Northwest, supported by the region’s highly fertile fishing.

Agribusiness
The Malthusian era, ironically, ended just in Malthus’s own time. We live in
an historically aberrant bubble of productivity growth, one that’s led
advanced nations to stabilize populations. Modern medicine nearly eliminates
infant and child mortality, while in other ways child-rearing is much more
expensive. (You can’t make a profit off the little buggers, for one.) So the
increased productivity translates into a higher standard of living.
Technically, American society is a mixture, with 70% of our protein coming
from animal sources. But food production has become a minimal part of our
economy. Less than 2% of Americans are farmers; most of us live in or near
large cities. Contrast this with most premodern societies, where 90% or more
of the people worked on the farm.

Ecological disaster
Some of the most malevolent actors in human history are not dictators but
diseases.
The most spectacular example is the effect of European diseases— smallpox,
typhus, cholera, and measles— on the New World. These spread quickly
from first contact and facilitated conquest and colonization. When Hernán
Cortés reached Tenochtitlán in 1519, half the population was already sick of
smallpox; the same disease killed the Inca emperor Huayna Capac and his
heir, leading to a civil war which Francisco Pizarro was able to take
advantage of. When the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth in 1620, they found the
site depopulated by disease. It’s been estimated that disease killed 90% of the
inhabitants of the Americas.
Why did Eurasia abound in diseases it could pass to the New World? Jared
Diamond posits that it’s the continent’s long association with domestic
animals, whose diseases can spread to humans.
The Black Death, bubonic plague, exploded out of the steppe in 1346, and
within ten years had killed 20 million people— in many areas, a third of the
population. Worse yet, the plague returned intermittently till the end of the
century. One effect was a labor shortage and a rise in wages. The general
shakeup of institutions may also have facilitated the innovations of the
Renaissance.
Epidemics tend to co-evolve to become less virulent over time— after all, if a
microbe kills off all possible hosts, it’s going to die out itself. The bubonic
plague is a grim exception, since its primary host is rats— humans are merely
an alternative when there aren’t enough rats.
There are other forms of ecological collapse which humans bring on by
themselves. One is salinization of the land caused by long-term agriculture. If
this continues long enough, the soil becomes too salty to grow crops.
Another is deforestation, which not only limits wood (a very useful resource),
but increases soil erosion; again, this leads to lack of fertility, as well as the
silting up of rivers and deltas The near total deforestation of northern China
and subsequent soil loss resulted in the Yellow River frequently shifting its
course, causing major and destructive floods.
It doesn’t take long for salinization to become a problem. In 3500 BC the
main crops in Sumer were wheat and barley; within 1500 years it was almost
all barley, which is more resistant to salt. By 1800 BC crop yields were a
third of what they had once been; the city-states of Sumer became marginal
and political power shifted to the north. The area had recovered by the time
of the Islamic conquest— only to collapse again centuries later, about the
time of the Mongols. In the 20C archeologists digging in the Iraqi desert
marveled at the lush world depicted in the tablets they were reading.
The picturesque landscape of the Mediterranean lands, dominated by olive
trees, vines, low bushes and herbs, is the result of deforestation— there used
to be plenty of forest. (The “cedars of Lebanon” referred to in the Bible are
nearly gone.) As early as 590 BC the Athenian legislator Solon proposed a
ban on the cultivation of steep slopes in order to prevent soil loss.
The Maya, originally garden agriculturalists, built an extensive urban and
agricultural civilization, clearing the forest to build permanent fields. But as
the population increased, crop yields dropped, silt damaged the raised fields
in the lowlands, and social unrest grew. The civilization collapsed, and its
cities were reclaimed by the jungle.
Salinization can be put off by leaving fields fallow, and by manuring (this
was unavailable to the Maya who had no large domestic animals). Terracing
helps reduce soil loss (but doesn’t eliminate it; the Greeks and Maya were
both great terracers). When problems start to occur, moreover, it becomes
harder and harder to do the right thing; the perceived need is more land, and
people start to cultivate more and more marginal soils, and reduce rather than
increase fallow periods, bringing the disaster closer.
In a sense dark ages are nature’s way of recovering after a too-intensive
period of human development.
Most of these ills are due to agriculture, but hunter-gatherers can cause
devastation too, by overhunting. The large animals of the Americas died out
at the same time as initial human settlement.

Fantasy/s.f. food sources

Anthropology stops here, but we don’t have to. Food could come from other
sources:
• hunting alone (for a carnivorous species)
• photosynthesis (for a plant-derived species)
• magic
• vats of algae formed into food-like shapes, injected with flavors
and nutrients— yummy!
• anything you want, constructed molecule by molecule using
 nanobots
• the less successful members of society. Cannibalism can’t be the
primary food source, however. Carnivores require several times their
biomass to support their population— if a species only ate conspecifics,
it would quickly die out.
Whatever exotic system you choose, decide how much work it involves.
Does it take the whole population most of their work week, as traditional
agriculture did? Is it a trivial economic sector, as in our society? Or
something in between?
What sort of population density is supported? One person in a square mile,
like some hunter-gatherer lifestyles? Huge megacities?
What resources are needed, and who controls those? Are they evenly
distributed through the land or concentrated in easily defended clumps? Are
they sustainable? How easy is it to create a new settlement, especially for a
dissident group?
What are the environmental effects, especially as the population density
grows? How high a population could the planet support this way?
History
History and culture determine each other, so which do you do first? I’ll
suggest history, since you can write an outline history without a detailed
understanding of your culture.

Filling in an outline
Earlier (p. 10) I suggested a narrative, two-line summary of the course of
your culture, the sort of thing you could pitch to a bored movie exec.
Let’s examine one of these and fill it out more:
It used to be... and now it’s...
two separate united, with cultural remnants
nations of the former independent
countries
Create a table comparing our own history with your conworld’s. This is going
to be fast and breezy— just a dozen lines long, on a more or less logarithmic
scale. Put in the two events we have somewhere.
BC/AD Earth Mil. New world
-9000 Agriculture 0
-4000 Urbanization 5
-3000 Writing; kingdoms 6
-2000 law codes; chariots 7
-1000 cavalry; alphabet; 8
coins
-500 Greeks; rise of 8.5
Rome
1 height and fall of 9
Rome
500 Dark Ages; Táng; 9.5
Islam
1000 Medieval era 10 two separate nations
1500 colonialism, 10.5
science
1750 Europe conquers 10.75
world
2000 Modern times 11 united, with cultural
remnants of the
former independent
countries

There are two reasons to include the précis of Earth history: to remind you to
outline the whole of your history, and to serve as rough defaults. A blank line
can be assumed to be similar to Earth’s development at that period.
So the current time in this world is comparable to our present? Meh. Let’s say
we want a Renaissance-like world. So let’s move the events back, and also
create some provisional names.
BC/AD Earth Mil. Novazema
-9000 Agriculture 0
-4000 Urbanization 5
-3000 Writing; kingdoms 6
-2000 law codes; chariots 7
-1000 cavalry; alphabet; 8
coins
-500 Greeks; rise of 8.5
Rome
1 height and fall of 9 two nations, Joausi
Rome and Mounia
500 Dark Ages; Táng; 9.5
Islam
1000 Medieval era 10
1500 colonialism, 10.5 united, er, Joausimounia
science
1750 Europe conquers 10.75 —
world
 2000 Modern times 11 —
I moved the component nations 1500 years back— the exact date can be
adjusted. So there’s a technological as well as a political difference between
the two periods.
Trying to name the united land brings us to the first of many questions about
making this history more specific: which nation won? Or is the union
something so new it got a new name?
But a single change of state is boring. Why not let both nations win, each in
turn? And only then, perhaps, a new nation emerges.
9 two nations, Joausi and Mounia
9.5 Joausi conquers Mounia; many rebellions
10 Mounia re-emerges, takes over Joausi
10.5 formation of united Naeja Republic
10.75 —
11 —

How did we get from a revanchist Mounia to a new republic, though? Maybe
another civil war, but we more or less did that. Perhaps another nation,
Ombuto, invaded, and it was in pushing out the invaders that a new national
identity was formed.
That’s a good start, but where did Joausi and Mounia come from? Let’s give
them very different histories:
Joausi Mounia
6 first city-states along
great rivers
7 empire of Kinyr
8 nomad invasions: cities form
proto-Joausians
conquer Kinyr
8.5 a dark age— some diverse littoral people
foreign or Kinyrian create mercantile
rule republics in a former
 barbarian area
9 Joausi nation unified Mounia
9.5 Joausi empire Conquered by Joausi;
many rebellions
10 ruled by Mounia Mounia re-emerges,
takes over Joausi
10.5 Ombuto invasion; formation of united Naeja Republic
One nation derives from nomadic conquerors; the other from maritime city-
states. We begin to get a picture of how their values differ, and even what
they might fight about.

Map time
It’s hard to get much further without a map. Note that some bits of the map
are already determined: Joausi must adjoin a region suitable for nomads;
Mounia is littoral; there must be a fair amount of room for Ombuto, a nation
that can threaten them both.
You’ll probably have a lot more world than you have countries at this point.
In the example we have three nations. Presumably Mounia and Joausi adjoin;
but what’s to the north, south, east, and west? Ombuto is one of those
directions, but what’s beyond it?
So add some names to the map— you can always change them later. While
you’re at it, name some of the major regions within the two main nations—
these will be useful as you add further history, as they may have been nations
themselves at certain periods.
The dark shading indicates mountains,which partly protect the southern
nations from the steppe.

A historical chart
Now that we have multiple nations, let’s expand the chart, one column per
region:
Zpatia Joausi Mounia Ombuto
6 city states
along great
rivers
7 early empire of first
kingdoms Kinyr kingdoms
8 conquest by cities form three-way
Jouausi on coast war
nomads
8.5 Vlapuyn dark age— littoral early
unites rule by people Ombuto
Zpatia, Zpatians; create empire
forms rebellion by mercantile
empire Kinyrians republics
9 collapse; Joausi Mounia nomad
dark age kingdom united conquest
9.5 Joausi ruled by warring
empire Joausi states
10 divided conquered Mounia re- rise of
into small by Mounia emerges, united
states becomes empire
empire
10.5 eastern Ombuto Ombuto invades
states invasion; invasion; Mounia
occupied Naeja Naeja
by Naeja republic republic

This sort of chart is easily converted into a graphic. Keep the basic idea:
regions across the top, time down the sides. But present the information
graphically. Color in each of the nations; make the size proportionate to how
much of the region they control. Here’s the above table turned into a chart:

The graphics allow a lot more detail in the same space. E.g. I was able to
suggest the back-and-forth of the struggle to form Ombuto, rather than just
label this spot “three-way war”; it’s also possible to see stages in the conquest
of Mounia and the emergence of Naeja.
Avoid the pattern of “state emerges, stays the same till it’s conquered”. E.g.
look at Souru and Mieje, two of the city-states that formed the Republic of
Mounia: the scalloped border between them indicates that they alternated
periods of dominance.
Also avoid kingdoms or city-states that are all the same size. Some should be
much larger, some much smaller.
When you develop historical details, be bold. A sort of psychological block
can develop— you’ve labeled a portion of the map “Mounia” and you think
of it as always being one country. But few nations have a simple history.
Apply the principle we started with at smaller levels: this region is now X,
but it used to be Y.

Historical atlas
The historical chart can now be turned into historical maps. As a boy I
discovered Colin McEvedy’s Penguin Historical Atlases; in four slim
volumes he covers the whole of European and Middle Eastern history, with
several maps per century, plus a brisk, wry, and informative commentary.
Companion volumes treat North America, Africa, and the Pacific. These
books are invaluable for giving a wide perspective on history, but McEvedy
is also a master at lapidary character portraits that bring history to life:
Fortune smiled on Spanish arms but Ferdinand deserves his traditional
share of the credit. Ever willing to compromise, always offering to take
the smaller half, he usually ended up with the whole bag.
You can draw horizontal lines across your chart at key points and use these as
guides for making the map. The main idea is that you are translating
diagrammatic conventions to geographical facts— e.g. “half of Mounia
controlled by Joausi” must be translated into an exact division of the territory.

Formats
My historical atlas of Ereláe includes maps for 43 dates, from the remote
paleolithic (-25,000) to Almea’s present, Z.E. 3480, plus 13 supplementary
maps covering things like terrain, cities, and languages. And this is still only
about 1/4 as large as McEvedy’s coverage of the West.
You can do far less than this, of course— a couple of maps of “ancient times”
may be all you need. But the more maps you have, the more story you have
in your history. You accumulate a rich cultural lore and a set of past heroes
and villains.
Movements and borders are constrained by geography. I recommend
including the major mountain ranges on your base map. These make natural
boundaries— e.g. the Pyrenees separate Spain from France, the Alps protect
Italy, the Carpathians form a minor barrier around Hungary. (Mountains
paralleling the coast, such as the Atlas range in the Maghreb, are less
important for history).
Be aware of ecological boundaries too. The most important are those
between climate zones, such as tropical, temperate, and arctic. People are
unlikely to expand into areas where their crops don’t grow— or where the
local diseases kill them off.
Just as important is the distinction between areas suitable for cultivation, and
those best suited for nomadism— the steppe. These boundaries are somewhat
permeable: a strong nomadic nation can force the agriculturalists off
grassland, though not forest.
Know where your major rivers are; these are natural transportation arteries
and sites for cities, and their basins make a natural ecological zone. The area
separating river basins will be higher ground and form a natural boundary.
Another natural ecological zone is the littoral, areas in close contact with the
sea. A very convoluted coastline, as in Greece and western Anatolia, extends
the littoral zone. A littoral zone makes a natural maritime nation, distinct
from the nations of the interior. The ancient Greeks by preference colonized
nearby regions that also belonged to the littoral zone: the Crimea, the
Mediterranean islands, the boot of Italy. A relatively straight coastline
produces only a small littoral, less likely to form a distinct nation.
A lesson from terrestrial history: few regions belong to the same people
forever. Think in terms of population movements. As a corollary, the
majority population of almost any nation originally came from somewhere
else. (This is sometimes reflected in the people’s mythology— though a more
prestigious place of origin may be substituted, as the Romans claimed to
descend from Troy.)
Movements trigger counter-movements. E.g. the movement of the Huns into
Europe impelled a number of Germanic peoples to try their luck in the
Roman Empire. Or the movement may be a counter-invasion: the ancient
Persians’ attempt to conquer Greece ultimately led to the Greek conquest of
Persia.

Methods
The first version of my historical atlas was done on paper. I created a base
map with only oceans, rivers, and mountains, and took it to a printer to get a
hundred pages printed in a light blue color. That was enough to do the atlas,
then redo it better.
Now that color printers and photocopiers are available, you can easily make
your own blank maps, and with far better colors.
These days, though, you can get better results entirely on the computer. You
can proceed in several ways, most but not all of which involve handing
money to Adobe.
See the Maps chapter (p. 285) for how to create the actual maps. Some
programs you can use for the atlas:
• A good paint program, or to use the technical term, anything but
Microsoft Paint. Create the base map— just the geographical features,
no lettering. Start from this every time you need to make a historical or
other kind of map.
• Photoshop, or GIMP— any paint program which supports
layers. Now you can place the oceans, rivers, and terrain on separate
layers, and each historical map on its own layer above those. Each bit
of text gets its own layer— this can quickly get out of hand, so this is
perhaps the best solution only if you need a handful of maps, rather
than 50.
• Illustrator, or Inkscape. Put the base map as a bitmap on one
layer. Everything you need for one map— borders, towns, text,
transparent regions to color in the countries— can live in a separate
layer. You can easily switch between maps by setting their layers’
visibility.
 • Flash. I used this method for the atlases of Arcél and Skouras.
Flash is two-dimensional: it has layers and frames. The layers will
work like Photoshop: one for oceans, one for rivers, one for boundaries,
one for names, etc. The frames correspond to each of your maps.

Flash makes it easy to share elements between maps. In the

example, the base map, terrain colors, and rivers are shared between all
maps. The “nonhumans” layer contains only a few different frames, as
the boundaries of the nonhuman states change much less often than
those of the humans.
Best of all, the atlas can be played as a movie, and you can see
your nations wax and wane over time. You can also add controls to
hide or show the layers; my Flash atlases allow the viewer to step
through the maps with or without layers for the terrain, cities, language
colors, or political colors.

Example: Novazema
Here are three rough maps of Novazema, at three points within the last row of
the graph.
First, here’s the beginning of the Ombutese invasion: Ombuto has occupied
the coast nearest its own territory.
You can add new details at any point— I’ve added some tribe names to the
steppe area. Adding names is a good first step, but get into the habit of
thinking about the stories behind them: what makes this place different from
that place over there? Terrain, language, religion, what? If the difference is
cultural, when did it arise?

The map below shows Ombuto in control of both countries, but rebellions
have occurred in each. Perhaps these almost fail before they overcome old
antagonisms and decide to work together to expel the invaders.
Now that we’re looking at individual maps, quirks of geography— or just
whim— can suggest additional stories. The island of Akaerti is either another
rebellion, or was never conquered by Ombuto.
Marginal areas should have changes too. Here the Kašaeni have absorbed
their neighbors, the Sindri.
Here’s the present state of affairs, after the Naeja Republic has not only
kicked the Ombutese out, but taken some Ombutese territory, and conquered
Dviona to the west as well. Ombuto’s weakness has allowed a buffer state,
Ndato, to form.

It looks like Akaerti did its bit in fighting the Ombutese, but refused to join
the Naeja Republic.

Iterative development
Don’t try to rush through a project as large as a historical atlas. The Atlas of
Almea I posted on my website is about the fourth version I did, and by the
time you’re reading this I may have revised it again. If you’re in a hurry, do
the historical table and just a few maps.
Your first map is likely to be breezy and characterless... a bunch of similar-
sized kingdoms that bubble up into empires and divide for no apparent
reason. That’s fine— inspiration can flag. This is one reason to create rough
draft maps at first, so they’re easy to go back and revise later, as you think of
new and better things to happen.
It’s also a good idea to stop after the rough draft stage, and work on the
culture, religion, and technology, using the following chapters. A rough
history is enough to inform your cultural creation— if you want to say
“Religion X was invented in Y”, you have some names for possible Y’s and
your map suggests propagation routes. You’ll know what your main culture’s
neighbors are and something of what makes them tick.
But for the polished version, especially the commentary, the more you know
about the culture the better. You want to know not just what happened, but
why. The meaningless unions and divisions of the rough draft can take
significance as dynastic quarrels, religious splits, the result of mercantile
success or military advances, the consequences of corrupt emperors or
ecological crises.
If you’re working out languages at the same time, think about what happens
to entire language families. An empire normally imposes a standard
language, which then splits into daughter languages over the course of a
millennium or two.
You’ll need a naming language for each region of your map; some of them
should be related and look somewhat alike. Working out the full culture,
religion, and history of your main conculture is difficult without working out
its language, or at the least a lexicon of a few hundred roots.

Example: What’s next for Novazema?

For the maps of Novazema, the maps suggest a story, but it needs to be
fleshed out. Why did the Mounian empire fall so quickly to the Ombutese—
was it decadent, unpopular, or simply technologically backward? What
allowed the rebellion to begin? Was it merely an ethnic rebellion, or a new
ideology, as suggested by the new name Naeja and the change from empire to
republic? Why wouldn’t Akaerti join? Why did the republic, founded to
counter a foreign invasion, turn around and occupy one of its neighbors?
Think about who did these things— who were the Ombutese kings; whose
idea was the republic?
Look at the more static areas of the map— it’s not very realistic that pretty
much nothing has happened in Dneva and Hrev for the last five centuries.
And perhaps because I didn’t put the steppe into the historical chart, there’s
no interaction here between its inhabitants and the lands to the south.
The reason why
Why did Ombuto invade?
• Arashne the Great, the favored prince of Ombuto, after
consolidating his power, sought eternal glory, setting himself against
the canny and brave empress Kiraeku of Mounia (the Great Man
theory)
• Trade, even Ombuto’s internal commerce, was dominated by
Mounians; if they were conquered this engine of wealth would be
Ombuto’s (the economic explanation)
• Arashne’s line and upbringing was Sito, disdained by the
Ombutese proper. He thus had a burning urge to prove himself and
quash dissent (the psychological explanation)
• The Ombutese nobility was feudal and war was their raison
d’être; the best way to keep them from rebellion or frivolity, and to
strengthen the state, was an external war (the cultural explanation)
• Sithiswe, the god of Peace, entered on his long cyclical sleep,
leaving Harana the goddess of War as his regent. Men had no choice
but to fall into war (the mythological explanation)
It could be all of these, of course. Your history becomes more interesting, in
fact, the more reasons you add. You can start, as we did above, with mere
statements of fact like “Ombuto invades”, but the world starts to seem real
once you can explain why, on several levels.

Who’s talking?
The commentary for my atlases takes a pseudo-scholarly tone, but that’s only
one alternative.
Historians aren’t omniscient; for Almean studies I allow my point of view to
be limited by native sources— e.g. little archeological information is
available, and I describe conflicting sources and historical mysteries. If you
prefer, of course, you can know everything about your world.
Or you can take a native point of view: e.g. the history of Novazema might be
relayed by a Mounian, with appropriate biases and gaps in knowledge— this
can be a lot of fun to write. I’ve mentioned the Count of Years, a native
Almean history. Oblivion and Skyrim , are filled with stories, poems, and bits
of history or ethnography all written by natives.
Native writers might simply wish to relate the facts as they know them; or
they might have an agenda. Perhaps our Mounian wishes to glorify the old
empire, or justify the new republic, or advance a religious revival. The
narrator might even be unreliable— events can be narrated in a way that
suggests a different story or interpretation to the reader.
Here’s the same event narrated in three different styles:
Academic: Arashne spent two years mustering his army, ferrying troops to
Paedha, the Mounian port his father had captured. There were endless delays
due to the scale of the operation; the force was not ready till early fall. Eager to
make use of the remaining campaign season, he ordered the attack to begin. But
the delay had allowed Kiraeku to move a hastily raised army into position, and
as winter fell the invasion petered out at the gates of Mieje, just 100 km into
Mounian territory.
Partisan: The alien despot launched a sneak attack at harvest time, with over
200,000 death-pale Ombutese and thousands of traitorous Paedhans.
Forewarned in time, our brave Empress Kiraeku personally led the loyallest of
her troops, a bare 50,000 stalwalt fighters, to meet the invaders with their cruel
curved swords. The horde was halted at the desperate battle of Mieje, but the
invaders remained outside the city and were rumored to be fetching cannons.
Reinforcements were few; fear led many to desert Mounia at the hour of her
greatest need.
Religious: These were the dark times of Harana into whose hands the world of
mortals was delivered; Lord Arashne made sacrifice and drank blood in Her
worship. Possessed by the goddess, the Lord and his warriors burned with
wrath and they advanced into the heathen lands causing great devastation with
sword and lance and musket. They halted before Mieje as even Harana must
not act in the night of the year, the season of the Nameless God.

Cities
These maps— to say nothing of modern politics and economics— give the
impression that history is all about countries. This is highly misleading; it’s
all about the cities.
Why are cities important?
• They’re key military strongholds. A rural area can’t resist an
invading army; a city can, and in fact conquering a country, as opposed
to ruling it, can’t be done without taking the cities— a formidable task
before cannons were invented.
• Because of this they’re the safest place for rulers to hang out,
and thus they become centers of administration.
• They’re economic powerhouses, before modern times the site of
all manufacturing and banking, the endpoints of trade routes. They
generate wealth that rulers can tap in its most convenient form, money.
In Europe town culture— the literal meaning of bourgeois— was
the origin of the middle class, and thus of republicanism and capitalism.
• For all these reasons they become cultural hubs, the home of
artists, writers, theaters, and universities. Cities also become the focus
of language varieties; a standard language is almost always the speech
of a prestigious town.
• Most important, perhaps, they’re the center of innovation—
even advances in agriculture such as mechanical reapers and electricity
begin in or near cities. The Renaissance began in the most urbanized
parts of Europe, northern Italy and Flanders.
For many reasons (including high-speed transportation and the fad for nation-
states) the 20C was a rough time for cities; Americans may still feel that
cities are swamps of poverty and crime. Historically it was quite the opposite:
the cities were rich and far safer than the countryside. (Unhealthier, though.
Dense populations breed disease, attract vermin, and create loads of waste.)
For more on this I recommend the books of Jane Jacobs, cited in the reading
list; also see the essay on cities on my website.
What do you do with this in your conworld? Well, create cities, for one.
That’s why I have a cities layer in my atlases, so I can see where they are.
• In earliest times, kingdoms are likely to be city-states. When one
gets strong enough to conquer the rest, the empire stage begins.
• If a nation is conquered in stages, this corresponds to taking one
 city after another.
• Some regions, such as ancient Greece and medieval Italy, never
really coalesce as nations, but remain patchworks of city-states.
Cities aren’t interchangeable; cities and whole regions develop specialties—
e.g. the wool trade in medieval Flanders, or the auto industry in 20C Detroit.
A specialty may develop by accident, but once it exists it’s self-reinforcing:
support industries grow up, skilled workers abound. It’s not easy to bite into
such an area’s market share (but when it happens, it’s likely to be a major
economic event).
Cities can last thousands of years, but they can be abandoned in a dark age or
a conquest, and not all are reestablished. So don’t have the same cities in
every epoch.
See also p. 91 on city sizes, and p. 297 on city plans.

Cycles
Are there cycles to history? Nations certainly have their ups and downs; so do
economies. The Chinese have long noted a pattern of vigorous rulers at the
beginning of a dynasty and weak ones later on. In the last few centuries
Western nations seem to alternate between periods of revolution or reform
and reactionary cooldowns.
Attempts to set fixed years on apparent cycles require a bit too much special
pleading. For conworlding, cycles are a reminder to have stuff happen. Throw
in a major war, a revolution, a great intellectual discovery, a plague, an
ecological disaster, a new religion, an orc invasion.

Alternative histories
Instead of creating a world from scratch, you can take ours and tweak it. The
usual method is to take a single event and have it come out the other way:
e.g. Hitler won (Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle), or the
Reformation never happened (Kingsley Amis, The Alteration), or a Jewish
homeland was set up in Alaska rather than Palestine (Michael Chabon, The
Yiddish Policemen’s Union).
Or there may be an ongoing difference. In Alan Moore’s Watchmen, the
difference is that superheroes are real in the Watchmen world. Or your goal
may simply be to insert a fictional country into the map of Europe.
The advantage is that you already have your planet, with a full history and set
of cultures up to the point of divergence. You’ll need good research on the
period of divergence, however, to make your alternative history plausible.
Reversing the last battle of a war is usually not convincing: you have to
address the reasons for the victory. If Napoléon had won Waterloo he would
likely have lost the next battle, perhaps when the Austrians or Russians
arrived. (As Ken Hite and Mike Schiffer point out, the real divergence in
many an alternate history is “so-and-so wasn’t as much of an idiot as in our
timeline”.)
If the divergence is quite early, you’ll be doing quite a bit of conworlding.
E.g. if Persia had beat the Greeks, the world would look very different 2000
years later. And even if you just make the winning side last longer, as in the
ever-popular ongoing Roman Empire, clothes and language and religions
won’t be the same as in the 1C.
The process is most impressive if you think out second-order effects. For
instance, Amis has Martin Luther becoming Pope; one result is that his
puritan ideals prevent Michelangelo from designing St. Peter’s.
Four centuries later, Amis has Jean-Paul Sartre becoming a Monsignor. This
sort of thing is hard to resist, and of course it supplies you with ready-made
personalities, but I find it hard to swallow. If the big picture is radically
different from our timeline, there’s no reason the little details are the same
long after the point of divergence.
Don’t forget demographics. By Hannibal’s time Rome had a 4-to-1
population advantage and was unlikely to be conquered by Carthage. There
are similar problems with attempts to make a successful Confederate States a
real rival to the USA.
Lost cause histories are the bread and butter of alt history, but be careful if
you sympathize with the lost cause: you may be tempted to write a utopia,
and utopias kill storytelling.
Culture
What’s a culture? Everything that’s not biology nor individual choice. To be
specific, this chapter will cover things at the level of the whole society:
culture tests, government, law, and the economy. The next chapter will look
at things at the individual level: family life, clothing, architecture, and other
aspects of daily life. Religion, magic, technology, and war get their own
chapters.
Many things we imagine are universal– how men and women relate, rules on
invitations and gifts, how negotiations proceed, how much you can get from
your family, attitudes toward nudity or fidelity— are really cultural.
You can also work backwards: take what seems to be a commonplace of
human experience (e.g. “people prefer girls to old women”) and imagine a
society where the opposite holds. It’ll make your culture at least distinctive,
and at best fascinating.

Culture tests
A good way to begin describing a country is to write a culture test. The best
way to explain these is to show you one. There are a couple dozen more
available from my website, for both real and imagined countries.

Skourene culture test

Skouras is a region on my conworld Almea; it’s a maritime culture,
comparable to ancient Greece or Phoenicia. The culture test is intended to
apply only to urban residents, as these are the dominant and most interesting
class.
If you’re Skourene...
• You think the gods are important— everyone should have one. But you
can’t imagine telling someone outside your bsepa (your extended family) who
to worship. In some foreign countries the rulers tell you who your gods are.
Crazy!
• You’re reverent to all gods— who needs supernatural enemies?— but
you reserve your sacrifices and requests for the two gods of your bsepa, one
 male and one female.
• You can ask the gods for things because that’s their job: they’re helpers
and guardians. Things can become gods— some gods even used to be human
beings— and they can cease to be gods. The world, including its gods and
people, was originally created by Ksaragetor (who is responsible for all good
things) and Gamagetor (who was not so good at his job and created all the
messed-up things); but no one worships them or knows much about them.
• You can read— how would you do business without it? You enjoy
reading stories, the convoluted history of the Skourene states, sermons, poems,
satires, philosophy, treatises about your trade, and much else.
• Games are simply training for war: running, swimming, archery, rowing,
wrestling, spear-throwing, sword-fighting. If you’re male, you like to
participate in these and watch exhibitions by masters— or even better, fights
with captured prisoners. If you’re female, you grew up playing at these things
too, and can pursue the first three as an adult, if you care to.

Would you eat that? I’ll have a slice

• We’re here to work; if you get tired of doing one thing, do another; if
your feet hurt, do the accounting; if you’re sick of the city, take to the sea. This
isn’t to say you can’t enjoy yourself with food and drink and amusements, but
don’t tell me you want to do that all day long.
• You like to eat a big meal in the evening, at home with your family; but
you usually buy your lunch in the market, or take some business associates to
an eatery (tnasali).
• There’s very little that you wouldn’t eat. If you travel to faraway places
and see exotic animals, your mouth waters.
• You don’t like to live far from the water, and you take a morning bath
every day if possible— if you’re poor, right in the ocean or the river; if you’re
better off, in the heated city baths.

Do I get paid for taking this test?

• If you need a letter or package sent to someone in the city, there are
messengers who will take it— you just flag one down in the street. Barefoot,
shaggy fellows, but reliable. There are services between cities, considerably
more well-heeled.
• You have no objection to walking, but who has the time to walk all the
way across town? There’s carriages for that; or you take a skiff along the
 waterfront. To get to other cities, of course, you take a ship.
• You’re proud to be part of a free people, which is ruled by its own
bsepas, meeting in a Senate, and not by “kings”, as the foreigners are.
• People can have lighter or darker skin, or hair that ranges from black to
brown to straw color. It doesn’t mean anything. You don’t entirely trust
someone from out of town, though.
• You think that most problems can be solved if they’re thought about long
enough— and if you can be the first to think of it, there’s probably money in it.
• Disputes that can’t be solved any other way can be taken to the courts—
a scary prospect, as the judges are empowered to probe into every aspect of
your life. The better way is to talk to the higher-ups in the bsepa, and they’ll
work it out for you. You’ll owe them a favor; but that’s better than the courts
getting their hands on you.

People and other people

• Humans aren’t the only people on Almea. There’s the ṭailuadnir, who
live in the sea; you don’t want one as an enemy, and you’re not sure if you
want one as your friend, either. Not that they’ll harm you, no.
• Then there’s the atingetoro— little, fierce, mostly friendly guys from the
mountains, who come round to sell gems and minerals and metals they’ve dug
up, and beautiful things they’ve made out of them. You’ve learned the hard
way not to play drinking games with them.
• Then there’s the geŋŋiaḷgirigi— mischievous little devils who are an
excellent reason not to go into the forest, where they live. Farms near the forest
will leave out food for them, to appease them. There are other monsters up in
the mountains or the steppe.
• You’re not the sort of hick who only knows one language. You know
your own city’s language and that of a few other Skourene cities. Possibly
Axunašin, Jeori, Mei, or Tžuro as well.

One of them said Almea is round, if you can believe it

• Each of the bsepas has a tax levied on it, which goes to pay for defense,
the courts, roads, public entertainments, and the dole. You grumble over it, but
you pay your share.
• You learned to read and write and calculate at home, and you learned
morality and worship from the bsepa’s priest. Some of the philosophers offer
lectures; it’s often worth paying a few coins to hear what they have to say.
 Sometimes you learn something; sometimes you just laugh at the crazy old
greybeard’s ravings.
• Years are reckoned by the groparam, the triennial Trucial Councils
between the three delta cities. The three Senates meet together, and there’s
competitions and feasts and performances. Complicating the chronology,
they’re not held if the cities are at war with each other.
• You grow your own vegetables in a plot by your house, and perhaps raise
chickens as well. Everything else you buy at the market.
• There used to be a proverb that “Skourenes don’t fight Skourenes”...
would that it were still true. Some city will get too big for its breeches and need
taking down.
• Your own city has come out on the wrong side of a war or two, and
perhaps lost a good deal of its colonial empire. Skouras has never been
conquered by foreigners, however, and it’s hard to see that it ever could be.

Why you’d better get along with your mother-in-law

• Marriage, like any business of importance, is arranged between the
bsepas. It takes time to get used to being married, but you end up loving the
person almost as much as your own relatives.
• In the old days, a man joined his wife’s bsepa. These days a firstborn son
may bring his wife into his own bsepa instead— at least, if his is richer.
• A man can only have one wife; but some men— lucky bastards— can
support a mistress or two. In colonies, where the supply of women is low, a
woman is sometimes married to two men.
• It’s not really right for men to sleep with other men, outside of special
circumstances like a long campaign or a trading expedition. But it’s an impure
world, and what happens behind closed doors is the least of our worries.
• You call a person by his name. Foreigners make this complicated by
having multiple names and making you guess which one to use.
• Nudity is best indulged at home— except when bathing, of course. Some
women like to dress in the shameless Axunemi fashion, showing their breasts.
• There are houses (rubnakalir) that will rent a room to a stranger. It’s
better to stay with a friend or relative, though; through the bsepa you’ll have
these anywhere in your city’s empire and sometimes elsewhere in Skouras.
• Whatever sort of business you have, gifts and meals will help it along.
But it’s going a little too far when people expect to have their vices satiated, or
 get rich at official posts.

Give me that old five-tone music

• The only money you entirely trust is gold, but it’s more for saving than
for buying things. For that, you use silver coins, or promissory notes from a
bank.
• The simplest way to run a business is within your own family or bsepa—
there’s a tradition for it, trustworthy workers, and financial help. But you can
have a family firm with nonfamily employees, or work for a large concern that
has lost any family character (though in many ways it acts like a bsepa).
• If there’s no wine available, you’ll consent to swig down some of the
westerners’ foul rye beer.
• Music is decaphonic and polyrhythmic, based mostly on drums, horns,
wooden flutes, and sitars. But there’s an undeniable charm to country music,
with its pentatonic scale, simple rhythms, and reliance on reeds and bagpipes.
• If you’re sick, there are people who will do disagreeable things to you
and charge you for it and leave you just as sick. Better to go to a hermitage for
rest, steam and cold water baths, and massage.
• As a citizen, you have the right and obligation to serve in the army, when
your city is attacked or when arrogant outside cities need to be punished. Only
a crazy person actually likes it, but it’s got to be done.

Barbarians and where to find them

• You may trade, you may farm or fish, you may make things— it’s all
business. If you’re not in charge, you think you should be.
• Proper streets are paved, and the major roads into the hinterland too.
• The people upriver— from Miligenḍi and Papliopagimi and such places
— are not much better than rustics or barbarians; they only feel comfortable
with despotic governments and too much religion.
• The colonists— a term which you apply to anyone who lives south of the
delta, even if their cities were founded half a millennium ago — are rough
around the edges and a little too excitable and full of themselves. The Guṭḷeliki
are the worst— proud and vulgar.
• The Axunemi and Jeori are warlike, priest-ridden, and oppressed by their
‘kings’ and ‘lords’— a fat, idle class who are treated like gods.
• The only safe, civilized places in the world are Skourene cities. There are
 some places in them you wouldn’t advise a stranger to go alone, of course.
Rural areas are unsafe and depressing. Forests, mountains, and deserts are
nasty, dangerous places. If you can’t smell the sea, it’s no place for you.

“Can I take this road to the city?”

“Reckon not. They already got one”
• The ideal girl is a little pale, a little thin, a little naive, and a little fiery.
Once married she loses the first three qualities but makes up for it in the last.
• The best jokes are told about the guşourianda— the people of the
hinterland. Most are dimwits, but there are also stories of clever guşourianda
teaching a lesson to a foolish city slicker.
• Everyone knows that Skouras is the richest land under the sun. Why are
things so expensive, then?
• The most important thing to know about someone is what bsepa they
belong to.
• If you run a firm, you choose who will run it after you; it doesn’t have to
be one of your children, but if it’s not, you’ll adopt them. They’ll get the bulk
of your personal wealth as well. Land belongs to the families and so it doesn’t
change hands when someone dies.

Mess with me and I’ll call Grand-Uncle

• The biggest holiday of the year is the celebration of the harvest
(Raḍḍoug); the most important is the blessing of the spring planting
(Raḍḍinoum). At those times, and no others, you feel great solidarity with your
rural brethren and your farmer ancestors.
• You can name most of the bsepas in the delta cities and their relation to
your own, and you’re pretty well informed about the other major cities, too.
• If you run into trouble you would turn first to your bsepa. If they can’t
help or you have no family, you have to rely on the dole. The city will give you
food and a place to sleep, but you have to wear special clothes and do menial
work, like street-cleaning. You hope you never have to use it, or if you do, that
it won’t be long.
• There are some professions, such as medicine, magic, architecture, and
the martial arts, that you can only learn by apprenticing yourself to a master.
Others, like writing or the law, are just talents which some people can do and
others can’t.
Space and time
• It’s very rude to make an appointment and not keep it. On the other hand,
you don’t expect to get someone all to yourself— you join the people hanging
around with him, and the amount of attention you get is finely calibrated to
your relative importance.
• If you’re talking to someone, you’re uncomfortable if you’re not close
enough to make a point by grabbing their arm or tapping their chest.
• You don’t haggle for cheap things, but if it’s expensive, you make a
production out of it.
• You can show up at a friend or relative’s place uninvited. If they’re really
busy, though, you’ll only get a glass of wine and some honey cakes, not a meal.
• It’s extremely impolite to refuse someone outright; also to boast about
your own abilities or wealth. On the other hand, there’s no need to hide your
feelings just because of someone’s rank.

How do you write one?

What are you doing as you write a culture test for your culture? Making
decisions, mostly, and inventing details that help show what it’s like to
belong to that culture. The points above are selected to tackle a wide variety
of issues— marriage and sex, economic life, attitudes toward the past and
foreign countries, values, religion, government.
The idea is to make statements that are true of 90% of the described
population. E.g. the American culture test has “You are not a farmer”, since
farmers are a tiny percentage of the population. “You’re a Christian”
wouldn’t quite make it, since under 80% of the population identifies as
Christian.
If you’re baffled, go point by point through this culture test (or look at the
ones online at http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html) and say to yourself,
“Self, how would this go in my country?” If you’re not sure, go on to the next
point. Or write something tentative and go back to it later.
You don’t have to make every point a major difference from your own
culture, or the Standard Fantasy Culture— but think of every point as an
opportunity to do so, or at least to look at things from different eyes.
Reading the tests can help you realize just how variable cultures are—
attitudes we’ve always taken as universal turn out to be much more parochial.
And writing them is a good first step in bringing a world alive, and learning
to speak for the natives.

Monoculture
It takes work to devise a culture, so it’s understandable that many creators
stop at one. This is especially evident in s.f., where most alien races and
human colonies have precisely one civilization per planet... sometimes just
one climate per planet, too.
On our own planet, culture is fractal— there’s variation at every level. There
are major civilizations: European, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, African, Andean,
Mesoamerican. Each of these is divided into ethnic groups and religions. The
ethnic groups are divided into provinces, the religions into sects. Your
province or state is far from uniform; your city is divided into neighborhoods
each with its own character; even a small school is divided into factions and
cliques. Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France is an eye-opening
exploration of just how diverse a premodern nation is.
How do you simulate this without working out a thousand cultures in full
detail? By incorporating diversity as you design any culture.
• When considering aspects of culture— or biology— you should
sometimes answer “all of the above”. Whether it’s hairstyle or form of
government or number of gods worshipped, this produces areas where
variation is to be expected.
• Ask yourself where disagreements occur. What are the
controversies in your society? What do people fight about? (This is
valuable for storytelling too: people talk about their disagreements far
more than their common values.)
When creating culture tests, we look for things 90% of the
population would agree on. Creating controversies, look for things 40-
60% of the population believes. If just 10% believe something, they’re
likely to be persecuted dissidents.
• Outline some subcultures. Even within one nation, there will be
groups isolated or organized enough to have their own distinctive
 mores and values. E.g.:
° Immigrants. Make sure you have a story on why they got
there... are they conquerors, traders, refugees, job-seekers, former
slaves, or mercenaries?
° Remnants of an earlier population— like the Celts in Roman
Gaul, the Indians in the US, the Ainu in Japan.
° Religious minorities, like the Jews in Europe, the Muslims
(Huí) in China, the Zoroastrians in India.
° Certain professions, especially despised ones like grave-
diggers and thieves, might band together, providing the support
system they are denied by larger society.
It’s worth considering why these groups don’t assimilate. This is
less of an issue in premodern societies, where communities could easily
keep to their own neighborhoods under their own laws, using their own
language. But reasons will vary: a despised minority may be kept at bay
by the larger society; a conquering minority wishes to maintain its
monopoly on power; a community of traders needs to foster its
relationship to the outside world; a religious sect has divine orders not
to mix with the world.
• Diversity may be chronological. If there’s been a major change
— e.g. a foreign conquest, the overthrow of a king, evidence against
the prevailing religion— there will be factions that liked the old
situation and are threatened by the new. Almost any change can be
opposed by somebody... electric lights were surely despised by the
gaslight industry.
Try to get beyond single-adjective cultures: e.g. “warlike”, “commercial”,
“spiritual”. It’s a good place to start, but no culture is uniform. The medieval
aristocracy, for instance, was as “warlike” as any Klingon, but knights and
lords were also obsessed with courtly love, beautiful art and clothes, and
often religion. Some liked fighting for its own sake, some undertook war out
of duty, some avoided it. And a civilization needs more than one skill to
survive; the most successful empires also have a genius for administration,
urban life, agriculture, and engineering.
Rulers
It’s all about power. Who’s on top, and what can they do to whoever’s on the
bottom? Any establishment will have a self-myth where the people on top
deserve to be there— but, well, they would, wouldn’t they? Things may look
very different from the bottom. Take Jeff Alexander and Tom Bissell’s
hilarious piece from McSweeney’s, imagining Howard Zinn and Noam
Chomsky watching The Lord of the Rings:
ZINN: Well, you know, it would be manifestly difficult to believe in
magic rings unless everyone was high on pipe-weed. So it is in
Gandalf’s interest to keep Middle Earth hooked.
CHOMSKY: How do you think these wizards build gigantic towers
and mighty fortresses? Where do they get the money? Keep in mind
that I do not especially regard anyone, Saruman included, as an agent
for progressivism. But obviously the pipe-weed operation that exists is
the dominant influence in Middle Earth. It’s not some ludicrous magic
ring.
There’s an underlying optimism to most s.f. and fantasy. We like the
occasional horror story, but we rarely read an entire novel where the Evil
Overlord wins, or where technology ends up destroying us all.
In history, however, the overlords do often win. And after they do, they’re the
ones who hire the scholars or troubadors and control the theologians, so their
version of events is what comes down to us as history and even as the
judgment of the gods. (We never hear the Carthaginian side of the Rome-
Carthage wars.)
That’s not to say that negative opinions are suppressed. When the overlords
die, historians can be more honest— especially if it’s convenient to their
successors. As well, what we consider damning evidence was often no big
deal, and thus appears in the historical record because no one bothered to
censor it.
There are limits to power, as well. There are always ambitious men who see a
better ruler whenever they pass a mirror. The peasants can always rebel. And
though the cruelty of ancient rulers is striking, if rulers went too far they
made too many enemies, and usually met a bad end.
So let’s take a look at rulers and what they do.

Choosing rulers
One way of classifying governments is by whether authority ultimately rests
with an individual, a small group, or a wide base of society. The key word
here is “ultimately”: obviously power can be shared, and monarchies can be
weakened or watered down to share aspects of the other systems.
Autarchies
These are realms principally ruled by one person, though they vary in how
absolute the ruler’s power is, and in how the ruler is chosen.
• The ruler may be selected by the leading clans, or nobles, or
even a wider collection of stakeholders (e.g. the College of Cardinals).
The advantage is that you get the best guy; the disadvantage is that the
losing candidates may beg to differ.
Arguably the golden age of the Roman Empire was the 2C, when
emperors hand-picked a competent successor. Marcus Aurelius blew it
by choosing his idiot son.
• Rule may be hereditary, which avoids contention, at the cost of
having a large number of incompetents in charge.
Primogeniture isn’t always the rule; sometimes the previous
monarch chooses; sometimes the royal family makes the choice. In
royal Uganda the chiefs chose a new king from the old one’s sons.
• A general or warlord may take over. From the 200s on, this was
essentially the Roman system: a general would be acclaimed by his
troops as emperor. Legions closer to the capital had an advantage; on
the other hand troops on the frontiers were more experienced. Rome’s
history is not a good advertisement for this system, which led to
inflated soldier salaries, near-constant civil war, devastated civilian
populations, and declining military preparedness. Post-colonial Africa
has suffered from more than its fair share of these bully boys as well.
• Rulers may emerge from a ideological movement: John Calvin’s
 theocracy in Geneva; the Supreme Leaders of the Islamic Republic of
Iran; the General Secretaries of communist regimes.
• The term dictator comes from an earlier stage of Roman history,
in which rather than the two consuls normally appointed by the senate,
a single ruler was named to deal with an emergency.
• Democracy was once distrusted by political scientists because it
had a tendency to produce tyrants— much of the Federalist Papers is
an argument on why it wouldn’t happen this time. Hitler received a
plurality of votes in an election, then used all the power of the
government to stack a new election which he ‘won’ and used as a
mandate for seizing absolute power. Napoléon became emperor out of
the chaos of the French Republic.
• Some writers (e.g. G.K. Chesterton in The Napoleon of Notting
Hill) have suggested that choosing a ruler randomly would produce as
good or better results than any of the above methods.
Oligarchies
These are ruled by a group— wider than an individual, pointedly much
smaller than the general population. The group may be defined in various
ways:
• the leaders of clans or tribes
• the nobles as a group
• the top merchants in a town; this is the natural government for
city-states
• a military class, such as the Janissaries
• pirates, bandits, or mafiosi
• a separate species
The ruling group may or may not be defined as a formal council or
legislature. In some of the above cases there may be a monarch, but one with
severely limited power.
Democracies
By this I mean states that are ruled by a relatively large subpopulation—
thousands or even millions rather than dozens or hundreds. (No state is run
by “the people” as a whole; children, at least, are always excluded, and often
other large groups.)
There may be a property requirement, as in ancient Athens. In England before
the 1832 Reform Bill, just one in eight Englishmen could vote. This made the
British elitist and conservative in our view, frightening populists by
continental standards.
Hunter-gatherers require little government, often resisting anyone who tries
to set themselves up as an autarch; they may thus be classified here.

The standard class

Another way of grasping the values and power roles of a society is to identify
the standard class— the group whose interests are assumed to be those of the
nation as a whole. This is usually broader than the ruling class; we might say
that these are the people the ruling class had better not offend. Examples:
• In Ancient Greece, the citizens— that is those who held
property, voted in the assembly, and had the right and duty to serve in
the army.
• In the Roman Republic, the knightly and senatorial class; in the
Empire, the army.
• In medieval Europe, the noble class, including knights and
churchmen. (The urban burghers were important because their money
was needed to finance wars, but they were unable to translate this into
more than transitory political power.)
• In imperial China, the scholars, those who had passed the civil
service examinations.
• In Tibet from the 1600s, the monks— up to one third of the male
population; the country was ruled by their leader, the Dalai Lama.
• In modern America, the businessman. “What’s good for GM is
good for America,” as the president of General Motors said in the
1950s.
 • In Xurno, one of the nations of Almea, it’s the artists, who took
control during a revolution.
• In communist countries, in theory the “workers”, in practice the
Party.
The standard class may be evident from a glance at a typical city: what are
the largest buildings? In the medieval city it’d be the local lord’s castle and
the cathedral; in an American city, the headquarters of corporations.

What do governments do?

This may seem obvious— just look at existing governments. But the
activities of government were often much more restricted in premodern states
— even as their pretensions were higher. Adam Smith considered the idea of
a general sales tax completely impossible.
Absolute power
In some cases the answer is Whatever the sovereign wants. The early Roman
Emperors are an example; when a nutter like Nero or Elagabalus donned the
purple, there was no institutional bound on their power; they could only be
removed by coup d’état.
Some extracts from A.A. Goldenweiser’s description of the Baganda
monarchy give the flavor of absolute rule:
[The King] ate alone, served by one of his wives, who, however, was
not permitted to see him while he was engaged in eating. “The Lion
eats alone,” said the people. If any one happened to come in and
overtake the King in the process of eating, he was promptly speared to
death by the latter, and the people said: “The Lion when eating killed
so and so.”...
All the land belonged to the King, excepting only the freehold estates
of the gentes, over which the King had no direct control. Contributions
to the state in taxes and labor were, however, expected from these
estates. The king had the right to depose a chief at will....
The king was expected to visit the temple of his predecessor, which
was in charge of the dowager queen. When about to leave, the king
 would suddenly give an order that all persons who had not passed a
certain spot arbitrarily named by him, should be seized. This order was
at once carried out by his bodyguard, and the persons seized were
bound and gagged. Then they were sacrificed to the ghost of the dead
king.
As society becomes more complex, and as rulers show their fallibility, such
systems become hard to sustain. Tyrants become targets; weak or very young
rulers tempt regents or generals to take power. A council of nobles, the
bureaucracy, or even the palace eunuchs may become important
counterweights.
Custom may make it harder for the sovereign to do as he likes. The officials
of imperial China would remonstrate with decrees they disagreed with;
though he might take action against them, he couldn’t do without them. The
officials were all trained in the ancient classics, which had much to say about
the character of the ideal monarch.
Not infrequently an important official becomes the real ruler, keeping the
monarch only as a puppet. The Frankish Mayors of the Palace were
examples, till Pépin took the throne for himself. Another is the shoguns of
Japan, who didn’t even bother to rule from the city the emperor lived in.
Death
Perhaps the basic governmental power is to wage war. Sometimes a monarch
only has significant power in wartime.
It takes a good deal of organization to maintain a large standing army, at least
for a non-nomadic states. Huge empires such as Rome and China might have
several hundred thousand soldiers on hand, but only during periods of
strength; yet both had to hire barbarian auxiliaries to meet foreign threats.
Civil war and barbarian invasions sapped the strength of the western empire;
perhaps more importantly, foederatii, barbarians settled within the boundaries
of the empire, removed those regions from the tax base. A mark of the
decline in military readiness is given by the size of the army Justinian of the
Eastern Empire sent to reconquer Carthage and Italy: less than 15,000 men.
More than a thousand years later, Europe had not much advanced: in the
1630s Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was able to cut a large swath through
Germany with an expeditionary force of just 20,000 men.
The benefits of keeping the peace over a large area are great. Or to put it
another way, the alternative is that economic life is sapped by the local
warlords or bandits, or by fear of the next city-state over.
Taxes
The other universal power of government is to maintain the elite in
sumptuous style. To modern eyes this may look like nothing but stealing
resources from the producers, but in older times taxation was considered the
obvious prerogative of those who owned the land. As late as the 19C, a rich
man who had earned his wealth was considered something of an upstart;
gentlemen collected rent.
Taxation in kind can be used to stockpile against famine, a practice noted in
the Old Testament.
To regulate taxation, the state may undertake censuses, draw maps, and
maintain archives of land ownership and boundaries. (As a corollary, one of
the first priorities of a peasant rebellion was to burn the local tax records.)
It’s hard to cite typical levels of taxation, because taxes were constantly
changing. The ruler’s boundless needs drove him to devise new taxes; but
this was offset by the fact that one of his most effective rewards was
exemption from taxation. Poor recordkeeping and corruption made state
revenues unpredictable.
As a data point, in Táng China, free peasants owed 3% of the harvest for each
adult male in the family, plus a length of linen or silk for each woman; men
also owed three months a year of labor.
Public works
Often only the state has the resources for large-scale works: irrigation or
transport canals, aqueducts, paved roads, sewers, forts, city walls, mines.
Some governments provided temples, arenas, theaters, schools, libraries and
scriptoria, observatories, public baths, fountains and parks, mills, shipyards.
Of course, they also constructed palaces for the comfort of the rulers and for
official business.
The economy
In some early kingdoms, such as Egypt, any economic activity above the
level of a single farm or workshop was organized by the state— everything
from mining to metallurgy to issuing money to lumber extraction to
armaments to shipbuilding to salt panning.
The Anatolians of about 600 B.C., followed quickly by the Greeks, are
considered the pioneers of market economies, and the inventors of coinage.
In these states many economic functions were taken over by private parties,
though the state was likely to keep a hand in. Much of Adam Smith’s The
Wealth of Nations (1776) is spent arguing against the idea that the state
should closely regulate trade so as to benefit its own producers and
manufacturers.
States may organize transportation and communications networks. The
Romans are famous for their roads, the Chinese for their canals (the empire
preferred these to trade by the open ocean, which was much harder to protect
and regulate). The original couriers unfazed by “rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of
night” were messengers of the Persian empire. The Incas, lacking pack
animals, maintained a corps of fast runners.
People have long recognized that some industries are noxious or destructive;
these might be limited by the state, or restricted to certain areas. As
mentioned, the Athenian Solon proposed to prohibit farming practices that
fostered deforestation.
Religion
Few premodern states were entirely untangled with religion. On the other
hand, not all belief systems are centered around temples and priesthoods, and
some have no organization above the level of a local cleric. We’ll get back to
this in the chapter on religion.
Culture
The state may or may not intrude in personal morality or marriage. Marriage
might be regulated instead by families, ethnic communities, or clerics.
Public education is a relatively new development, though Hàn China had
schools to prepare students for the civil service exams. Schools were mostly
private affairs, or run by religious groups.
A relatively modern concern is the codification of an official language, such
as the Accademia della Crusca for Italian, founded in 1582.
In a fantasy culture, an area to explore is the relationship between
government and magic, which would surely be as complicated as that
between rulers and religion.
Future functions
Future societies will vary greatly in the specifics, but some general principles
may be useful. Governments are likely to be necessary, or impose
themselves, in certain areas:
• Projects too big for individuals or groups— terraforming,
building ringworlds, establishing hyperspace waypoints.
• Managing externalities, i.e. effects of private activity with no
direct price, thus not addressed by the feedback mechanism provided
by the market. Almost any s.f. technology could generate social or
environmental headaches. The mother of all externalities is life support
on a space habitat; “do as thou wilt” doesn’t work when malice or
accident can destroy the whole ship.
• Arbitration between competing actors, a function that becomes
more important as society becomes more complex. Imagine the legal
system of a state consisting of predators from a gas giant and
herbivores from a terrestrial one.
It’s easy to imagine governments becoming more intrusive: spybots could
monitor everyone; songs might monitor who listens to them, weapons who
fires them and who they’re fired at, cars what damage they cause. Or perhaps
corporations assume this power— or parents, or schools, or religions.
On the other hand, the same power could be used to increase citizen
involvement (crowdsource the legislature!) or to reduce externalities (e.g. if
individual pallets can be tracked, perhaps pollutants can be too).

Law
The idea of law has many sources: monarchical decrees; morals preached by
the priests; custom; bureaucratic precedent; rights granted to favored nobles
or demanded by obstreperous ones; rules proclaimed by the founder of a
dynasty. Law need not be universal— often it applies very differently to
different classes, and it may never be fully applied to the king.
There isn’t always a court system— laws may be enforced directly by the
monarch or by the bureaucracy. If there are courts, private advocates may or
may not be tolerated.
The sovereign generally enforces a level— perhaps a low one— of public
order. This is easiest to do in the cities, which are the safest regions in
premodern societies: rural areas are easily terrorized by gangs, and only a
strong state can prevent this. Bandits on the road didn’t come in ones or twos,
but in swarms a few dozen strong; when they were strong, traders or pilgrims
had to travel in caravans.

Custom and non-state law

This vague term covers “how we always do things”, and it can be an obstacle
even to absolute rulers. The Ugandan kings described above (p. 131) were
given enormous power by custom, but were also bound by traditional rules.
Laws aren’t always enforced by the state; guilds, clans, or temples may take
this role instead. In areas run by gangs, gang leaders enjoy taking a judicial
role— everyone likes to consider themselves as benefactors.

Babylonian law
The Code of Hammurabi, dated to 1790 B.C., shows a fairly sophisticated
legal system. Cases were decided in courts by judges, who would interrogate
the parties to the case and witnesses; there are no mentions of lawyers. There
are punishments for false accusations, and an insistence on proof and
evidence (e.g. adultery could only be proved by catching the participants in
the act). One law refers to a trial by ordeal:
2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to
the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall
take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is
not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the
accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river
 shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.
It seems that the canny criminal would make sure he learns how to swim. But
this is the only such law; everything else relies on evidence, witnesses, and
oaths. Medieval European law was a lot worse.
The law is often remembered for its “eye for an eye” severity; but quite a few
severe infractions are simply payable by fine, especially if committed against
the lower classes. Women have substantial rights, and freedmen and slaves
have certain protections. Some laws precisely quantify the worth of the
various classes; e.g. if a man strikes a pregnant woman and causes a
miscarriage, the fine varies by her class: 10 shekels for a free-born woman, 5
for a freedwoman, and 2 for a maidservant. Intent was taken into account;
some penalties could be reduced if the accused swore that the damage was
unintentional.
Topics include theft, the treatment of slaves (including penalties for runaways
and those harboring them), merchants and their agents, the maintenance of
irrigation works, required military service, sexual crimes (adultery, rape,
incest), divorce, dowries, inheritance, adoptions, and violence between
citizens. Certain prices are set (e.g. hiring a ferryboat costs 3 gerahs a day),
and penalties are set out for malfeasance by physicians, wet-nurses,
veterinaries, builders, shipbuilders, tenant farmers and herdsmen.

Roman law
Roman law was codified around 450 BC in the Twelve Tables; it mostly
addressed private or civil law: marriage, succession, wills, property, the
power of the paterfamilias. It was supplemented by creative interpretation as
well as by new laws issued by the Senate or the plebeian assemblies.
A lawsuit was brought to a magistrate, one of the higher republican officials,
who would conduct a preliminary investigation. If he found the case had
merit, it would be assigned to a judge, a private citizen agreeable to both
parties. The magistrate could issue instructions to the judge, in effect another
source of law. In the provinces, however, cases were heard by imperial
judges.
From the -3C a new profession emerged, the jurisconsult— one who gave
advice on matters of law. These were men of high rank, acting out of civic
duty— their services were free. Their opinions were highly authoritative, not
least because magistrates were politicians, not jurists. They did not plead
cases themselves, and looked down on the advocati who did— essentially
professional orators.
There were oddities by modern standards. As Paul Veyne recounts, a large
landowner might invade a smaller estate with an army of slaves. The
wronged estate owner could sue— but it was his obligation, not the state’s, to
seize the defendant and bring him to court, generally impossible unless one
had powerful friends.
The emperors gradually acquired a monopoly on legislation, and also had the
right to dictate how a court should rule— though they generally followed
precedent.
Justinian codified the entirety of Roman law, incorporating Greek and
Christian ideas. His Corpus Iuris (534) consists of four books forming a
general survey, 12 books of law proper, and 50 books of excerpts from the
classical juriconsults— intended to entirely supersede them. These 66 books
suggest the elaboration of Roman law in the millennium since the Twelve
Tables.

Chinese law
Different Chinese traditions have very different attitudes toward the law.
• The Legalists believed that humans were inherently evil and
must be controlled with explicit laws (fǎ) and harsh punishments. They
underlined state power and disdained tradition. They were strongly
favored by the first emperor, Shi Huangdi— but he was widely
regarded as a despot, discrediting Legalism.
• The Daoists valued individual liberty and minimal government
— the Dào Dé Jīng advises non-action: “When the Master governs, the
people are hardly aware that he exists.” It’s a spiritual treasure but not
much of a legal system.
• The Confucians didn’t trust law so much as ritual (lǐ), not just
ceremony but the whole ordering of society— inferiors being
 deferential, superiors being compassionate. The good example of the
Emperor was key.
Law was not transcendent; it was purely a tool of government. Its only source
was the emperor’s command; imperial China never developed any tradition
of consultative assemblies. The emperor relied on the scholar-officials to
draft laws and correspondence, though he was always free to change them.
The local magistrates, also products of the civil service exams, tried and
decided cases; there was no profession of jurists. They had no time for small
disputes, and civil disputes could only be heard if framed as criminal
complaints. Under these conditions the peasants resorted to the arbitration of
community and clan leaders instead.
Cities did not have any separate legal status— unlike in Europe, where the
bourgeois, literally the town dwellers, gained freedom from feudal lords and
were granted self-government.
Under the Táng, punishments for grievious crimes might apply to the
extended family as well. On the other hand emperors were given to issuing
blanket pardons, so if you weren’t actually killed your sentence might be
lifted after a few years.

Economy
The economy is, basically, work— what we do to support ourselves.
In primitive societies, everyone does the same work— hunting, fishing,
gathering, herding, farming— though there may be sex or age specializations.
Even the chief or king lives pretty much like everyone else. Though it
accounts for most of the species’ history, we hardly think of this as an
economy; it’s merely a lifestyle. Economies kick in once you have
specialization and scarcity. No longer is everyone doing the same thing;
there must therefore be mechanisms to share the wealth... probably
unequally.
Fantasy writers generally either copy the modern American or medieval
English system... doesn’t every town have a market and use coins? But these
things were once innovations.
It’s all too easy to introduce a major distortion into the picture and not take
account of its economic effects. The standard D&D world has an astonishing
amount of currency tied down in dungeons, mined only by adventurers... why
don’t the kings, a class habitually short on cash, send in the army? For that
matter how can the mountains of Middle Earth support an army of orcs far
greater than that wielded by human agricultural societies?

Types of economies
The first level of intensification of production is redistribution. We might
say that these are proto-states so primitive that they haven’t learned how to
oppress. A “big man” or a chief encourages the people to produce more than
they usually would; the excess is then consumed or given away in enormous
feasts, leaving the Big Man with nothing but prestige and the need to do it all
again.
These feasts serve to increase production without central control, creating a
buffer for hard times and redistributing goods from fortunate to less fortunate
areas. If you’ve had a good year, you share; if not, you benefit from the
success of those who did.
Once a ruling class has developed, we find command economies, where
large-scale production is organized by the state. In its most extreme form, all
production is centrally organized; luxury goods are a perk of state; key
resources are state monopolies, perhaps collected by state-run expeditions;
trade is negotiated with other rulers. The prototypical example is ancient
Egypt. In our time communism reverted to a command economy as a radical
reaction against capitalism.
The Mesopotamians had a class of merchants, and their trading expeditions
might be financed by private investors as well as by the temples and the state.
Without coins, it was necessary to come up with a package of goods that
could be bartered; e.g. a -19C Akkadian expedition invested 2 minas of silver
to purchase 5 gur of oil and 30 garments, traded in Bahrain for 4 minas of
copper.
The market economy was pioneered by the Lydians of Anatolia and the
Greeks starting in the -7C, when markets and coins first appear in the
archeological record. Markets allow goods to be distributed efficiently,
without armies of bureaucrats, and allow a looser social system. They also
adapt quickly to change, from new technologies to natural disasters, without
anyone having to make explicit decisions.
Nonetheless the state was always a major economic actor. Romans might
grow rich and gift their towns with a public building; but only the Roman
state could build those enormous aqueducts, roads, and mill complexes.
States often maintained a monopoly on important goods— e.g. half the Táng
state’s income derived from its monopoly on salt.
Imperial China constructed networks of canals, including the Grand Canal
which allowed the south’s agricultural surplus to be shipped to Beijing... this
despite the fact that the country bordered an ocean. The empire preferred to
focus trade on the canal, which was safer and easier to control.
Anglo-American culture is mercantile; we admire the man who buys low and
sells high. This attitude was generally not shared in early societies. Warriors,
priests, and scholars were likely to have higher prestige than merchants, and
there was often distrust or disdain for people who merely carted merchandise
around for a profit, seemingly adding no value. A medieval mystic, Gerard
Groote, declared that “Labor is holy, but business is dangerous.”
As late as 1776, Adam Smith declared that only the landowners could be
trusted to increase the nation’s prosperity; merchants and manufacturers were
too apt to create cartels and artificial restraints on trade.
Trading may be closely tied to raiding— the Vikings, for instance, would
seize goods by force if they could, and trade only if the locals seemed able to
defend themselves. A mercantile nation may handle trade between third
parties, and form a neighborhood in every port, sometimes resented by the
less commercially gifted locals.
Trading posts easily become colonies and then imperial enclaves, whether
Philistines in North Africa, Greeks all over the Mediterranean, Arabs in East
Africa, the British in India, the Portuguese and then the Dutch in Indonesia.

Travel
A key characteristic of premodern societies is slow transportation.
• Human walking speed is about 5 km/h or 3 mph. The winner of
the 40 km marathon at the 1896 Olympics took just under 3 hours,
 probably a good approximation of the maximum long-distance speed
before modern training; this amounts to 13.3 km/h or 8.3 mph.
Neither pace can be sustained all day, of course. A large army,
marching 8 to 10 hours a day, might count on making 30 km or 20
miles a day— but a half or a quarter of that if they were foraging (i.e.
plundering the areas passed through to support themselves).
The Incas organized runners (chaskikuna) in a relay system,
allowing messages to travel at 250 km / 160 miles per day. Quite
impressive, but a message from one end of the empire to the center
would still take 12 days.
• Horses can gallop at 40-48 km/h (25 to 30 mph), but not for
more than a couple miles. But again a relay system helps. The Pony
Express averaged just 9 mph. In 1808 a noble rode across Scotland at
an average rate of 15 mph. The ancient Persian messengers, the ones
undeterred by rain and sleet and dark of night, could get a message
across the empire at 300 km (190 miles) per day.
This heady clip of course doesn’t apply to cargo transport.
Merchants plied the same Persian route at about 30 km (18 miles) a
day.
• Camels walk at 3 mph, though they can briefly gallop at 12
mph. A camel caravan traveled 25 miles a day. Oxen travel at 2 mph.
• Tanks can travel at 70 km/h (43 mph) on good roads. The speed
of a blitzkrieg was 30 to 50 miles per day.
• Sailing ships can’t travel as fast as a horse, but can go all day
and night. But more importantly, they’re compact and safe. A small
sailing ship can carry 60 tons of cargo, which would take at least 20
horses to haul; even this comparison is misleading as such an
expedition would need a beefy security force and food for them and the
horses. In a premodern state, most long-distance trading was thus done
by water— the waterways were its transportation system.
Steamships can travel faster than sailing ships, but require a
network of coaling stations. The worldwide British Empire had plenty
of these but the U.S. did not, so U.S. oceangoing ships depended on sail
 throughout the 19C.
Some average speeds and cargo capacity for ships, given in knots
(1.8 km/h; 1.1 mph):
tons kn km/day mi/day
Trireme not under sail 36 6 250 150
(-5C)
Caravel (15C explorer) 60 4 175 100
Carrack (16C cargo) 300 4 175 100
East Indiaman (17C cargo)
600+ 4-5 200 120
Clipper (19C) 800 16 700 400
First steamship (19C) 3000 11 450 300
Steamship c. 1900 22 900 600
Steamship c. 1950 35 1500 900
Aircraft carrier (WWII) 21,000 14 600 400
Modern oil tanker 500,000 15 600 400
Nuclear submarine 350 20 850 500

One economic consequence of all this is simply hassle— the logistics of

communications and travel made long-distance trade difficult. In well-
organized states that maintained good roads and kept bandits in check, staples
like grain and farm animals could be exchanged; in troubled times these
could only be traded locally, and only compact, high-value items were traded
long-distance.
Another is that prices and economic conditions could vary wildly by region.
The price of wheat, or the ratio of gold to silver, was quite different in
different countries.

Enterprises
How are large enterprises financed and run? And who can you really trust to
do them?
The state has been a major economic actor since the Sumerians: securing
resources, running factories, trading with other nations. Many of the things it
does for its own use—building roads, protecting against bandits and
invasions, running a postal service and a court system— may be extended to
private actors as well. It’s a relatively late development for the state to do
things for the benefit of private enterprise, such as granting patents.
The state has already solved the problem of getting people to do what it
wants. For everyone else, the problem is trust: are you going to hand your
money or projects over to complete strangers in a city three months’ travel
away?
Local resources can be combined in interesting ways:
• A group of people can contribute a certain sum each month,
distributed as a sum to one member, who uses the capital to start a
business. This method is used today within immigrant communities
who aren’t likely to get a traditional loan.
• You can simply hang out in a central location with people in
your line of work. The insurance giant Lloyd’s of London started out in
1688 in Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse, where sailors, merchants, and
ship owners met.
There are other ways to facilitate long-distance projects:
• A family can operate as a business; the early German and Italian
banks ran this way. You can trust even remote family members better
than strangers.
• Temples or religious orders may directly engage in trade,
facilitate money transfers, or help travelers. Medieval monasteries were
often industrial operations, as well as careful landlords with an interest
in long-term development of their property.
• An ethnic or religious minority may trust one another more than
strangers. In many areas of the world some displaced minority took on
most local commerce— e.g. Indians in East Africa, Chinese in
Southeast Asia.
The corporation per se, which brings together unrelated strangers and treats
them as a legal entity, depends on many tools and conveniences: insurance,
banks, a strong court system, an educated work force, a culture that
discourages corruption. But above all it requires fast communications; it’s no
coincidence that the golden age of the corporation came soon after the
invention of the telegraph.
Once you have a banking system, banks can create money. E.g. if Roger
deposits $1000 in the bank, he probably doesn’t need the money right away;
the bank can lend it out to Ann. Ann spends half of it but deposits $500 in her
own bank account. The bank happily lends that out to Múr. The money has
more than doubled: Roger still has $1000 in the bank, Ann has $500 in the
bank and $500 in goods, and Múr has $500 in hand.
The bank is in trouble if everyone wants their cash all at once (a bank run);
but this can be avoided by setting a reserve requirement. The process is rather
disturbing to those who want to think of money as a commodity, but it’s the
foundation of the immense investment power of modern economies.
Advances in finance as as important as those in technology. Britain’s rise as a
naval power, for instance, was financed by the Bank of England, and the
railroad boom in the US was largely financed by British investors.

Scarcity
Without scarcity, there’s no trade and really no economy. It worked for a
couple million years for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but since then, there’s
been goods that not everyone can have.
This is hard to miss in a premodern society, as many goods are produced only
in particular areas: fish in the sea; horses in the steppe; furs in the forest;
gems and metals in the mountains. Each crop has its best growing area— e.g.
rice needs waterlogged paddies, olives and oranges need a warm climate.
A new invention may suddenly change the fortunes of its supply region—
when bronze was first used, for instance, tin became a key resource. The
growing use of gunpowder made the saltpeter deposits of the Atacama desert
valuable.
Manufactured goods depend on expertise and a network of suppliers, which
may at first exist only in particular areas. Silk was once restricted to East
Asia; wootz iron to India; fine woolens to England.
Certain jobs, such as trading, software, and moviemaking, are scaleable:
sales can be multiplied independently of the work itself. It takes the same
effort to trade a hundred shares as a million; it’s no harder to write a
bestseller than a niche book. Compare jobs like farming, barbering, or
dentistry, where more customers means more work.
As Nassim Taleb points out in The Black Swan, technology moves jobs into
the scaleable category. No matter how fabulous he was, a premodern
musician could only satisfy a few hundred people in one town. Today he can
sell millions of CDs, putting many local musicians out of work. The rewards
in scaleable jobs are lopsided.
I emphasize this mostly for s.f. writers, who sometimes like to create utopian
communities where everyone has access to everything. Iain Banks creates
something like the ultimate consumer paradise in his Culture novels, largely
by inventing an infinite energy source, ‘gridfire’. But this doesn’t address the
inequalities produced by scaleable jobs. E.g. one of his characters designs
space habitats for a living— as each one can house millions of people, few
people can aspire to such a job.
If you’re not so utopian, make sure you think about what goods are scarce,
who controls them, and what happens when people can’t get at them. We can
live without silk clothes; it’d be more dire if someone got a monopoly on a
space habitat’s oxygen supply.

Money and prices

There may be a bewildering variety of coins in use; in Shakespeare’s time,
for instance, there was the pound, the angel, the noble, the crown, the
shilling, the sixpence, the groat, the half-groat, and the penny. We might have
a similar list, of course, if we had no paper money.
Note that the relative value of gold, silver, and other metals is not fixed, but
varies according to their supply; and that coins may circulate outside their
country of origin. (The American currency is called the dollar because of the
prevalence of the Spanish dollar at the time of independence.)
Here’s a table of prices in Shakespeare’s time (from an edition of the Major
Plays edited by G.B. Harrison, 1948, as well as Daily life in Elizabethan
England by Jeffrey L. Singman, 1995). As few readers are likely adept at
handling pounds/shillings/pence in their heads, I’ve stated all prices in
terms of pence only.
The vertiginous scale of class differences should be apparent; also the relative
expensiveness of food and drink for urban laborers.
Wages
nobleman, income per day 1600
skilled worker, without food and per day 10 - 14
drink
skilled worker, food and drink per day 6-9
supplied
boy per day 5
captain (of 200 men) per day 96
sergeant per day 12
common soldier per day 8
payment for a play 1920

Food and drink

beer, good quality quart 1
butter pound 4
cheese pound 1.5 - 2
eggs dozen 4
beef, good quality pound 3
chicken whole 10
tallow candles pound 4
pepper pound 48
wine quart 12
tobacco ounce 36

Travel
meal at an inn 4-6
bed at an inn 1
horse, hiring per day 12
coach, hiring per day 120
Clothing
tailored suit 216
satin doublet (fitted jacket) 480
canvas doublet, officer’s 173
woman’s gown 2400
woman’s working dress 240
shoes 12
white silk hose 300
satin cloth per yard 144

Goods
soldier’s sword and dagger 96
soldier’s helmet 96
sackbut (a musical instrument) 480
knife 4
spectacles 3
Bible 480
horse 240 - 480
bed 48
theater admission 1-3

More data points, courtesy of Adam Smith: in 1776, the wages for a common
laborer in London were 18 pence a day; in Edinburgh, 10 p, and in rural
areas, just 8. Rising productivity, centering in the cities, was beginning to
raise the standard of living— even more so than the wage figures indicate, as
the price of food and clothing was lower than in Shakespeare’s time.

Future economies
I’ll happily make predictions about war or religion, but predictions about
future economies are the one thing likely to make me look ridiculous in five
hundred years. The nature of the modern economy would be
incomprehensible to a man of the year 1500; Adam Smith with his long
disquisitions on wheat prices, agricultural rents, and tariffs looks quaintly out
of date.
Capitalism keeps inventing new goods and new markets. This is how it
defeats Malthus— we live in a bubble where new ideas increase productivity
faster than we can reproduce. It’s also why you can never just extrapolate
current trends— e.g. predict that the economy will simply collapse when the
oil runs out. Not to make light of the adjustment needed, but when it does run
out, the economy will look different. A late 19C observer might have
predicted that cities would soon be covered in horse manure to their rooftops.
The previous revolution occupies a smaller and smaller slice of the economy.
Agriculture is now less than ½% of the US economy; and manufacturing is
about 12%. The service sector now predominates, at 80%. Whatever replaces
it will start as a fringe activity, grow to encompass a huge fraction of GDP,
and then shrink in turn as it’s outmoded.
The products of capitalism get more and more complicated: reinsurance,
derivatives, iPod covers, bagel slicers, virtual world memberships, virus
checkers, low-sodium organic soy sauce. I imagine half the economic
transactions from the year 2500 would require a lengthy explanation before
we even understand what they are.
Over the last three centuries, the overall trend has been toward automation.
Old sectors of the economy don’t just shrink because they’re old, but because
ways were found to do the work of hundreds with one worker and a machine.
When this process isn’t balanced by the creation of new products and
services, it results in mass unemployment rather than prosperity.
For this reason I couldn’t quite buy the society depicted in Ghost in the Shell.
Robots seem to do everything in society... what do the people do? If the
answer is ‘not much’, doesn’t the price of labor drop to near zero and thus
become competitive with the robots?
Taking a bird’s eye historical view, current arguments over the size of
government are hair-splitting, like controversies over the human and divine
nature of Christ. The main battle is over: all precapitalist systems, as well as
totalitarian control over the economy, were outperformed. Robber baron
capitalism didn’t work so great either; government is needed to set the basic
framework for economic competition and even out its rough edges. Not that
new systems can’t emerge; it’s just unlikely that they’ll be repeats of the old
systems, especially the absolutes (total or zero government).
One area which might be transformed in the future is management. Smith
thought that the corporation had little future; a firm needed the strong hand of
an owner at the top. He was wrong, but capitalism hasn’t been able to decide
if the best managers are entrepreneurs, hired managers, or major
stockholders, nor whether the best workers are mindless drones, hands-on
tinkerers, or empowered decisionmakers. Personally I think that the
hierarchical top-down structure will one day seem as inefficient and
antiquated as absolute monarchy.
Western culture has increasingly emphasized individualism over
community; the American ideal seems to be citizens without strong ties to
extended family, ethnic group, location, or religion. Not coincidentally, this
sort of citizen makes the best employee for corporations. This could easily
change, especially as the US won’t be the top nation forever. A swing of the
pendulum back toward stronger communities seems likely. Charlie Stross
points out that robber baron capitalism would be a recipe for disaster on a
small space habitat.
I also expect that our current heuristics on government, management, and
economics will slowly be replaced by science. Most political arguments are a
clash of morals and values, conducted that way because we don’t have
enough solid data. I can’t imagine the world of AD 3000 working that way.
When you don’t know how to cure a disease, it can be blamed on bad air, or
iniquity, or the Jews; when you know how to cure it you just do so.
Future society might also develop different attitudes toward change and
toward technology itself. We’re still half enraptured, half frightened at our
own headlong progress— both tendencies being well manifested in s.f. The
google-eyed fascination should damp down in the next thousand years. On
Almea, I have a sentient species, the iliu, with 40,000 years of civilization.
They have very high technology, but they’re no more captivated by it than we
are by fire. Indeed, miniaturization and specialization have developed to the
point where their technological footprint is small, and they’ve purposely
moved to a lifestyle reminiscent of their own ancestral environment.
Apocalypse now!
Of course, maybe in your imagined future everything collapses. I’m a sucker
for a good post-apocalypse myself. One cheap error is to assume that
civilization will just revert to some particular earlier period. Some
survivalists seem to assume that after the collapse the world will look pretty
much like 1840 again.
But history doesn’t neatly repeat. A collapsed society may simply disappear,
as the Norse Greenlanders did. The fall of Rome didn’t make people revert to
Celtic and German paganism or chieftancies. And for that matter the mindset
of 1840s America— relatively unpolluted, thinking itself with some reason to
be the most advanced nation on the planet— would be very different from a
2140s America devastated by social and economic collapse, surrounded by
enemies, out of resources, and full of environmental disaster areas. I’m afraid
Fallout 3 would be a better model.
There can also be local declines. Jane Jacobs describes a settlement where her
aunt was sent as a missionary. The aunt wanted to build a church from the
large stones found in the riverbed; but the locals patiently explained that this
was impossible. As everyone knew, mortar could only hold small stones; and
even those could only be used for small structures like chimneys, certainly
not a whole wall. This was not the Third World; this was 1930s North
Carolina, and the people were descendants of people with a long tradition of
stonemasonry. Such stories are hard to imagine in today’s highly
interconnected world— but an interstellar society might have such isolated
pockets.
Daily life
This is really a continuation of the Culture chapter, but with the focus on
everyday life rather than entire societies.

Sex and sexism

Humans are pervs... their laws, culture, and religions are obsessed with sex.

Is sexism avoidable?
Let’s hop right into the maelstrom, or (joke imminent) the femaelstrom:
sexism. For the most part our ancestors’ views on sex are unpalatable, even
ludicrous. A realistic portrayal of medieval sex roles would be too.
One possible response: just ignore it. In Oblivion, for instance, players,
bandits, fighters and magicians, pirates, and orcs can all be male or female.
Beginning stats may be affected, but they all balance out (e.g. Dunmer
females lose in Endurance what they gain in Personality).
I’m not bothered by this— games and even fantasy novels don’t have to be
realistic. There’s another approach, though: try to understand the biological
and cultural bases for sexism, and address those directly rather than simply
erase the problem.
Not all historical cultures were equally sexist; it’s worthwhile to consider the
variation that existed. And there’s even more variation found in other species,
which can be adopted for your conworlds or aliens.

Historical sex roles

Here’s one mitigating factor, though it’s a bit of a downer: life sucked for
everyone! Or more generally: for the vast majority, life in agricultural and
early industrial society involved hard work and plenty of it, for both sexes.
As a pioneer woman succintly put it: “Everything on this farm is either heavy
or hungry.”
The upside of this is that class trumps sex. In an egalitarian but sexist society
all men may feel that they outrank all women— except for their mother— but
in a stratified society, upper class women outrank lower class men. Chaucer’s
depiction of the Wife of Bath shows how formidable a medieval woman
might be. In cultures from ancient Rome to imperial China, women might be
regents for young heirs and rule the country. Some kingdoms could be ruled
by queens in their own right. In medieval times there were monastic orders
which were entirely female-run; a large noble household was often run by the
noblewoman.
Dorothy L. Sayers in Are Women Human? points out that women’s work was
economically significant. In hunter-gatherer societies women often do the
gathering, which produces half or more of the tribe’s food. Hammurabi’s law
code describes tavernkeeping as a female occupation. Clothing is often a
female industry— stolen from women by the industrial revolution. Women
helped their craftsmen husbands in medieval times and could inherit the
business upon their death. Among California Indians, artistic creation was a
female monopoly, as it consisted of basketry (a category that included most
household goods).
The notion that women should only be occupied with bearing children was a
conceit of the Victorian upper classes.
The position of women improved or degraded over space and time,
sometimes in surprising ways. The Spartans, those military juggernauts, were
noted for their proud, independent women— this scandalized the Athenians,
who thought women should stay at home. The Neo-Confucian thinker Zhū
Xī, writing in the 1100s, pushed Chinese society in the direction of rigid
respect for authorities, resulting in much greater restrictions on women.
Women had more independence among the nomads of the Eurasian steppe
than in China. They had property rights, they could initiate divorce and
remarry, and elite women could hold high office, even military office. They
cared for the herds along with the men, rode horses, and defended their
settlements when the men were away.
Yingtian, wife of the Khitan emperor Abaoji, accompanied her husband on
military campaigns and received ambassadors with him. Abaoji died in 926.
There was a tradition of wives being sacrificed upon the king’s death, but she
stated that her sons were young (they were in their twenties) and the country
needed her. However, she insisted— over the Khitan nobles’ protests— on
having her right hand cut off to be buried with Abaoji. This did nothing to
lessen her power: she was able to overrule her husband’s choice of heir and
impose what she considered a better choice. And it ended forever the custom
of sacrificing the widows of Khitan kings.
What factors are most important in maintaining sexism?
• The male monopoly on war. Marvin Harris argues that this is the
primary factor— that the premium on raising warrior boys makes girls
less valuable.
Read enough history, and it’s striking how every society seems to
have a few exceptional warrior women: China’s Fù Hǎo, Vietnam’s
Trưng sisters, France’s Joan of Arc, Arabia’s Mavia, Artemisia of
Helicarnassus, India’s Lakshmibai, the Hausas’ Amina, the Apache
Lozen, the Soviet Lyudmila Pavličenko, and on and on. For the curious
I’ve provided a fuller list on the web resources page.
Though many of these women were royalty, some organized
female armies as well, and there are other peoples where women
routinely fought alongside men. Weapons are found buried with
women in Scythian graves; the Romans found women fighting among
the Teutonic tribes. In modern times there are many stories of women
disguising as men in order to fight— e.g. the first US woman to receive
a military pension, Revolutionary War fighter Deborah Sampson.
• Lack of birth control. Hunter-gatherers have children at
intervals of about four years; for agriculturalists it’s about two years.
Women are obviously not restricted to only child-rearing, but if there’s
always young children around, their options are limited. As a corollary,
women are freer when they can control conception and birth.
• Authoritarian religions. The Abrahamic religions were harder on
women than paganism; the Confucians more so than Daoists or
Buddhists.
An obsession with virginity is especially destructive for women;
it can cause men to sequester women, to make their lives miserable if
they stray, and in extreme cases even to mutilate their bodies to prevent
sexual arousal.
 • Limited land held by an elite— such as the medieval European
aristocracy. Such an elite does not value fertility, which in a primarily
agricultural society can only dilute its wealth. You want to raise a son
to inherit the estate; daughters are something of a liability, and you
actually pay someone to take them off your hands.
In land-rich societies, by contrast, fertility is welcome— as is
polygamy. Women are valuable and a husband has to pay a price to
marry one.

Biological sex roles

Biology offers some generalizations on male and female appearance and
behavior:
• Males tend to be larger; the size discrepancy (sexual
dimorphism) correlates, we may say, with the nastiness of the males—
e.g. male gorillas are 1.5 times the size of the females, and a single
male maintains a harem; gibbon females are almost the same size as
males, have a considerable degree of choice over their mate, and live in
long-term monogamy.
Humans are on the low end of the sexual dimorphism scale— the
male/female size ratio is 1.1. If you think this means that males do all
the heavy work, think again. An anecdote from Jared Diamond:
Once [in New Guinea] I offered to pay some villagers to carry
supplies from an airstrip to my mountain camp. The heaviest item
was a 110-pound bag of rice, which I lashed to a pole and assigned a
team of four men to shoulder together. When I eventually caught up
with the villagers, the men were carrying light loads, while one
small woman weighing less than the bag of rice was bent under it,
supporting its weight by a cord across her temples.
• Males expend little energy in producing and distributing sperm;
females invest much more in producing eggs and bearing young. Their
mate selection strategy accordingly varies: for males there is no cost
and much to gain by inseminating as many females as possible; females
are more picky as they’re making more of an investment, and prefer
monogamy.
 But it’s much more complicated than that. Within the same
species, males may try different strategies: e.g. some male chimps
bluster and cow the females into submission; others form friendships
with females and mate behind the alphas’ backs. Male parental
involvement is a good evolutionary strategy: being a strong caretaker
and protector makes it more likely the small fry will thrive and
reproduce. And females even in pair-bonding species play around—
getting the best of both worlds: viable genes from the strongest males,
nurturing from the gentler ones.
Some females are well defended against male violence— the
porcupine, for instance, isn’t going to have sex unless she feels like it.
(Though this isn’t without its kinky side... foreplay consists of
drenching the female with urine.)
• There’s something of an arms race between the sexes, waged
with changes to the genitals. The very promiscuous chimpanzees have
evolved enormous testicles, so as to produce a huge amount of sperm—
the better to fertilize you with, my dear. (Male gorillas, who keep their
harem sequestered, have small testicles.)
When a drone mates with a queen bee, his penis detaches, acting
as a genital plug to prevent other drones from mating with her. Male
squirrels insert a gluey “copulatory plug” with the same purpose—
though the female may later remove or eat it.
The bedbug, perhaps in response to such obstacles, developed
“traumatic insemination”— the penis skips the genitals entirely and
pierces the female’s carapace, inserting the sperm close to the ovaries.
In some species the females have evolved a swelling that guides the
penetration and is filled with hemocytes that combat infection.
Or a male may kill a female’s offspring, to make sure the next
ones are his— a behavior observed among lions and chimpanzees
among others.
Humans are unusual among the great apes in that estrus (the
female’s most fertile period) is hidden. Most likely this increases pair-
bonding by divorcing sex from reproduction. The males can’t be sure
of reproducing by focusing on the short period of fertility, so they have
 to be around all the time.
All that said, there’s immense variety in the animal kingdom, and there’s all
sorts of wacky sexual behavior.
• Close to home, bonobo females are nobody’s patsy. Females
don’t let themselves be dominated by the males— in captivity, they are
even dominant. The alpha male more or less decides where the troop
moves... unless vetoed by the alpha female.
Bonobos also use sex as a form of social bonding and conflict
resolution; they don’t pair-bond, and female-female sexual contact is
very common— male-male contact also occurs, though less frequently.
• It’s not always the female that raises the young. After laying an
egg, the female emperor penguin (star of March of the Penguins)
skedaddles off, leaving the male to brood the egg— all the more of a
sacrifice as the penguins mate in a remote area and the male has no
food for two months.
• Some species reverse the amount of effort put into the genetic
package. Many species (including species of firefly and salamander)
create and deposit a huge sperm packet, which not only provides a huge
number of sperm but a significant gift of protein. I borrowed this idea
for one of the sapients of Almea, the ktuvoks.
• In some species, nature seems to have decided that males are just
vehicles for sperm. Beehives are almost entirely all-female affairs;
drones are raised in small numbers for reproduction only, and die after
mating. At least they’re not eaten, as in many spiders and mantises. (To
be fair, among bristle worms, it’s the female that dies after laying her
eggs, and she is sometimes eaten.)
The male green spoon worm is 200,000 times smaller than the
female; after finding his mate he enters her body and takes up residence
in a little sac in her reproductive system.
• The spotted hyena has a real matriarchy, and these dames are
tough. Their clitoris has expanded into a pseudo-phallus, and it’s not
only used for mating but for giving birth. Packs have a dominant
female, and all males (except her cubs) rank under all females.
 Normally cubs are born in pairs— and one immediately kills the other.
A single spotted hyena can kill a wildebeest three times its size.
They’re also able to eat and digest bones.
For much more on unusual animal sex, see Olivia Judson’s Dr. Tatiana’s Sex
Advice to All Creation.

Matriarchies
Part of the fun of fantasy and s.f. is that you can explore neat ideas that
human history hasn’t bothered to try out. One of these is matriarchy.
If you’d like to build your own:
• If you can play with the biology, consider using some of the
ideas above, such as small or reversed sexual dimorphism, biological
protection against rape, and male care for the young.
• At the cultural level, you can supply reliable birth control, plenty
of land, and of course an ideology of feminine superiority.
• If you’re working with humans, don’t just reverse everything in
premodern societies. There are biological differences after all: women
are still the ones to get pregnant and nurse, which take far more of an
investment than insemination. At least some of male violence and
female bonding is hormonal.
For Almea I created a female-dominated civilization, the Bé. Here’s a partial
description of Beic mores; see also the biography of Múr on p. 30.
The following description applies to the poor— the majority of the people. Their life
is not that different from peasants, fisherfolk, and craftsmen in any pre-modern
society. Both sexes work hard; marriages are arranged by the family rather than by the
participants; women marry in their late teens and have many more babies than survive
to adulthood. The major differences from most other societies:
• Women are the acknowledged leaders. They are usually older than their
husbands; they control the family’s wealth; inheritance and naming are
matrilineal; husbands join the wife’s family and take her name. Women are
considered smarter, tougher, more even-tempered, more virtuous (yet, when
they are bad, more evil). Men are recognized for their strength, but the
comparison is inevitably made to the even stronger nawr ox. Men are
considered the more emotional sex, and the sexual tempters.
• Society is organized into extended family groups called bands (jɔ), led
by an elder woman (háɔ) and consisting of her descendants, plus males who
have married into the family. When the elder dies, the two oldest daughters
become the nucleus of their own bands, unless the family is too small. The
optimum size for a band is one to three dozen people.
Bands rather than marriages are the basic economic unit: members work
for the band as a whole, and wealth is pooled. Raising children is a task of the
entire band.
At this level of society a band’s wealth mostly means land, so splitting the
band means dividing up land. However, bands don’t legally own land— noble
families do; poor bands simply have the right to work somewhere on the estate,
and the nobles don’t care how many bands there are.
More importantly, the Bé are relatively land-rich. The majority of land at
any one time is uncultivated. When a band splits, it will abandon its old fields
and begin two new plots. This practice helps maintain the ecological health of
the jungle.
• Since women are not the property of men, there is no cult of virginity,
nor any concern that women be faithful to their men. Nonetheless a woman is
not supposed to have sex till a few years after menarche. They’re expected to
devote themselves to learning their band’s work and ways.
• Men technically do not marry a woman; they marry into a band. (Indeed,
the word for marriage, jɔhù, means ‘band entry’.) As marriage is not the basic
economic unit, marriages are not accorded the importance they have in our
society— both parties are free to terminate it. Men will not lightly do this,
however: since wealth stays with the females of the band, leaving the band will
almost always be a severe economic loss. Moreover, bands are reluctant to
accept older males.
Moralists spend much more effort exhorting women to keep their men— a
clue that, often enough, they do not. On the other hand, if a woman has tired of
a man, she can stop sleeping with him without kicking him out of her band
(which is the elder’s prerogative anyway). The band won’t lightly give up an
extra pair of hands.
A marriage is sought for a particular girl in the family, when she’s old
enough. It’s not inappropriate, then, to use the terms ‘husband’ and ‘wife’.
Nonetheless, sex between any band members of the same generation is licit. To
put it bluntly, a man can and probably will sleep with his wife’s sisters, and
with her cousins if they are part of the band. His primary pair-bond may even
shift to one of them. The Bé like to say that their morality allows the male
 (considered the randier, more animalistic gender) to stray, but within bounds.
Marriages are sought with allied bands; these are often ultimately related,
but the rule is that one cannot marry into bands which have split off from one’s
own within living memory. (In our terms, you can’t marry your cousins,
because they’re probably in your own band, nor your second cousins, because
their band split off only a generation back; but your third cousins are fair
game.)
• Young women bear and nurse babies, but that’s the extent of their formal
responsibility. Past infancy, the primary caregivers are younger girls, middle-
aged women, and older men. (This wide range is considered healthy for the
child.)
To put it another way, a young girl is learning the skills needed for her
band’s lifestyle; that includes raising children, so she helps out. A healthy
young woman, however, is best used working at the band’s primary economic
activity. As she ages, she has more time for leisure pursuits— including caring
for children. When she becomes an elder her primary responsibility is
governing the band.
Boys will help take care of younger siblings, but it’s not so important for
boys to learn the band’s ways— they’ll be leaving it when they marry.
Thereafter, their primary task is working to help support their new family.
Their working life is longer mostly because of sexism. As old men, however,
they’re not expected to work hard, and they have little role in running the band,
so they’re most useful in taking care of the children.
This probably raises many questions; you can read the Almeopedia for more.
You may think it would go a different way— fine, on your planet it will.
The jɔ structure is partly based on the largely female-dominant Moso culture
of East Asia. It’s also an attempt to provide an extended family structure that
would free women from being bound to child-rearing for most of their lives.
Another interesting approach is Sheri Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s
Country, in which women run the towns. Men are allowed to live with them,
but most live in barracks just outside the towns and engage in frequent war. I
can’t explain much more without spoilers.

Marriage
There are several decisions to make about marriage.
• Are marriages arranged? In premodern agricultural societies,
 arranged marriage was generally the norm. Among the well-off,
marriage cemented ties between families or even nations, and were far
too important to leave to the individuals involved. For other classes, as
among Indians today, it was felt that mature older people could make a
much better decision than rash youngsters.
Among the medieval European nobility, people still fell in love,
but this had little to do with who they were married to. Courtly
literature offered a complex standard of behavior for such adulterous
affairs.
• Who is out of bounds? In our culture this is largely a matter of
avoiding incest. But many cultures divide people into groups and
specify complex rules on which groups can and can’t intermarry.
The simplest such system is two moieties or halves. E.g. the
Tlingit are divided into Raven (yéil) and Eagle (ch’aak’) moieties (in
some areas the latter were Wolves instead). A Raven could only marry
an Eagle and vice versa.
• Whose family does the couple live with? In matrilocal societies,
the bride stays with or near her parents; her husband may or may not
live with her. Among the Moso, for instance, a man visits a woman at
night, and helps little with child-rearing.
Matrilocality does not mean matriarchy. Among the Iroquois, a
man was absent for half the year raiding, trading, or hunting; the rest of
the year he lived with his wife’s family. Under these circumstances a
man’s wealth would pass to his sister’s son or to his brother— that is,
to the nearest male relative within his own clan; his own children
belonged to his wife’s clan. (Given the social mores, this also made
genetic sense: his heirs were certainly genetically related to him; his
wife’s children might not really be.)
In patrilocal societies the bride goes to live with her husband’s
family; this has historically been the pattern for about 70% of societies.
Most modern societies are neolocal, meaning that the couple sets up a
new household separate from both sets of families— a consequence of
highly mobile societies where people routinely move long distances to
study or work.
• Is the family line matrilineal (inherited from the mother) or
patrilineal? Western European culture is patrilineal, in that names and
titles are inherited from the father.
Inheritance of ethnicity may be more complicated. In Arabic
culture an Arab man’s children are all Arab; this is why (say) Egyptians
consider themselves Arabs. The Spanish in the New World, however,
didn’t consider a man’s child Spanish if the mother was Amerindian or
black. Traditionally one can only be a Jew if one’s mother is Jewish.
In the premodern world wealth was not easily acquired, and it
would quickly be subdivided into nothing if all children inherited
equally. In Europe, the traditional rule for the elite was primogeniture:
the eldest son inherited the estate. Some cultures, including parts of
medieval Japan and England, practiced ultimogeniture, where the last
son inherits the estate, or a larger share, perhaps on the theory that older
sons already had an estate, or to reward the youngest son for taking
care of his elderly parents.
Cultures differ in whether women inherit at all, and if so whether they
get a full or a half share.
• Is a payment required, and who gets it? Does the man pay a
bride-price? This seems to be associated with regions where
population density is relatively low, land is cheap, and there is no great
social stratification, such as traditional sub-Saharan Africa.
If the woman’s family must pay a dowry, the implication is that
female fertility is something of a negative; this suits areas where
population increase threatens to reduce the standard of living, and
where elites don’t want property to spread to lower strata.
• How many wives? Having multiple wives is polygyny;
according to the Ethnographic Atlas Codebook, 85% of the 1231
societies surveyed allowed polygyny. Thus it’s monogamy that seems
to demand an explanation.
Nonetheless, polygynous societies can hardly supply multiple
wives to every man; polygyny is a privilege of the wealthy and
powerful.
 • How many husbands? Polyandry is quite rare, but it’s practiced
among some Tibetans; this is a difficult environment where limiting
population growth is highly desirable.
Many of these choices are more male- or female-centric, and it’s safe to say
that the more of the male-centric choices are made, the more male-dominant
the society.

The family
In most premodern societies the extended family is more important than the
nuclear family. You may live with them, or next door to them. They’re your
social network, your judges, your protectors and avengers, your investors,
your safety net in bad times.
In ancient Roman society, for instance, the paterfamilias, the head of the
family, not only retained authority over his adult sons, they could not sign
contracts, free slaves, or make wills without his consent, nor did their money
belong to them. (This was an extreme, however; the Greeks were surprised
by such strictures.)
As a corollary, the modern idea of teenage culture is a novelty. In most
cultures, a male adolescent simply begins living and working as an adult,
though at a junior level, and is often forbidden to marry till he is well
established.
In Rome, however, young elite males were expected to be rowdy and
sexually indulgent— breaking into shops, visiting prostitutes, getting into
fights.

Birth control
It’s no coincidence that sexual liberation came on the heels of effective birth
control, nor that moralists of all religions preach fidelity. In premodern
conditions, chastity is the only sure way to avoid disease, and since a woman
could hardly avoid pregnancy, it was best to be married before having sex.
Anna Magdalena, second wife of Johann Sebastian Bach, bore thirteen
children between 1723 and 1742, meaning that she spent half her time
pregnant.
!Kung hunter-gatherer women have babies only about every four years. They
nurse their children till the next child is born, which seems to inhibit
ovulation. On the other hand they live in a desert and have a low fat intake,
so it’s not clear that this is truly representative of the ancestral environment.
There’s always been a strong demand for birth control, and where any
demand exists it will generate a supply: acidic vaginal suppositories, oiled
paper used as a cervical cap, herbal concoctions. But these methods seem to
have been no more effective than most of the premodern physician’s toolbox
— that is to say, variable at best, fatal at worst. The condom, originally made
of animal intestine, appeared only in the 17C.
In Roman times the herb silphium apparently inhibited conception; it only
grew in Cyrenaica, was highly expensive, and seems to have been
overharvested to extinction.
Abortifacients can be more effective— but mostly because they’re poisons,
with a high risk of harming or killing the woman.
The simplest premodern birth control is infanticide— usually done soon after
birth before any bond can develop, but there may also be a pattern of
preferential neglect. This is so effective among the Yanomamö that the sex
ratio at puberty is 154 males to 100 females. But it’s by no means limited to
primitive societies; in the 18C poor women in England regularly dropped
unwanted babies in the river, left them in trash barrels, or rolled over them in
a drunken slumber.
More benignly, you can try abstinence, or non-reproductive sex. However,
many of these activities were considerably less attractive with premodern
hygiene. Oral sex was once considered highly perverted— the premodern
nose was accustomed to a workout, but there were limits.
I go over all this grim history not to encourage you to reproduce it, but to
suggest that you think about how to avoid it. It’s not realistic to depict a
premodern society with modern promiscuity and sexual equality with no
explanation; it’s like outfitting your windy and stinky old castles with
jacuzzis.
The simplest though the least original method is to posit a herbal mixture that
really works. It could be interesting to place limits on this: where do the herbs
grow? are they rare or common? do the religious authorities approve?
You can also tweak your biology. Queen bees can determine whether an egg
is male or female, and it’s easy to imagine a species with greater control over
ovulation or conception. (Though the genes may have reason to distrust the
brain, as discussed above, p. 84. They’ll be screwed if the brain decides not
to reproduce at all.)
Cultural norms may help— e.g. many societies practice sexual abstinence
during nursing, perhaps accompanied by rationalizations such as that semen
would poison the milk.

Homosexuality
So, there are two types of people, people who love the opposite sex and those
that love the same sex, right?
Nah. It’s much more complicated than that. Let’s look at a few examples.
• In ancient Greece and Rome, men routinely took male lovers as
well as wives.
• In Latin America, only bottoming is a sure token of being gay—
a man who penetrates another man may consider himself straight.
• Among the Azande of central Africa, male warriors would take
on a younger male lover, even paying his parents a bride-price. The
relationship would end when the younger boy reached maturity.
Marriages were polygamous, and lesbianism was common among
wives. The Atanda of Australia and the Keraki of New Guinea had
similar customs.
• Male homosexuality is required among the Etoro and the Sambia
of New Guinea— it’s believed that young men must ingest the semen
of older men in order to attain maturity and impregnate women; there
are also severe time and place restrictions on heterosexual sex.
These examples suggest that sexual orientation is a continuum, not a binary
opposition, and can bend very far depending on cultural mores. It can also
vary over an individual’s lifetime; there may be a good deal of adolescent
exploration, and occasionally a dramatic change in orientation in later life.
I don’t mean that homosexuality is a choice. As it’s found among animals,
it’s a part of biology. But it’s more complex than a single binary parameter.
For reference, I’d love to give you a percentage for homosexuality, but the
numbers are all over the place. For the U.S., on the low end, a Census study
found 0.5% of the population living in a same-sex relationship; on the high
end, Alfred Kinsey found 37% of men reporting at least one homosexual
experience.
So, how is homosexuality expressed in your society?
• It’s considered wrong. This is a minority view: an
anthropological database, the Human Relations Area File, reported that
of 76 societies where homosexuality had been studied to some extent,
only 36% considered it unacceptable.
“Wrong” covers a lot of ground, however. It could mean:
° Evil, and punishable by death or imprisonment, as in
Leviticus or Victorian England. This should be put into perspective:
Leviticus also dictates the death penalty for adultery, incest,
spiritism, and cursing one’s parents.
° Disreputable but not criminal, like being a Jew or an actor in
Elizabethan England.
° A character failing, like drunkenness.
Lesbianism may be treated differently— or ignored; Leviticus
doesn’t even mention it.
• It might be tolerated if kept discreet. Note that societies differ in
how much any sexuality can be expressed in the open, and which sorts
of things were considered sexual. In the 19C Japanese men and women
bathed together, but the Japanese were scandalized by Westerners
kissing in public.
• It may be regarded as a private matter, so long as it didn’t
interfere with one’s duty to beget children, as in premodern China.
• It might be fully indulged, as in Greek and Roman society. The
ceramics of the Moche, in Peru, depict both gay and lesbian acts.
• It might be allowed to a certain subclass of people (see the next
section), or within sex-segregated institutions such as monasteries and
the military (as in feudal Japan).
 • It might be obligatory, as for the Azande, Etoro, and Sambia.
Though we might pride ourselves on our openness to sex, many cultures
would complain that we inappropriately sexualize everything. Men holding
hands or kissing may have no sexual meaning; two people setting up a house
together (like Holmes and Watson) doesn’t imply a sexual relationship.
All this can make it hard to know for sure what’s going on in history.
Michelangelo, for instance, wrote love poems to boys and created beautiful
images of male bodies, but a contemporary biographer, Condivi, describes
him as “chaste”. Interpreting Chinese sources is complicated by the lack of
gender-specific pronouns and the use of highly allusive language (e.g.
“countenances of linked jade”). (Of course there are plenty of clear references
too; what’s difficult is getting an overall perspective.)

Cultural sexes
Biology says there are two sexes, but cultures don’t have to agree.
Many North American Indian tribes had a category, called “two-spirits”
(niizh manidoowag in Ojibwe), for those with a mixed masculine and
feminine nature. These often took on special roles within the tribe, e.g.
shamans, prophets, storytellers, matchmakers. They might have either
heterosexual or homosexual relationships.
In northern India, the hijra community includes eunuchs, transvestites,
homosexuals, and hermaphrodites, considered an alternate gender. They too
have a cultural role, though an uncomfortable one: they sing and dance at
weddings and births— often uninvited; they’ll offer their blessing for a fee
and a curse if none is given.
One of my Almean cultures, the Ezičimi, considered that there were three
sexes: male, female, and ewemi (literally, ‘middlers’):
The ewemi were those that didn’t fit the fairly rigid sex roles of the Ezičimi
bands. It was said (usually by outsiders; Ezičimi explanations tended to the
tautological) that these were the unmanly men and the mannish women, and
when we learn that many of them were homosexual, we may think we have
their number. But the Ezičimi were using their own categories, not ours.
The prototypical Ezičimi man was a warrior, strong and hard; the prototypical
woman was a mother and wife, hard-working and nurturing. Men who were not
 good with weapons, who messed around with herbs or (later) books, were
likely to be classified as ewemi. Same story with women who resisted marriage,
or preferred books or bows to babies. A fifth or more of the population was
considered ewemi. Only a fraction of these were actually gay or lesbian; we
could equally call the ewemi ‘geeks’ or, more nicely, ‘intellectuals’.
Ewemi did not dress like women or like men; rather, there were separate dress
styles for each sex. Ewemi dressed in long robes and followed an aesthetic that
hid their biological sex; they were expected to marry only other ewemi (male or
female).

Clothing
If you see a foreigner, the first thing to strike you may be what they’re
wearing. In a visual medium, you hardly need those place subtitles (“Venice,
1690”)— the clothes on the first person we see will do the job.
Alison Lurie wrote a book called The Language of Clothes, and indeed, our
clothes have a lot to say about us: our sex, our age, our wealth, often our
profession or our passing mood.
Ironically, it may be the last thing a conworlder thinks about. And it’s not as
easy as devising a coinage system or a list of gods; it requires us to think
visually, and know something about how clothes are made.

Cloth and how to make it

Clothing starts with cloth, which in turn goes back to the fauna and flora of
your world. Here’s a whirlwind tour of types of cloth:
• Animal skins make good clothing, once the animal is removed.
If you scrape off the fur you get rawhide. Skins didn’t become really
useful till the invention of the needle, some 40,000 years ago.
The minimum equipment for preparing rawhide is a scraper; later
cultures used a dull knife. The process can be facilitated by soaking in a
solution of lye or lime.
• Skins are made into leather by the process of tanning (named for
tannin, an acid derived from oak bark). Tanning makes the skin softer
and allows it to last indefinitely— rawhide decomposes.
 Tanning is a somewhat unattractive process: the fur might be
limed with urine or lye; then dung or animal brains were pounded into
the material. Even in a society used to strong odors, you didn’t want to
live next to a tannery.
• Textiles are cloth made from fibers of various types:
° Plant fibers, which range from the extremely coarse (grasses
and rushes, mostly suitable for making rope, mats, sacks,
hammocks, and very rough clothing) to the very fine (such as the
near-transparent Egyptian linen).
° Wool, made from hair (goats, sheep, camels, llamas, rabbits).
I’ve always thought of wool as scratchy, but fine wools such as
cashmere and vicuña are very soft.
° Silk, made from the cocoons of the silkworm; silk produces
the finest and softest natural fiber.
° Various synthetic fibers, such as polyester and nylon
(polymers, a type of plastic), or fiberglass.
Textiles start out as short loose fibers. These can be mashed and rubbed
together, which is how you get felt; this was the favorite fabric of the Central
Asian nomads.
You get a more durable fabric by spinning and weaving. Spinning aggregates
fibers with a strong twist. The easiest and earliest method was to use a
spindle, a simple device like a top; it acts as a weight and spins the thread,
and the newly formed thread can be wrapped around it. Hand-spinning takes
much more time than weaving; women often kept their spindle with them to
do some spinning at idle moments.
The spinning wheel greatly sped up the process, though quality was low till
the foot treadle was invented to power the wheel, allowing the spinner to use
both hands to control the fiber as it was spun.
Weaving is the process of making cloth on a loom. The simplest loom is a
framework to hold an array of parallel threads, the warp; these could be
stretched tight with a backstrap. The weaver then interweaves a thread at
right angles to them, forming the weft. (Warp and weft may be of different
fabrics or colors, and for fancy effects one can alternate colors, forming a
pattern.) Hand-threading is very slow; an early improvement was the heddle,
a rod which lifted every other thread of the warp.
A slightly more elaborate version is the vertical loom, with the warp threads
attached to the framework at the top and held taut by weights, or tied to a
bottom frame; this also had the advantage of allowing a wider cloth to be
woven.
Even before steam power was applied to clothmaking in the 1700s, the use of
spinning wheels and large frame looms transformed clothmaking from a
home craft to an industry: cloth became something you bought rather than
made.

Types of clothing
There’s a wide range of clothing that doesn’t require much fitting or sewing:
• Loincloth: Put a short thin cloth between your legs; tie it tightly
round your waist with a cord. A variant is to use a long enough cloth
that the material itself can be wrapped around the waist, though a belt
may still be a good idea.
• Toga: Take a very long, wide cloth; wrap it around the waist,
then throw the excess over one shoulder. The weight of the toga would
hold it in place, but it wasn’t suitable for hard labor, and thus was an
indicator of elite status.
• Poncho: Take two pieces of cloth about six feet long; sew them
together except in the middle; put it over your head. If you sew the
sides together (leaving armholes) you’re on your way to a tunic or shirt.
Make it longer and you’ve got the long simple robe worn by both sexes
in early medieval times.
 • Kimono: The kimono is made from a single bolt of cloth with no
waste. Follow the recipe for the poncho, but use a longer cloth so it
comes down to the feet. Add two more pieces of cloth that drape over
the shoulders, forming sleeves. Kimono are properly sewn together
only very lightly, at cleaning time, which makes them easy to wash and
to adapt to changing figures.

• Skirt: Cut a length of cloth so it wraps once around your waist,

sew together. It can be made longer and held up by straps to form a
basic dress.
• Cape: Take a large squarish piece of cloth. Drape over the
shoulders; bring the corners together and fasten with a clasp, pin, or
even a loop of cloth.
Our clothes (pants, shirts, dresses) are of course fitted, which involves
measuring, cutting complex shapes out of bolts of cloth, and sewing together.
These can be made to fit the body much better, but they are more specialized
work and do not use the cloth as efficiently.
Infinite variation is possible: color; type of fabric (coarse or fine, stiff or
soft); length and thus amount of coverage; thickness of belts; amount of
decoration; accessories (hats, headbands, collars, cravats, shawls, veils).
Sometimes hats, belts, sleeves, or shoes grow long extensions, such as the
long pointed shoes and pointy hats popular in the 15C, often mistaken as
typical medieval wear.
The basic templates can be combined or layered, of course. A medieval
peasant might wear a light tunic, a thicker cloak, and leggings. The properly
attired noblewoman of Heian Japan wore no less than twelve layers of
kimono. Often you want to show off the fine underlayers, so undergarments
peek out at the edges, or are glimpsed through slashes or slits in the outer
layer.
The type of clothing interacts with other aspects of lifestyle, such as furniture.
Liza Dalby points out that kimono are impractical with chairs— you have to
perch on the edge; the obi (stiff tied sash) doesn’t allow you to lean back. The
kimono was designed for kneeling on the floor. In this position Western
clothing is highly uncomfortable, but the kimono flatters the figure and the
obi offers back support.

The language of clothing

A culture has not only a style of clothing, but a set of variations that tell much
about the individual.
Unsurprisingly, the main signifier is quality. The well-off wear better, softer
fabrics, more layers, and more decoration. Dyes have been sought after for
millennia, and the strongest colors are often expensive and thus markers of
high status. Tyrian purple, for instance, is harvested from a type of snail; as
12,000 snails are needed to extract enough dye for a single garment, it was
restricted to royalty. Cochineal, made from a scale insect, was the most
important export of colonial Mexico after silver.
Sumptuary laws, which restrict certain clothing to certain classes, are
common. In Táng China, for instance, commoners were supposed to restrict
themselves to undyed hemp. Such laws are repeated often enough that it’s
clear they were frequently violated.
It may be equally important to be sophisticated. Geisha, for instance, wear
kimono in slightly more subdued hues and a subtly more voluptuous line than
middle class women, and pride themselves on matching kimono to the season
according to complicated cultural conventions.
A perennial approach to sophistication is to dress like prestigious foreigners
— elegant Romans dressed like Greeks, Japanese like Chinese; today male
leaders around the world use Western suits— essentially a version of 19C
British formalwear. Exotic dress can be worn as a novelty (Mandarin collars,
harem dresses) or as a political statement (Nehru jackets, Palestinian
keffiyehs).
It’s an oddity of recent Western culture that men dress drably, while women
have a wide array of styles and colors. Historically men were just as apt to
compete in the richness and color of their clothes. Male and female outfits
may or may not be sharply distinguished.
Clothes become associated with professions, and these may become markers
of values or even intent. In ancient Rome the toga was the dress of the
senatorial class, very different from the armor and skirts of the soldier.
Emperors were often military men, and whether they wore the toga or a
military outfit was a signal of which class they intended to favor. Blue jeans,
originally a marker of the sturdy working classes, became the uniform of the
young. The hip-hop style of sagging pants originated in prison, where belts
were banned, and neatly shows the reverse prestige operating in a
marginalized community.
Authority figures in the Middle Ages wore long robes— as opposed to the
peasants’ short tunics— and this has persisted in the robes worn by priests,
judges, and academics.
Children often wear simpler garments than their elders. Roman children, for
instance, wore a simple tunic. In Europe young boys wore dresses similar to
those of their sisters well into the 20th century.
As Lurie points out, changes in fashion reflect larger social trends. With the
French Revolution, the elaborate and colorful dresses and coiffures of
noblewomen went out of style; the new style was simple white gowns,
appropriate for the bourgeois democratic era, and based on lingerie, or the
simpler outfits worn by children. Male attire became far more restrained,
distinguished by fine tailoring rather than striking color. (Styles don’t stay
simple for long; by the end of the century women were wearing corsets and
long skirts with a ballooned-out shape built out of whalebone.)

When to be nude
Another clothing option is to wear none, or not much. Looking through a
history of clothing, it seems there’s been a general tendency to wear more
over time. Some of it was climate, of course— you don’t need to wear
anything at all near the Equator, and not much in Egypt or Cambodia. But
you can also find bare breasts in early Anatolia, Germany, and North
America.
Perhaps nudity goes out of style because it’s associated with poverty or low
status. Slaves might go naked in ancient Egypt; till relatively late poor
children went naked in many cultures, saving the expense of clothing them.
Ascetics may wear simple clothing, like Mahatma Gandhi’s loincloth; as a
further step the holy man may wear nothing at all. Isaiah preached naked for
a time (Isaiah 20:2-4), and in a religious ecstasy King Saul took off his
clothes and prophesied (1 Samuel 19:23-24). Traditionally Indian sages often
went naked.
In special circumstances nudity may be a signal of elite status. Athletes
competed nude in ancient Greece, and a marker of high status in modern
Europe is the freedom to fly to a warm beach somewhere and wear as little as
possible.

The unfashionable human body

That’s the title of a fascinating book by Bernard Rudofsky, chronicling the
ways humans disfigure their bodies for the sake of fashion.
Foot binding is the most infamous example: for nearly a millennium, Chinese
girls had their feet broken— all but the big toe crammed under the foot. Then
the arch was broken and the heel and big toe pressed close together. This
caused enormous lifelong pain, difficulty in walking, and malodorous
infections, but a tiny foot that looked fetching in tiny shoes (though less so
when the shoes were removed), and a cautious, swaying gait that men
considered highly erotic. Curiously the Manchu rulers of the Qīng dynasty
forbade their own women from binding their feet.
The Victorian corset was not quite as cruel, but still painfully constricted the
waist and forced the internal organs downward; no wonder women were
depicted as frail, fainting creatures.
We don’t do any of that anymore though, do we? Look at your feet. The big
toe curves inward a bit; the little toe may curve back the other way, especially
for women. This isn’t natural; this is what shoes do to us. For contrast,
Rudofsky shows the foot of a Roman sandal-clad foot with completely
straight toes. He also mocks the designers of women’s shoes for apparently
believing that the big toe is in the middle of the foot.

Architecture
Houses are almost as distinctive as clothing. What does the architecture of
your people look like, what is it made of, and how is it decorated?

How to make a hut

The dwellings of primitive peoples are not arbitrary, but adapted to the
climate, rainfall, local materials, and degree of nomadism.
• In the rain forest, there’s no need to protect against the
temperature, so walls may disappear. Instead there’s a parasol-like
thatched roof to provide shade and protection against the rain, and
sometimes a raised floor to protect against vermin. Houses are made of
the most prevalent materials: trees and leaves.
• The hot deserts feature blistering daytime heat and cold nights;
clay and stone absorb heat during the day and radiate it at night,
mitigating these extremes. Walls are massive; roofs in low-rainfall
areas can be flat.
• Nomads favor tents, with a light framework covered by skins,
felt, cloth, or bark. The diagonal willow framework of Central Asian
yurts folds up to a compact bundle.
• The dome shape of the igloo deflects winters storms and
efficiently encloses space. Snow is a good insulator, and body heat and
an oil lamp create an inner glazing of ice that seals the surface and
 reflects heat. When outside temperatures are -25 to -35° C, the inside
temperature remains just above freezing.
Another factor is the number of people per house. The Yanomamö build a
single house for an entire village— really a large ring enclosing a circular
inner courtyard. The Plains Indians built earth lodges 12 to 18 meters wide,
large enough for an extended family.

The problem of roofs

Architecture, as opposed to a dude making himself a house, happens when
you’re building something big, and facing the fundamental problem of how
to roof it over.

The simplest construction is trabeated: a flat lintel rests on vertical posts.

The force on the posts is vertical and entirely compressive. That on the lintel
is more complex: compressive on the top, tensile on the bottom. Stone and
wood are strong only under compression, thus aren’t suitable for long
trabeated spans.
In the third dimension, the pillars can become walls; or you can stick with
pillars or columns for an airier building.

Longer spans are possible by using a truss, a structure composed of narrow

beams, strengthened with diagonals. (Triangles add stability because they
can’t buckle.) A truss is stronger and much lighter than a solid beam of the
same length.
Arcuated construction relies on the arch; the Romans were the first to fully
exploit arches. The wedge-shaped stones (voussoirs) are easier to handle than
lintels, and an arch can cover longer spans.
The voussoirs eliminate tensile forces and thus nicely fit stone and wood, but
the arch generates outward force, requiring buttresses on the sides.
The arch need not be a half-circle; variations add a particular character to the
building. Gothic arches have the advantage that the two arcs need not be the
same height, while the parabolic arch eliminates the need for side buttresses.

A circular arch can be extruded into the third dimension, forming a barrel
vault, or rotated to form a dome.
Walls don’t need to be solid; a set of columns as in a Greek temple, or a row
of arches as in a Roman aqueduct, are equivalent to a wall.

Materials
Architecture was transformed in the 19C by mass-produced iron, which is
not only stronger than wood and stone but much better at resisting tensile
force. Iron frameworks, or steel-reinforced concrete, can be much lighter and
taller than traditional buildings.
Since iron rusts, it generally has to be covered. This bothers some architects,
as the structure of the building is hidden— indeed, a building can now
deceive the world, looking like it’s made of brick or pure concrete when it
relies on a steel skeleton.
Steel beams support two structural innovations:
• A lintel can be balanced on just one pillar if a counterweight is
added on the other side, forming a cantilever. As the weight can be
hidden, the visual effect is of a large rectangle extending into space
without visible support.
• A block can be suspended: supported by cables, themselves
hung from larger cables attached to huge pillars. The suspension bridge
is the most familiar example, but roofs can be suspended as well.

Shapes
Primitive houses are often circular; the circle encloses the most space per
length of wall, but it’s harder to combine into larger structures. Large
buildings usually end up rectilinear.

Most architects start with a big geometric shape and subdivide it.

An alternative is to add rooms as discrete units, with an irregular perimeter, a

plan which may appeal to more romantic tastes.
Somewhere in between, the building can incorporate wings and courtyards,
inside and outside. Negative space is as much a part of the design as positive
space.
Civilizations, epochs, and architects differ in their appreciation for
symmetry, uniformity, and large-scale order. An organic or haphazard plan
may have a retro charm, or a modernistic edginess.
Similarly, some people like Zen simplicity, some like extravagant
ornamentation. But things that look arbitrary or decorative often are not. The
flying buttresses of a medieval cathedral are functional, supporting the
outward pressure of the arcuated walls; the beams of a truss or the columns of
a temple are similarly structural.

Function
How a house is built tells us much about the values of the residents. Which
are the biggest, grandest rooms, for instance— those intended to receive
guests, or those for the private life of the family? Are there rooms for
servants? Is the kitchen a small mean room or a luxurious status symbol? Is
the house decorated according to male or female taste?
Do children get their own rooms? Do the servants? Go back far enough and a
large household lived and slept in one big room— if nothing else, because
that was the room with a fireplace. Most premoderns would be amazed not at
the size of American McMansions but at the fact that they house only three to
five people.
As a civilization becomes more complex, both buildings and rooms become
more specialized. Before the modern era no one needed a train station, a
missile silo, a computer room, or a garage. On the other hand, few houses
today need a granary, a stable, a music room (that is, for making music), or a
sickroom.
Architects also face new logistic problems: they not only have to fit in the
rooms, corridors, and stairs, but elevators, ventilation shafts, wiring,
plumbing, heating and a/c. An s.f. house might need life support, robot
storage, teleport pods, and the central A.I. core…

A Verdurian house
Here’s a house I designed for a middle-class family in Verduria:

I used a number of features inspired by Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern

Language:
• An intimacy gradient from public (the dining room at lower
left), to the kitchen/bath area, to the private bedrooms.
• The use of negative space to define areas such as the garden.
• Light can enter all of the rooms from two or three sides.
• Offset walls in the bedroom area create semi-private niches.
The focus of the house is the kitchen and bath, where the family spends most
of its time. The latter includes a pool that extends into the garden. For a poor
family, this would be the whole house— beds would be fitted along the side
walls.

And more…
This section is a frank miscellany of things that didn’t fit in anywhere else.

Politeness
I’ve covered the linguistic aspects of politeness in the Language Construction
Kit (p. 145). Here I’ll cover various nonverbal aspects.
Personal space
As noted in the culture test (p. 124), cultures vary in how much personal
space people expect, with comical effects when cultures mix. My high school
psychology class did a neat exercise: the class was divided in pairs; one half
the students (unbeknownst to the rest) were told to try to move just a foot
away from their conversational partner. The others, quite unconsciously,
moved back. You could see each pair constantly moving around the room.
Americans expect to have their own space— the nuclear family can come in,
but they’d be decidedly uncomfortable with the lack of privacy in a
Yanomamö village, a Roman senator’s house, or a Bedouin chieftain’s tent.
Some s.f. writers, taking this attitude to the extreme, have imagined worlds
with a positive horror of any direct physical contact.
Loose and strict time
Many cultures are notoriously lax about time: if you’re asked to come at
seven, you’re expected to show up a couple hours later; if you have an
appointment with an official, you might wait all day, then be told to return
tomorrow.
We’re used to clocks accurate to the minute, and the strict schedules they
allow, as well as transportation that matches this accuracy. Laxity over time
may be a holdover from the era when time was measured in hours at best, and
a visit anywhere could be expected to last days or weeks.
Requests and orders
Richard Feynman told a story about going to a seminar in Japan; he wanted
to stay in a Japanese-style inn rather than the Western-style hotel his fellow
physicists were staying in. But somehow this proved to be an enormous
problem. The Japanese organizer was polite but kept bringing up one
objection after another. It took half an hour to get down to the real objection:
if Feynman was in another hotel, the bus would have to make another stop in
the morning.
“No, no! In the morning, I’ll come to this hotel, and get on the bus here,”
Feynman said.
And so it was settled. Only it wasn’t; some new obstacle had come up. This
time it took fifteen minutes before it was out in the open: the mail was
delivered to the other hotel. Feynman promised to pick his mail up when he
walked to the other hotel, and the problem was solved.
This sort of thing is insanely frustrating to Americans less patient than
Feynman. Why don’t these people say what they mean?
The key here is that in many cultures, indirection is polite. Directly stating a
price, or a refusal, is disturbing, so these are obscured. Japan is what’s been
called a Guess culture, rather than an Ask culture. In an Ask culture, you can
ask directly for things— you accept that the answer may be no. In a Guess
culture, you don’t ask directly unless you’re sure the answer is yes. You put
out subtle feelers, in hopes that the hints will be taken and you’ll get an offer.
A Japanese person would have either intuited the reason for the organizer’s
reticence (rather than, in effect, forcing it out of him), or backed off when the
request ran into obstacles; one can also be more direct once a personal
relationship is established. People within a Guess culture get along fine; it’s
the conflict of cultures that causes frustration.

Meals and drinks

We’ve already talked about the chief crops (p. 86) and domestic animals. But
there are other questions to answer:
• What do you add for flavor? The Romans, for instance, were
fond of fish sauce (garum). The Chinese favored pickled vegetables.
• When is the chief meal? Laborers prefer to eat at noon; urban
sophisticates like to dine at night.
• What’s a typical meal? The Verdurians of Almea, for instance,
like to wrap meat or vegetables in a thin bread, much like a tortilla.
Before modern sanitation alcoholic drinks, apart from their amusement value,
were safer than water. Also note that distillation wasn’t available in ancient
times.

Schooling
Mass education is a modern phenomenon— literacy was traditionally
restricted to a minority, sometimes a very small minority... though since
they’re the ones who write the books, their point of view is overemphasized.
Schools are ancient— there were schools for scribes in Sumer— but they
were at first restricted to an elite. Plato’s Academy was founded in 387 BC,
though it was more of a scholars’ circle than a university. The Imperial
Academy was established by the Hàn dynasty in China in the -2C, and
eventually had 30,000 students. Some disciplines established their own
schools; medical schools existed in the Islamic world by the 7C.
An Egyptian text used as a writing exercise reminds the students of their
favored status:
Do you not consider how things are with the farmer, when the harvest
is taxed? Grubs have taken half the grain, the hippopotamus has eaten
from what is left. There are mice in the field and the locust swarm has
come… [The tax collectors] say “Hand over grain!”… He is stretched
out and beaten… his wife is bound in his presence....
Let me tell you how the soldier fares… how he goes to Syria, and how
he marches over the mountains, his bread and his water carried on his
shoulder like the load of an ass… His drink is foul water… If he gets
back to Egypt, he is like worm-eaten wood, sick and bedridden.
Religions may take on educational functions, whether it’s adolescents being
taught the ways of the world in primitive tribes, or education in the scriptures.
Most of the European universities started as religious institutions.
Craftsmen took on apprentices to learn the craft, a practice at least as old as
Babylon, as they are mentioned in Hammurabi’s code— an apprentice was
considered an adopted son, and could sue his master if he failed to teach him
his craft.

Medieval misery
I don’t think the medieval stink has been expressed more memorably than by
Patrick Süskind, in Perfume, speaking of 18C France:
The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank
of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage
 and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of
greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of
chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys, the stench
of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came
the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed
clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth... even the
king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old
goat, summer and winter.
This is on Süskind’s first page, and it masterfully tells us that the world he’s
describing is different from ours, in some very unappealing ways.
The past is a foreign country. On the other hand, it’s only the narrowest and
rudest sort of tourist who visits a foreign country and complains incessantly
that things aren’t as good as they are back home. These things would all
immediately assault our nostrils, but the people of the time certainly didn’t
feel the same way about them. (Or more precisely, they made distinctions.
Everyday sweat was one thing, but please keep the tannery on the outskirts of
town.)
Rather than washing, people might rely on hiding the stink with perfumes. A
Táng prince chewed on a mixture of aloeswood and musk when with guests,
so that whenever he spoke they would sense a pleasing fragrance.
Attitudes toward bathing have widely varied. Bathing every five days was
good enough for the Táng; the Cambodians and Koreans were considered a
little strange for bathing daily. On the other hand Western traders stank; but
then this would be hard to avoid after a six-month journey.
Stench was only part of the general misery. Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant
Mirror is a vivid evocation of the horrors of the 14C: in addition to the
general corruption of the clergy, the oppression of the peasants, and the
irresponsibility of the nobles, there was the Black Death that killed a third of
the population, vicious pogroms against Jews, the Great Schism, and the
Hundred Years’ War. One of the worst scourges was the free companies,
groups of mercenaries who simply prolonged wartime pillaging into a full-
time occupation. Lacking a standing army, the kings could not suppress them,
and indeed had reason not to, as they could be hired for the next war.
This isn’t to say that life was uniformly awful, even for the poor. There were
islands of prosperity and beauty, and the seeds of future progress. Nor were
all lands as disordered as medieval Europe.
Again, you don’t need to dwell on this— unless you want to; perhaps you
like grim conworlds. But some idealization is fine; art need not be didactic.

Lords and slaves

A time traveler from a land where you call the CEO by his first name— or a
hunter-gatherer— would be equally nonplussed at the staggering hierarchy of
premodern states. Lords were prickly and arrogant; only relatively recently
were the powerful expected to treat their lessers with friendly courtesy.
Tuchman records some blood-curdling diatribes against the lower classes;
one Duke not only called the peasants dogs but liked to force them to bark.
At the same time, their inferiors need not be abject. As C.S. Lewis points out,
slaves in Greek and Roman comedy are cheeky, knowing, full of tricks, and
highly self-interested— more like Figaro than like Uriah Heep. St.
Augustine’s mother was berated by her slave-girl for her drinking; Odysseus
in a play is insulted as never having a “freeman’s thought”— meaning he is
always calculating, never acts freely and generously.
Didn’t the lower orders ever rebel? Of course they did; they could easily
storm the local keep and massacre the inhabitants. Rebellions were usually
beaten down, but it took time to organize a counter-force. Cities rebelled too,
and having more money, plus walls, they were trickier to subdue. Sometimes
it was easier to grant them certain liberties rather than sack them.

Xenophobia
I’ve always been fascinated by the foreign. I like learning languages, reading
about foreign and historical cultures, meeting people from distant lands. I’d
love to have access to the galactic Internet.
This has probably always been a minority taste; most people don’t cotton to
strangers. Every group has disparaging terms for non-members. And many
things create groups of insiders and outsiders: race, religion, class, customs,
and above all language. If you can talk at all, there’s some chance of coming
to terms.
But groups differ in their openness:
• A primitive tribe may have a very narrow world, without much
interest in or sympathy for the tribe down the next jungle trail. Jared
Diamond describes New Guineans from different tribes meeting and
exchanging long lists of relatives. They were trying to find a common
relative so they’d have reason not to kill each other.
• Large empires, amalgamating many peoples, end up
cosmopolitan in spirit: Persia, Rome, the Islamic caliphate, India,
China, and the US were all used to multiple religions, ideas, and ethnic
groups. But their tolerance and interest may end at the border.
• A nation isolated by natural barriers, like Japan or Britain, may
be open to foreign ideas but decidedly uncomfortable with foreign
people.
• A small unprotected nation has a complicated relationship to the
outside world. It may have a strong pride and sense of identity— the
ancient Jews, for instance, refused to fall into the melting pot of the
Roman Empire. It may also feel a sense of precariousness and
peripherality alien to the citizens of empires: they’ve been invaded
many times, and too much happens outside their borders to be ignored.
Xenophobia may be tempered by the hunger for novelty. A stranger can tell
you stories you’ve never heard before, perhaps one reason why many cultures
preach courteous treatment of outsiders.
Both fantasy and s.f. introduce separate species into the equation. I would
expect these would generate a greater sense of difference than any human
division. The happy melting pot depicted in many works strikes me as
implausible, at least outside artificial environments such as a university or
diplomatic compound. I like C.S. Lewis’s description of Ransom’s first
meetings with the hrossa of Mars: it was both like speaking to a human and
like being with an animal— sometimes an uncanny and disagreeable
sensation.

Amusements
What do your people do for fun? Here’s some ideas and examples.
• Hang around and talk— this seems to be the favorite activity of
the Pirahã. Storytelling is surely almost as ancient.
• Feasts; as we’ve seen (p. 140), this is the origin of economic
activity, as Big Men organized redistributive bonanzas. Even when the
flow of goods became a steady stream from peasant to king, canny
rulers still knew the power of giving away food. The Roman emperors
issued a wheat ration to almost the whole population of Rome.
• Music, including song and dance. You could make a living
doing this in medieval Provence or the shogun’s Japan— geisha
originally meant ‘artist’.
• Vice: gambling, intoxication (by drink or other substances), and
whoring are as old as civilization.
• Theater, as for instance among the ancient Greeks. The
medieval guilds put on mystery plays, based on Biblical stories but
including a heavy helping of verse and comedy. Acting was a fairly
disreputable profession in Renaissance England— thus the use of boys
to play women’s roles in Shakespeare’s time.
• Illusions have always been popular; all the better if the marks
thought the trick was real. If magic exists in your world, maybe some
magicians earn a living as street performers. Illusionists would likely
still exist… or even magician/illusionists whose act is a mixture of real
and fake.
• Athletics, an obsession of Brits, Americans and ancient Greeks.
• Baths, popular in ancient Rome and in the Ottoman Empire; still
highly popular in Japan.
• Board games: the ancestor of go was played in China 2500
years ago; chess originated in India 1500 years ago. The earliest known
board game is the Egyptian senet; boards have been found in burials of
3500 BC.
Religion
You want a religion for your conculture. You can come up with half a dozen
god names and call it a day. But let’s say you want to get beyond that.
Religion is a misleading term, because to many people it just means
Christianity. I prefer belief system, since it covers things that act like religions
but don’t seem to fall under the term, like Confucianism or communism.
Everyone has a belief system, just like everyone has a skeleton. It’s not a bad
thing, really. You don’t want to go through life believing nothing, or
believing everything, any more than you want to toss out your skeleton.
The best practice for creating a religion is to have one of your own. It’s hard
to imagine what people get out of worshipping and praying if you’ve never
done it— though I’ll do my best to explain below.
For Christians: Is it OK to create a religion?
It’s just as OK a creating a fictional villain. A Christian writer like
G.K. Chesterton wrote a lot about murderers and thieves; he didn’t in
the least approve of murder or theft, nor did he worry that his stories
would tempt his readers to these sins. No one’s going to join your
fictional religion.

I hope you’ll approach your fictional religions, like your villains, with
Christian compassion. We’re all fallen, but likewise there are glimpses
of the Light everywhere. A fictional religion that simply worships evil
is as cheap and unconvincing as a fictional villain that cackles and
curls his moustache.

The more interesting question may be, how do you convincingly put
God into a fantasy world? Clearly God would want to save all fallen
worlds. C.S. Lewis answered this question in two different but equally
valid ways: in Narnia, he assumed that God would choose another
incarnation in order to redeem that world’s sin; in Perelandra he
assumed that the incarnation of Jesus was valid for the whole universe.
 Some Christian fantasy writers have appealed to both Christians and
non-Christians by a certain indirection. The name of God is never
mentioned in The Lord of the Rings; you have to read Tolkien’s other
works to understand the couple of references to ‘the One’. Diane
Duane uses the same term, with the ‘Lone Power’ standing in for
Satan. Of course there’s nothing wrong with being direct, but you may
end up preaching only to the converted.

I recommend Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man as a overview of

religions from a Christian perspective, full of unusual insights, and
Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Mind of the Maker as an essential exploration
of both the Trinity and the nature of artistic creation. J.R.R. Tolkien’s
essay “On Fairy Stories” is a spirited defense both of fantasy and of
subcreation.

For atheists: How to create something you despise

My advice to atheists is about the same as for Christians: avoid cheap
caricatures. Religions are not just cabals of nasty old men plotting the
enslavement of others. I admire the amazing invention and rip-roaring
pace of Philip Pullman’s fantasies, but his Magisterium has a bit too
much of the James Bond Villain about it. (On the other hand his Marisa
Coulter is a model for how to create villains; she’s a genuinely
threatening character but her relationship with the main character,
Lyra, is as much love as antagonism.)

Beyond that, just read the chapter, especially the next section, which
goes into much more detail on what belief systems are and addresses
some common misconceptions about them.

What are they for?

Let’s start by looking at what belief systems do. They go far beyond telling
stories about God or the gods.
Framework for thought and action
Above all, a belief system is a mental framework— that’s why I compared it
to a skeleton. It provides a model or sketch of the universe we live in, sets out
the laws of that model, and suggests how it affects us and how to affect it
back. It tells what our purpose is, how people should treat each other, when
we’re messing up and what to do about it.
It’s silly to say that atheism is a religion, but an atheist has a belief system. A
commitment to “science” is a value and requires a strong belief (which any
philosopher since Hume could easily tear apart) in the objectivity of the
outside world and in its freedom from meddling deities. Very likely—
indeed, hopefully— the atheist also has moral values, some of which are
moral axioms which can’t be reduced to any other moral principle.
Most belief systems go far beyond this, of course. Think of a fundamentalist
Christian, or a Communist, or a talk radio host. They have an answer for
everything, and everything can be put in its place. Don’t think of belief
systems as extreme, however. Mild Anglicanism, or a bemused eclecticism,
are also perfectly valid belief systems, and more typical of belief systems
worldwide.
Why not have the minimum possible framework and work out everything
else as you go? Well, this is like saying everyone should build their own cars
and write their own operating systems. Following an existing system—
especially the one that’s a norm in your community— is an immense time-
saver. Most people don’t want their metaphysics and morality up in the air.

Support for the social system

Belief systems provide a justification for the prevailing social system—
indeed, the two are hard to disentangle. In general, religions are going to be
big on obedience to authority, property rights, respect for holy things, treating
people peacefully, not stealing other people’s sex partners, not running with
scissors, etc.
If you have a dramatically different society, its belief systems should match.
On Almea, for instance, I have ktuvok empires, where one sapient species,
the ktuvoks, dominates a much larger mass of humans. Naturally the religions
of these realms depict the ktuvoks as holy and superior creatures, preach
obedience to them, and warn about the dangerous lies of humans who think
they can govern themselves. Less dramatically, if a culture oppresses women
or holds slaves, its belief systems will explain why that is just and true— just
as most modern belief systems explain why it’s not.
I should that add that a reflexive conservativism isn’t an entirely bad thing.
Most new ideas are bad, and sticking to the old ones saves the time needed to
prove them wrong or to try them and have them fail.

Call for change

I must immediately add that belief systems also justify change, and
sometimes rebellion. This can happen in several ways:
• A society which has drifted far from its ideals will find its very
belief system exhorting reform, or even revolution. Societies rarely live
up to their ideals; a religious case can always be made for change.
• The belief systems started in historical times all have origin
stories— they had to challenge existing society. Jesus was crucified,
Muhammad was chased out of Mecca, the Shi‘ites began when the
descendents of Ali were denied power, the Communists wished to
sweep away the bourgeois who had only just elbowed their way into
power themselves. All these belief systems therefore have, not far
buried in their DNA, models for rebellion.
• Society can change, and the religion changes in response—
despite itself, perhaps, but sincerely. Catholicism eventually made its
peace with Galileo (and indeed with Darwin).
In the U.S., churches were at the forefront of abolition and the civil rights
movement— Martin Luther King Jr. was a pastor. When Britain threw out its
king, a hundred years before the French Revolution, zealous Protestants were
the firebrands. Peasant rebellions often coalesced around a charismatic
religious leader. The Messianic hopes in 1st century Palestine, part of the
background of Christianity, were in part driven by the desire for liberation
from Roman rule. The founder of the Míng dynasty, Zhū Yuánzhāng,
belonged to a Buddhist secret society, the White Lotus.
There can be retrogressive religious movements too, of course. But before
modern times, if any group was agitating for peace, justice, or national
liberation, it was more likely than not to be a strong religious movement.

Difficult social values

Marvin Harris has argued that belief systems provide support for difficult
social values— those that don’t come naturally. Religions don’t have to urge
men to look at pretty girls, or to eat chocolate. Examples:
• Hinduism urges poor peasants to worship their cows. This seems
irrational to Westerners, but in fact it’s quite sensible: the cow is the
basis for the peasant’s prosperity— it provides milk and butter, dung
for fuel and fertilizer, and bears the oxen needed for plowing— but all
that is easy to forget if the monsoons fail and there’s a drought. It’s
mighty tempting to eat the cow then— but if he does so, the peasant is
ruined. Religious sanction helps reduce the temptation.
• Judaism and Islam ban the eating of pork. This doesn’t make
much sense in Europe, but it does in the arid Middle East, where pigs
would compete directly with human beings for food, and where their
instinct to keep their skin wet assumes unsanitary forms.
• Among the Bushmen of the Kalahari, excessive ardor for
hunting is discouraged. “When a young man kills much meat he begins
to think of himself as a chief... we cannot accept this,” one explains.
“We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill
somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless.” The reason
for this cultural more is not hard to find: the Kalahari is a desert.
Overhunting would produce a short-term feast and then starvation.
• Why do so many religions have strictures about sex? There are
many answers, but some of the best are the most obvious: venereal
disease and pregnancy. Both are highly dangerous in a premodern
society and sufficient justification for putting a lid on our natural desire
for free sex. It’s not coincidence that we’ve rebelled against these
strictures precisely in a period where antibiotics and birth control have
funda-mentally changed the danger level.
Practical help
Much of this so far is abstract. People want practical help too, in areas where
medicines or machines are of no use. They want to cast or counter curses, to
get healed, to meet lovers, to have babies, to have rain, to find lost objects, to
protect their homes, to hear from the dead. And where needs exist, providers
will come.
No one likes disappointment, and belief systems will go to great lengths to
deliver on what they promise. In some American Indian religions, for
instance, all boys coming of age must experience a spiritual vision. A matter
of such importance is hardly left to chance; drugs, hunger, and physical
exhaustion help ensure that that vision will come.
In a fantasy world, such beliefs may not be illusory. This raises an interesting
question: would the religions look any different? I suspect the answer is, not
much. Actual believers don’t feel that they lack for evidence or that their
gods are unresponsive.
The requested aid need not be supernatural. In the slums of Brazil,
evangelical and charismatic churches expand by addressing people’s
immediate needs— how to deal with alcoholism or drug addiction, how to get
jobs and get along with their families. Islamic fundamentalists build support
by running schools and charities. Many universities and hospitals in the West
had their start as religious projects.
More abstractly, the belief system offers heuristics for mental and social life.
Richard Feynman gives an example of a scientific heuristic: distrust the first
or last data point in a series. If that data was better, there’d be more points
beyond it. It’s not a physical law, it’s just a rule of thumb backed by lots of
experience. For examples of moral heuristics, consider the idea of
forgiveness, or the notion that hubris will lead to disaster, or the idea that
radical renunciation fosters enlightenment.

Personal growth
On a more personal level, belief systems can offer disciplines for personal
growth— meditation, introspection, confession, prayer and fasting, visions,
the interpretation of dreams, recovery from neurosis, the perfection of virtues.
This shouldn’t be hard to understand, as these are fascinations even today—
though traditional religions aren’t the only suppliers in the market. If these
things still seem odd, think about it this way:
• Mental peace really helps. It’s useful to still that inner voice that
insists on worrying, resenting, or replaying painful memories. To put it
bluntly, our culture abounds in other ways to relax. Premodern cultures
didn’t have iPods, DVDs, mystery novels, TV, video games, and sleep
pills.
• We still believe in the cultivation of will— if you want to give
up smoking, maintain an exercise program, learn a language, or run a
marathon, you must learn discipline and a certain acceptance of pain
for future good. “No pain, no gain”, we say. Once you start down this
path, it’s not hard to feel that with even more pain you’ll get even more
gain.

Worship and wonder

Belief systems in general satisfy the sense of wonder— in religions per se,
this may take the form of worship. A healthy religion appeals not merely to
the conscience but to the heart; it offers marvels and poetry as well as duties
and laws; it stimulates love and creativity. In cultures racked with violence,
pestilence, and injustice, it is a refuge for contemplation, gentleness,
scholarship, and art.

Memetic effects
There’s very little to be said for memes— for why, see the essay on my site,
zompist.com— but memetics offers two genuine insights.
First, belief systems develop an immune system. Among the beliefs are a set
designed to counter backsliding and skepticism. There are explanations why
other beliefs are wrong, warnings that temptations will come, and predictions
of unhappiness outside the fold. Socially, the believers have a tendency to
isolate themselves, avoid outside messages, and ostracize heretics.
Thus Christianity explains that all other gods are false. Atheism simplifies
further by deleting the word ‘other’. Communism posits the dialectic, which
elaborates ideologies of greater and greater complexity— ending in
communism itself, where the process stops. Movement conservatives turn
harshly on anyone who criticizes any aspect of movement doctrine or its most
popular adherents. Bahaiism more subtly declares that any truth found in
other religions is already incorporated in itself.
Such doctrines are hardly intellectually defensible; they exist to protect the
belief system from deterioration. A religion just isn’t going to last very long
if it says “believe as you like, it’s all good.”
Memes also offer an explanation for zeal. Extreme beliefs have an advantage,
because they provide motivation for propagating them. It’s the zealots who
look for converts and punish apostates. Above all they expend considerable
effort to pass their beliefs to their children.
A denomination can become moderate and tolerant, and that may keep its
members happy. But their very moderation makes them unlikely to look for
followers and diffident about keeping wayward teenagers in the faith. Thus
the slow decline of moderate denom-inations in the U.S.
At the same time, there are factors that mitigate zealotry— the principal one
being the general cussedness of human beings. Zealots can intimidate an
entire population (cf. Saudi Arabia, or Stalinism); but most people are not
interested in being zealots. The normal state of a religion is fervor on the part
of a few, quiet acceptance on the part of the majority.

The evidence of narrative

Most belief systems, including non-religious ones, do have one fatal flaw:
they’re not falsifiable. This is the secret motor of science— scientists ideally
highlight contrary evidence, and disdain a hypothesis that can’t be tested. The
crackpot, by contrast, only looks for confirmation. He not only ignores or
denies evidence against his theory, but modifies his theory such that it can
never be disproved.
Some beliefs in a belief system may be derived and debated rationally. Others
can’t be, because they’re axiomatic— basic morality can’t be derived from
logical propositions, for instance, because no logical operation can turn an is
into an ought. But a large chunk of a belief system isn’t designed to be
falsifiable.
Belief systems are evaluated by another standard, which we may call
narrative coherency. Does it make a good story? Does it hold together, does
it shed light on the world and inside our heads, does it satisfy our sense of
wonder and our sense of justice? Stories are still appreciated this way; also
much of politics, and even philosophical arguments. No one can prove that
libertarianism or Buddhism or free will are right or wrong— all we can do is
provide the best possible narrative.
In some ways that’s what this book is about: creating a conworld with
narrative coherency.
To a modern ear, myths are obviously false because they’re made-up stories.
To their original hearers, I think they seemed true for almost the same reason:
how can someone tell a story at all unless it was dictated by a god?

Easy assumptions
Many conreligions are too closely modeled on Christianity— whether as it is
or as it’s perceived by outsiders.

Religion = Catholicism
Catholicism makes a great model: a powerful centralized organization,
gorgeous stone cathedrals, holy water, incense and chanting, priests in
distinctive robes and funny hats. If you like it, it’s solid, homey, and grand; if
you don’t, there’s a sinister undercurrent to draw on, from self-mortification
to the Inquisition.
But just as fantasy writers again and again end up with pseudo-European
monarchies, they keep imitating Catholicism. The only religion that’s like
Catholicism is Catholicism; religions don’t have to share any of its attributes.

Exclusivity
The Abrahamic God is a jealous God; his believers aren’t just prohibited
from worshipping other gods; they’re not supposed to believe they even exist.
Mixing your religions is a decided no-no.
The atmosphere is far different in East Asia, where people have no trouble
following multiple religious traditions at once. The approach of Chinese
intellectuals was to look over everyone’s ideas, from all the major schools,
and select the best of each.
This should put into perspective intriguing events such as Kublai Khan
asking for a hundred Christian scholars to come explain their doctrines in
Yuán China. Christians hearing about this regret the lost opportunity: China
could have become a Christian country! Not likely; Kublai was simply
inviting more viewpoints to the table.
Ancient Greece and Rome were much more like the East than like our
culture. There was always room for one more cult.

The nature of faith

Unbelievers often misunderstand the nature of faith. To admire faith as a
virtue seems repellent to them— it sounds like a glorification of believing
things against the dictates of reason and evidence. But this is a parody of
faith, and entirely irrelevant to the premodern world.
Paul’s letters show some tension between Greek rationalism and Christian
belief, but this was not a war between “science and religion”, more a
reflection of a cultural gap: like the Chinese, the ancient Greeks just didn’t
get the mindset of uncompromising, exclusive declarations about God.
In the 13C, Thomas Aquinas devised a brilliant synthesis of Christianity with
Aristotelian rationalism. Reason was a godly virtue; its Greek name, logos,
was associated with Jesus. The universities of the Middle Ages revived
ancient learning (much of it via Arab intermediaries); the Scholastics’ use of
dialectical reasoning, heuristics such as Occam’s Razor, and the empirical
focus of clerics like Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, all prepared the
ground for modern science. (Academic robes even derive from ecclesiastical
ones.)
It’s a commonplace that science makes belief harder. But it doesn’t— for
believers. The believer has made his peace with the apparent conflicts. Some
just deny them; some do their best to accept scientific facts without denying
their faith; some have elaborate answers; some just don’t care. But what’s
quite wrong is to imagine that believers must constantly beat down or
suppress contrary evidence. Quite the opposite: for a believer, the world is
full of confirmations of their beliefs and reminders of unbelievers’
foolishness. Neil Gaiman explains this nicely:
I noticed a long time ago that the Universe rewards belief systems. It
doesn't really matter what you believe— it'll be there and waiting for
you if you go and look for it. Decide the universe is, say, run by secret
enormous teddy bears, and I can guarantee you'll immediately start
running across evidence that this is true.
It’s probably just confirmation bias; but if you want to dismiss people’s ideas
because of that, remember that it applies to whatever you believe, too.
C.S. Lewis gives us a good way to think about faith: it’s the same thing we
offer our friends or lovers. Once you decide to make a friend, or get married,
you don’t subject them to careful laboratory tests, even if you’re a positivist.
You give them the benefit of the doubt. You can take all the care you want
converting, but once you’ve accepted your God or god, you give them the
same trust.
At the same time, Christianity tells us that faith must be practiced, that if you
don’t make an effort to keep your beliefs straight in your mind, you’ll lose
them. This is a heuristic, an observation made from generations of spiritual
experience. Acquiring a belief system is like learning a language: you have to
keep it up, not because it’s inherently hard to swallow but because it’s a
complicated set of beliefs and practices. Unbelief, by contrast, requires no
maintenance, just as if you don’t know French you don’t have to practice not
knowing it.

Beliefs never change

Another commonplace, both among believers and unbelievers, is that belief
systems never change. Believers are proud of their constancy, unbelievers
disdainful of it. But they’re both wrong: belief systems constantly evolve,
albeit slowly.
• Political changes are easily swallowed. In 1776 the Anglican
church in America fairly painlessly changed into the Episcopal church,
giving up its allegiance to the Crown and indeed its belief in crowns at
all.
Early Christianity went from a sullen hostility to the Roman
 Empire (which after all had crucified its founder as a rebel and
periodically persecuted it), to a thorough intertwining of church and
empire. No one seemed to remember the “Rome is Babylon” message
once the emperors were painting Christian symbols on the army’s
shields.
• Scientific challenges are accepted, sooner or later. Copernicus
was at first accepted as a methodological convenience, then rejected as
an offense against scripture, and finally quietly accepted— the fundiest
fundamentalist doesn’t insist on an unmoving Earth today.
• Social changes are accepted too, though it may take generations.
Slavery was fully accepted by every writer in the Bible and by
Christians for many centuries; it’s been entirely rejected. Racism used
to be justified by the story of Ham, son of Noah, but racism is no longer
part of theology. In the last half century or so, conservative Christians
have accepted things their predecessors shuddered at: female pastors,
rock music, makeup.
It goes deeper than that: read the Mosaic Law, and it’s striking
how much of it Christians don’t even dream of applying. Even if they
believe it’s the Word of God, they’re not going to stone adulterers,
keep kosher, worry about mixing cloths, forbid interest, forgive all
debts in Jubilee years, sacrifice animals, or check for leprous walls. For
that matter, not many will follow the New Testament and eschew
violent retaliation, never utter verbal abuse, avoid marriage, have
multiple elders in a house church, keep their money in common, give
all they have to the poor, or have women keep silent in church.
Don’t make the opposite error and consider that belief systems are fickle and
quickly jettison anything inconvenient. Many of these changes occasioned
much struggle and debate, and were solved not so much by people changing
their mind as by the previous generation dying off.

Beliefs = practice
I once read a book which asserted that religious taboos against masturbation,
birth control, and oral sex led their adherents to vaginal sex only and the
resulting high birth rates. The author forgot that religious prohibitions aren’t
always obeyed, and that beliefs don’t always translate into action.
Frequent and fervent admonitions, in fact, are pretty good evidence that the
precept is frequently violated. We use this in linguistics, in fact—
prescriptivists’ complaints about some pronunciation or word misuse may be
the first evidence that the pronunciation or the meaning has in fact changed.
Sometimes an explicit rule has the opposite of its intended effect. The
abortion rate is far higher among U.S. Christians than among atheistic
Swedes. There are many reasons, but one is that believers overemphasize the
easiness of following rules. In theory they disapprove of abortion more than
fornication. But they get so hung up on the “no sex” rule that they reject
attempts to reduce abortion by providing information about sex and birth
control. They believe so firmly that the abstinence message should work that
they can’t face why it doesn’t.
Don’t just invent the rules of your religion; think about which ones are really
followed. This can vary by sex or class... often in eccentric ways. Don’t
assume the lower classes are always laxer; sometimes they’re shocked at the
wild ways of their betters.

The dustbin of history

S.f. is often written by technophiles who think religion should have
disappeared long ago. But religion is still hovering around. without making
any definitive move toward the exit.
It’s human nature, in part— we have a spiritual side that keeps coming out. In
American society, strong forms of Christianity are still with us, but there are
plenty of alternatives— Buddhism, pagan revivals, reverence for the Earth,
crystals, aliens.
To a large extent, the destructive fervor that once attached to religions now
attaches to politics. Fascism and communism are the big examples and the
big killers. But the unrestrained anger of contemporary politics shows that
belief systems are alive and well.
More respectably, it’s hard to picture a prosperous and progressive society
that isn’t supported by a belief system— or several of them. Consider the
following propositions:
 • Human beings aren’t bags of meat; they’re persons, with a right
to exist and be prosperous.
• Social systems should produce prosperity and happiness for their
citizens.
• People should be free from injustice, oppression, and arbitrary
interference. The community may impose rules, but greater intrusions
require greater justifications.
• The common habitat— our Earth, while we’re restricted to it—
must be preserved, both to support the human population and for its
own sake.
• Truth should never be feared, and we wish to know as much as
we can about the universe. The scientific method is the best guide to
the physical world.
These are all moral propositions, completely unprovable by science. But a
society which explicitly rejected them in belief or in practice would be
miserable and ultimately destructive.
And because humans can be dunderheads, it would be better to go beyond the
minimal beliefs necessary. These propositions should have a wide margin of
error: maximal definitions of “human beings”, “happiness”, “science”, etc.
That’s why we have things like burial customs. Humans shouldn’t become
bags of meat the moment they die; that’s too close to deciding that some of
them are meatbags while still alive.

Beliefs
To describe a belief system you’ll want to describe its beliefs. This may be a
bit Christocentric: not all religions have a systematic theology. What
teachings they do have might be given only to an elite, or might not be very
important to the believer— arguably paganism is more about what you do
than what you think.
Still, the belief system is likely to have at least a strong opinion on the
following topics.

Cosmology
What’s the overall structure of the universe? What are those bright lights in
the sky? What is under the ground and behind the clouds? What other planes
are there?
Religions often feature at least one ‘other world’, close enough to our world
to affect it, with its own laws. Christianity has heaven and hell. Some Native
American religions have a series of worlds arranged vertically... at some
point humanity climbed out of the previous world from a cave, and when we
die we ascend to the next one.
Speaking as a conworlder, the visualization of these worlds is on the whole
unimpressive. They’re either foggy (because spirit is a little like the airiest
visible substance we know, smoke or fog), or a preternaturally bright and
summery copy of the natural world.
Well, it’s hard to describe what we’ve never seen. But here’s some different
approaches:
• Add a dimension. The supernatural world should be deeper and
richer than our own, as our 3-D world is richer than a flat picture.
(The classic description of 2-D life is Edwin Abbott’s Flatland;
an excellent evocation of the fourth dimension is Rudy Rucker’s
Spaceland.)
• Spirits are minds, so the spiritual world should have the
attributes of mental thoughts and images: infinitely malleable, often
wild and lawless, able to switch locations instantly, easily lost. My
dreams, at least, come with meanings attached, with no need of
exposition: I just know who everyone is, what the shadowy threats are,
what the evil ones are after.
• Perhaps the imagery of a spiritual world is based on spirits’
recollections of the natural world; but as spirits from all worlds interact,
they share images, so the spiritual world has aspects of highly alien
worlds.
• Physics suggests that energy is quantized, and possibly time and
space as well; I wonder if the universe is a cellular automaton run on a
hyperdimensional supercomputer by some bored grad student. If we
don’t generate some interesting patterns soon he’s going to turn it off.
Premodern religions’ attitudes toward matter are generally negative. This
was not a matter of dour Christians and carefree pagans; if anything orthodox
Christianity was unusually pro-matter, asserting that as God created the
world, the physical world was good. More typical was the Gnostic position
that matter is evil. The Hindu view that the world is maya (illusion), and the
Buddhist rejection of desire, are along the same lines.
This does much to explain why many religions exalt ordeals, physical
deprivation, even self-harm: the attachment to base matter must be attacked.
Religions may also classify matter into clean and unclean, and establish
elaborate rules for dealing with and eliminating uncleanness, a concept both
physical and moral. Isabel Fonseca’s description of Gypsy customs is
relevant here— Gypsies have a very strong sense of cleanliness, are obsessed
with washing, and disgusted with non-Gypsy customs like keeping pets in the
house. Yet their horror of uncleanliness is not at all triggered by squalid
clothing.

Historicism
Cosmologies may extend over time as well as space, giving an outline of the
history of the universe: how it was created, what sort of times preceded our
own, what comes next, how everything ends.
Creation myths face the metaphysical question of how to make something out
of nothing; the usual expedient is that something, probably something bland
and seemingly worthless, must have already existed. (Modern science
achieves the neat trick of allowing particle-antiparticle pairs to arise from
literally nothing; the vacuum boils with detectable energy. The whole
universe may have arisen from one super-expanded blip. But this only pushes
the question back one step: where did the physical laws come from that allow
this?)
Many religions posited a Golden Age at the beginning and a slow decline
afterward. This may sound depressing, but C.S. Lewis thinks otherwise:
Historically as well as cosmically, medieval man stood at the foot of a
stairway; looking up, he felt delight. The backward, like the upward,
glance exhilarated him with the pleasures of admiration. ...The saints
looked down on one’s spiritual life, the kings, sages, and warriors on
 one’s secular life, the great lovers of old on one’s amours, to foster,
encourage, and instruct... One had one’s place, however modest, in a
great succession; one need be neither proud nor lonely. (The Discarded
Image)
Our own belief systems assume progress— a steady march from the amoeba
to the australopithecus to the agnostic. Christians more than ever seem
fascinated by eschatology, compiling prophecies and writing fantasy about
the end times.
Cyclical cosmologies have a certain romantic appeal, though if the cycle is
long enough it’s hard to get any narrative use out of it. E.R. Eddison’s The
Worm Ouroboros in effect presents a four-year cycle.

The soul
Consider these two sets of phenomena:
organs and flesh thoughts and memory
death, decay, and pain meaning
growing plants ideas, facts, and arguments
preparing and eating foodlove
gravity anger, fear, and other emotions
weather stories
earth and water poetry

All of these are everyday human experiences, yet the two columns are like
two different and incommensurate worlds. Very little that we know about the
first column, even today, sheds any light on the second, except by analogy.
Not surprisingly, many belief systems separate these two aspects of our lives
as body and spirit. The soul or spirit is usually judged to be superior, partly
because it seems to be us— we have a picture of living in the body, which the
soul controls much as a driver controls a vehicle. The native Germanic word
was ghost; which thus become the name for the thing that sticks around after
death minus its body; also cf. Holy Ghost, the older name for the Holy Spirit.
Religions may elaborate this picture, telling a story about where the spirit
comes from (if it’s separate from the body, either it had to enter the body or
be created there between conception and birth) and what happens to it after
death:
• it’s lost
• it stays around as a sad little incorporeal thing— the Greek
‘shades’
• it is transferred to a new body (reincarnation)
• it hangs around till God creates a new body in a new perfect
world (the Christian Resurrection)
• it moves on to another plane, with or without a new body to
match; some spirits may hang around our world to see to unfinished
business
• it’s reabsorbed into the Universal Soul (the ultimate goal in
Buddhism)
• aliens capture it just before death, keeping it in an enormous
library, or perhaps giving it a virtual world to roam in
Once you have the idea of the spirit, it’s easy to imagine purely spiritual
beings like angels, creatures who either have no body or can temporarily
manufacture one when they must interact with the physical world.
Medieval Christians actually distinguished three levels of immaterial soul:
• the Vegetative, which as its name implies is shared with plants;
its powers include nutrition, growth, and propagation
• the Sensitive, which is shared with animals; these add the senses
and the power of movement
• the Rational, which man alone among the animals has
A strict separation of body and soul— dualism— is no longer respectable in
philosophy. It seems all too likely that our minds are only a very strange
epiphenomenon of our brains. We can largely blame this on science, which
has found most of life explainable without recourse to spirits or creators. It’s
well to remember sometimes that science can’t yet explain everything about
our minds. Its track record is good; on the other hand, the feeling that science
already explains 99% of phenomena and the rest will turn out to be trivial
was maintained by Victorian physicists and turned out to be quite wrong.
That last 1% always proves larger than it looks.
As a corollary, cultures without modern science are less likely to have
materialistic or monistic philosophies. Philosophy alone can’t convincingly
explain why a corpse is different from a living animal.

Ethics
One of the major purposes of a belief system is to provide a moral
framework... especially for those things that get in the way of our baser
desires.
We often evaluate belief systems morally... but that only means that we judge
them according to our belief system. If we find earlier systems cruel, racist,
sexist, authoritarian, and superstitious, that’s because they conflict with our
own values. From their own point of view, we’d seem to be arrogant,
libertine, appallingly materialistic, full of disrespect and blasphemy.
If you want to outline a moral system, the most convincing method is
probably to give your own. You don’t have to feign anything, and your
invented sages can speak with your own passion. But obviously you can
make them disagree with you too— even explore a set of positions you
abhor.
Marvin Harris makes a provocative point about universal ethical religions,
such as Christianity, Confucianism, and Buddhism: all appeared and
flourished in empires, and made them function more smoothly. Spiritualizing
poverty— e.g. Buddhism “convert[ing] the de facto vegetarianism of the
semi-starved peasants into a spiritual blessing” as Harris puts it— reduced
demands to actually improve living standards. At the same time, a call for
compassion and mercy towards the weak would to some extent reduce their
grievances and sense of oppression.
Don’t just list rules; think about how they conflict. The ordering of rules can
have a large impact on the system. George Lakoff (in Moral Politics) has
analyzed the disagreements between liberals and conservatives as due in part
to a different ordering of the virtues of compassion and obedience to
authority.
How much are your rules actually followed? Which rules are insisted on but
widely violated? Which ones are winked at?
Let’s look at some examples.
Confucian morality
Confucian morality can be organized by three key concepts:
• Rén, compassion or humaneness. It was specially concerned with
person-to-person relationships, especially father to son, elder to
younger brother, husband to wife, elder to junior, and ruler to subject.
The junior partner is expected to be respectful and loyal; the senior to
be kind and benevolent.
• Lǐ, ritual or social norms. A Ministry of Rites was one of the six
ministries of imperial China, in charge of state ceremonies, but the
word also applied to everyday behavior. The basic idea was that
training the body to do things correctly would also train the mind.
• Yì, righteousness or correct action. Confucius recognized that
this might conflict with rén; he gives the example of a man who
reported his thieving father to the authorities— correct according to yì,
but a violation of rén.
Endajué
In Endajué, a religion of Almea, the vices are organized into opposing pairs:
• theft (gonaudo) vs. avarice (dusrosmeludo)
• perversion (payjuacudo) vs. puritanism (xezidaudo)
• aggression (xwemeludo) vs. cowardice (dzismelic)
• tyranny (jusudo) vs. lawlessness (kuvetudo)
• servility (edemudo) vs. disrespect (xaušmelačudo)
• selfishness (dzuxešudo) vs. conformity (dzurodudo)
• foolishness (bodusaudo) vs. cynicism (ezešindudo)
Righteousness consists of navigating a path between the errors on either side
— a more sophisticated attitude than creating binary oppositions.
Jippirasti
In another Almean religion, Jippirasti, the overriding concept is
uncleanliness, istuja, which is prototypically physical dirt, but also includes
spiritual or moral dirt. The prophet Babur provided 35 categories of istuja:
• Blood
• Excrement
• Huj: phlegm, snot, vomit, discharges from disease, etc.
• Contact with a corpse, including its clothes; eating one, of
course, was right out
• Sleeping in a room where animals are kept
• Eating the intestines, bones, or feet of animals
• Eating insects, shellfish, frogs, or animals which eat carrion (e.g.
crows, coyotes)
• Killing an animal or a human “slowly enough to cause pain” (the
killing blow or stroke must be quick and smooth)
• Malformed animals or children (e.g. multiple limbs,
hermaphrodites)
• Indecent language
• Rudeness
• Ingratitude
• Attending a pagan ceremony, or entering a pagan temple
• Eating food sacrificed to pagan gods
• Magic
• Tattoos, earrings, body paint, and other bodily modification
(abominable because the Munkhâshi favored these)
• Betraying a comrade, or running away in battle
• Dropping one’s weapon
• Fighting with a fsava member
• Theft
• Disinheriting one’s sister
• Drunkenness
• Rape (literally igejruda, sex with a woman outside her bed, thus,
uninvited)
• Sex with children (defined as under 12) or animals
• Sex with more than one woman at once
 • Sex with a woman in one’s own fsava (clan)
• Sex between men, except during war, or as part of an expiation
• Sex with a pagan
• Mixed-sex nudity, except in the course of licit sex
• Bigamy
• Gossip
• Causing division in the tej (the Jippirasti community)
• Violating a fast
• Blasphemy
• The entire period of expiation (igosota)— that is, a person
undertaking an igosota is unclean

Jippirasti was developed among nomads, and therefore says little about the
sins of urban and agricultural peoples. When it conquered such people,
theologians adapted the 35 categories to cover new offenses; e.g. tax evasion
fell under ‘causing division’; commercial fraud under ‘rudeness’. There was
also trouble with strictures which were easy to follow on the steppe but less
so in the city (e.g. keeping animals outside, avoiding shellfish).

Supernatural beings
Most religions come with a roster of supernatural beings. These can be
classified by accessibility.
• Remote father figures. In some religions the creator is so remote
or so lofty that he’s effectively gone. People may treat God or the gods
like kings— unlikely to be interested in their problems.
• Benign helpers. These are your go-to guys for requests, because
they’ve got time for you. In traditional Catholicism this role was
fulfilled by the saints. The Evangelical God is like a friendly CEO with
an open-door policy.
People can get very familiar with these— they can be yelled at or
cajoled; idols can be punished for not coming through.
• Mercurial powers. These are beings with their own agenda, like
satyrs or the Fae. If you run into them, the results are unpredictable but
rarely are simply good.
 • Antagonists. These are hostile to humanity and to the gods. At
the same time there’s a tradition of magicians being able to control
them.
Writers who don’t believe in traditional devils and monsters tend
to move them into the previous category, and tone down the gods as
well. Thus numinous and alarming magical beings become cute little
fairies; monstrous vampires become troubled romantics; brutal and
irredeemable orcs become gruff tough guys.
Several writers have played with the idea that belief creates gods— that
strong belief systems create powerful deities, and as worshippers disappear,
the gods wane as well. I find the idea rather annoying, partly because it seems
to both deny and accept the gods (the gods are real, but somehow not real in
the traditional way), partly because it trivializes them— Yemaya no longer
controls the sea, she’s merely a sort of supernatural maritime MP for
Yorubas. But the idea has been done very well by Neil Gaiman in American
Gods.
On the other hand, I rather like the idea used by Georges Pichard and Jacques
Lob in their version of Ulysses, that the Greek gods were extraterrestrials
whose wonders were all advanced technology— e.g. when Aeolus gives
Odysseus the North Wind to propel his ship, it’s actually a powerful jet
engine. It adds a nice sense of irony to the old story. Roger Zelazny’s Lord of
Light uses a similar idea based on Hinduism.
The Greek and Roman gods had strict portfolios— e.g. Venus/ Aphrodite was
the goddess of love. But gods can be characterized in other ways: types of
animals, the elements, stages of life, planets. Or perhaps they simply have
different personalities, and you worship the most compatible one.

Practice
What do people do following your belief system? Here’s some possibilities:
• Worship services. These are the quintessential activities of
Christian churches, but not all religions get their believers regularly
into a room.
• Sacrifice. These may be public events; but descriptions of
 ancient religions (including ancient Judaism) indicate these might be
individual too, or provided as a service by priests.
• Prophecy. This was a major function of the oracles of Greece,
and the prophets of Israel.
• Healing. One of the most useful powers of the gods.
• Festivals. These are more freewheeling than a worship service.
They may be organized around a meal, or games, or a performance, or
a procession; the mood may be festive or repentant or erotic.
• Ceremonies marking life transitions: birth, puberty, marriage,
death. In Caďinorian paganism I posited that the major celebration was
of second births... you didn’t want to draw unneeded supernatural
attention to your first child.
• Discussion. People from the Greek philosophers to Jewish rabbis
to Chinese scholars to Quakers like to meet together to talk or argue
about their beliefs.
• Individual prayer— personal communion with one’s god,
whether for worship, thanksgiving, confession, or supplication.
• Rituals of cleanliness. Some religions seem obsessive about
cleanliness— literally. Robert Sapolsky suggests that such rituals may
have started when some hand-washing obsessive, normally ignored by
the tribe, was suddenly seen to be proved right by some disaster.
• Spiritual disciplines: special practices to train the body or the
mind— anything from exercise to martial arts to pilgrimages to
meditation to self-mortification.
• Education is often a religious duty— after all, the beliefs and
practices must be transmitted to the young, and you might as well teach
them other useful things while they’re at your mercy.
• Renunciation. The easiest way to distinguish yourself from the
greedy masses is to give up something. This can range from minor
inconveniences to a simple but comfortable life (à la Ben Franklin) to a
life of poverty.
• Evangelism, which is characteristic of universalistic religions,
 such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Traditional religions
generally don’t see the need.

Priests and monks

Don’t assume that all these functions are performed by the priests. Families
often have built-in religious roles, so rites can be performed at home. Kings
may have religious powers separate from those of the official clerics. Other
functions might be performed by isolated, self-selected hermits or eccentrics.
Even if the larger nation follows your religion, it can be useful to retire to a
small community dedicated to it. These often begin with a particular holy
person and their followers, and can grow into powerful and rich institutions.
Religions may or may not be organized above the level of a single holy
place... indeed, Christianity is unusual in striving to keep its clerics and
doctrines under central control. Even Islam has no such hierarchical
organization.
In perhaps all civilizations, holy people inspire gifts from the rich and
powerful— which can lead to temples or monasteries becoming wealthy
businesses and landowners. This may in turn tempt the avarice of kings.

Scriptures
A religion in a civilized country will generate an enormous and growing body
of literature. At some point it becomes useful to distinguish one or more
works as canonical. These may be the works of founder(s), or those works
considered earliest and most authentic.
Someone will disagree; indeed, the need for a canon pretty much implies
disputation. The Christian canon marked the victory of one faction of the
early church, and the rejection of the other factions’ literature. The
Protestants rejected a large chunk of the Catholic Old Testament.
Zhū Xī (d. 1200) codified the Confucian canon (choosing four books and
deemphasizing the Book of Changes) and wrote extensive com-mentaries; in
1317 both became the basis for the imperial examination system and thus for
scholarship and government in China.
A new religion may accept all or part of an existing canon and add new
works, as for instance Mormonism does by adding the Book of Mormon to
the Christian Bible.
Ancient enough commentaries or other literature may become important
enough to be ‘near-scripture’; e.g. the Talmud in Judaism and the Hadith in
Islam.
The physical form of scriptures may receive special veneration, and the very
language may become holy, and believers of other lands expected to learn it
to properly study them.

Future belief systems

Future religions might of course resemble past ones. But let’s look at some of
the ways they might not.
• From the French Revolution on, we find mass movements:
political ideologies with doctrines and foundational works, proselytism,
zeal, and persecutions. Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer is an excellent
survey. These have their downsides— there’s that little matter of World
War II— but they’re undeniably modern, and are likely to be with us
for a long time.
• The least convincing s.f. religions are those attached to mundane
things: atoms, rockets, spaceways. Marvelous as they are, we don’t
worship our refrigerators. But spiritual feeling can attach to things out
of the ordinary, e.g. the recent fad for crystals.
• There are always unexplained things in life; and probably
because our brains developed to understand social interaction, we
assign these to actors. It used to be ghosts or fae; now it’s aliens. When
aliens are a matter of everyday life it will be something else— post-
singularity essences?
• Religions affect culture, but also broadly reflect it. God in many
ways resembles a king; the Chinese pictured a Celestial Bureaucracy.
The individualism of Western culture gives us religious movements
that emphasize personal development.
Look at the overall nature of your culture. A new colony on a garden
world might gravitate toward a freewheeling individualism; a tiny
 space habitat might need strict disciplines to preserve its fragile
ecosphere. But there’s likely to be a lag, with interesting consequences
during a time of transition— e.g. the garden world is settled from the
space habitat.
• Westerners have seen so many well-meaning systems lead to
catastrophe that an extreme distrust for authority becomes compelling.
Perhaps this becomes the prevailing ethos: a punk rock culture. I’d
imagine its people quick to resist impositions and ready to violence, but
hard to organize.
• Religious communities sometimes withdraw from the world.
Space travel might let them do so permanently: move to an asteroid or a
new colony and build a society in complete conformance to their
beliefs.
• From the beginning (e.g. Wells’s Eloi; E.M. Forster’s “The
Machine Stops”) s.f. writers have worried about humans having it too
good. Like Calvin’s dad, they believe that adversity builds character.
This may be so; but generally adversity just creates misery. If we have
a deficit of character, should we bring back the Black Death or slavery?
I expect it’s a moot point, though; if we eliminate one evil, like
slavery, we invent a new one, like totalitarianism. If your fictional
world is getting too soft, throw a crisis at it.

Controversies
Your religion isn’t done till your people can argue about it. Not even the
strictest religion can force agreement on everything; and it gives a much
better idea of what people actually talk about.
Here’s some ideas to get you started:
• Popular vs. scholarly religion. The people are likely to
understand things differently from the philosophers. They’re less
interested in fine theology and more likely to take things literally. They
may be more or less lax than the clerics. They may keenly resent lapses
in the clergy.
• Attitudes toward authority. A religion is likely to have a
 complicated relationship with rulers. It might have been persecuted
once; the state’s aims are likely to conflict with religion at some point.
Clerics may expect the king to act as a humble worshipper— a view the
kings will ultimately resist. The Sunni-Shi‘a division in Islam was
originally a dynastic dispute; the fact that the Shi‘ites lost has colored
their attitude toward authority ever since.
• Church vs. state. There’s no conflict if the religion is state-
controlled or vice versa, and not much more if the religion isn’t
organized. If church and state have separate, powerful leaders, there
will be a fight for authority, complicated by mutual dependence. The
situation may dramatically change if one side is removed (the church
fragments, the empire collapses).
• Religion vs. science— a conflict which can really only start
when science starts questioning key dogmas. And then it will probably
go through stages of wariness, furious reaction, rear-guard
fundamentalism, and acceptance.
• Fundamentalism is not the original state of a religion; it’s a
reaction against a perception that people are watering down the faith in
response to modern scholarship or cultural laxity. Factions may differ
in what beliefs and especially what practices are considered
fundamental.
• Attitudes toward novelties, technological or cultural. Can your
prayer wheels be moved by electric motors— or magic? Is electricity
subject to rules about fire? Are the novel foods of a new continent clean
or unclean? Are new intoxicants allowed? What happens if the
ecological reasons for a practice (p. 193) change? What happens to
strictures on sex if an effective condom is invented?
• Rivalries with other religions. An older religion may strive to
adopt the attractive characteristics of the new, as paganism acquired a
trinity (the One, Mind, Soul) and an ethical cast under the influence of
Christianity, or as Orthodox Christianity rejected icons once it
competed with icon-less Islam. Confucianism and Daoism both adopted
some features of Buddhism. Such changes can of course cause a
counter-reaction, as the policy of iconoclasm did in the West.
 • Regions may develop variant beliefs. This may be due to
difficulties of travel and translation, as in the divergence between
Indian and Chinese Buddhism; or to the popularity of a local leader
— e.g. Arius in the 4C. A region may seize upon a religious difference
to justify a move toward independence.
• Pick a group condemned by the orthodox— anything from
pagan minorities to merchants to wizards to women. Give them some
quill pens and parchment and see what their reply is. Do they
eventually overcome the condemnations, or at least moderate their
tone?
A cult is a dissenting faction large enough to attract persecution. Excessive
behavior— free love, nudity, raucous celebrations— may be enough to invite
repression, but there’s likely to be some theoretical challenge to orthodoxy,
even if it’s as simple as defying the existing authorities.
Magic
What’s a fantasy world without magic? A relief, if you ask me. But fine, let’s
put some magic in.

Techno or spiritual?
In older fantasy, magic is a dread discipline, pursued by creepy old men in
symbol-bedecked robes and overgrown beards, and wild women with wilder
hair. They’re solitary and distrusted— likely as not they cavort with evil
spirits and do their bidding— and they richly return the disdain of the masses.
Gandalf has the shadiness and the facial foliage, but he’s on the side of Good.
But magic in LOTR is still a spiritual force, not a type of technology. We
never really learn what Gandalf can or can’t do. He sometimes does some
spectacular magic, but for most problems, from trolls immobilizing all his
friends to opening a locked dwarven gate, he relies only on mundane
cleverness.
In fact Gandalf is a maia, more or less an angel, sent to oppose Sauron not by
the direct use of supernatural force, but by stirring up men and elves. His
reticence to use great magic thus has a spiritual point— opposing evil is
something men are supposed to do, not something greater powers will do for
them.
It can be very effective in stories to have magic be limited, and used more by
personal whim or urgent necessity than rational calculation. If you’re after the
sense of wonder, it can be fatal to explain too much. Neil Gaiman is very
good at getting this right; e.g. Neverwhere is all the better for not explaining
its magical powers.
On Almea, magicians are those who can speak with Powers, supernatural
beings— who however have no interest in doing menial tasks for human
societies. Rather, they view the wizards as amusing pets, or as useful servants
in otherworldly schemes of their own; they are likely to drag the wizard into
their own world permanently sooner or later. But a wizard of strong character
and diplomatic nature can get the Powers to favor them with abilities of use
in the physical world.
Many writers prefer to take a more s.f. approach, and treat magic as a form of
technology. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are the best known example:
magic is something you learn in school, by hard study and constant practice;
you can use it grandiosely and routinely to light your halls, send messages,
fight your enemies, or just get around.
In games, on tabletop or computer, it’s hard to deal with magic in any other
way. If you’re going to use it in combat, healing, and dungeon exploration, it
needs to work every time and in set, specified ways.
There’s some room in between these extremes. In sword & sorcery stories,
for instance, like Fritz Leiber’s, there may be isolated mighty warlocks of
unpredictable power, but there are also guilds of mages who presumably
offer their services as reliably as physicians or assassins.

Magic systems
If you want magic as technology, I’d urge a couple of things on you.
First, divide it into rationalized subsystems. These might be based on the
elements (earth, air, fire, water), on function (e.g. Oblivion’s Alteration,
Conjuration, Destruction, Illusion, Mysticism, and Restoration), on spiritual
source (heaven, hell, chaos), whatever.
This isn’t just because systematization is neat; it’s to impose limits and
predictability on the system. A system where you can do anything you want,
any time is not going to be challenging— nor ultimately any fun. It’s better to
choose a narrower set of powers and explore those.
Second, apply it consistently to society. What will happen to a society if
such skills are commonplace? It doesn’t make much sense if magic is an
everyday thing, and yet the rest of the world is strictly 13C England. I’d
expect developments such as these:
• Light spells illuminate private and public spaces; as a corollary
most people no longer go to bed at dusk.
• Healing spells take the place of medicine. (A corollary might be
a lack of anatomical and medical knowledge: why learn how the body
functions if the spell does all the work?)
 • Magical fire supplies heat, powers steam engines, clears forests.
• If you can create food, no one needs to engage in agriculture.
Assuming magic isn’t a new thing, that means most people do
something else: craftwork, scholarship, war.
• If you can create or even just purify water, many diseases and
plagues will be cured. Expect a population explosion.
• Messaging spells allow instant communication across the realm
— at least as much of a revolution as telephones and the Internet. Local
lords, tiny workshops, and weak kings would give way to modern states
and corporations.
• Telekinesis spells would replace water and land transport,
enabling large-scale trade and industry.
• War, of course, would be waged by battlemages. In effect armies
all have cheap, powerful ranged weapons; the results should be
comparable to the gunpowder revolution.
• Spells affecting other people would transform interpersonal
relationships and government. Why argue with people if you have a
Persuade skill? You can toss away the rack if you have Truthtelling.
Some writers have embraced all or most of this, notably Rowling; also see
Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which finds fascinating
uses for magic in 19C England. If you still want a medieval world, you’ll
need to limit magic in some way.
A couple ideas that don’t do the trick:
• Limit magical abilities to 5% of the population. That’s like
saying that you’ll limit the power of airplanes by having no more than
15 million pilots. Maybe magic is no longer widespread enough to
replace agriculture, but how many mages do you need to run a
telegraph agency or a transport firm?
• Mana is a nonrenewable resource that can be used up in a given
area. Larry Niven got some good stories out of this, but he also
depicted what would happen: people would exploit the mana fully till
their magic-based civilization collapsed.
Here’s some better ideas:
• Magicians can only be highly exceptional individuals— a
handful in the entire kingdom, rather than a pair in every adventuring
party. Of course, this idea pretty much makes all wizards into valuable
state resources.
• Put a principled restriction on what magic can do. For Almea, I
took an idea from Ariosto: magic is like having a legion of invisible,
fast, yet stupid trolls. So you can only do what could be done with such
a tool. You can build a mansion, search a town, or attack an army; but
you can’t create light, heal, or persuade.
Or restrict magic to local and temporary effects. This would
eliminate the most society-changing spells— long-range
communications and transport— and prevent routine, mechanical use
of magic: you can only light your street if the magician stands there
flicking his wand every twenty seconds.
Or let’s say magic is a largely energetic phenomena, resisted by
large masses. The easiest things to affect, perhaps, are minds and the
air: illusions and light shows are easy, but powering a boat is a
challenge, and knocking down a castle wall is quite impossible.
• Magic could have certain vulnerabilities. The classic one is that
armor blocks magic, so the spellcaster is vulnerable to physical force.
Perhaps magical communication and transport are fairly easily diverted
to other destinations, making them unreliable or benefitting the wrong
people. Maybe a skilled battlemage can send magical bolts back where
they came from... another reason to hedge your bets and recruit
traditional pikemen and cavalry.
• Magic has a cost to it. Perhaps to create the positive energy to
cast a spell, negative energy is also released and causes damage to the
spellcaster or to the environment. Perhaps it consumes ordinary
resources or requires energy that could be devoted to other things.
Perhaps it ultimately reduces the spellcaster’s lifespan. Maybe it seeds
the material world with instabilities so that overuse of magic degrades
the environment.
 • An extension of this: maybe magic is tied to demonic forces...
perhaps one in a hundred magicians becomes a monster. The type and
degree of danger would determine whether it’s viewed as a noxious but
necessary nuisance, like a tanning factory, or a criminal activity.
• A goth extension of “no pain no gain”: the power to do magic
comes from destruction. Sacrificing an animal or destroying a valuable
object is enough for everyday spells. Harming a person— cutting off a
finger, for instance— generates even more power, and the strongest
spells are powered by murder.
You have something of a meta-narrative excuse, of course, in that if there are
any magicians in the society, your story can center on them. (The James
Bond stories don’t require that every Englishman be a spy.) But it’s the other
details in your story or world that really show how widely magic is used. If
you have magicians’ guilds, magic shops, healers in every temple, and magic
items in every hidden chest, then you have a magic-ridden world.

Magic, herblore, ancestors

Wizardry need not be the only type of magic around. A premodern society
might have a number of disciplines and people that aren’t even viewed as one
thing:
• Herblore— the use of plants with special properties, something
everyone might know something about, with more accomplished
practitioners to be found in every village. It’s also easy to imagine a
few canny old women and men who’ve pieced together a few useful
cantrips— things that ease life a little without greatly changing it.
Some very alarming mixtures were used as cosmetics. Táng
manuals suggest bats’ brains to remove blackheads and lead oxides to
whiten the skin, and powdered coral blown into the nose to stop
nosebleeds. (But then, you may not want to learn too much about the
ingredients of present-day personal hygiene products. It’s not all
flowers.)
• Alchemy in our world was just the early form of chemistry;
ideas like the transmutation of elements followed the best scientific
 theories of the time. Things like distillation and the ability to dissolve
gold made it seem like they were on the right track, and playing around
with liquid mercury was always a good party trick. No wonder many
fantasy worlds allow alchemy to produce all sorts of wonders. (In video
games, there’s something very satisfying about being able to make use
of bits of defeated enemies— imp gall, troll fat.)
• Spiritual arts— martial artists, hermits, mendicant orders,
wandering tinkerers. In our world these have special powers only in
that they have exceptional discipline, or knowledge beyond the usual.
But in your milieu perhaps they attain more spectacular powers. A
wuxia world where adepts dash between arrows, defeat armored
opponents with bare hands, and make hundred-foot leaps, is a hell of a
lot of fun.
(Tinkerers? For a memorable portrait of such, see Melquíades the
Gypsy in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. If
a community is isolated enough, someone coming from outside
showing off the latest mechanical marvels may seem to have occult
powers.)
• Perhaps the dead don’t wander too far from the world, at least at
first. They can be given some interesting abilities through not being
tied to a body: movement through solid objects, invisibility if they
choose, direct effects on people’s minds (e.g. fear).

See also…
Cosmology (p. 203), magic in warfare (p. 272); and of course almost any
aspect of your world— creatures, sustenance, economics, travel, government
— can include fantastic and magical elements.
Technology
Wait, what? If you’re writing s.f., your culture already includes all past
technology, and if you’re writing fantasy, you hate technology anyway, right?
There’s still reason to work out the tech.
First, consistency. Even if you’re just doing one culture, it should have a
believable and coherent level of technology. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to
add steam engines to ancient Rome (which couldn’t produce cheap strong
steel), or throw a printing press into a feudal society with no social effects.
Second, accuracy. This is especially so in military matters, such that I’ve
devoted a whole chapter to war (p. 243). But it comes up in other areas too. A
Roman atmosphere is impaired by spinning wheels, spectacles, and
windmills; a medieval atmosphere by ironclads, pendulum clocks, and gas
lighting.
If you want a complete world like Almea, it shouldn’t be static. Many a
conworld doesn’t ever seem to change... even Middle Earth doesn’t seem to
have any technological development over the millennia, and don’t get me
started on Star Wars.
Once you look at technology, it’s evident that human beings are constantly
modifying their culture and environment. In dark times maybe there’s only
one major advance per century, but things aren’t stagnant. Medieval Europe
was changing constantly and spectacularly— 1400 was very different from
1100, which was very different from 800. Technological change didn’t begin
in the Renaissance.
Finally, even in s.f. you’re likely to need some primitive cultures— for
aliens, or new colonies, or after the apocalypse. For that matter, the
technology of the future should keep changing; indeed, there should be a few
technological revolutions that transform society.

A timeline
Here’s a fairly broad list of technologies and discoveries, sorted by the date
they emerged on Earth.
I realize it may look intimidating, but it’s intended to be detailed enough for
in-depth conworlding. The most significant entries are bolded. There’s also
an interactive version of this chart on the web resources page which may be
more approachable.
Round numbers for dates are intended to signify uncertainty, and in the early
period should be taken as a lower bound; e.g. -7000 indicates the entire 8th
millennium B.C.
Archeology can be competitive, and claims for primacy may be provisional
or disputed. I've preferred to cite fairly sure dates; this may merely mean that
at the cited date the technique was common enough to be preserved in the
archeological record.
Researching just about any bit of technology, it’s striking the number of
steps involved in any advance. Lists like this one can give the impression that
some inventor of genius, known or unknown, created a revolution.
Sometimes they did, but more often there was a dizzying array of early
suggestions and minor improvements. I’ve tried to include some of these
below, but for each entry, imagine half a dozen more not listed.
Many inventions or discoveries are made simultaneously by different
people; classic examples include calculus and the electric light. This is a
corollary of the previous point— a number of people are working at the state
of the art, and several will be poised to advance it.
-2.5M Stone tools, used mainly in East Africa
scavenging
-1.8M Hunting East Africa
-400K Fire Africa
-200K Language East Africa
-200K Spears tipped with stone points Old World
-90K Burial with evident ritual Fertile Crescent
meaning
-50K Clearly differentiated tools: Africa
points, engravers, knives, drills,
piercers, needles
-50K Dogs domesticated (from wolves) Old World
-40K Australia settled Australia
-33K Sculpted figurines Europe
-30K Cave paintings Europe
-25K Fired pottery figures Central Europe
-15K Humans reach the Americas North America
-10K Pottery vessels China
-9000 Agriculture Fertile Crescent
-9000 Copper (which appears naturally Fertile Crescent
as a pure metal) mined
-8000 Bow and arrow Europe
-8000 Clay tokens (precursor to writing Fertile Crescent
and accounting)
-8000 Sheep, goats domesticated Fertile Crescent
-8000 Pig domesticated Mideast & China
-7000 Maize domesticated Mexico
-7000 Warp-weighted frame loom Anatolia
-6000 Cattle domesticated Fertile Crescent
-6000 Rice domesticated Yangtze valley
-5500 Irrigation Mesopotamia
-5500 Copper smelting (refining from Anatolia
compounds)
-5000 Chicken domesticated East Asia
-5000 Plow Mesopotamia
-5000 Lacquer China
-5000 Cotton domesticated Indus valley
-4000 Barrel vault (like a long extended Sumer
arch)
-4000 Potter’s wheel Mesopotamia
-4000 Urbanization (~1000 residents) Mesopotamia
-4000 Wine Near East
-4000 Donkey domesticated Egypt
-4000 Water buffalo domesticated China
-3500 Beer Iran
-3500 Horse domesticated Central Asia
-3500 Alpaca domesticated Andes
-3300 Gypsum (used as plaster) Egypt
-3200 Writing (logographic) Sumer
-3000 Kingdom Egypt
-3000 Arsenic bronze (copper alloyed Anatolia
with arsenic, making it stronger)
-3000 Crude distillation used for Middle East
perfumes
-3000 Silk China
-3000 Wheeled vehicles Near East/Europe
-2800 City-states (population reaches Sumer
5000)
-2800 Soap Babylonia
-2600 Large-scale warfare between Sumer
cities
-2550 First structure over 100 m (a Egypt
pyramid)
-2500 Seagoing ship Egypt
-2500 Tin bronze (copper alloyed with Mesopotamia
tin— stronger, easier to use, and
safer than arsenic)
-2500 Glass Middle East
-2500 Iron smelting; produces wrought Anatolia
iron
-2500 Lime Mesopotamia
-2500 Parchment (prepared animal Egypt
skins)
-2500 Camel domesticated Central Asia
-2400 Rudder (adapted from a steering Egypt
oar)
-2400 Scaling ladder (for attacking Middle East
 walled cities)
-2400 Beekeeping Egypt
-2250 First empire Akkadia
-2000 Brass (alloy of copper and zinc) Middle East
-2000 Papyrus (made from cut strips of Egypt
the plant’s pith)
-2000 Quadratic equations Mesopotamia
-2000 Written legal code Sumer
-2000 Grafting of fruit trees China
-1900 “Pythagorean” theorem Mesopotamia
-1900 Battering ram Egypt
-1800 Banks (referred to in Mesopotamia
Hammurabi's laws)
-1700 Consonantal alphabet Palestine
(drastically reduces symbol set
needed for writing)
-1700 Syllabary Crete
-1600 Chariot Aryans
-1600 Water clock Middle East
-1500 Fresco painting Crete
-1500 Glazing applied to pottery Middle East
-1500 Compound bow (made of Middle East
composite materials, much more
powerful than simple bow)
-1300 Bow lathe (turned with a rope; a Egypt
second worker cuts the wood)
-1000 Carburization (heating iron with Middle East
charcoal, which adds carbon, then
quenching in water, making the
outer layer into steel, allowing
lasting iron weaponry)
-1000 Tea China
-900 Cities reach 10,000 population Assyria
-800 Letters of credit China
-750 Alphabet Greece
-700 Cavalry (effective fighting from Eurasian steppe
horseback)
-700 Ram (on ships) Phoenicia
-600 Coins; market economy Anatolia
-510 Senatorial rule (without kings) Rome, Athens
-500 Abacus Egypt
-500 Cast iron China
-500 Stirrup India
-450 Atomism Greece
-450 Irrational numbers Greece
-475 Crossbow (bow with mechanical Greece
assistance to pull string)
-400 Torsion-powered catapult Greece
-385 Academy Greece
-300 Traction trebuchet (sling pulled China
by men)
-300 Zero (used only between Babylonia
symbols)
-250 Water mills (with waterwheel and Greece
gears)
-200 Cam (translates between rotary Greece
and linear motion)
-200 Moldboard plow (lifts and turns China
a strip of soil— faster, and moves
more earth)
-200 Towns reach 100,000 size Hellenic Egypt
-150 Astrolabe Greece
-125 Precession of the equinoxes Greece
-100 Lateen rigging Hellenic Egypt
-100 Paper (first used for packing) China
-100 Porcelain (pottery fired hot China
 enough to vitrify)
1 Glassblowing Middle East
1 Magnetic compass China
10 Towns reach 250,000 size Rome
50 Austronesians reach Polynesia Polynesia
100 Clear glass Hellenic Egypt
100 Groin vault (intersecting barrel Rome
vaults; allows covering a wide
span)
100 Improved distillation apparatus Egypt
100 Treadwheel crane Rome
100 Wheelbarrow China
200 Crucible steel India
400 Austronesians reach Madagascar Madagascar
400 Padded horse collar (allowing full China
strength of the horse)
400 Pure alcohol distilled from wine China
500 Chess India
500 Toilet paper China
600 Windmill Persia
600 Civil service examinations China
700 Woodblock printing of text China
800 Positional decimal numbering India
system
800 Pure distillation Islamic empire
800 Three-field agriculture Europe
820 Algebra systematized (many Persia
specific methods date back far
earlier)
900 Coke (purified coal used as fuel) China
1000 Paper money China
1000 Silkscreen printing China
1040 Moveable type China
1050 Gunpowder China
1088 University Italy
1100 Counterweight trebuchet Byzantium
1100 Rib vaulting Europe
1200 Nitric acid, sulfuric acid, Europe
hydrochloric acid isolated
1200 Pole lathe loom (foot pedal Europe
allows one-person use)
1200 Spinning wheel China, Iraq
1200 Wine press Europe
1250 Joint stock company France
1270 Eyeglasses Europe
1290 Cannon China
1300 Hourglass Europe
1300 Weight-based clock Europe
1350 Double-entry bookkeeping Italy
1350 Arquebus (early rifle) China
1375 Granular gunpowder (more Europe
efficient and reliable)
1400 Coffee roasting and brewing Arabia
1400 Full plate armor Europe
1400 Perspective Italy
1400 Intercontinental exploration China, Portugal
1420 Patents Italy
1430 Intaglio printing Germany
1440 Printing press Germany
1490 Cast cannon— far stronger than France
earlier forms, able to fire iron
balls, and above all mobile
1492 Transatlantic colony Spain
1530 Footpedal for spinning wheel Germany
1543 Heliocentrism mathematically Poland
demonstrated
1550 Spring-powered watch Germany
1590 Microscope Netherlands
1600 Constancy of pendulum Italy
1602 Stock exchange Netherlands
1605 Printed newspaper Germany
1609 Elliptical orbits of planets Germany
1610 Telescope Netherlands
1610 Jupiter's moons, phases of Venus Italy
observed
1614 Logarithms Britain
1620 Slide rule Britain
1650 Air pump Germany
1654 Pendulum clock Netherlands
1654 Probability France
1660 Royal Society Britain
1663 Static electricity generator Germany
1671 Hydrogen Britain
1676 Microorganisms Netherlands
1680 Ring bayonet Europe
1682 Boiler safety valve France
1684 Calculus Britain, Germany
1687 Theory of gravity; laws of Britain
motion
1700 Analysis of prisms and the Britain
spectrum
1712 Steam engine Britain
1730 Octant Britain
1733 Flying shuttle Britain
1735 Linnaean taxonomy Sweden
1740 Electric wire France
1744 Leyden jar (capacitor jar; stores Netherlands,
static electricity) Germany
1749 Lightning rod British N. America
1755 Carbon dioxide Britain
1762 Marine chronometer Britain
1764 Spinning jenny (multiple spindle Britain
machine)
1767 Lightning shown to be electric British N. America
1772 Nitrogen Britain
1772 Oxygen Sweden
1775 Separate condenser for steam Britain
engine
1781 Iron bridge Britain
1781 Uranus discovered Britain
1783 Hot air balloon France
1785 Non-blackening oil lamp USA
1785 Power loom Britain
1789 Conservation of mass France
1790 Chemical element theory France
1790 Water understood to be hydrogen France
+ oxygen
1792 Gas lighting Britain
1793 Cotton gin USA
1795 Dinosaur bones understood as France
reptilian
1796 Smallpox vaccine Britain
1800 Card-controlled loom France
1800 Electric battery Italy
1800 Towns reach 1,000,000 size Britain
1801 Ceres discovered Italy
1804 Canning France
1807 Steamboat USA
1808 Self-loading cartridge, allowing France
practical breech-loading rifles
1822 Photography France
1825 Railroad Britain
1830 Old earth theory in geology Britain
1837 Telegraph USA
1843 Iron-hulled ships Britain
1852 Elevator USA
1855 Mass industrial steel production Britain
1858 Theory of evolution Britain
1859 Spectroscope Germany
1861 Reconstruction of Proto-Indo- Germany
European
1862 Machine gun USA
1865 Dominant and recessive genes Austria
1866 Transatlantic cable USA
1867 Typewriter USA
1869 Periodic table Russia
1873 Laws of electromagnetism Britain
1876 Refrigerator Germany
1876 Telephone USA
1877 Phonograph USA
1879 Electric light USA, England
1887 Mechanical adding machine USA
1888 Radio waves Germany
1895 Automobile Germany, USA
1895 Motion picture France
1895 X-rays Germany
1897 Electron observed Germany
1902 Air conditioning USA
1903 Airplane USA
1905 Relativity Germany
1909 Plastic USA
1910 Antibiotics Germany
1911 Proton Britain
1912 Continental drift Germany
1916 Tank Britain
1925 Quantum mechanics Germany
1929 Expanding universe USA
1929 Instrumented rocket USA
1930 Jet engine Britain
1931 Electron microscope Germany
1931 Incompleteness theorem (an Germany
epistemological shocker)
1931 Radio astronomy USA
1932 Neutron Britain
1939 Digital computer USA
1939 Helicopter USA
1945 Atomic bomb USA
1947 Holography Britain
1948 Big Bang theory USA
1948 Programmable computer Britain
1948 Transistor USA
1953 DNA decoded USA, Britain
1957 Laser USA
1957 Satellite launched USSR
1958 Nuclear power plant USA
1959 Industrial robot USA
1961 First astronaut USSR
1962 Communications satellite USA
1969 Landing on the moon USA
1973 Space station USA
1975 Personal computer USA
1982 Compact disk USA
1989 GPS USA
1990 World Wide Web Europe
1997 Quantum entanglement Austria, Italy
1997 Sheep cloned Britain
2000 Human genome sequenced USA

How do I use this?

You can create a technological timeline for your conworld, as I did for
Almea. If this sounds like work— and it is— skip to the next section, where I
describe a simplified approach.
I included the region where each discovery was made; note the rough
movement of the most advanced region: roughly, the Middle East, then
China, then continental Europe, then Britain, then the USA. That underlines
that you need at least an outline history (p. 100) so you know where and
when to locate these pockets of innovation.
Civilizations can go backwards. Quite a few Roman technologies— mills,
geared machinery, treadmill cranes, stone houses, standing armies, large
cities, long-distance trade— were lost after the fall of the western empire, and
were only slowly rediscovered.
Think about the geographical situation of your cultures, who their neighbors
are, what resources they have. Some inventions depend on animals: the wheel
and the moldboard plow could only be exploited using traction animals. The
highly convoluted Greek coastline encouraged maritime exploration in a way
that (say) the Nile didn’t. Mining technology is likely to start in nations with
mountains. The location of England, the Netherlands, and Portugal on the
seacoast, obstructed from grand continental ambitions, must have helped
produce a focus on exploration and trade. The Islamic caliphate was a natural
crossroads, inheriting Greek knowledge and coming into contact with India
and China.
Pure science is rarely a priority; scientific insights in premodern times are
driven by practical concerns: surveying, navigation, time-keeping, ballistics,
medicine. Adornment has been a surprising driver for progress in metallurgy,
textiles, and long-distance trade.
The order of developments may be quite different even in terrestrial
civilizations. China had paper, silk, porcelain, moldboard plows, the
compass, and cast iron a millennium before Europe, while it lagged in other
areas, such as navigation, glass-making, alphabetic writing, jurisprudence,
and republican government. If you have several major civilizations you may
need a timeline for each.
However, there’s a natural order to certain discoveries. For instance:
• Gutenberg’s printing press was an adaptation of the agricultural
screw press; the use of moveable type required knowledge of metal
casting; the idea of printing built on existing woodblock and intaglio
printing; its commercial success depended on a literate population
hungry for things to read.
• Progress in metallurgy depends on reaching higher and higher
temperatures. Copper melts at 1100° C; the timing of the Bronze Age is
tied to the fact that a pottery kiln reaches about this heat. (Smelting
copper ores requires a lower temperature, 800° C. Even this is above
the heat generated by an open wood fire.) Iron melts at over 1500° C,
which requires more advanced methods— e.g. increasing the heat using
a bellows, or adding carbon to lower the melting point.
• Metallurgy is also driven by the ease of purifying the metal.
Gold and silver are unreactive, so they only have to be chipped away
from their matrix. Most metals need to be refined from ores. Moreover
some metals need to be alloyed together for strength— e.g. copper is
too soft to be used for tools, and is alloyed with tin to form bronze, or
with zinc to form brass. As many copper ores contain arsenic, smiths
were subject to arsenic poisoning, which may explain the prevalence of
lame smith-gods in many mythologies.
• Europeans began to build mills in large quantity around the 10C.
These were great for large-scale machinery; but new advances in
metalworking were needed before smaller machines such as the
spinning jenny could be created. Clockmaking was one of the missing
links.
• Steam engines at first only provided linear motion; this was
suitable for creating pumps— their first major use was in pumping
 water out of mines. The key step in making them more generally useful
was to deliver rotary motion, which allowed them to power mills,
lathes, and railroads. Steam engines were only made efficient with the
invention of the separate condenser, and safe with that of safety valves
and steel boilers, all reasons not to make too much of the steam toys of
1C Alexandria.
Think about the social effects of any advance.
• The printing press allowed an enormous democratization of
knowledge, much as the Internet has. The difference between a library
of a dozen books, all chained to the shelf, and one of thousands is more
than just quantity.
• Discoveries that disprove the reigning cosmology may have a
profound disordering effect. In technical areas, this may simply remove
roadblocks on the mind: Lavoisier’s chemical theory destroyed the last
remnants of the classical four elements; novas and comets showed that
the heavens were not changeless; Jupiter’s moons showed that the earth
was not the center of all rotation in the solar system. But touch a
sensitive enough spot and the whole edifice shudders; the theory of
evolution is the obvious example.
• The industrial revolution in effect stole the clothing industry
from women. Contrariwise, the traditional role of Native American
men as warriors and shamans was destroyed, with immense social
effect, by restricting Indians to reservations and discouraging Indian
religion.
• Wine and beer may be more than a diversion. In large towns,
getting unpolluted water becomes a problem, and the easiest solution is
to drink alcoholic beverages instead. There’s some evidence that
cultures which have been urban for millennia have developed a larger
tolerance for alcohol.

Technological epochs
You can skip the details of technology by focusing on a particular
technological epoch— basically a package of technologies.
For more information you can read up on the particular cultures named, or
look in the timeline to see what had been invented and what hadn’t.
I give a few models for each; I assume you’re smart enough to understand
that fiction may or may not aim at historical accuracy.

Babylon, 1200 B.C.

Agriculture, the domestication of animals, and writing are already old
technologies. The denser agricultural regions are ruled, and not with a light
hand, by kings and occasionally empires. Economic enterprise is largely
under the control of the state— there are no markets or coins, though there
are private merchants and even banks. Towns reached about 7500 souls. Less
populous areas are held by farmers and peasants organized into small tribes,
sometimes precariously free, sometimes controlled by the nearest empire.
Priests were important figures, as religion was an important prop of the state.
Warriors are only lightly armored, and wield swords, spears, and bows.
Horses could only be exploited in combat using chariots— even the nomads
hadn’t learned how to fight from horseback. Bronze was still widely used for
weapons, but states that could afford it used wrought iron.
There were sophisticated pleasures: fine jewelry and metalwork, decorative
pigments, perfume, incense, wine and beer. The educated were already
advanced in astronomical observation and geometry, and some claimed to
master mystical powers.
A few good models:
The Old Testament: the Israelites were a marginal people in between
the major powers of Egypt and Mesopotamia
Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey
My own In the Land of Babblers is largely Bronze Age in technology
Robert Howard’s Conan stories have a pre-Roman feel to them

Rome, 1st century A.D.

After centuries of struggle, the bulk of the known world was united under one
empire. The empire had till recently been a republic, and still contained a
senate of important (and rich) men, often entrusted with governmental tasks.
The empire was a patchwork of conquered states, each with their own
language, religion, and laws; those outside it were considered no more than
barbarians.
Urban life was thriving— the capital had more than 250,000 people, and
many other cities had several tens of thousands. Urbanites enjoyed theaters
and baths, a wealth of literature, arenas, philosophical academies, and their
choice of temples. Trade was market-based and empire-wide, and individuals
could become very rich; but there was no great barrier between the state and
the private sector. Rich men would bestow public buildings on their cities,
and take office— a path to further riches, as corruption was normal. Very
large enterprises, from aqueducts to water mills, were imperial concerns.
The empire maintained a huge standing army; its pay was the major
government expense. Soldiers wore banded metal armor, and were divided
into infantry, cavalry, and artillery (ballistae as well as siege engineers).
Besides impressive buildings, road, and fortifications, the empire boasted
fascinating novelties: blown glass, tiny machines powered by steam,
alchemical apparatus.
A few good models:
The New Testament
Robert Graves’s I, Claudius
All those gladiator movies
A History of Private Life, vol. 1

Táng China, A.D. 750

At this time China was the most advanced and prosperous civilization on the
planet. Perhaps its most distinguishing feature was that its aristocracy
depended not on blood, but on educational achievement: advancement in
government was based on an elaborate nationwide examination system. This
concentrated on the ancient classics, but there was a constant debate serving
to apply old precepts to modern situations.
The classics defined the ancient religion of the people, but there was an
openness to new and even foreign ideas; the best thinkers rarely declared for
just one ideology, but reviewed all the possibilities and chose the best ideas
from each. The monk Xuánzàng had recently returned from India with
hundreds of Buddhist texts to enrich Chinese Buddhism.
Compared to our previous models, China was striking in its longetivity and
homogeneity— no regions separated for long, and the system was able to
absorb several foreign conquerors.
Warfare was principally infantry-based, befitting a huge sedentary
agricultural population. The primary military threat was nomads in the
northwestern steppe; these could often be bought off with tribute, titles, and
princesses, or hired as mercenaries. The system was secure enough that in
most of the country, large cities needed no walls.
There was a steady stream of important inventions: paper, porcelain, the
compass, the padded horse collar, steel-making, woodblock printing. Silk had
long been an enormously profitable export. Just past our period, the Sòng
continued the tradition, inventing paper money, silkscreen printing, moveable
type, and gunpowder.
A few good models:
Journey to the West, a retelling of Xuánzàng’s journey as fantasy
Wuxia movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are set in an
idealized ancient China
Video games: Jade Empire
Luó Guànzhōng, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
The Tale of Genji, from Japan, often listed as the world’s first novel

Medieval Europe, A.D. 1350.

We’ve all been down these cobbled streets, seen the knights in plate armor
and the ladies in pointy hats. But fantasy isn’t so much the West’s nostalgia
for its own past, as the descendent of the Renaissance and medieval epic—
the medieval era’s idealization of itself.
What did they leave out? The medieval industrial revolution, for one.
Medieval society was as machine-oriented as we are computer-oriented. The
Clairvaux abbey, for instance, was built to exploit water power; the water was
used for milling wheat, sieving flour, fulling cloth, and tanning; pipes carried
water to the kitchen and to the gardens, and cleaned out the drains. There was
an explosion of mills: in the department of the Aube in France, there were 14
water mills in the 11C, 60 in the 12C, and over 200 in the 13C. The English
Domesday Book records 5,624 water mills, one for about every 50
households.
The Romans had water mills, but nothing on this scale. But the Europeans
also had windmills and tidal mills; agricultural productivity soared with the
three-field system and the wheeled moldboard plow; horses could pull more
with the padded collar; Europeans mined gold and silver in areas the Romans
believed to have none. The medievals sometimes depicted God as an architect
or engineer, measuring the universe with a compass.
I chose 1350 as being just before the gunpowder era— the first cannons
(following Arab designs) were appearing in Europe; the first arquebus
wouldn’t appear in Europe for another century. The typical armor was
chainmail, but through the century it developed in the direction of plate, to
counter new two-handed axes and swords, thrusting swords, and the
longbow. At this stage the powerhouse of an army was the heavily armored
mounted knight— though this concept, like the knights, would be decimated
at the battle of Crécy (1346).
In intellectual life, great universities had been founded—Bologna in 1088,
Paris in 1150, Oxford in 1167. At Paris, Thomas Aquinas had recently
systematized the study of theology, reconciling Christian teaching with the
reason of Aristotle. The mineral acids had recently been isolated,
revolutionizing alchemy. There were other novelties: the spinning wheel, the
wine press, eyeglasses, the hourglass, weight-based clocks. New methods for
building were developed, less dark and bulky than Roman architecture. The
explosion of European power and knowledge at the Renaissance was only the
culmination of economic and social forces that had been building throughout
the medieval period.
A modern (especially a European) would probably be most struck by the
centrality of God. Everyone believed, and no one saw a contradiction
between scholarship and science— quite the reverse; Aquinas was canonized.
Not that this meant priests and monks were treated with reverence; they were
often seen as corrupt and venal.
A few good models:
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror
Shakespeare is only a little later, and was often writing about earlier
times anyway (though with ships, pistols, and the printing press his is
already a different world)
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings— not strictly medieval, but as all the
glorious empires were far in the past it feels more medieval than
classical
C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series
Comics: Jeff Smith’s Bone, Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, François
Bourgeon’s Les compagnons du crépuscule, Rosinski & Van Hamme’s
Thorgal
The post-medieval epics: Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Spenser’s The
Faerie Queene, Malory’s La mort d’Arthur
Video games: Oblivion, Skyrim, Dragon Age Origins, World of
Warcraft

The early steam era, A.D. 1800.

I personally find this era more fascinating than medieval times, and less
overdone in fantasy. It was the dawn of the modern world, when its
transformations were still largely potential.
The overall theme was the questioning of authority. The first dethroning was
of Ptolemy; the earth-centered universe with its crystalline spheres, the
outermost pleasantly scattered with stars, was replaced by the modern
concept of space. Newton and Galileo had overthrown Aristotle’s
momentum-based physics; now Lavoisier had systematized chemistry, a new
conception of dozens of elements replacing the ancient alchemical dogmas.
Adam Smith’s economics, like the new physics, worked without a central
decider, without even any dependence on the nation-state. Biology had
micro-organisms and the smallpox vaccine to think about. The printing press
had revolutionized and democratized information.
Most scholars still accepted God, but the universe seemed more and more
like a clockwork he had made and set in motion, not a series of miracles that
required his constant intervention. Religious authority had fragmented, and
the ensuing Catholic-Protestant wars led to the conviction that the state could
not impose a belief on the people. (Not that religion was moribund; freed
from the sleepiness of state control, fervent popular forms of religion were
springing up— Methodism and Quakerism were originally full of
supernatural zeal, like Pentecostalism today).
Kings also seemed less necessary than before. France and the British North
American colonies had got rid of them; even England had experimented with
being a Commonwealth. The sleepy Iberian empires in the Americas would
soon be transformed by revolution.
And yet everyday life was not yet a rush of novelties. The industrial
revolution was well underway, but few had seen the new steam-powered
machines or worked in a factory. The most striking change from medieval
times was in warfare: edged weapons had almost entirely disappeared in
favor of muskets, pistols, and cannon.
Go a little further, of course, and you can play with steampunk. There’s
something delicious about the massive boilers and iron girders of Victorian
engineering, perhaps festooned with Art Nouveau decoration, and it’s even
more fun to make them even larger, or float them from enormous airships.
A few models:
Jane Austen’s novels evoke the daily life of the period
Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities
James Boswell’s Life of Johnson
C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series, evocations of the sailing
ship as far-flung agents of the British Empire, and an inspiration for
Star Trek
Tim Powers’s The Anubis Gates
My own conworld Almea
 Steampunk: Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen; Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicäa

Modern times
There’s no reason you can’t set your fantasy in a time like the present, or
develop your conworld to modern times and beyond.
A few good models:
Most of Neil Gaiman, especially Neverwhere and American Gods
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
H.P. Lovecraft’s stories
R.A. Lafferty’s delightful short stories
Star Wars is essentially near-future fantasy
War
Most fantasy, and much s.f. too, features war, or at least some deadly
fighting. This is probably one of the biggest gaps between writers and the
people they describe— few of us are at all expert at killing someone with a
sword. So there’s a lot to learn.
Most of this chapter is on historical warfare. I’ll pretty much skip the modern
era— you know how wars are conducted today anyhow, and detailed material
is readily available. At the end, however, I’ll consider magical and futuristic
warfare.

The warrior
War is hell, but there is a temperament that is not displeased to enter its gates.
In John Keegan’s words:
It is the admiration of other soldiers that satisfies him— if he can win
it; most soldiers are satisfied merely by the company of others, by a
shared contempt for a softer world, by the liberation from narrow
materiality brought by the camp and the line of march, by the rough
comforts of the bivouac, by competition in endurance, by the prospect
of le repos du guerrier among their waiting womenfolk.
Our earliest ancestors were hunters, close to the animals they hunted, their
senses highly trained, their bodies tough and fit, highly skilled in the use of
weapons and in wilderness survival, and able to kill quickly when necessary
— all qualities that must be cultivated in the soldier, increasingly setting him
apart from the office workers around him.
As a character the warrior comes with that most attractive of narrative traits,
paradox. Perhaps the best character in the Narnia series, one which survived
the disappointing transition to the screen, is Reepicheep the warrior mouse.
The combination of courtesy, politeness, and deadly skill remains its interest
in the modern age, all the more so when most people no longer face war
themselves.
War cultures
As important as the tools of war is the culture that surrounds it, as Keegan
demonstrates in A History of Warfare. A war culture generally has limits that
inhibit excessive violence, much as dominance fights between predators
include a signal of submission (e.g. a dog baring his neck) that ends the fight
and allows the beaten animal to escape.

Primitive
Tribes vary in warlikeness. One extreme is the hunter-gatherer Bushmen,
who avoid conflict; one book about them is called The Harmless People. But
they live in a highly marginal environment— the Kalahari desert— and may
not be characteristic of early man.
Daniel Everett describes the Pirahã (Amazonian hunter-gatherers) as highly
peaceful among themselves, as well as rather sexually egalitarian; at the same
time they can be brutal with outsiders they perceive as encroaching on their
land.
By contrast, the Yanomamö— garden agriculturalists and hunters of
Venezuela— have been called “the fierce people”; males are encouraged to
be violent, and horribly mistreat their women— beatings and disfigurements
are common. Violence between men, however, is highly ritualized. One form
is the chest-pounding duel. Two men with a quarrel take hallucinogens to
foster aggression. One stands, chest out, and lets the other hit him in the chest
as hard as he can. He bears as many blows as he can, then it’s the other man’s
turn. The fight usually ends with the two men making up and swearing
friendship.
Then there’s the club fight. A challenger plants a ten-foot pole in the ground;
the man challenged takes it and gives him a mighty blow to the head, which
can then be returned. Such fights can quickly become a nasty general brawl,
and fatal wounds are common; they’re ended when the headman takes a bow
and arrow and threatens to shoot the participants if they don’t stop.
Finally there’s the raid, where the men of one village run to another, find
some defenseless victim, kill him, and run away. The most deadly action
however is the treacherous feast: you get a third village to invite your
enemies to a meal, then surprise them and kill as many as possible.
There are two take-home points here:
• Ritual. Aggression is channeled into set patterns that limit
destructiveness; above all there are conventions on when the fight is
over.
• Limiting risk. You’ll get hurt in a duel— showing your
toughness is the main appeal— but you’ll survive. The raids and even
the treacherous feast are by ‘civilized’ standards cowardly— they avoid
a general battle where the defenders can fight back— and kill— on
equal terms.
Marvin Harris notes that the perceived need for fierce male warriors leads to
widespread female infanticide, which he views as an effective if brutal means
of controlling population. (Population isn’t limited directly by war: no matter
how many men are killed, the remainder can keep the women pregnant. Only
limiting the number of women bearing children can restrict population
growth.)
The Maring of New Guinea are garden agriculturalists who raise herds of
pigs. It takes about ten years for the animals to grow to full size, at which
point the gardens are strained. The tribe then slaughters the pigs, holds a huge
feast, and goes to war. War takes one of four forms:
• ‘Nothing fights’, which consist of an exchange of arrows. These
usually end if anyone is seriously wounded.
• ‘True fights’, which add a front line where men duel with stone
axes and flint-tipped wooden spears.
• Raids, similar to those of the Yanomamö.
• Routs, usually an outgrowth of a ‘true fight’, a headlong rush at
a settlement with much killing of both sexes; the defeated group
abandons its settlement entirely.
Again, note the ritual and the limitation of risk. Fights were not always
escalated; they often ended in a peace negotiated by allies. But even the routs
are not as final as they sound. The defeated tribe’s territory is not occupied,
as it’s considered to have bad magic. The survivors regroup in the territory of
allies.
Direct evidence for warfare in the vast majority of human history is rather
slim. It’s fair to say that our ancestors were neither brutal nor noble savages.
Their wars were likely to be limited displays of aggression which allowed the
losers a dishonorable but life-saving retreat.
Of course, there was the rare possibility of a near-genocidal rout. These are
all the more striking to Westerners because they’re the opposite of our
military mores, which glorify facing a fully armed opponent; when the enemy
is fleeing in terror we consider the battle won and pursuit to the death an
atrocity. But in many military cultures it was simply good sense to avoid a
battle except under conditions of overwhelming superiority. Those pointy
things can kill you, after all.
In some areas and periods, such as the Trojan War, early medieval Europe,
and China’s Spring and Autumn Period, war was not much more
sophisticated; it was a matter of aristocratic heroes whose battles were more
an array of individual duels than a mass action. Their codes of honor may
greatly influence their culture’s idea of what war should be, but for wars that
really change the map you need something more.

East Asian
Classical Chinese military theory was elucidated by Sun Tzu (properly Sūn
Zǐ) in the -4C. Armies at this time were large (in the tens of thousands) and
well trained— maneuvers were signalled using drums, bells, and banners.
Weapons included steel swords, spears, and powerful and accurate
crossbows; horses were used to pull chariots, though cavalry was introduced
soon after his time.
Sun Tzu’s major emphases:
• Calculation. If we picture Alexander charging sword in hand at
the enemy’s strongest point, Sun Tzu must be pictured with an abacus,
evaluating troop strengths and dispositions, terrain, supply, and morale.
• Professionalism. Sun Tzu has to emphasize promotion based on
merit (rather than nepotism), the use of experience rather than omens,
and the freedom of commanders to ignore the king’s orders once in the
 field.
• Movement. Quick movement allowed an attack where the
enemy was weakest. An army could be divided into zhèng ‘orthodox’—
big solid battalions— and qí ‘extraordinary’, small élite groups sent to
attack the flanks and rear.
• Deception. “When capable, feign incapacity; when active,
inactivity… Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and
strike him.”
• Intelligence. Use spies, diplomats, and local guides to
understand and undermine the enemy. He helpfully suggests that
disgruntled courtiers can easily be recruited.
• Avoidance of wasteful battle: long wars, sieges, direct
confrontation with stronger forces. “To subdue the enemy without
fighting is the acme of skill.”
One could guide the battle rage of soldiers, one’s own or the enemy’s. The
general Hán Xìn smashed his cooking pots, burned his boats, and fought with
his back to a river, so his army had to win or die. Another general, after
winning a battle, refused to rush after the losers, as that would provoke them
to turn and fight; he could do better moving slowly and harrassing them.
Some of Sun Tzu’s precepts can be seen in China’s perennial struggle with
the nomads to the northwest, which emphasized defense (including
construction of the Great Wall), co-opting nearby tribes with Chinese titles,
bribes, and princesses, and using them if possible against fiercer farther
tribes. Though there were great Chinese generals, Chinese culture tended to
disdain military action, especially after the military revolts in the Táng period
and the failure of a forward policy in western Turkestan, where Arab rather
than Chinese influence ended up predominating.
Perhaps the most spectacular demonstration of Sun Tzu’s principles was
made by Mao Zedong in defeating the Nationalists. He treated his soldiers
well, which helped induce large numbers of the enemy to desert to him, and
mastered quick movement— he joked that his army was the best in the world
at running away. But this allowed him to attack weak points and set traps.
Ho Chi Minh used similar methods in Vietnam against the French and the
Americans. Guerrilla warfare proved to be an effective way of countering the
material advantage of Western armies.
Japanese samurai warfare was based on the skillful use of swords; but feudal
Japan was ended by the general Oda Nobunaga at Nagashino in 1575 using
huge numbers of musketeers. This might have led to an age of gunpowder but
once unity was achieved, the shogunate made firearms a government
monopoly, effectively eliminating them from use and preserving the samurai
as a class.
The samurai objected to the indiscriminate nature of gunpowder weapons— a
peasant could mow down a highly trained samurai. Similar objections were
made in Europe, but no European state was unified or isolated enough to ban
firearms. Japan’s 250-year renunciation of the gun is a remarkable exception
to the usual quick acceptance of new military technologies, of lasting
relevance in light of the destructiveness of nuclear weapons.

Nomadic
As noted (p. 92), the nomads of Central Asia were formidable fighters. The
entire adult male population was available as a highly mobile cavalry, all
expert with the powerful compound bow and, as Keegan points out, even
more experienced with dealing death than hunters, due to the necessities of
controlling and culling herds and protecting them from predators. Settled
states found them difficult to resist. The usual expedient was to hire other
tribes to fight back; Europeans in addition learned to cultivate their own class
of horse warriors.
Nomads were frightening and frustrating enemies. One of their favorite
tactics was the false retreat, which prompted an unwary infantry to pursue,
breaking up their line and allowing a devastating counter-charge. They felt no
need to offer a firm defensive line— the Persian emperor Darius famously
failed to defeat the Scyths because they simply rode away, refusing to face a
battle. When they did win a battle they could be notoriously cruel,
massacring the inhabitants of a city to punish them for the temerity of
resistance, or chasing peasants off their fields.
There were natural limits to their empires, however. One was the perennial
difficulty of ruling the settled states they conquered. If they simply plundered
and pillaged, like Timur, there was nothing left to loot and they could only
seek new conquests. If they settled down as rulers, the trick was to assimilate
enough to the agriculturalists to rule effectively, but not so much so that they
lost the skills expected back on the steppe.
Few nomadic empires could maintain this balance for long: Attila’s empire
collapsed after his death; Kublai Khan’s dynasty lasted less than three
quarters of a century after him. The later Manchus retained power only at the
price of a conservativism that became an immense liability in the modern
age. Perhaps the only lasting success was the Ottoman Turks, who long
remained a formidable military power, and who managed a successful
transition to a strong modern state.
Nomads can extend their grazing lands into marginal agricultural areas, as
they did historically in Hungary and Anatolia; but not into forests or rich
agricultural land, which don’t turn into grassland just because the peasants
are dead.
Finally, horselords require, well, lots of horses. Marco Polo reported that an
average Mongol warrior owned 18 horses. Extended campaigns off the steppe
killed horses profusely— probably one reason Attila’s attacks on Europe
petered out.

Western
In 480 BC, the greatest empire the world had yet produced was stymied by a
tiny coalition of city-states one-tenth its size. This was big news and rocketed
the winners to the top of the merc market.
What was the secret of the Greeks? There are a few key points.
• Logistics. The Persian force was huge, but it was at the end of a
very long supply line; the full resources of the empire could not be
brought to bear.
• Naval advantages. The Greeks had fewer ships, but they forced
battle in a confined space, the straits of Salamis, where the Persian
numbers were thwarted. Persian ships were more maneuverable but less
heavily crewed, so in a tight space the Greeks had a great advantage.
• Armor and weapons. Despite what you may have picked up from
 300, the Greeks had heavier armor and longer spears than the Persians.
• Terrain. Greece has few open plains, rendering the Persian
cavalry nearly useless. (In more open terrain, such as in Anatolia, the
Persians defeated the Greek counter-attacks.)
The army of a Greek city-state was organized as a phalanx— an extended
rectangle of men, each man holding a round shield and a spear, long enough
that those of first three rows pointed out at the enemy. Tactics were simple, as
befit a soldiery whose main job was farming: they consisted of charging
forward at a trot till the formation burst against the enemy. A Roman
observer commented that the advance of a phalanx was the most frightening
thing he’d ever seen. Once the armies had collided, the individual soldier
could switch to a sword.
Compared with primitive or nomadic tactics, this represented a major change:
a phalanx directly confronted similarly armed opponents, with a high risk of
death. It’s been estimated that 15% of a losing force died in the battle itself,
either from wounds or from being picked off by skirmishers as they ran.
What made men willing to run directly into line of enemies brandishing
spears? We can identify several factors.
• The greater risk of running away. Better to face a spearman head
on; showing him your side or back was far more dangerous. And the
tight formation of the phalanx meant that the front rows literally had no
place to go but forward.
• Fear of the shame of not fighting. Your buddies were right there
next to you; you fought to protect them and to retain their approval.
• Spirits raised by drink, by religious invocations, even by the
rituals of insults and shouting that preceded combat.
• Victor Hanson suggests that phalanx warfare allowed battle to be
brief and decisive, a desirable attribute for part-time soldiers. Like
having your teeth pulled, it was going to hurt, but it’d soon be over.
In inter-Greek struggles, total victory was not pursued— the losers were
allowed to run off. They would often drop their armor, which allowed them
to outpace the victors. Once again we see the theme of cultural limitation to
war. Often the wars were about revenge or points of honor, which were
satisfied by victory; occupation of the enemy city was rarely a goal.
Sparta was a partial exception, in that it had enslaved its neighbors in the
southern Peloponnese, also in that its army was composed of a professional
class of warriors. But even Sparta never pursued an empire beyond its little
slice of Greece. It was left to Athens to attempt to exploit the Greek military
superiority revealed by the victory over Persia. This ultimately stalemated:
Athens’s little empire did not have the resources to do much harm to Persia.
But all of Greece did if it were united, as Alexander showed in the -4C.
As time goes on, conventional limits to war get stretched and broken. By
Alexander’s time the army was professionalized; the short campaign season
had extended to nine months; and of course the wars were fought for
conquest.
The Romans adapted the phalanx into the legion, dividing it into smaller
sections (maniples) which allowed greater maneuverability. Perhaps more
importantly, they added an ethos of fighting to the end that none of their
enemies could match. Hannibal of Carthage invaded Italy, soundly thrashed
the legions several times, and won away a slew of Italian cities; by the
standards of the day the Romans should have sued for peace. They did not;
they resisted for ten years, defeated the Carthaginians in Spain and then
invaded Carthage itself, forcing Hannibal to return to defend it. They reduced
the Carthaginian empire to a remnant and, still not satisfied, eliminated it fifty
years later in another war.
Even when they lost, they won: the term “Pyrrhic victory” refers to their wars
with Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose defeats of Roman armies were so painful that
he abandoned his war.
And this, through many a change in military technology, largely remained as
the European idea of war: where men and materials permit, squarely engage
the enemy, instill the discipline required to throw soldiers into probable
death, and seek the total destruction of the enemy’s army.
(The nuance is important; medieval armies, for instance, were hamstrung by
the difficulty of raising a large army. Armies were therefore small, and wars
rarely decisive.)
For all its brutality, Western culture has its cultural limits— respecting
medical units, for instance. There’s also the expectation that once your army
is defeated, you surrender. The denial of this expectation in the Iraq war was
a huge and unwelcome surprise to the Americans.
The ultimate expression of Western military culture was World War II, a
conflict so brutal that it largely discredited the very idea of war for the
Europeans, at least.

Weapons
For ease of exposition I’ll focus on one weapon at a time, but be aware that
civilized states rely on combined arms; relying entirely on one type of
weapon is generally a mistake.

Spear
If you play a fantasy game, what weapon do you want? A spear? Of course
not; spears are for weenies. You want a badass sword.
But primitive and classical warriors preferred the spear. A 2.5-meter-long
spear, made of ash with an iron tip, was the basic weapon of the Greek
phalanx; the Macedonian sarissa was twice as long, which compensated for
their lighter armor. A spear can of course reach farther than a sword; phalanx
tactics are also relatively simple, suitable for part-time soldiers. Spears are
are also cheaper to make than either swords or arrows.
A javelin is a lighter spear that is thrown at the enemy; this was effective to
about 20 meters. Peltasts, light infantry armed with javelins, would be used to
harrass the enemy. At Lechaeum in 391 BC peltasts defeated a small Spartan
phalanx, repeatedly advancing to throw their javelins and then nimbly
retreating when the Spartans attacked. (Normally peltasts were countered by
other peltasts, but in this battle the Spartans had none of their own.)
Roman legions gave up the thrusting spear in favor of the pilum or javelin;
they would throw this and then follow up with the sword.
The medieval pike was three to six meters long, and most useful against
cavalry charges. The cavalry themselves often used the lance, a stout, long
spear whose thrusting power was multiplied by the weight of a charging
horse. However, after the initial charge, the horseman would switch to sword
or mace for melee.

Sword
Swords require metal, and bronze doesn’t allow swords more than 60 cm
long, while spears can be far longer. Wrought iron doesn’t hold an edge well,
but charcoal heating and water quenching, mastered by 1000 BC, produced a
hard steel layer on the outer edge.
Around 300 AD India was producing wootz steel, a pure steel with high
carbon content and a characteristic swirling grain pattern, which could be
used to make hard and tough blades. In Europe, the best steel was produced
by heat-layering high-purity Swedish iron with charcoal, until the invention
of the Bessemer process in 1858 allowed cheap mass production of steel.
Set designers and video game players love huge elaborate swords with extra
sharpened bits, like the Klingon betleH. But heavy weapons are hard to
control and tire the user, and wacky indentations and protrusions are probably
an invitation for the sword to get caught on obstacles. In a rapier vs. betleH
battle, I rather imagine the rapier would be spearing an internal organ while
Mr. Klingon was still figuring out his grip.
The axe was the preferred weapon of the Viking, not least because it was also
a useful tool in peacetime, at least in the forested north. Metal tools are
expensive and time-consuming to forge and maintain, so greater utility was a
real plus.

Swordfighting 101
The golden age of swordfighting, as Arthur Wise points out, was due to the
invention of firearms. Plate armor encouraged the use of weapons that would
crack it or induce injury despite it: war hammers, maces, axes, flails.
Gunpowder eliminated the defense of heavy armor, and personal combat fell
back on the sword.
In the 16C, swords were thick and heavy, and often wielded with a mailed
gauntlet to protect the hand. The swordsman circled his opponent, sword held
out, looking for an opening, preferably on the opponent’s left side (i.e. away
from his sword arm). Attacks could depend either on cutting or thrusting.
In defense, he might use a small shield, a mailed glove, or a cloak wrapped
round his hand: the cloak could be used to brush a point aside, or to attempt
to catch it in the cloth, or could even thrown at the opponent. The best
defense was a counter-attack: step back, parry, or meet the opponent’s blade
with his own, in either case making a counter-thrust. Bouts required strength
and endurance.
Tripping and kicking were not out of bounds; one could also grasp the
opponent’s sword (by the blade or by the guard) and wrest it away.

Rapier
The broadsword was replaced in personal combat by the rapier, a thin sword
that emphasized dexterity and ultimately the thrust rather than the cut. A
thrust was faster, the masters taught, and put the attacker at less risk. The
rapier’s hilt also evolved curved projections that protected the hand.
The usual defense became a dagger held in the off hand, and eventually
nothing at all— the rapier itself could be used for defense. The rapier is held
such that the opponent cannot hit merely by thrusting forward, but must move
his weapon; and the typical counter to a thrust is to parry rather than counter-
thrust.
There is an element of fashion to all this— if your opponent has a rapier
that’s all you need as well— but the rapier was also considered more
effective. “The short sword against the Rapier is little better than a tobacco-
pipe,” as a royal weapons master wrote in 1617. (On the 17C battlefield, of
course, the only edged weapons to be seen were cavalrymen’s sabers and
anti-cavalry pike; the infantry used muskets.)

Bow and arrow

The simple bow is made from a single piece of wood; a sapling provided the
necessary elasticity. Nonetheless it allowed attack at a hundred yards, much
longer than the hurled spear.
The composite bow is much more complicated. It was made from five pieces
of wood— grip, two arms, two tips— glued together and steamed into a
curve, opposite to its shape when strung. Strips of horn were glued to the
inner side, tendons to the outer, then left to cure for as much as a year.
Stringing the bow required bending it against its natural shape, requiring
great strength but greatly increasing the bow’s power. The bow’s effective
range was 250 to 300 yards.
Typically archers wore little or no armor; their role was to use their speed and
range to harrass the opposing force. The Persians relied on a standing army of
trained, fast archers wielding composite bows.
The crossbow was introduced to Europe in the 16C, though it was known in
China a millennium before. It used a clockwork mechanism to store and
suddenly release energy; its bolts could easily penetrate armor. It cost more
than the ordinary bow and fired slower, but was easier to aim and did more
damage.

Horse and Pike

The first major use of the horse was for food. The first animal used for
traction was the ox (i.e. a castrated and thus more docile bull); the first riding
animal may have been the donkey or its larger relative the onager. These
however are stubborn, resist spurs and bits, and lack the wide range of gaits
of horses.
The first stage in the use of horses in war was to pull chariots, developed
around 1700 BC in the borderlands between the steppe (where the horses
were plentiful) and the civilized lands (where the metal and wood necessary
to build chariots were found). Chariots were not an item of mass warfare—
they were luxury items. At the battle of Qadesh in 1294 BC, the victorious
Egyptian army had about 5000 men and 50 chariots.
There is some controversy about exactly how chariots were used. Pictures
show teams of two or more, one driving the horse, the others firing arrows or
throwing javelins. This would seem to be awkward if driving straight at the
enemy; rather they must have ridden along the enemy’s flank, or better yet,
come close and then dashed back: the chariot is one of the few military
implements which fights most effectively when retreating,
Horses were ridden in the 2nd millennium, though at first the rider was
seated over the rump. By the 8th century BC stronger horses had been bred,
and horsemanship had improved, so that they were ridden in the forward
control position. The Scyths and Cimmerians, both Iranian peoples, learned
to shoot from horseback; their intervention in Mesopotamia led to the
downfall of the Assyrian empire.
Horses were the backbone of the nomadic armies for the next two millennia,
forcing agricultural states to invest resources in either developing or buying
horsemen of their own.
Cavalry forces can also be divided into heavy and light, the latter relying on
missiles, the former on lances and heavy armor; heavy cavalry was often
decisive in Alexander’s battles, a lesson absorbed by the Persians’
successors, the Parthians.
In the post-Roman period, cavalry was the most efficient use of scant
resources, and its power was reinforced by the stirrup, which reached Europe
in the 8C. This greatly reduced the rider’s risk of falling and increased the
power of charges with the lance.
An effective counter was the pike shield; a barrier of pikes could stand up to
a cavalry charge if the pikemen stayed steadfast. The Swiss excelled at this;
thus their value as mercenaries. The English had their own counter: the
longbow, which being constructed from heartwood and sapwood had many of
the advantages of the composite bow, though it also required immense
strength and training.
Enemies who had never faced horses could be decimated by even small
numbers. A typical encounter was the battle of Vilcaconga in 1533, in which
Spanish forces numbering no more than 300, including 110 horsemen, routed
an Inca army of more than 10,000. The power and the mobility of the horses
was of course multiplied by the strength of Spanish steel (as against Inca
stone maces) and the near invulnerability of steel armor (compared to the
Incas’ quilted cotton armor).
The decimation of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854 under rifle and
artillery fire may be taken as the battle horse’s last whinny. A military
historian, with heavy irony, notes that the Polish cavalry of 1939 was perhaps
the finest such unit of its time. Horses were nonetheless used in great
numbers in both World Wars for transport.
About the only other animal widely used in battle was the elephant. (Camels
were used for transport, not battle.) An elephant charge is formidable, and not
easily stopped by pikemen— stepping aside and throwing javelins is more
effective. And the extra height can be used as a platform for archery. But they
have disadvantages too; they can panic in battle, and cause as much harm to
their own lines as to the enemy. They were used sporadically in classical
warfare and even less so in China; but they were a mainstay of Indian armies
as late as the 19C; they couldn’t stand up to cannonfire.

Gunpowder
Gunpowder is a mixture of crystalline saltpeter, powdered charcoal, and
purified sulfur. Sulfur is readily available as a bright yellow crystal found in
volcanic regions. Saltpeter, potassium nitrate, can also be found naturally as a
white crystalline encrustration on rocks (thus its name, ‘salt of stone’), but
also produced from a compost of manure, ash, earth, and straw. Gunpowder
was discovered by the Chinese by 1050, and used for rockets and cannon.
The first cannons don’t seem to have been very effective, not least because
loose gunpowder was dangerous and prone to separation. In the late 14C
Europeans learned how to add liquid to make granular (“corned”)
gunpowder, which kept better, was safer to handle, and above all burned
more efficiently. By the mid-15C cannon were highly efficient at reducing
fortification; the French kings used them to burst through English castles, and
the Turks finally destroyed the long-impregnable walls of Constantinople.
Early barrels (made of banded strips like their namesake) were liable to burst;
in the 1490s the French perfected a long cast barrel that directed the
explosion better and allowed the cannon to be attached to a mobile cart.
The earliest hand weapons required touching a lit match cord by hand to the
firing pan, a tricky and dangerous maneuver. In the 15C the matchlock was
devised— a little clip that held the match and applied it to the touch hole. It
was superseded by mechanisms such as the flintlock, which ignited the
powder with sparks.
Muskets had become reliable and ubiquitous by the mid 16C, despite their
slow rate of fire (no more than three rounds a minute). Their effective range
was about 100 meters. They were further improved by rifling (spiral grooves
inside the barrel which impart a spin to the bullet, making the trajectory more
accurate) and by cartridges, allowing fast breech-loading rather than muzzle-
loading. These were invented early but not common till the 19C.
I’ve mentioned the samurai distaste for the gun as an insult to their skill and
elite status (p. 248); Europeans had the same attitude but being disunited had
to adapt to it. The gun made metal armor useless and ultimately ended the
long domination of cavalry.
Pikemen were still important in the 17C as a counter to cavalry; but by the
end of the century they were largely made obsolete by the invention of the
ring bayonet, which allowed musketeers to perform their role.

Ships
The predominant warship before the gunpowder era was the galley, rowed by
oarsmen. Sailing ships were better for trading, but only oars provided the
quick maneuvering necessary for battle. Battle galleys were long and narrow
(e.g. 24 by 3 meters), and extremely short-drafted; this allowed them to
operate in very shallow water and to be beached or even portaged. They were
not suitable for the open ocean, however, and couldn’t store food for more
than a few days; as a result most naval battles were fought within sight of
land. For the same reason blockades were very difficult.
From about 700 BC the dominant naval tactic was ramming, though after the
-3C it was more common to attempt to board an enemy vessel and engage in
melee combat on deck.
Cannon were added to oared galleys in the 15C; due to their narrow width,
these could only be added to the bow or stern. In the 16C, however, the
advantage shifted to sailing ships with side-mounted arrays of cannon. These
were deep-ocean ships which could travel for half a year out of port and
arrive ready to fight.
The geography of your conworld will influence what sort of ships are built.
The Mediterranean allows small, coast-hugging ships to travel long distances
and encounter interesting trading partners or enemies; the Chinese and the
Incas had long coastlines but couldn’t easily reach states worth trading with
or conquering. (Zhèng Hé’s expeditions are impressive but underline that
China didn’t find ocean exploration very rewarding.)
In the 19C the sailing ship gave way to the steamship— though these ships’
enormous hunger for coal meant that only those powers which could establish
coaling stations worldwide could depend entirely on them. Before WWI ships
switched to oil, which being more efficient allowed a greater range without
refueling.

Other factors
Terrain
Large swaths of the earth’s surface have never or rarely seen a battle.
Mountains, deserts, and jungle are bad places for armies, suitable for little
more than expensive skirmishing. (Mountain passes can be very important, of
course.) Almost all major naval battles took place near the shore.
Commanders prefer large flat plains, perhaps with nearby hills to funnel the
invader’s army, close to good roads or rivers for their supply line. Men can
negotiate hills better than cavalry. A river can serve as a trap, too, preventing
a smaller or beaten force from retreating.
Few armies like to fight in the rain, or at night, or in the winter. Peasant
levies can hardly be maintained at sowing or harvest time.
The approaches to Moscow are not only protected by generals January and
February, as Tsar Nicholas I said, but by the rasputitsa, the spring snowmelt
and the autumn rains, which turns the region into a morass for a month in
each season.
The geographical situation of a country may have an enormous effect on its
military fortunes. Ancient Egypt was isolated in the west by desert, in the east
by coastal ranges; this channeled its military defenses into two regions, the
Nile delta and the cataracts upriver, and probably contributed to its long
backwardness as a military power. Japan was protected from the Mongols,
and Britain from most of the wars of the last millennium, by their island
location. Very likely the many peninsulas of the Mediterranean, each
protected by mountains, encouraged the development of separate peoples and
nations, while the relative lack of geographical barriers within China
encouraged a single administration.

Fortification
Until modern times, the most efficient defense against an army was the wall.
Keegan describes three basic types of fortification:
 • The refuge, a place of temporary safety, only strong enough to
deter immediate attack. The pre-contact Maori, for instance, built
hilltop pallisades which sufficed to protect a fleeing army, as the
attackers had no siege engines and could not operate for long away
from their territory.
• The stronghold must be able to withstand a siege; it thus needs a
water source, room for stores, walls high enough to discourage
mounting with ladders, fighting platforms for firing at attackers, and
gates for counter-sallies.
• Strategic defenses— large-scale fortifications such as Hadrian’s
Wall in Roman Britain, the Chinese Great Wall, the French Maginot
Line, or the series of forts that divided ancient Egypt from Nubia.
(Multiple lines are the most effective— raiders who pass one line may
be stopped by the next.) Only a strong state can afford to build and
garrison these lines, but they may save the expense of garrisoning each
city of the interior.
A land dotted with castles, as in medieval France, is associated with weak
central authority or endemic raiding. A nation with a strong forward defense,
such as imperial Persia, doesn’t need walls round its cities— after breaking
through the outer defenses, Alexander conquered the empire with three
battles fought in open country. Roman cities in pacified provinces were also
unwalled; as the Western Empire declined the cities fortified. (Early
Sumerian cities weren’t walled either, which may mean that large-scale
warfare had not yet begun.)
Despite the impression created by the movie of The Two Towers, catapults
were rarely decisive before the gunpowder age. A well-built wall could
withstand the glancing blows from hurled stones.
You don’t want people walking up to the foundations, or knocking them with
battering rams; this could be discouraged with an excavated moat, filled with
water if feasible. The moat also provided an open space vulnerable to fire
from the defenders.
For their part, besiegers built counter-fortifications as platforms to shoot back
at the defenders, prevent sallies, and protect ramps for scaling the walls.
Battering rams were built inside mobile wagons, with a steep roof to deflect
projectiles and rawhide coverings to resist fire. Besiegers might also tunnel
under the walls (mining)— though this could be foiled by counter-mining.
The surest methods, however, were surprise, treachery, and starvation.
Mobile cannons, from 1500, made older fortifications spectacularly obsolete.
Their great advantage was that they could be precisely aimed at the walls’
weakest point, their foundations; worse yet, the higher the wall the greater the
destruction. Within fifty years new systems of fortification were devised to
resist the cannon. Walls were short but immensely thick, and backed with
earth ramparts. They incorporated wedge-shaped bastions which could
concentrate cannon and musket fire on the attackers.
Cannons were devastating in open battle as well. A single cannonball could
take out more than twenty men. Naturally this focused attention on capturing
artillery pieces, or disabling them.

Logistics
Every form of warfare is limited by logistics. War is hell to organize.
A man can carry about 70 pounds of gear— including clothes and armor,
weapons, and other equipment that will amount to at least half of this. As a
day’s food weighs about 3 pounds, a soldier on the march can only carry
about 10 days worth of food. As we’ve seen that amounts to 200 miles (320
km), which wouldn’t get a Roman soldier out of Italy.
You can try living off the land— i.e. stealing from the civilians— but this
quickly exhausts the base of operations, or slows the army down as it spreads
out to forage. A large cavalry worsens the problem; a horse needs about 20
pounds of fodder per day. A large classical force, invading or defending,
can’t stay in the field without supply for more than a few weeks, a fact which
an opposing commander may use to force or avoid battle.
That leaves bringing supplies with pack animals or water transport... but of
course oxen have to be fed too, and waterways don’t always lead nicely
toward the enemy. Few premodern nations were provided with good road
systems.
Between armies of the same type (e.g. heavy infantry), retreat is faster than
pursuit. For this reason, after Hannibal’s initial victories, the Romans under
Fabius harrassed and raided the Carthaginians while avoiding battle, denying
Hannibal control over Italy. A war of attrition tires the defenders as well;
eventually Rome replaced Fabius and sought battle, leading to the disaster at
Cannae (p. 266).
The railway revolutionized both logistics and mobilization. In the first two
weeks of World War I, Germany mobilized 1.5 million men and transported
them ready to fight to the western front. Of course, once at the front mobility
dropped to horse speed and then, within the enemy’s artillery range, to that of
a man walking.
World War II, of course, was fought at modern transportation speeds: Jeeps,
tanks, steamships, fighter planes. War between modern advanced states is
generally won by the side with the better manufacturing potential, which in
recent wars has meant the US.

Communications
Simple communication was an immense hassle before the invention of the
telegraph. War suffered all the disadvantages of normal travel (p. 142) with
the additional problem that messengers could be attacked. As late as 1815, a
major battle of the US-British war was fought two weeks after the peace
treaty had been signed.
On the battlefield itself, there was no better communication than horses
through the 19C. WWI trenches were equipped with telephones, but these
became useless as soon as troops attempted forward movement. Radio was a
revolution.
Merely locating the enemy was not straightforward. Scouts could be sent out,
or signal fires set; but not a few battles were won or lost depending on who
stumbled onto who first, or who could get their reserves to the battle in time.

Death in another form

It’s hard to make this look cool in an epic fantasy, but the biggest threat to
soldiers is disease and starvation. In WWII, US army hospitals had 17 million
admissions for illness or accidents versus a million for combat wounds. In the
Civil War, 60% of the Northern war dead succumbed to disease— about half
diarrhea and other intestinal disorders, the rest pneumonia and tuberculosis.
Sword wounds often killed indirectly, through peritonitis, or by infections
caused by forcing dirt into the wounds.
Modern technology has been a double agent, finding new ways to
incapacitate and just as quickly improving medical skill. There’s been a
similar two-step in speed of care. Battles lengthened and the killing zone
grew immense— someone felled in the WWI no man’s land could lay there
for days. But advanced armies have concentrated on quick medical care: in
Vietnam helicopters could get the wounded to a field hospital in fifteen
minutes.

Armor
Primitive warriors like the Maring generally use no armor at all, a practice
maintained till quite late by the ancient Egyptians.
The Greeks— those who could afford it, at least— used bronze helmets,
breastplates, and greaves, as well as a wooden shield reinforced with iron.
Their weapons were iron; they wore bronze armor because it was not yet
possible to make iron plates of sufficient malleability and strength. The
Persians by contrast wore light iron scale armor.
Regular Roman legionaries wore chainmail, or a cuirass made of overlapping
iron bands. Scale armor was used, though more rarely. Greaves were worn on
the legs, and sometimes arm guards. Helmets were iron. The typical shield
was rectangular, curved to allow blows to glance off, and a meter tall— large
enough that legionaries could protect against a rain of arrows by holding their
shields together above their heads, a formation called testudo (tortoise).
The armor of the medieval knight was chainmail. After the mid 14C knights
switched to plate armor, the famous suits of armor. Though these were not as
cumbersome as sometimes depicted, the heaviest suits of armor were
intended only for tournaments, where protection was more important than
mobility. Medieval states could only fully arm a small army; if a larger force
was needed to meet an invasion, much of it would be unarmored and barely
trained.
From the 18C, armor was largely abandoned, except for the helmet— due to
the power of rifles, as well as the expense of maintaining the era’s larger
armies.
Modern US soldiers wear lightweight Kevlar helmets and vests.

Ideology
There’s nothing quite so dangerous as an army with an idea. The armies that
poured out of Arabia on the death of Muhammad were not appreciably better
armed or skilled than the Byzantines and Persians they faced; but they were
on fire with a new religion.
Ironically, perhaps, once the Islamic empire was divided and most conflicts
were between Muslims, religious scruples made it difficult for Arabs to fight
wars; they created slave armies or hired Turks instead.
The armies of the French Revolution were just as fired up, first throwing out
the invaders who had thought to take advantage of French troubles, then
conquering the continent as far as Moscow— an achievement far beyond the
dreams of royal France. Similarly Mao Zedong won China by combining the
strategic insight of Sun Tzu with the fervor of a mass movement.

Types of armies
Where does an army come from? This might be viewed as the intersection of
two choices, how much of the adult male population serves, and how well
trained they are. Other things being equal, a big army will defeat a small, and
a trained army will beat an untrained one, but both choices are expensive.
little training much training
entire population phalanx nomadic riders
militia experienced
raw conscripts conscripts
subpopulation standing army

In the upper left square we require, or allow, everyone to serve, as an

interruption to their ordinary life. Examples include the classical phalanx or
the militia that Machiavelli recommended to reduce the Italian city-states’
dependance on mercenaries. A part-time army may be well motivated and
may supply its own gear, but it can’t follow very elaborate tactics.
Conscripts are the male population turned into soldiers; this was the source
of Napoléon’s million-man army and the huge armies of the two World Wars.
These are fairly useless at first, but after a year or so they become a very
effective force.
Alternatively you arm some fraction of the population. (It doesn’t make much
sense to do so and not train them, so I’ve left that cell blank.) Now the
question is the army’s standing in society— and how you keep it from
assaulting the palace.
• The warriors may also be the ruling class: the medieval knights,
the Japanese samurai, the Spartans.
How do you make sure the elite actually functions as an army?
One way is feudalism: grant land to successful officers on condition
that they supply soldiers on demand. The best that can be said for this
system is that it was cheap to maintain; but the vassals were often a
threat to the state, and neither they nor the kings could provide public
safety. The Islamic iqta system was non-hereditary; this allowed
greater state control but encouraged corruption.
• Regulars are soldiers as a profession, as in the Roman or
Chinese empires, or today in the US. This eliminates the fuss of raising
an army when you want to make war, but at the cost of maintaining the
army in peacetime.
You don’t want it to occur to your soldiers that they’ve got guns
and the civilians don’t and that they could take power— a perennial
problem in ancient Rome and the mid-20C Third World, and only a bit
less so in imperial China. Sufficiently prosperous democracies with
highly professionalized armies seem to avoid the problem. In
premodern times canny rulers kept armies under civilian control and
rotated their generals.
• Mercenaries fight for money, land, or citizenship. There have
been periods when these were key resources— Alexander hired 50,000
of them, and the Swiss infantry were highly sought after in medieval
Europe; the Pope’s Swiss Guard is a remnant. There are always
questions about their loyalty and reliability, so modern states prefer
regulars.
• Slaves— mamluks— were the main military element in many
 Islamic states from the 9C, and persisted in some form till the 19C.
Early mamluks were mostly Turkish, and raised to be strict Muslims.
Their sons were not allowed to become mamluks; rather, new recruits
were found in the Turkish lands. This system allowed the Arabs to
avoid having to fight other Muslims; just as importantly, the Turkic
mamluks had no local ties or allies and thus were loyal. Until they
weren’t; in the 1250s they took over power for themselves.
Army sizes vary immensely. Here’s a few representative samples:
• The Roman army under Augustus: 250,000 total, across the
empire.
• The Byzantine expeditionary force that recovered North Africa
and Italy for the Eastern Empire: 15,000.
• Mongol army, at the death of Genghis Khan— 130,000
(including some allies)
• Medieval standing armies, 16C: a few hundred in peacetime; 15
to 30,000 in wartime.
• Sòng dynasty, 12C China: 1 million men, though this army was
considered bloated and inefficient
• US, World War II: 12 million
• US, 2007: 1.37 million

Great battles
Military history is a slightly macabre affair; aficionados pore over neat
diagrams which, after all, represent enormous numbers of violent deaths.
Nonetheless it’s valuable to learn what the generals are thinking. Let’s look at
some of the great battles of history.

Cannae, 216 BC
Carthage was the underdog in its second war with Rome; Rome expected to
easily pick off its Spanish colony. Instead the Carthaginian general Hannibal
advanced over the Alps and took the war to Italy, beating several Roman
forces.
His masterpiece was the battle of Cannae. The Romans, with 75,000 troops
and a 2-to-1 advantage in infantry, were drawn up in standard formation:
infantry in the center, cavalry on the flanks. Hannibal placed his weaker allies
in the center, thrust far forward to invite an attack; his best infantry units
were on their flank, and cavalry farther out.

As the Romans advanced, the Carthaginians gave way, moving backwards.

Hannibal sprung the trap by having his flanking infantry move forward,
hitting the Romans’ flanks on both sides.
Meanwhile the left half of the Carthaginian cavalry routed the Roman cavalry
opposite them, rode behind the Roman army, and attacked the Roman left-
side cavalry from behind. They chased the Roman cavalry away, then moved
back to attack the trapped Roman army from behind.
50,000 Romans fell, there was no Roman army left, and southern Italy went
over to Carthage.

Tyre, 332 BC
Sieges are the complement of battles; to conquer a nation its fortified cities
must be taken. When he besieged Tyre, Alexander had already won two of
the three land battles that bested the Persian Empire; but the Persian navy had
not been defeated, and threatened his supply lines and even Greece. But
rowed galleys cannot maintain themselves at sea for long; they would be
defeated if he captured their ports, and Tyre was the chief of these.
It wouldn’t be easy. Tyre stood on an island a thousand meters off the coast,
was entirely surrounded by walls 45 m high, and had a strong garrison of
15,000. The usual expedients of mines, rams, and siege towers looked
impossible, and starvation was out of the question as the city could be
supplied by sea.
With typical bravado Alexander determined to alter the facts. He had a
causeway built across the water, which remains to this day. The forward end
of the work was protected by two enormous siege towers, themselves fighting
platforms. The Tyrians sent a fireship against them and burned them down.
Ships from both sides fought nearby, but Alexander had the better of the
battles. He mounted battering rams on his ships; finding that underwater
blocks of stone kept them from reaching the walls, he mounted cranes on
ships and hauled them up.
Finally, after seven months, the rams were able to make a breach in the south
walls. Bridges were dropped from his ships and troops poured in. The result
was a massacre (as frequently happened when a city was stormed).

Chìbì, AD 208
In the 3C, the Hàn empire had divided into Three Kingdoms (Sànguó). The
warlord Cáo Cāo controlled the north, in the name of the Hàn; the southeast
was the kingdom of Wú ruled by Sūn Quán, and the southwest was Shǔ Hàn,
ruled by Liú Bèi, a remote relative of the Hàn.
To unify the country, Cáo Cāo had to take the middle Yangtze— modern
Húběi province. He took a large army south, estimated at 220,000 men; the
southern states, who formed an alliance, had only about 50,000.
Early battles favored Cáo Cāo; he captured the important naval base at
Jiangling and gave Liú Bèi a drubbing at Changban. The warlord’s forces,
fatigued and suffering from a plague, sailed down the Yangtze to Chìbì (Red
Cliffs). The ships were tied together, perhaps to reduce seasickness among
the northern soldiers.
The warlord was approached by an enemy commander offering surrender. A
squadron of defecting ships appeared; but the surrender was a ruse and the
ships were filled with oil and kindling. The sailors lit them on fire and
escaped in small boats, letting the wind bear the fireships to Cáo Cāo’s fleet,
causing a conflagration.
The remnants of Cáo Cāo’s army fled north, pursued and harrasssed by the
allies. For half a century China would remain divided into Three Kingdoms.
The battle is a classic demonstration that numbers are not enough, even when
technology is matched. Even apart from the ruse, Cáo Cāo was defeated by
his own overconfidence, stretched supply lines, and unfamiliarity with marine
warfare.
Chìbì is a major event in Luó Guànzhōng’s 14C novel The Romance of the
Three Kingdoms and remains a favorite in movies and games.

Hastings, AD 1066
This is one of the classic confrontations of infantry and cavalry. King
Harold’s English army was almost entirely infantry, wearing chainmail armor
and wielding spears and battle axes (six feet long, a blow from these could
take down a horse). Harold was a competent warrior; he had just defeated the
king of Norway 200 miles north. The Norman army under Duke William was
mixed: archers, infantry, and heavy cavalry armed with lances and swords.
Neither army had more than 8000 men.
The English line formed along a ridge, and formed a shield wall that was able
to resist the initial volley of arrows, a follow-on infantry charge, and a
cavalry charge.
By accident or design, a cavalry division on the left fled away from the shield
wall. The English were unable to resist the temptation: they broke ranks and
rushed after the fleeing Normans. William was unhorsed and at first thought
dead.
But he was alive, and rallied resistance and then a counter-attack. The
English had lost cohesion, and many of the shield carriers were picked off;
the Norman archers were also ordered to fire over the shield wall, devastating
the farther ranks— Harold was killed by an arrow at this time. William’s
army attacked again, broke through the shield wall, and finished off the
fragmented English.
The two take-home lessons: a determined infantry line can hold off a charge
of the best cavalry— but it must be careful in pursuing retreating riders. The
feigned retreat (also a favorite nomadic tactic) is an invitation to the infantry
line to break, greatly increasing its vulnerability.

Ain Jalut, AD 1260

In the 13C the Mongols exploded out of their homelands, a threat to China,
Europe, and the Middle East alike. They conquered Persia and Mesopotamia
and seemed poised to conquer Syria, Palestine, and Egypt— once they had
sorted out the matter of the succession; the Great Khan Möngke’s death in
1259 required the local leader Hulagu’s presence back in Mongolia. He left
Mongol forces under the command of his Turkish general Kitbuga, 10 to
20,000 troops.
Egypt was ruled by the Mamluk sultan Qutuz. The Mamluks were themselves
Turks, maintained as a slave army by the Egyptians, but had recently taken
power for themselves. Qutuz had 20,000 men, of which half were Mamluk
cavalry. The two sides met in Galilee, not far from Acre.
Qutuz, knowing the local terrain, hid the bulk of his forces in the highlands
while baiting the Mongols with a smaller force under his commander
Baibars. Baibars used typical nomadic tactics, advancing with his cavalry and
feigning retreat several times. Eventually Kitbuga took the bait and pursued
Baibars into the hills where Qutuz’s forces emerged from hiding and
attacked.
The Mongols fought fiercely on, but the tide turned when Qutuz rushed into
battle calling “O Islam!”— appealing to the ideological unity of the Mamluks
as against their religiously mixed enemies. The Mongols were forced to
retreat, though Kitbuga fought to the death.
The battle checked the momentum of the Mongols; they were never able to
do more than raiding west of Mesopotamia, while the Mamluks retained
control of Syria and Palestine. Just as importantly, perhaps, it marked the
ability of a sedentary state to field a cavalry strong and skilled enough to
resist the nomadic armies using their own tactics.

Stalingrad, AD 1942
Stalingrad is perhaps the pinnacle of European all-out war, and arguably the
turning point in the German-Soviet struggle.
In 1942 Hitler decided that he needed more oil, and made a drive for the
Caucasus. The operation started well— the leading panzer division got
halfway to Baku— but stalled as the Germans failed to take Stalingrad.
From August to November the Germans continued to pour troops into the
city, fighting street to street and sometimes floor to floor within a building.
This made little strategic sense; the city could simply be bypassed. But Hitler
had a thing about willpower and wouldn’t hear talk of retreat.
The Soviets, at first overwhelmed by German aircraft, built up their air forces
till they could serve as an effective counter. In late November the Soviets
attacked the weaker Romanian armies on either side of Stalingrad with
mechanized units. Three days later the arms of the pincer met, trapping 22
German divisions (250,000 men) in the city. Hitler was not worried; he had
supplied seven divisions in Demyansk by air the previous winter and
proposed to do it again. But the logistics were much more daunting this time,
and the Soviets inflicted heavy losses on the Luftwaffe. Not enough supplies
were getting through.
In December the Soviets launched an even larger pincer movement,
advancing from two points 300 miles apart. Hitler had to admit defeat; the
armies in front of the city retreated, but those inside were lost. Total deaths in
the campaign exceeded a million, one of the deadliest in history.
The large-scale pincer movement was a feature of World War II, enabled by
mechanized troops and radio communications.

Fantasy war
You can have an earthlike planet with earthlike war. Or you can mix it up a
bit— but follow the sorts of balances and limitations of actual war. Some
general questions to ask about any element you add:
• What skills are required? Is this something all soldiers will
adopt, and if not why not?
• Does it require special resources, and if so where do they come
from and who controls them?
• What are the limitations?
• How is it countered?
 • How does it interact with conventional elements?

Magic
Novelists don’t always have to make a coherent, balanced system; video
games do. In Oblivion, magic works like this:
• There are three basic types of damage: fire, shock, and frost.
Some enemies are immune to one of these; there are also element-
specific shield spells.
• Spells cost magicka to cast; this regenerates fairly quickly, but
limits the rate of fire. Your total magicka depends on your skills; there
is thus a tradeoff between swords and sorcery.
• Armor interferes with spellcasting, which means that magicians
are vulnerable, and it’s an option to go in and bash them with a sword.
There are Shield spells, but as magicka is limited there is a tradeoff
between offensive and defensive spellcasting.
• There are also spells specifically designed to interfere with
spellcasting, such as Silence, Paralysis, and Drain Magicka.
• Spells to heal and rally and to fortify skills and attributes allow
magicians to support other fighters.
• Spells can be permanently cast on armor or weapons, creating
magic items with those properties. Magic weapons have an inherent
charge and thus a limited number of uses. They can be recharged via a
somewhat gruesome operation (it requires killing other creatures).
Permanency has a huge unbalancing effect, so it’s wise to put limits on
it.
The net effect is that conventional fighting complements magic. An army
would have a corps of battlemages, which can be used for both offensive and
defensive purposes. Magic has limits, and can be countered either by
traditional weaponry or by other magicians.
In Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the title magician
Strange accompanies the Duke of Wellington on his campaign in Spain.
Asked what would most help the army, the duke gives an answer which
resonates with military history: good roads.
On Almea, one of the sapient species, the iliu, has the power to gen-erate
visions or images in other people’s minds. This is normally used for
communication and art, but it has military applications: enemies can be
confused about where an iliu force is, or made to imagine forces that aren’t
there. Their main enemy, the ktuvoks, have a related mesmeric ability that
allows them to enslave other sapients— though the iliu are immune to it.
The Force in the Star Wars universe is essentially magic (molest me not with
talk about midichlorians); it doesn’t transform warfare only because it’s
highly limited in numbers— fewer than one Jedi per planet, it seems— and in
effects. Yoda can lift an entire X-wing, but there’s no suggestion that he
could pull the Death Star down from the sky with his mind. Jedi are thus
something like elite commandoes, not something you’re going to deploy in
regiments of thousands.
Magic systems may have a metaphorical basis— they’re associated with
divinity, or mind, or life. This can produce narrative and military restrictions:
e.g. if magic is tied to the gods, only holy men can use it in battle; if it’s
linked to femininity, the battlemages are women.
Novelists’ magic systems have a tendency to get out of hand. I admire the
inventiveness of J.K. Rowling’s magic, but it seems to me to invent too many
powers, like Marvel superheroes or D&D magic systems. They go down
smoothly enough while we’re reading, but I think that’s because readers and
writers forget all the inventions already made. Give your heroes too many
powers and they become boringly invincible. For narrative balance the
writers start to create absurd vulnerabilities (such as Superman’s unhealthy
reactions to bits of his home planet) or increasingly campy supervillains.
Again, the key to avoiding that path is restraint. One good idea is better than
twenty. Take a lesson from s.f., which usually concentrates on exploring one
idea at a time— teleportation, or time travel, or robots. Instead of creating
long lists of spells, perhaps take one idea, such as—
• healing spells
• the dead can be revived and made into dull-witted but relentless
soldiers
• magic can make a soldier invulnerable, but only for 10 seconds
 at a time
—and think out all the consequences.

Strange creatures
The example of the horse (p. 255) shows how much warfare can be
transformed by a single suitable animal. Fantasy animals could make a
similar impact.
Did you just think of dragons? You’re not the first. But a large ridable bird or
pterosaur would create a very distinctive form of aerial warfare. As with
airplanes, the beasts could be used for communications, scouting, infiltration,
skirmishing, or bombing. Walls would no longer secure a city— the only sure
defense against a flying creature would be a cavern or building.
Again, think about limitations. Perhaps, like horses, the creatures only thrive
in certain habitats. They should have limitations on how long or far they can
fly. It’s hardly fair to make them invulnerable; defenders would surely rain
crossbows up at them, or launch their own flying creatures. Perhaps they can
be confused by smoke, loud noises, or the smell of certain animals.
More ideas:
• Mole-like animals would be useful for mining city walls, or for
reconnaissance.
• Our species hasn’t had much luck militarizing predators, but
perhaps others have done better. A lionlike mount could be terrifying
on the battlefield; even more so a lionlike sapient.
• Sea creatures would be effective allies against ships. If they’re
large enough, they might serve as mounts or transports.
• An ogre or golem could serve some of the functions of a tank: a
massive, highly destructive shock force. But perhaps they’re easily
confused, or have a tendency to run amok among their own lines.

Strange environments
Another approach is to create new environments. This has been discussed
under alien species (p. 76), but it’s worth reconsidering these from a military
perspective.
For instance, a marine sapient has great inherent mobility— it doesn’t need
roads and isn’t impeded by vegetation or mountains. (Venturing off the
continental shelf where most sea life congregates might be risky, though, like
a human being venturing into the desert.) It also adds a three-dimensional
aspect to fighting; a common tactic would probably be to rise suddenly from
the inky depths.
On the other hand, ranged attacks would be difficult, and metallurgy would
be nearly impossible, to say nothing of gunpowder. Appendages for
manipulation might be necessary for civilization, but it’s hard to imagine
them large enough to wield strong weapons without impeding swimming;
most fighting might therefore come down to natural weapons— teeth, claws,
tentacles. A battleground— battlepool?— would soon be choked by blood,
reducing vision to a few feet and inviting marine scavengers.
An entirely aerial species, or a very small one, would similarly have its own
distinctive advantages and disadvantages.

Future war
Nukes
As a future weapon nukes seem decidedly retro. Nuclear weapons haven’t
been used in battle for fifty years.
This is largely due to the overkill of the Cold War: in 1967 the US had over
30,000 warheads. A war fought on this scale wouldn’t be a war; it’d be
planetary suicide. For reference, the bomb at Hiroshima killed over 100,000
people, perhaps a quarter of the population; the blast was equivalent to 13
kilotons of TNT. An average modern warhead is 100 times as powerful.
Your typical rogue dictator has fairly rationally concluded that nukes are the
best defense: Iraq was invaded, North Korea was not. As offensive use of
nukes by a state would surely result in devastating retaliation, this might lead
to a stasis where nuclear powers are safe from invasion, but they fight proxy
wars among the nukeless.
That leaves non-state actors, the stuff of many a thriller and CIA briefing. It’s
hard to be sanguine; on the other hand it’s hard to picture nuclear terrorism as
very effective, as it would invite a furious response and certainly not lead to
the perps’ demands being met. (One million dollars, maybe; ending
capitalism, no.)
It might be far more militarily useful to use nuclear weapons to generate an
electromagnetic pulse (EMP); a single high-altitude detonation can disrupt
electromagnetics for hundreds of miles. Live components are more
vulnerable, so one countermeasure may simply be to keep spare parts on
hand.
The story changes in interplanetary or interstellar war. If you don’t have to
live on your enemy’s planet, you may be happy to blow it away. Counter-
measures would include a screen of space fighters and hiding industrial
facilities, perhaps in the asteroid belt.

Robots
Already in Iraq and Afghanistan we see an increasing use of unmanned
drones, more than 10,000 of them. They can disable roadside bombs, provide
an extra set of eyes, venture into areas unsafe for soldiers, shoot down
incoming mortars, fly over enemy terrain and shoot missiles, even succor the
wounded. Most can be controlled from halfway around the world— a way of
economizing on expensive First World soldiers. They’re also an increasingly
effective counter to asymmetric insurgent tactics, and allow operating in
areas such as northwestern Pakistan where outside troops would be highly
unwelcome.
It’s not hard to imagine future conflicts largely fought with drones and
robots, in which case war would come down to a nation’s industrial capacity.
Military robots obviously have no use for Asimov’s Laws of Robotics.
They’re subservient to humans, though, right? P.W. Singer offers a sobering
anecdote: in 1988 a cruiser patrolling the Persian Gulf spotted something in
the air. The object was broadcasting radar and radio signals showing it to be a
civilian flight. The cruiser’s Aegis system, however— designed for projected
war with the Soviets, not for observing in peacetime— insisted that it was an
F-14 fighter. The crew trusted the computer system and authorized fire. But
the computer was wrong; it was an civilian airliner, Iran Air Flight 655, and
290 people were killed.
Military technology triggers the invention of counter-technology, and then
counter-counter-technology. The Iraqi insurgents have been improving their
bombs and tactics, finding new ways to trigger them and to hide them from
the robots or to jam their sensors; at least once they co-opted a captured
robot.
The next level of technology may well be swarms of tiny robots— if one
extra pair of eyes is good, a hundred or a thousand is better, and much harder
to counter.

Lasers
Since the days of Buck Rogers at least, writers have been eager to see energy
guns. The military agrees; in 2010 an aircraft-mounted laser successfully
destroyed a ballistic missile travelling at 4000 mph.
Laser beams travel at the speed of light, have no recoil, and minimal
divergence— the beam is narrow even at long distances. Laser sights make
use of the latter property.
Unfortunately, lasers consume enormous amounts of energy and generate
huge amounts of heat, making it difficult to create hand-held weapons. Plus,
human tissue is mostly water and lasers do mostly heat damage; the physics
makes this a bad combination. And if the target stays still and you do
vaporize some tissue, the vapor will block the beam.
In the short run it’s more practical to make weapons that dazzle or stun the
enemy, or explode their rockets. Or stick with bullets, which use energy
efficiently and do lots of damage.
Plasma or antimatter are even more speculative. They’ll probably require
enormous energy too.

Information
The World Wars were all about applying industrial technology to war,
making armies and ships as massive and powerful as our dams, factories, and
steamships. The next military revolution may be the application of
information technology.
We’re starting to see this in the Iraq war— e.g. the US often undertakes
major actions at night, when its forces can use night goggles to see, and the
insurgents can’t.
In future wars, soldiers may have heads-up displays that show information
about the enemy and the environment, personal AIs to offer advice and
warnings, weapons that offer targeting assistance, and radio contact with
buddies, robots, neighboring divisions, and command. War, in short might be
like a video game, with live fire.
This is more of a novelty than it sounds; one of the universals of combat has
been the fog of war. The individual combatant sees only a tiny fraction of the
battle. In the gunpowder era the battleground was literally covered by fog, by
persistent clouds of gunpowder. In WWI trench warfare, once a battalion
climbed out of the trenches to advance into the no man’s land, they were
eerily cut off from all contact, even if they were only a thousand yards ahead.
The fog only began to lift with the widespread use of radio technology in
WWII.
It’ll be interesting to see if the classic military hierarchy survives this change.
Your typical cannon-fodder had to obey because he had little training but
drill, and saw only a tiny portion of the battlefield. If every private is a highly
trained expert and has the same information as the general, he can be a good
deal more autonomous.

Unobtainium weapons
There’s no need to restrict yourself to cutting-edge or foreseeable weapons; if
you do you’d be like a Roman writer inventing really fancy swords. You’d
might as well posit something impossible.
The same questions apply as to fantasy war (p. 271). Few weapons are
devastating for long. Think about what happens when everyone has your
weapon. What are its limitations; what are the counter-measures?
Alfred Bester is an excellent model for how to think things out. In The Stars
My Destination, personal teleportation is possible, but only to precisely
known and visualized locations; effective counters include total darkness and
obscuring coordinates with mazes. The book is full of implications neatly
drawn from the idea, such as homesteads out in the middle of nowhere and
corporate tycoons who express their status by maintaining pre-teleport modes
of transportation.
Quite a few s.f. themes have interesting applications to war:
• Teleportation: appear in ones and twos in enemy territory to
infiltrate, or in thousands to invade
• Telepathy: track where all the insurgents are and what their
intentions are. On the other hand, codes and surprise attacks become
impossible
• Time travel: go back a week to disable the enemy’s defenses
before the war starts, or back a century to stop his rise to power
• Nanotechnology: flood the enemy’s bodies and machines with
microscopic invaders
• Matter duplicators: finally solve those pesky logistics problems;
easily duplicate the enemy’s more advanced weapons so long as they fit
in the analyzer bin

Future cultures of war

Beyond the technology of war, think about future cultures of war. It’s
questionable whether the European idea of massed battling armies will
continue to be useful. Large and comfortable nations have much to lose and
little to gain by throwing themselves at each other.
Perhaps new conventions will develop for nearly symbolic combat between
advanced nations. A nuclear tournament, for instance: set off some bombs in
space to show who has the most effective weapons. Perhaps a corps of
volunteers is placed at the detonation point to demonstrate that the will to
sacrifice still exists. The side that demonstrates insufficient courage and
firepower concedes the battle.
Asymmetric warfare can be expected to continue. In a 2002 set of war games
preparatory to the Iraq war, Paul van Riper, the commander of the “Red”
forces (those playing the enemy), used a series of simple evasions that
discomfited the “Blue” troops planning a high-tech offensive. To avoid
Blue’s electronic eavesdroppers, he use motorcycle messengers; he sank
massive Blue battleships with suicide bombers.
Saddam Hussein himself was not nearly so clever. But as the insurgency
showed, though a high-tech military can easily occupy a lower-tech country,
an insurgency can make it nearly ungovernable for years on end. Roadside
bombs or suicide bombers are cheap, and require the occupier to stay in safe
zones or venture out only in highly militarized units, making the occupation
politically difficult.
This can also be thought of as a matter of military culture: the insurgents do
not recognize the Western rule that an occupation definitively ends the war.

Space imperialism
That people will form interstellar empires and then have grand old battles is a
hoary old s.f. tradition, and probably hooey.
Respecting Einstein
If you respect the speed of light— that is, you stick with science that’s held
up for more than a century— then interstellar states, empires, and wars are
nearly impossible.
Space is really, really big. There’s a nice sunlike star four light years away,
but as we saw above (p. 40), comfortable stellar systems are likely to be rare
— space is full of red dwarfs. And we’re far from having anything that can
come anywhere near lightspeed. A grand tour of the human colonies near Sol
could take several lifetimes.
But suppose we have a workable STL drive. Are you really going to pack up
a large fraction of your metals, use some unimaginable amount of your
energy reserves to send them way out of communications range, and have
them take on an enemy right next to his own industrial base? Space
imperialism is the mother of all quartermasters’ nightmares.
And for what? Once we’ve got the nanoduplicators set up, what material
goods could they send back that we don’t have? Spices? You want to take a
chance on alien plant species? Kudzu is bad enough.
Some people are convinced that we’ve messed Earth up so badly that we
need to find a new planet. First, good luck convincing the rest of the planet to
fund your departure. More importantly, the skills needed to start a new
colony somewhere in space— long-term economic and political stability,
sustainable industry, a light ecological footprint— are precisely those that are
most lacking on Earth right now. You’ve got to solve those anyway. And once
you do, you don’t need a lifeboat.
S.f. empires are an unwarranted extrapolation from our Age of Navigation.
But planets are not oceans. As Charlie Stross puts it, get back to me on space
colonization once we’ve got burgeoning colonies in far easier environments,
such as Antarctica and the bottom of the ocean.
This also explains why no aliens have ever, to our knowledge, taken over this
prime bit of real estate. Anyone advanced enough to get here is advanced
enough not to need the place as Lebensraum. Personally I suspect that
galactic protocol is “hands off any planet with an ecosphere.”
My own s.f. future, as used in Against Peace and Freedom, addresses these
issues in this way:
• Human lifetimes are far longer— well over 600 years. This
makes it practical to undertake several space journeys in one lifetime.
• Human colonies are linked in a loose confederation, the
Incatena. The Incatena has some police powers— in effect, its agents
have extraterritoriality— but has nowhere near the power needed to
conquer a member planet. Its agents are free to use diplomacy and
espionage, however.
• There’s little trade in anything massive; instead, what’s traded
are ideas: databases, information and entertainment, franchises, patents.
Screw Einstein
OK, sigh, you want faster than light travel.
Interstellar war is still a difficult proposition, for the same reason that it’s
hard to take over a nation entirely using ships or aircraft. You’re still sending
out a lot of metal way away from home. You can only send a fraction of your
industrial output, while the enemy has an entire planet. No matter how magic
you make your supply lines, they’re still longer than his.
Plus, you’re attacking from space; though that gives you some advantages
(e.g. you can nuke the planet at no risk to yourself), it also makes you highly
visible and highly vulnerable— rather like a WWII aircraft carrier, an
impressive feat of engineering that could be sunk by three torpedoes.
OK, think big— you have factories that take up entire planets, you can fuse
metals out of gas giants, and every ship can use minimal energy to go directly
anywhere in the galaxy from just outside planetary orbit. (You still want
those lovely tracking shots of the spaceship approaching or leaving the
planet.)
But you have to assume the enemy has the same technology, if not the same
level of resources. So when your megafleet arrives, his can just leave. Space
is big. Which of the hundred billion stars in the galaxy did they move to? If
space travel and resources are cheap, there can hardly be choke points and
fortifications.
As Arthur C. Clarke said, a sufficiently high technology is indistinguishable
from magic. But that means that, like magic, it should be defined in a
satisfying and plausible way. Magic that make a character omnipotent is
uninteresting, since the character no longer has any needs or limits. By all
means create superweapons and super-travel, but give them interesting costs
and limitations.
The precise nature of the galactic society you come up with, and the kind of
wars it fights, will depend on those costs and limits. For instance:
• Spaceships are expensive enough for a group of private investors
to build, and take a few months between stars.
Then you essentially have the age of sailing ships: spaceships can be
maintained by corporations, colonies are distant but not unimaginably
so, most wars will be local since only large states can assemble a fleet
in one place.
This is similar to some of the universes created by Robert
Heinlein... as a libertarian, he made sure to keep space affordable for
private citizens.
• FTL spaceships are huge investments only states can afford, and
take a few weeks between stars.
Now you have something like WWII and its battleships and aircraft
carriers. A fleet of three spaceships is an enormous imposition of force
(at least against another fleet, not necessarily a planet). Spaceships
 might have a squadron of STL fighters to deploy as protection, or to
land on a planet. Decoys that imitate the radiation signature of a
spaceship might be an important obstructive tactic.
This is largely the model of Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica.
• Space travel is instantaneous, but only along particular
wormholes.
In effect a large set of worlds becomes closely interconnected— and
can have wars not much more complex than those between planets of a
single stellar system— but this may be only a small part of the galaxy;
the rest remains nearly inaccessible.
This is the setup for the Mass Effect games.
• Space can be directly travelled with little energy by
teleportation, perhaps directly by individuals.
In essence, all planets are connected, if only for foot traffic. The same
sort of wars can be fought as within a planet; but you can’t prevent the
enemy from taking the war to your doorstep.
A variation: only biological entities can be teleported. That means
you can’t bring your space scooters, factories, or guns... though you
could bring your war horses and attack wolves. (Might as well allow
thin layers of dead animal or plant material, so people arrive with their
clothes on, to say nothing of their hair and epidermis.)
• Individuals can travel directly between planets— but only a
select, trained few.
Space travel becomes a form of tourism or very restricted trade. War is
essentially limited to espionage, or to expensive conventional means.
One universe that follows this idea is Le cycle de Cyann by
François Bourgeon and Claude Lacroix.
Making maps
One of the primary tools for visualizing your world is maps. In this chapter
we’ll go over how to make beautiful maps that make you want to go there.
See the Astronomy chapter (p. 47) for how to create the geological elements
of the map: what continents should look like, where the rivers go, where
mountains will appear. This chapter is about drawing the actual maps.

Methods
Methods: Paper
My first maps were on paper, generally made with pens and colored pencils.
Also, we lived in a paper bag in the middle of the road and our Da killed us
every morning.
Paper maps are hard to modify, hard to get right, and harder to show to the
world. Nonetheless they may be an essential first step in creating a computer
illustration. Most of us can draw better on paper than on the computer; if
that’s the case with you, draw your map and then scan it.
Given that, you don’t need to worry too much about all the art school
techniques— what paper to use, what brush or pen. You’re basically doing a
clean rendering that you’ll finish up on the computer.
If you do want maps as permanent works of art— well, throw away the
ballpoint pens and get to know your local art supply store. Calligraphic pens
offer a sensuous thick black line; technical pens give a very black line of
uniform thickness.
Uniform coloring is very hard to do. You may have luck with art markers. If
you have patience, there are color films that you can cut into shapes with an
X-acto knife.
Clean-up on the computer can be tedious, so for best results you want a nice
thick line on white paper. If you have pencil sketch lines, erase them, or draw
very lightly and ink the final line heavily, then turn up the contrast once it’s
scanned.
Methods: Computer
First: get a drawing tablet. Drawing with a mouse, to say nothing of the
horrors that come with notebook computers, is like trying to wrangle a knife
and fork with your feet. I use the cheapest Wacom tablets, which have
hovered around $100 for years. Though if enough people buy this book I’d
love to get a tablet-monitor. Those things are sweet.
Tablets are not only easier to use— you use a stylus, like a pen, rather than
the mouse— but they’re pressure-sensitive, which is essential for nice-
looking lines and for airbrushing.
Second: forget all about Microsoft Paint. There’s lots of great paint programs
out there. For drawing I like Photoshop— though it’s an annoyance that its
brushes aren’t sharp enough. Sometimes I use Painter for its better brushes;
or I just use the Sharpen filter in Photoshop.
There’s a low-end alternative, Photoshop Elements, which is perfectly
adequate; I got it free with my Wacom tablet. Or use the free Gimp.
The hand-eye coordination takes a little getting used to. Or a lot. But you
have an Undo button; use it often.
As a map largely consists of sharp lines and text, Adobe Illustrator is a
natural for them. You can import a shaded bitmap for terrain. As Illustrator is
vector-based, it supports scaling much better than Photoshop. Plus, you can
edit the path point-by-point, a boon for drawing smooth curves.
There are programs specifically for making maps; I’ll list some on the web
resources page, http://www.zompist.com/resources/pck.html.

Layers
Photoshop (and similar programs) have a wonderful feature: layers. These
are like a stack of transparent acetate cels you can draw on.
Here’s a representation of the layers of a simple map of Arcél: text on top;
then borders; then rivers and coastline; then terrain in grayscale; then the
ocean.
Layers don’t conflict with each other, so you can move text around without
messing up the image below, or draw the terrain without affecting your rivers
and coastlines.
Best of all, you can create multiple maps with the same base: maps of
political states, languages, resources, religions, sapient races, whatever. With
transparent colors, these can all share the nice shaded terrain.

Overall tips
The first map you make, you’re likely to be in a hurry, and draw big blobby
shapes and nearly-straight rivers and mountain ranges. That’s fine, but go
back and refine it later. Natural shapes (including coastlines, rivers, and
mountains) show a certain randomness— learn to cultivate a jiggly line to
suggest detail.
Here’s an example of a region of Almea, Nan, in an early and late form:

Most of the map should be in subdued colors— at least halfway to white.

Otherwise the text on the map won’t be readable. You don’t actually need a
coastline at all if you color in the ocean, while shaded terrain means that
mountain ranges don’t need to be indicated with lines.
Use subdued and harmonious colors all over, in fact. Most amateur maps are
way too garish. Instead of a white background, a light beige works well.
Color-code your text. I use red for country names, blue for water features,
brown for mountains, black for cities. This can’t be reproduced in a book, of
course, but it makes a map much more readable.
Keep text small— just big enough to read. Use the same font for everything
— nothing too fancy.
A little airbrushing can subtly emphasize certain features. I like a darker
blue shade in the oceans near shore, as seen in the Arcél map above. If you’re
making a political map, select each colored region and airbrush a darker color
along the edges; this creates a nice old-fashioned effect.
For a hand-drawn effect, explore some of the Photoshop brushes and tools. I
like the watercolor brush, for instance, which I used in this schematic map
from the Count of Years:

Plausible mountains
Here’s a step-by-step guide to drawing a shaded relief layer.
We’d might as well look at what mountains actually look like. Here’s a
Landsat image of Madrid (the city is the white stain just right of center); the
mountains are the Sierra de Guadarrama.

The problem is, this map is only about 200 km across. On the larger scales
you’re likely to be working with— entire countries or continents—
mountains barely register. So what we’re really after is a convincing illusion.
I’ll illustrate with the northwestern portion of Arcél, a region 2000 km wide,
ten times wider than the satellite image above, though it’s only a portion of
the continental map a few pages back.
Always draw at magnification— I used anything from 200% to 600%. You
have a lot more control over your lines that way. (But frequently go back to
100% to see how it looks.)
First, I used the airbrush tool (17-pixel width), in a gray a few shades darker
than the neutral background, to draw the shaded sides of the mountains. Note
that the mountains are basically parallel sets of long ridges, not the individual
triangles you remember from Tolkien's maps.
Remember that you’re drawing half of the mountain at this point, the shaded
part. Which side is shaded? Pick a direction for the light (mine is the
northwest) and be consistent. It may help to use a sketching layer to draw the
continental divide— the highest points of the mountains. Shade the side of
the mountains away from the light.
Don't overdo it... note that the river valleys are left flat. You can draw some
low relief here in very light colors, but there's no real need.
Now I used a white airbrush to draw the other side of the mountains. Again,
remember where the light is coming from.
I’ve also gone back and added some smaller ridges (for instance, the spur that
divides the two river basins that drain into the northern ocean).
For this whole process, by the way, I’m working with the terrain area
selected. (The magic wand is useful for this.) That way I don’t have to worry
about drawing outside the continental area. (I don't draw over the rivers
because they’re on a separate layer.)
Now that the shading is more or less in the right place, I switched to a smaller
airbrush (size 5 or 7) in a darker color, and sharpened up the top of the
mountain ridges. I want the top ridge to be fairly sharp, but the bottoms to be
fuzzy.
I’ve also taken the opportunity to make the ridges a little more random.
Natural boundaries (coastlines, rivers, mountain ridges) are fractal, with
plenty of detail at all levels.
In the northern peninsula, among other areas, I’ve made the minor ranges
meet up with the main range, instead of running parallel to it. It looks nicer
that way.
The mountains don’t look bad now, and indeed if you use color overlays this
is about all you’ll see anyway. But to add some final detail, I used a smaller
airbrush yet (3 pixels) and drew cross-shading: white lines on the shaded
areas, dark lines on the bright areas.
Remember, Undo is your friend. Don’t be afraid to draw some stuff just to
see how it looks. If it doesn’t look like you want it to, undo and try again.
At this point I decided that the mountains were a little too dark and sharp-
looking. So I used the blur tool to soften up the edges, and also applied a
lightening filter. Now the mountains don’t overwhelm the map.

Cheap mountains
An alternative to shading the mountains is to draw a contour map. You don’t
have to go crazy with this— three levels of shading (plains; low moun-tains;
high mountains) are about all you need.
Here’s an example, a map of the island of Apoyin on Almea. I made it as a
contour map because it was originally a set of D&D hex maps which only
indicated two levels of terrain.
See also the map of Borneo on p. 64.
A CGI globe
Rectangular world maps will distort your world horribly. But they have one
neat use: they can be used in a 3-D modelling program to create a globe.
You need a cylindrical projection for this— that is, a map whose height is
half its width, with the latitudes equidistant, fortunately one of the easiest
maps to mark out. (Contrast with the Mercator, where the latitude lines get
farther apart closer to the poles.)
Load the map into your favorite 3-D modelling program (p. 342), create a
sphere, and use your map to texture it:

Within the program, you can rotate the globe to see what it looks like from
various angles.

A sinusoidal map
There is no projection that represents a sphere on a flat surface without
distortion— and the better ones require plenty of math and good technical
drawing skills. A good compromise is the sinusoidal projection.

Let’s start with one spear, 45° in width. (You can use any width, up to the
entire circumference of the planet.) The globe will be made of eight of these
spears (because 45° is 1/8 of the full 360°).
The drawing width is thus 1/8 of your drawing size. If the equator is 10” long
(which will fit neatly onto a sheet of typing paper), the eight spears are 1.25"
wide.
The spear’s height is half the size of the equator, thus 5".
If you’re using A4 paper, a spear width of 3.5 cm and height of 14 cm will
work well.

Here’s the clever bit. The sides of the spears aren’t straight, but curved, and
the curve obeys a simple rule: the width at any degree of latitude x is cos x
times the width at the equator. Let’s work that out for increments of 10° and a
spear width of 1.25":
x cos x width
0° 1.0 1.25"
10° .984 1.23"
20° .940 1.17"
30° .866 1.08"
40° .766 .96"
50° .643 .80"
60° .500 .63"
70° .342 .43"
80° .174 .22"
90° 0 0"
In Illustrator, you can click with the Line tool selected and you’ll get a dialog
where you can enter the line width. You can also let Illustrator center the
lines for you.
Now connect the edges of these lines with a smooth curve.
I used Adobe Illustrator, drawing the curve by eye, then lining up the anchor
points with the latitude lines and smoothing out the curve.
This only needs to be done once; for the other segments the curve can be
duplicated, moved, and reflected.

Duplicate this basic shape eight times, and you have this bristly little map of
the world:

This map won’t be very easy to read (it's hard for the eye to connect land
masses across spears), but it minimizes distortion.
You can even make it into a physical globe— many commercial globes are
made this way, in fact. Use a printout of the map. Carefully cut around the
edges of the spears (leave them connected at the equator). Tape the edges and
you have a little paper globe of your planet. Or make a map whose equator
matches the circumference of a ball; then you can paste the spears on the ball,
for a less delicate globe.
To show off your continents, you simply combine spears as needed:

You can combine any number of spears— even half-spears, as in the fifth
spear on the bottom. One longitude will always be straight and thus
distortion-free; it need not be the one in the middle. For the bottom left lobe I
made the longitude that passes through Verduria straight.
If you’re drawing on the computer, drawing the combined lobes is easy: just
take a half-spear and stretch it horizontally. The middle top lobe, for instance,
is stretched 300%. (If you’re drawing by hand, you’ll have to re-measure.)
Now you can draw the continents:

You can combine all the spears, if you like. The resulting map gets rid of the
orange-slice appearance, but the left and right edges do end up pretty
stretched out. (Note Palthuknen in the upper left.)

A city plan
A plan of your main city may be useful. The easiest method is to draw the
walls, fill in the city area with one color, then draw lines on top of it for the
streets.

Above is part of the plan of Verduria city; since it’s entirely made of
geometric shapes and very text-heavy I used Adobe Illustrator rather than
Photoshop.
What do you indicate on the city plan? I took the same approach as a
guidebook: street names, parks, government buildings, cultural and
recreational buildings, temples, palaces, and the top-tier taverns and stores.
Remember that premodern cities were tiny by modern standards. Ancient
Nineveh, terror of ancient Mesopotamia, had a population of 30,000 and a
size of 720 hectares or less than three square miles. Ancient Rome had about
250,000 residents, which would put it in the rank of Buffalo; medieval cities
were only half of that. Verduria has about 600,000 residents, since it’s at the
start of the steam age.
Some cultures seem to like rectilinear cities, others don’t. Seemingly formless
cities may have developed out of smaller settlements and following natural
features— rivers and streams, ridges and hills.
Whatever is most important to your people will get the most space and the
grandest buildings. Roman cities were dominated by public works: forums,
baths, theaters. The largest buildings in medieval cities were the churches; in
modern cities, corporate offices.
City size correlates with the prevailing mode of transportation. Cesare
Marchetti has pointed out that since ancient times people have preferred a
commute of no more than one hour— meaning that the radius of a city for
pedestrians is limited to about 5 kilometers. Trains, cars, teleportation, and
rideable dragons all change the largest practical city size.
Illustrations
If all you do is write, you can skip this chapter. But there’s nothing quite like
pictures at showing what your world is like and how it differs from other
worlds.
You can also skip it if you’re a great artist already. It’s aimed at the person
who thinks they can’t draw, or can cartoon but would like to do better.

How to draw better than you could

Methods
Keep your drawing simple. Beginning artists try to solve problems by adding
lines. Spend your time instead making sure they’re in the right place.
If you work on the computer, you’ll really need that graphics tablet. If you
don’t have one, draw on paper and then scan.
We’ve already seen the use of layers on maps (p. 286). For figure drawing
they have a number of uses:
• Put a simple colored background on the lowest layer. The color
helps you choose detail colors that harmonize with the overall tone of
the picture.
• Use a layer for sketching: draw roughly; then reduce the opacity
to 50%. Add a new layer and draw more cleanly on that. Repeat if
necessary. Once you’ve got the final drawing, hide or discard the
sketch layers.
• Draw background objects or patterns on a layer above the
background, below the figures. It’s a lot easier to draw even a straight
wall as a single object rather than drawing it in pieces behind the main
character. All the more so if the background includes a tree or a desk.
• You can paste images onto a layer and use them as models for
drawing.
• Use a separate layer for colors and shading, under your line
drawing. This will produce a more even coloration, without having to
 get the drawing perfectly clean.
• Layers can be used for details— jewelry, beards, shiny patches
— that you’re not sure if you want or not. You can easily delete them.
• If your picture includes multiple objects, draw each on a separate
layer— then you can easily move or resize them without messing
anything else up.
Be prepared to break habits. You may have some facility with cartooning—
you’ve drawn the same figures for years and have quick ways of drawing
ears, eyes, hands, etc. These habits will get in the way of accurate figure
drawing. Look at the models and retrain yourself to draw something more
complicated but more accurate.

Proportion
If you only absorb one word from this chapter, make it this one: proportion.
If a picture looks wrong, the proportions are probably off. Don’t try to fix it
by adding shading or extra detail. Get the proportions right in the sketch. If
you’ve gone further, you may be able to save the drawing by selecting parts
of it and resizing them.
An example: this picture is well rendered, but it still looks bad— the
proportions are off.
The girl’s eyes are too high on her head and too far apart; her mouth is too
low.
Also, her neck is too long, and her shoulders are too broad.
Here’s the corrected version of the same picture.
Or you can go the other way: purposely violate the rules to create aliens and
monsters. For instance, a high eyeline, tiny eyes, a big nose, and a massive
lower lip with overhanging teeth makes a good orc.
If you’re copying a picture or drawing from life, be aware of negative space:
the voids in the picture have a shape too, and they make excellent diagnostics
of an error in proportion.

Even a sketchy drawing will look pretty good if the proportions are lifelike.

Zoom zoom zoom-a zoom

Do you find it hard to get control of the stylus? No problem. Just zoom in.
 For instance, this hand needs work, but it’s hard to do
anything with it at the original size.

But blow it up 400%, and it’s a lot more tractable.

I’ve redrawn the hand and then shrunk it back to its

proper size.

I always make a drawing much larger than its target size... the eventual
shrinking will hide plenty of sins. While working on it, I zoom in as far as
possible.
But go back frequently to regular size— in Photoshop this is a single
keystroke (Windows ctrl-alt-0; Mac option-command-0). Don’t waste your
time making the zoomed-in part look fabulous if the details will just get lost
at regular size.
Zooming, like shading, can’t fix a drawing with bad proportions. If the hand
is too small for the arm, it doesn’t matter how well drawn it is.

A female face
Drawing pretty girls is a useful skill, and not an easy one. I’ve been working
on it for about thirty years.
Let’s start with the basics: a frontal view of the face..
Draw an oval. For extra points, make it more egg-shaped, narrow end down.
Now draw lines down the middle.

Divide the horizontal lines in half; we’re going to put the eyes there. (Slightly
inward would be more accurate.)
The eyes live on the middle line— not above them. They are little almond
shapes, twice as long as they are high.

Draw a little curve for the nose, a little less than halfway to the chin.
The ears run from the top of the eyes to the bottom of the nose. Don’t give
the poor girl Dumbo ears; we’re not seeing them from the side of the head.

If the ear shape scares you, a narrowed C shape will do. Or cover the ears
with hair.
Eyebrows live pretty close to the eyes— about an eye-height above, in fact.
They’re thicker closer to the nose.

The mouth is closer to the nose than to the chin. The curve you draw here
largely determines the expression, so get a line that satisfies you.
The top lip, with its double-bow shape, is only about 1/3 the total height. The
bottom lip is half an ellipse.
If you draw an equilateral triangle with two corners at the edges of the eyes,
the bottom of the triangle will touch the bottom of the lip.

You can erase the cross-hairs now.

There’s a million hairstyles; here’s a few simple examples:

The face and figure are timeless, but hair immediately brings in a sense of
period. My favorite drawing book, Jack Hamm’s Drawing the Head &
Figure, has extremely ’50s hairstyles.
Don’t overdo the lines— we know it’s hair, you don’t have to draw every
curl.
If you draw a jagged shape for the hair, remember that the jags can’t cut into
the outline of the head.

Getting things symmetrical can be tricky; on the computer you can cheat—
duplicate the eye or ear and flip it horizontally.

Eyes
If you draw almonds for eyes you’re ahead of many people who are under the
impression that eyes are circles. But we can do better yet.

The eye bows in a bit toward the nose, and the corner is curved. The lower
edge can be left out or lightly sketched.

Add some sweeping lashes to the side opposite the nose, and some much
smaller lashes on the bottom edge.

In close-up only, add a line above for the eyelid and one below for the rim of
the eye.

Add a big circle, and a smaller black one for the pupil. The highlights are
actually reflections of the lights in the room.

Shade the iris. If you’re drawing in color, the color of the iris may not be
uniform.

For East Asians, draw a heavy dark curve along the top of the eye, curving
down to hide the corner. Asians vary in how much the epicanthic fold covers.

The face in profile

The head in profile isn’t egg shaped. Who knew?
Start with a square, and divide it in four.
Mark a point ¼ of the way up the left top cell, and draw a smooth curve to
the top of the head.
From there draw a smooth curve down; it hits the bottom of the cell ¼ of the
way in.
The final curve is a bow shape, hitting halfway across the bottom of its cell.
These lines need not be perfect— they’re usually covered by hair.
Draw the straight part of the nose, from just above the center line outward. It
goes downward about ¼ of the cell.
The jaw is a smooth curve; it’s ¼ of the way up the left of the cell and ½ of
the way up the right.
The eye is a diamond shape on its side, a tad above the center line.
Draw the mouth a little bit below the center of of its cell, not very far inward.
Fill in the rest of the profile. It curves inward at the level of the eye, and
again below the nose and under the mouth.
This is probably the hardest part to get right. Undo, or your eraser, is your
friend.
The nose is a bit upturned, which helps it register as female.
The lips form a sideways heart shape; the bottom lip is bigger.
The ear is a backwards C extending from the top of the eyes to the bottom of
the nose.
I’ve added the eyebrow, nostril, and details of the eye and ear.
The main line inside the ear is another C, opposite the main C of the ear. Just
below that, and fitting inside it, is a a sort of extended V.
The front of the neck hits ½ of the way along the bottom of the cell.
Finally add hair. Don’t start too close to the eyes.
Erase your guidelines so people think you can do without them.

Race
How you draw the eyes, nose, and lips will largely determine the apparent
race of the character. These differences should be subtle— our brains are
highly sensitive to tiny facial details, so there’s no need to exaggerate.
For an East Asian appearance, the main factor is the epicanthic fold, which
hides one corner of the eye with a little curve. The eyes are not slits; they
aren’t slanted either.
The nose is often blunter and a little wider. The lips may be a bit more
prominent.
In profile, the cheeks and mouth may be farther forward. Asian hair is
normally quite straight.

Africans are very varied— what Americans think of as “black” is more

generally West African. Here the nose is wider, the lips larger, and the jaw is
farther forward.
Natural African hair is frizzy; it can be straightened, but rarely ends up as
fluffy as white folks’ hair.
Hispanics aren’t very uniform, but a prominent nose and bigger features will
help. The nose can be a bit beaky. Try a mixture of European and Asian, or
European and African.

Oblique views
Frontal and side views are boring; you want to know how to do oblique
perspectives. Fine, but they’re harder; don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The head is more or less an egg shape, with an extension in the back.
The slash indicates the overall axis of the head; it may help you draw the egg
shape.
Draw the vertical centerlines of the face, the sides of the head, and the
horizontal equator.
These are all half-ellipses. The line going up the face is a bit flattened.
Divide the horizonal line into thirds. The eyes will live on the frontward of
these marks.
The nose and mouth are marked out as when you’re drawing the front view.
The ear is drawn back of the cross-hairs on the side, just as we did in the side
view, but a little foreshortened.
Eyes and mouth aren’t straight; they follow the curve of the head.
The edge of the head bows inward at the eyes.
It’s the nose that’s most distinctive in this view; it’s kind of a soft L shape.
The nose and the left eyebrow (the one on our right) form an extended
smooth S-like curve.
I added hair and a few more details.
Her eyes are narrow because she’s looking downward.
Sometimes you’ll see the edge of the cheek bow inward toward the mouth.
A common mistake with three-quarter views is to draw the facial features too
far back. There’s a lot of space in between the eyes and the ears.

Male faces
Male faces are a lot more forgiving. Drawing girls, a line a few millimeters
off may ruin the drawing; you may not even notice it drawing men.
 Follow the same
basic procedure as for female faces, but note the differences: a squarer jaw, a
wider neck, more emphasis on the nose.
The brow is a little lower as well.
If you’ve mostly drawn girls, your first attempts at males may look too
feminine. Easy solution: add a beard.
Adding more lines will make your character look older— but this may
improve the portrait of a man.
I added lines around the eyes and forehead, creases by the side of the nose,
and a suggestion of jowls and cleft chin.
Men have lips— go check!— but the picture often looks better if the top lip is
removed and the bottom merely suggested with a heavy line.
For the profile, note the blockier brow, nose, and jaw and wider neck. The
nose is less upturned, the upper lip straight.
Again, some extra lines look good on a man: beneath the eye, between nose
and mouth, along the upper brow and the cheekbone.

A basic female body

 Figures are often measured in
heads— after all, the person you’re drawing is more likely to have a head
than to be holding a ruler.
Hamm recommends 7½ heads— actually a tall frame; a petite girl may be
only 6 heads tall. Some artists like to make their women 8 or 9 heads tall; I
guess they’re leg men.
Anyway, draw a line and mark it in eighths.
You may draw vertical lines a head away from the center— the body will lie
well within these lines.

Draw a skeleton figure, following these guidelines:

Torso: a little less than 2 heads tall; shoulders are about ¾ of the way to the
side vertical. Note the taper inward.
Hips taper the other way, and extend from head 3 to 4. They’re wider than
the shoulders.
The knees live at head 5½, the feet at 7½.
For the extended arm, the elbow is about at head 3, the hand reaches head
4½.
Some helpful landmarks:
• the nipples are one head down
• the navel is a head below that
• the crotch is one more head down
There’s a stagger at the knee: the lower legs aren’t on the same line as the
thighs, they’re shifted outward a bit.

Draw the outline of the body. The limbs are not parallel— they taper inward
as you go down. The neck tapers outward.
The outside curve of the leg starts at the hips and extends to the top of the
knee. The inner curve goes down farther, below the knee. That is, the bowed-
in bit on the outside of the knee is higher than on the inside.
In relaxed position, the thumb is closer to the body and the elbow points
away from us.
Get your lines in the right place, redrawing as necessary. When they look
right, redraw the whole thing on a new layer to get a clean line. (And only
then. A bad drawing isn’t saved by re-inking.)
The knees are suggested by a couple parenthesis shapes.
You can draw the face as described above, without of course worrying about
the tiny details.

A few more details, and of course hair.

Get to know the shape of the clavicles and the depression in between.
At this angle, the feet form a kind of triangle.... they don’t extend out
sideways, as I drew them years ago in an otherwise fairly good picture of a
flaid.

Male bodies
Adaptations for male bodies:
• This figure is eight heads tall. The knees are just above head 6.
• Shoulders wider than hips, as much as two heads wide.
• The neck is thicker, and the muscles on either side (the trapezius)
are convex rather than concave.
• The deltoid is more prominent— there’s always a curve at the top
of the arm.
• Men have waists too, but they’re not as indented.
• Without the breasts, it’s easier to see how the chest muscles hang
from the shoulders. Look at his left arm: the arm slots in under the pectoral
muscle.
This dude is well-built but not a superhero. If you’re drawing an ordinary
shmo, the neck and shoulders will be closer to the female figure.

Shading
My favorite tool in Photoshop is the airbrush. It’s amazing how much better a
drawing looks when it’s properly shaded.
Shaded sphere
Let’s start with a very simple object— a sphere.

Draw a circle and color it in.

Select the colored area, so the rest of the drawing is restricted to the circle.
Take an airbrush a good fraction of the sphere’s diameter— about 1/5 its size
will do. Open the color dialog and select a somewhat darker version of the
overall color.
Then draw around the circumference, so you get an even shading on all
edges. If it’s not quite even, add a few more light strokes.

Select an even darker shade. Then draw a sort of crescent moon shape well
within your sphere, at an angle.
The idea here is that the darkest part of the sphere is well inside its
boundaries— the edge nearest to it is actually lighter.
Now select a color lighter than the original shade. (The upper left of the
sphere should still have that color, so you can use the eyedropper to get back
to it.)
Draw another crescent moon shape, but smaller, on the opposite of the sphere
from the dark one.

Select a yet lighter color, close to white. Use this to create a highlight (n the
center of your crescent-shaped lighter area.
The exact nature of this last shiny spot will do a lot to suggest the surface
material. For instance, use a smaller white airbrush to add a small, very bright
highlight, and the sphere will look very shiny.
Experiment with Photoshop’s filters. One of my favorite tricks is to use Noise
and then Blur, which suggests a more textured material. (An example is the
arch pictures on the back cover.) Pixelate / Crystallize suggests a lumpy
surface, Brush Strokes / Spatter a rougher one.
The light here is coming from the top left. This may suffice for your first few
years of drawing. Of course you can reverse it if the light is coming from the
right. Other angles can be more complicated, but the basic principle is easy
enough, innit? Areas facing the light are brighter, and throw shadows away
from the light. The picture above is cleverly designed so that the angle of the
light can be varied by rotating the book.
Shaded face
One you can do a sphere, you can do a face. Bodies are largely composed of
overlapping squishy spheroids.
Do the shading on a separate layer, below your drawing. That way you can
change it easily, and the shading won’t spoil your drawing. Plus selecting an
area won’t be as fiddly— the lines of the drawing add a forgiveness factor.

First, select the area you want to shade.

I use the magic wand on the drawing, non-contiguous, and select the face in
the drawing layer. The area probably won’t reach to the edges. That’s fine;
use Select / Modify / Expand and expand the selection by 2 or 3 pixels.
That’ll probably do it, but there may be bits of the drawing that didn’t get
selected. Use the lasso to add them to the selection.

Move to the drawing layer and use the paint bucket to shade the whole face
region with your basic skin color.

Do the same to color in the hair, lips, and clothes.

Now use the magic wand to select just the skin, so you can airbrush merrily
away without affecting anything else.
Treat the face just like the sphere, and shade it the same way, ignoring the
features.
The neck and the hair can be treated the same way.
Use a smaller, darker brush, and add shadows where something blocks the
light: under the nose, chin, and ear; inside the ear; behind the clavicles.
The hair itself casts a shadow, so you can darken just under the hairline.
Add light and dark shading to the individual features: nose, forehead, arms,
neck.
The cheeks bulge out slightly, so they get a highlight; you can also emphasize
the cheekbones with some shading.
The lips are squashed spheres, so they get the usual dark shading toward the
bottom, plus an irregular highlight.
For the pupils, use a drawing brush (not an airbrush); draw a solid black
pupil, leaving a rim of iris; then add very small white highlights.
I’ve divided the hair into four regions, each with its own highlight and dark
region. An irregular highlight looks more natural— hair is rarely perfectly
combed.
Since this drawing is black and white, the eyebrows are part of the base
drawing. In a color drawing, they should be the same color as the hair.
Switch to a drawing brush, and add dark lines over the highlights, and light
lines on top of that.
Avoid the temptation to scribble. You want separate lines, nicely curved
following the lines of the hairstyle.
Some straggling hairs at the edges help make it look like hair rather than a
helmet.

If the face starts to look clownish, undo your last moves and switch to a
smaller brush or a color closer to the original skin shade. Or just use a big
airbrush set to the original color and swipe it over the whole face, which will
reduce all the contrasts.
For a female face, if you go much beyond the above, she’ll start to look old.
For a male, signs of age tend to add dignity: fleshy jowls, a cleft in the chin,
bags under the eyes.
Shaded body
Now let’s color in a full figure.
Again, start by applying a uniform base color. The easiest way to choose a
color is to find a photograph and sample the skin color (you can’t copyright a
pixel).
Apply the basic shading rules to each body part: head, arms, torso, breasts,
legs: a darker shade on one side, a lighter one on the other.
The arms are thin enough that you can just lighten one side. With the legs, it
looks better if the lighter area is within the leg rather than at the edge.
The armpits are a depressed area; also the area just behind the clavicles.
The top of the pelvis— the iliac crest— may be visible at the top of the hips.

More details, added with a finer airbrush. Note the upside-down U of the rib
cage.
Often bones are close to the surface and create visible lines. In the line sketch
these are indicated with ink, but some of these have been removed since they
are better indicated with shading.
In more complicated poses, the arms and legs are likely to shade other body
parts.

Clothing
Unless your people are nudists, you’re going to want to put clothes on them.
See p. 169 for designing clothes.
Drawing fabric is a study in itself. Here’s a picture of a towel draped over my
desk lamp.

The main thing to notice is how the fabric drapes down from a protruding
point (the top of the lamp). It’ll do the same thing from parts of the body,
usually bony points like shoulders, knees, and the iliac crest (the top of the
pelvis).
The lamp has a snaky neck; the towel follows it but is stiff enough to extend
past it on the right end.
Note the curtain folds in the middle; you will see these also in draped skirts.
When starting out, it’s best to sketch the nude figure first, then add clothes.
This will get the proportions right and prevent many errors.
Very tight clothes may approximate the lines of the body… just draw the
edges and you’ve got a swimsuit or superhero outfit.
The drawing below is intended to demonstrate common errors.

• No reference to the underlying figure. This is an impossible pose!

 E.g. the waist and torso point in different directions, and the left foot
doesn’t fit the leg.
• No attempt at drapery. Cloth folds over itself, especially in areas
like the armpit.
• Assuming that body features (the breasts and crotch) look the same
in the clothed figure.
• The ends of sleeves and pants legs aren’t straight once you put them
on. They curve around the limb.
• In several areas (waist, left leg) the clothing is drawn inside the line
of the body.
• Blouses and shirts usually billow out at the waist.
Sometimes you want a flatter, more naïve look— e.g. you’re imitating older
styles of art.
Here’s the same outfit drawn from life.
• There will always be wrinkles at the armpit.
• Note the twist in the fabric on the left sleeve.
• Protrusions produce folds— that, rather than its curve, is what
marks the bust here.
• The pants are of a bit stiffer material; they try to retain their
cylindrical shape, producing distinctive crush folds at the knee and ankle.
If you use shading instead, you can get rid of most of the little lines:

Another blouse. This one is tucked into the pants; note how the material
bunches up at the waist.
The breasts produce folds, pointing at the nipple. The breasts are not well
separated with most outfits.
The material wrinkles at the armpit and elbows, and bunches up just above
the wrist.

About the simplest clothing item to draw is a skirt. The fabric largely heads
straight down from the hips. The knees can produce folds as well.
 A lighter material, or more
of it, will produce more folds. Note the squarish curtain folds at the bottom of
the skirt.
Pants hide the line of the legs somewhat; they mostly drape down straight
from the hips and knees.
The model here is extending her left knee forward, which makes the knee the
focus of several folds.
The V-shape of the crotch disappears under clothes. Tight pants tend to have
horizontal folds at the top.

Good books
Is that everything you need to know to draw figures? Oh god no. Everything
looks different as soon as the pose changes. But you can get a whole book of
hints: Jack Hamm’s Drawing the Head & Figure.
Your friendly local bookstore will also have books full of photos, which are
invaluable resources. A few I’ve used:
John Cody, Atlas of Foreshortening (1984)
Erik A. Ruby, The Human Figure: A photographic reference for artists
(1974)
Thomas Easley, The Figure in Motion (1986)
Elte Shuppan, Pose File— a series of books published in the 1990s
The Internet is full of pictures, clothed and nude. Fashion catalogs are a great
resource too. You can teach yourself a lot by using them as models. If you’re
going to publish your work, don’t copy existing photos; I’ll show you a great
alternative in a moment.

Good models
You may or may not have a friend who will be willing to pose for you, but
you do know at least one person: yourself.
It can take a long time to master full frontal drawing— and then it turns out
people don’t stay in that position, and each pose is a minefield of new things
to learn. Once you’re a fabulous artist, you may be able to execute
complicated poses from memory. But till then, your best friend is a digital
camera.
For instance, here’s a panel from a comic of mine, and the photo I took for
reference, just for the position of the arms and hands:
That’s not a bad reference shot for drawing shirts, too.
A mirror can help too, but the camera is even better. Very likely it has a
setting to take a picture on a timer, which allows you to use both hands. Or
ask a friend to take the shot.
With some practice you can change sex... here’s a panel of my character
Fuschia Chang, and the photo I based it on. I could never get that pose right
without a model.
3-D Modeling
Fantasy illustration is no longer limited to drawing and painting; you can now
create three-dimensional renderings, and even wander around inside of them.
The cover illustration includes part of such a rendering.
For me, this is most useful in representing architecture. In theory you can
draw anything, and the top artists (such as the French BD artists François
Schuiten, Moebius, François Bourgeon, and Jean-Claude Mézières) create
jaw-dropping fantastic structures. But to draw even a couple of houses in
proper perspective, to say nothing of adding cultural flavor, is a dismaying
task.
By contrast it’s a few seconds’ work to make a building in a 3-D modeling
program, duplicating it is a snap, and the program handles perspective,
shadows, and even beautiful water reflections— see the example on the back
cover.
The ease is deceptive, however; to make an attractive scene you’ll still have
to put in a lot of work.
I’ll describe the basics of modeling, then list a few free modeling programs.

Prims
Whatever program you use, you’ll be doing the same thing: creating simple
3-D shapes called prims, then shaping and distorting them.
For instance, walls are just stretched-out cubes. Or you can create a room by
making a big cube, then hollowing it out. Doors and windows can be made
by carving out a space for them, or by careful building: build the wall on
either side, then a smaller piece on top between them (and one below, if it’s a
window).
Prims can be moved, stretched, rotated, and often more complicated
operations can be performed— e.g. skewing a cube into a slanted shape, or
drawing only part of a torus so you have a curved arc, or extruding a flat
shape into a three-dimensional one along a curve.
Prims can be connected together in groups and manipulated as a unit.
The program doesn’t care if prims interpenetrate. You can use this to cheat
fancier shapes. For instance, a tool might be made with a hollow piece fitting
round a shaft— you don’t actually have to hollow the thing out.

Textures
Prims can be textured; that is, a picture is applied to the surface. Your
modeling program likely comes with a bunch of textures— many varieties of
stone, brick, dirt, carpet, etc. Thus with a few clicks a set of prims becomes a
stone wall.
Good texturing separates the ugly, fake-looking model from the pros.
Slapping on a few canned textures may create something workable, but all
too often the textures clash luridly, the interfaces are sloppy (e.g. bricks don’t
look right at the edges), and the details are unconvincing.
If you do much modeling, you’ll want more than the canned textures.
• Google Images is your friend. Try to use free or public domain
images, unless you’re making something entirely for your own use.
• Take pictures. You’re probably surrounded by usable textures—
a walk around town will give you hundreds, and best of all you can get
multiple variations— e.g. a solid wall, a wall with window, a doorway,
interesting architectural details.
• You can draw your own textures using Photoshop— or take
photo images and manipulate them. Maybe those red bricks would look
better in brown; or you can add in a picture of a window, even adding a
drop shadow.

Seamless textures
Ideally you want a seamless texture— one that can be tiled without the edges
being obvious. Let’s go over how to do this in Photoshop.
First, here’s a picture I took of a wall in town.
The image isn’t rectilinear; this is easily fixed. Select the whole image, then
Edit > Transform > Skew. Move the corners till the lines between the bricks
are parallel to the edges of the picture.
Here you can see where I moved the corners— I expanded the window so I
could move them outside the image itself.
Here’s the image after skewing.
I increased the contrast, and also lightened or darkened some of the
individual bricks, to add to the visual interest. (This sort of thing is less
necessary if you’re working in color.)
I’ve cropped the image along the lines of the mortar between the bricks,
which will make the rest of the work easier.
Modelling programs prefer textures in powers of 2, so this would also be a
good time to resize the image to something like 512x512 pixels.
Select Filter > Other > Offset; you’ll get the dialog shown. Enter offsets half
the size of the image. (E.g. if the image is 512x512, enter 256 for both
offsets.)
Now you can see what the image looks like tiled. There are a number of
problem areas.
Select the Clone Stamp tool and choose an airbrush— for this image I used a
17 pixel brush. Alt-click (Mac: option-click) in a suitable area of the image,
and apply it in one of the glitchy areas, scrubbing over the border region.
Use Undo if you mess up.
Keep going till the image looks smooth. In this image, I worked on the bricks
first, then the mortar lines between them.
If there are too many variations in texture and lightness, such that you can’t
find enough areas to clone from, use another, more uniform image.
Use Filter > Other > Offset and again enter values of half the image size into
the horizonal and vertical offsets.
Now we’re back to the original view, but the edges have been modified.
One brick had a staggered edge; I decided I didn’t like that and fixed it with
Clone Stamp.
Now we’ve got a seamless texture that can be used to tile a wall of any shape.
With this image, the repetition is noticeable. If that bugs you, use a more
uniform image, or a larger texture (more bricks would make the repeat stand
out less).

Advanced texturing
The default texturing will apply a single texture to the entire prim. You can
get a lot fancier than that, however.
Each surface can have its own texture. You can use this for variety (e.g. some
walls have windows, some have none), or for non-uniform objects, like a
fireplace with a wood mantel on top.
You can tile a seamless pattern on one or more surfaces; this looks far better
than just stretching the image. The tiling can be different horizontally and
vertically— e.g. a long brick wall might tile just once vertically, and many
times horizontally.
The image can be cropped or offset. For instance, perhaps a wall texture has a
baseboard at the bottom. But perhaps you have a partial wall up above
somewhere. You can set a vertical offset so the baseboard doesn’t appear.

Alpha textures
Here’s a mind-blowing tip: textures can include transparent areas. So,
instead of messing with prims to make a window, you can just create one or
more transparent areas in your wall texture, apply the texture to a solid wall,
and behold, you have windows you can see through!
You can use the same trick for doorways if they’re just for show. It doesn’t
work for avatars though, since transparency only affects appearance— the
prim is still solid. You can cheat sometimes, though— e.g. if a short wall is
mostly doorway, you can make the entire prim non-physical.
Another application is to make irregularly shaped decals. For instance, you
could create a circular clock, or a bloodstain, and apply it to a very thin prim
in front of a wall. This sort of thing can add variety to the walls without
creating a load of textures.
Generally this involves creating an alpha channel in Photoshop. Let’s look
at how to do this to create a railing.
Create a layer for your alpha mask and fill the whole window with white. The
idea here is that black areas are transparent; white areas are opaque; and grey
is in between. That can be useful for semi-opaque windows, or special effects
like a gauze curtain.
The screen cap shows the layer dialog over the artwork. Copy the contents of
the alpha mask layer.
Select Channels in the Windows menu. You’ll get the window shown. Don’t
worry about the color-oriented channels it lists.
Click the arrow above the list of channels and select New Channel... from the
menu. Accept the defaults.
That gives you an all-black window. Paste in the contents of your alpha mask
layer.
(You can draw directly in the alpha channel, but it’s easier to have a layer
corresponding to it, because it’s easier to line it up with elements of the
image.)
Go back to the layers window and select any layer to get the regular view
back. Hide the alpha mask layer.
The image just shows a wood texture since that’s what we want for the bars
of the railing.
Save the image as a TGA file; make sure alpha channels are saved.
Here’s the texture applied to a long rectangular prim in the modelling
program, magically transparent.
The top of the railing gets a different, solid texture. Or you can add a second
prim for the handrail, a little wider.

Prim or texture?
Often something can be handled either by adding prims, or by adding to the
image.
It’s easy to overdo the prims at first. E.g. you want a railing partway up the
wall, or a set of pipes in your spaceship corridor; you add a bunch of prims. It
looks great, and texturing is simple— e.g. a pipe just needs a generic metal
texture.
However, it may end up a lot less work, and look just as good, if you add
these details to the texture. It’s remarkable how much character is added by a
good texture. For instance, here’s a simple spaceship corridor, with no
textures and with fancy drawn ones:

In general, use prims only where you need to get the lines right (e.g. you can
see the edge of a building and it shouldn’t be straight). If the model is to be
traversable, judicious use of prims can increase the level of realism; e.g. a
low wall will look better with a protruding cap.
Pay particular attention to transitions— e.g. wall to roof. Look at the nearest
door: the wall doesn’t just end at a particular spot; there’s usually a
protruding frame. That can make your modeled door look better too.
Say, this is starting to sound like a lot of work, isn’t it? Well, yes. Creating an
model for use as an illustration will take a few evenings— longer than
drawing it, if you can draw architecture at all. But the learning curve is easier.

Meshes
Some things can’t be nicely modeled with a few prims, however distorted.
Instead they are modeled with meshes, three-dimensional surfaces composed
of tiny polygons.
Character avatars are an obvious example; they’re made from hundreds or
thousands of polygons. It’s quite an art to make such complicated figures—
fortunately there are usually free figure meshes you can use if you need them.
If you want to create your own tentacled owlbear, though, you’re on your
own.
Prims are actually very simple meshes— a cube has just six polygons.
Circular prims (spheres, donuts, pipes) build the curved form out of multiple
polygons. Something like a pipe can look surprisingly good with just six
outside polygons— that is, its cross-section is really a hexagon, not a circle.
A large column may not look good without several times that number.
An irregular surface, like terrain, can be created by subdividing a large
simple prim— e.g. turning a single face into an array of 32 triangles— and
then jiggling the vertices randomly. In combination with a good texture, it
doesn’t take a whole lot of vertices to make terrain look naturally irregular.
You could use the same technique to make a stone wall where the wall bulges
out to match the texture. This is usually overkill, but it’ll improve a wall
that’s supposed to look highly three-dimensional, but instead looks too much
like a picture stretched over a flat surface.
In general, the more polygons, the more rendering time. If you actually want
to move around in your world, you want to limit how fancy your models get.

Designing a building
How do you actually go about modeling a building?
It may help to draw a rough diagram of the floor plan. I find it easier to just
lay it out using prims. If you’re using a program that allows you to walk
around in the model, go do so; it’s the best way to see what the sizes really
look like.
A huge square is a particularly unexciting design; try some of these instead.
The interior rooms get more windows, and the designs create interesting
exterior spaces as well— courtyards or gardens. Also see the section on
Architecture (p. 175).

Once you have a design you like, roughly lay out the walls, exterior and
interior. Vary the size of rooms— a mansion, for instance, might have a huge
dining hall, a large kitchen, relatively large bedrooms, and small rooms for
servants.
You probably need some corridors to get from room to room— the servants
shouldn’t have to get to their cubbyholes by tromping through milady’s
bedchamber. Rearrange the walls as necessary. To allow easy changes while
you’re working it out, it may be a good idea to make the walls non-physical
so you don’t have to add the doors yet.
If you have multiple floors, you need to leave room for stairs. Make sure you
like the location, because they’re going to be hard to move as you firm up the
design, largely because they leave huge holes in the floor. The upper floors
may be smaller, leaving nice balconies.
Once all the rooms look good, add the doors. Depending on the program
you’re using, this may be a matter of carving out the doorway, or rebuilding
the walls (e.g. turning a straight wall into three pieces).
Roofs can be a pain. Flat roofs are easy but will make your building look like
an office park. The traditional A-frame looks good, though it’s tricky to make
it work between wings. A barrel vault is pretty easy to make, though harder
for elaborate floor plans. You can make also more elaborate shapes (e.g. a
fancy pediment) as meshes.
Now add textures and details (such as door frames, columns, or larger corner
posts). It may only be at this point that it’s clear whether your building is a
stone castle or a future space colony!

Some programs
These are just a few programs easily accessible for beginners. (Some of the
high-end programs include Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, and Lightwave 3D.)
I’ve only briefly used Blender and thus can’t say much about it, but it’s free
and open source.
Garry’s Mod is available cheap on Steam and allows creating an interactive
environment with working contraptions. To create buildings you’ll need
Hammer (covered below) anyway.
Hammer is Valve’s map editor; many other video games provide one too.
The Creation Kits for Fallout 3 and Skyrim are very powerful. The Unity
game engine has a free version.

Second Life
Second Life is a virtual world created by Linden Lab, with a strong nod to the
Metaverse described in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. From Stephenson,
perhaps, it takes its relentless spatial metaphor: the entire world is one huge
two-dimensional grid.
The grid is divided into “sims”, each 256 m on a side— that’s virtual meters,
of course. Presently (2010) there are over 31,000 sims, for a total area of
more than 2000 km2. The content for all these sims is almost entirely
generated by the users.
Access is free, but to do any serious building you’ll need land, and that’s
where Linden makes its money. The smallest plots (512 m2), barely large
enough for a house, cost about $5 a month— and as a background you’ll have
your neighbors’ horrible constructions. You can build in the sky, however!
If you join the community, cheaper opportunities may occur— that is, you
may be able to borrow someone else’s land. I’ve created a castle, a couple
spaceships and space colonies, a Chinese pavilion, and a steampunk airship,
some on my own land and some on friends’. If you want a whole cityscape,
Second Life will be very expensive.
Building is done within Second Life, using the Build dialog. Here’s the
dialog, with a freshly created prim. To create a prim, click the build button
(A), then click in the world.
Now hit the edit button (B). Basic editing is done with the mouse; the radio
buttons at (C) determine what you’re doing (rotating, stretching, or moving).
Click and drag the colored arrows on the object to affect it.
The tabs at (D) and the options below the tab menu allow you to do all sorts
of things. Right-click on the object and pick Take a Copy to get a copy of the
prim in your inventory; don’t forget to rename it.
The interface is pretty intuitive— just play with the values and see what you
get. If you get lost, there’s a wiki available on the Second Life website.
On the plus side,
• You can learn to create a passable building in an afternoon, and
there are good textures available for free in your inventory; many more
can be cheaply purchased, or you can upload images.
• You can torture prims in interesting ways—add a twist, hollow
them out, remove part of them— e.g. turn a sphere into a half-dome, or
a cube into an L shape. Behind the scenes, what you’re doing is
defining simple meshes.
• You can link a set of prims into a single object, which can then
 be manipulated either as a unit, or piece by piece.
• You can move around in your build in real time. At the least you
can choose the perfect spot to take a picture; at the extreme you can
organize a roleplaying sim and go live in your world.
• Avatars, yours or your friends’, are available as human figures.
You can even design skins and clothes to directly represent your world.
• If you have access to Linden water, it’s quite pretty, with
realistic reflections.
• You can use Second Life’s lighting model, even set the time of
day. You can simulate a space environment, for instance, by building
far up in the sky and setting the time to midnight. You can specify light
sources and give items a nice glow effect.
• There’s a huge market in clothes, furniture, plants, and all sorts
of toys— including fantasy and s.f. variants. This can save a huge
amount of time in decoration.
• You can import meshes (complex 3-D models), which can create
some stunning effects. However, these must be created in another
modeling program.
Some minuses:
• Prim counts are limited by your land size— e.g. a 512 m2 plot
comes with just 117 prims.
• There are some fiddly limitations on prim size— e.g. you
normally can’t create things larger than 10 m or smaller than 0.01 m.
(You can acquire megaprims but they’re not resizeable.)
• Applying textures is prim-oriented, though you can select
multiple surfaces at once. This works best with simple textures or
prims.
• There’s no orthographic view available; this can make alignment
more difficult. Instead of doing everything by eye, use the Build dialog
to input set values— e.g. make all the walls 4.5 meters high and make
sure they start at 11.25 meters.
 • You can only edit terrain on land you own, and it’s pretty low-
res.
• You can’t get less ambient light than the Midnight setting.
Second Life is great for creating an environment you can walk around in; but
be aware of a subtle distortion created by the camera angle. Normally you see
your avatar on screen, and the camera is a few feet above your head.
The problem is, you’re likely to make walls look good by eye— and your eye
is ten feet above the ground. As a result you’re likely to overbuild. You’ll
make enormous buildings with 14-foot ceilings, and the avatars will look like
dwarfs inside them.
If you scale the buildings to the avatars, however, you’ll find that the camera
is messed up— it can’t fit in the same room as the avatar!
Compromise a bit— make the walls just high enough to allow the camera in.
(Or use mouselook, which takes the perspective of your avatar.)
A newb mistake in Second Life is to build vast barn-like spaces. These are
about as inviting as, well, barns, and they’re hard to furnish. Think small!
The max size prim— 10 meters on a side— makes a great room. To make an
interesting house, don’t tile your 10 meter prims; offset them.

Hammer
Hammer is the Valve map editor; it’s used to make levels for Half-Life 2,
Team Fortress 2, Portal, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and more. If you own
any of these games, you can download Hammer for free— select “Source
SDK” from your Library > Tools list.
Hammer looks more like most 3-D modeling programs: you start with four
views, a 3-D render plus three orthogonal wireframe views.
You create your map in Hammer, then compile it and run it using the target
game.
A map consists of three types of things:
• “Brushes”, Hammer’s name for prims. This is your workhorse—
your walls and terrain will be made of brushes. Each game comes with
a set of textures, or you can use your own.
Terrain is created using “displacements”, brushes that have been
subdivided into an array of triangles; the vertices are then moved to
create an irregular surface. The Chinese roof seen in the screen cap
above is a set of displacements.
• Models— imported MDL files. Basically these are fancy objects
that it’d be hard or impossible to make with brushes. Each game comes
with a bunch of canned models, and you can create and import your
own. (An example is the ship in the front cover illustration.)
• Entities— basically things that tell the game how to behave. At
the very least you need an info_player_start entity to tell the map where
the player gets spawned, which you’ll need to run the map. Entities are
also used for all sorts of special effects— lighting, smoke, fog, fire—
 and of course to make maps work as levels within a game.
To make environments for fantasy/s.f. illustrations— such as the one on the
cover— I’ve found it simplest to make Half-Life 2 Episode 2 maps. The only
gameplay element you need is the spawn point, and since the player spawns
by default with no weapons, there’s no HUDs to obscure your view as you
walk around the map.
You need to enclose the whole map in a huge hollow box, which you’ll apply
a sky texture to. Hammer gets very unhappy if there are “leaks” which would
allow the player to see off into the infinite void.
Positives:
• You can make huge environments for free. No land fees or prim
limits, as in Second Life.
• The maps are based on a grid, and brushes snap to the nearest
point; the granularity is changed with the [ ] keys. This, plus the
orthogonal views, makes aligning objects a lot easier.
• Since the games are first person, there’s no distortion induced by
the camera location. On the other hand, you need to refer to your spawn
point (which is a simplified avatar), or import a character model, to get
the scale right. (Dimensions are in “Hammer Units”; the player is about
83 units high, so a good minimum height for walls is 100.)
• There are great tools for applying textures across multiple
objects. For instance, you can select a complex set of surfaces, then
apply a texture across them all in one operation; no need to manually
adjust the textures at boundaries.
• You have immense control over lighting (and the lighting effects
are quite good). Light sources include a bright diffuse light (i.e. the
sun), point sources, and flickering lights suitable for candles or fires.
• You can put water where you want it. (One limitation, though:
water doesn’t reflect models, only brushes.)
• You can carve out doors from a wall— much easier than
building the wall in pieces.
Negatives:
 • It’s not as user-friendly as Second Life. You have to get used to
the orthogonal views, and things like adding water or lights can take
some careful reading of the wiki pages.
• To get water and reflective surfaces working right, you need to
add an env_cubemap entity, compile and run the map, open the
console, and run buildcubemaps.
• The compile process can get bogged down. The compile dialog
has some options that make some operations faster or skip them
entirely; use them if the compilation is taking too long.
What’s actually happening is that the compiler is calculating
visibility and lighting ahead of time, to save time when actually playing
the game. (If something isn’t visible to the player, you don’t want to
waste time rendering it.) There are all sorts of advanced tricks to
optimize the map to save on compiling and rendering time— look them
up if you really need to. (The quick ‘n dirty version: if you can see
everything at once, compiling and rendering will take a hit. If you’ve
played Valve games, note how you’re usually in a building or a small
street where you can’t see the whole map.)
• Adding character models is possible but not simple, though you
might get away with using the game’s models from a distance. You can
always keep your architectural rendering separate from your character
portraits.
• The playable area of a map is about a half-mile square, though
this can be supplemented by a ‘skybox’ for distant objects you can see
but not get to. If you want really expansive scenery, the Skyrim
Creation Kit may be a better bet.
Hammer basics
Here’s how to make your first map. Use HL2:Ep2 as the game.
1. File > New to create a blank map.
2. Click the name of the top left view (it should say camera); select 3-D
Textured.
3. Select the Block tool (the cube) from the toolbar. Draw a square in the
 top right view. (This is your overhead view.) In one of the lower views,
extend it vertically by dragging the white squares.
4. Hit Enter; this creates your first brush. It’s a floor.
5. Select the Entity tool (the little peg). The Object field in the lower right
should read info_player_start. Click in the 3-D view to place the player
spawn on top of the floor; it’ll be a blocky green figure.
6. Move to the Object field and type light instead. Now click in the 3-D
view to place your light.
7. Select File > Run Map.
Hammer will compile the map and run HL2:Ep2 loading your map. You’ll be
on the floor you created, lit by your light, and can walk around. When you’re
bored, hit Esc and quit the game to return to Hammer.
The sky will be crazy, so you need to create a skybox. (The method below is
deprecated for making game levels, but it’s fine for making architectural
vistas.)
1. Select the Block tool and create a really large box around your original
one. Zoom the view back using the mouse wheel so you can make it
immense— it’s going to enclose the whole map.
2. Use one of the lower views to make sure it’s huge upward and
downward as well.
3. The info bar on the upper right shows the current teture. Hit the Browse
button. In the dialog that comes up, type tools in the Filter field; this will
change what textures are visible. Double-click on the sky-blue
tools/toolsskybox texture to select it and leave the dialog.
4. Hit Enter to create the brush.
5. Select Tools > Make Hollow and accept the default.
Run the map again; now you have a nice sky.
You can import a large number of premade models.
1. Change the Object field to prop_static.
2. Select the Entity tool and click in the 3-D view.
 3. Press Alt-Enter to bring up the properties dialog. Move to the World
Model field. Then hit the Browse button.
4. Browse through the available models. You can look through each
directory, or enter a filter (like box or tree or handrail) to narrow the
selection.
5. Hit OK, then Apply. Your model is now visible in your map.
Hammer definitely doesn’t hold your hand. Here’s some tips that may not be
obvious:
• Hold the spacebar and move the mouse to move the camera
within a view (whether 2-D or 3-D).
• It’s easiest to select objects by clicking within the 3-D view. It
works in the other views too, but you have to click exactly on the lines
of the wireframes.
• Ctrl-click to select multiple objects.
• Hold shift while dragging the mouse to duplicate an item.
• If you have an object selected in the 3-D view, Ctrl-E will center
the other three views on that object. (If you have an object selected in a
2-D view, Shift-Ctrl-E will center the 3-D view on it.)
For more tips and tutorials, Google for Valve Developer Community.

Autodesk Softimage Mod Tool

This is a free version of the professional 3-D modeling program Audodesk
Softimage; it was formerly known as XSI Mod Tool. You can use it to create
models— basically, sets of complicated meshes.
There is a free add-on available to allow the Mod Tool to export models for
Hammer, and models can also be exported to Second Life.
If Hammer is a bit advanced, Mod Tool is downright arcane. There’s an
extensive manual included, and there are online tutorials.
Further reading
Christopher Alexander et al., A Pattern Language (1977)
An exploration of the design patterns of the “timeless way of building”,
principles for humane and beautiful architecture.
Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, eds., A History of Private Life (1987)
A multi-volume anthology on private life, or as we’d probably say,
everyday life, from Roman to Victorian times. A treasure trove of
information; worth it for the introductory essay on classical Roman life
alone.
Neil Comins, What if the moon didn’t exist? (1993)
What if the earth had two moons? (2010)
An astronomer's exploration of what would happen under various
physical scenarios: no moon, a smaller earth, a bigger sun, etc. Much
better than just guessing!
Liza Dalby, Geisha (1983)
Not just a book about the history and habits of geisha, but an admirable
exercise in participant observation. Her Kimono is a great follow-up.
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
(1998)
Why did Europeans, rather than any other culture, take over the world?
A century ago the usual answer was racist: white Europeans are better.
That's just know-nothingism; but till recently it was hard to come up
with a better explanation. Diamond has done so, quite convincingly,
using principles you can rip off for your conworld.
Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)
Here Diamond focuses on cultures that failed: the Easter Islanders who
chopped down all the island’s trees; the failed Norse colonies on
Greenland; the collapse of the Maya, and more. A sobering rebuke to
naive optimism that we’ll always solve our problems: it really is
 possible for a society to destroy itself.
Dougal Dixon, After Man: A Zoology of the Future (1981)
A delightful book which painlessly introduces evolutionary biology by
imagining what evolution might come up with given another 50 million
years: rats evolved into mighty predators, penguins taking on the role
of the whales, an island where all the main niches are filled by bats...
John King Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985 (1987)
Everyone should read at least one book on China; this is a good choice.
Though focused on the last two centuries, it covers a much broader
ground, and Fairbanks has an eye for the arresting sensory detail.
Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the
Middle Ages (1976)
What Tolkien never told you... the Middle Ages were highly
mechanically oriented, a blossoming of development in milling,
clockmaking, mining, and more, all preparing the way for the explosive
transformations of the Renaissance.
Jack Hamm, Drawing the Head & Figure (1963)
The book that taught me to draw. You can start from nothing, and yet
there’s a plethora of information for the advanced student.
Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture
(1974)
A whirlwind tour of the puzzles of material culture. The title names
some of them: why Hindus love their cows, why Jews and Muslims
hate pigs, why people fight, why people persecuted witches. And
there’s more: cargo cults, messiahs, potlatch.
Marvin Harris, Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture
(1979)
The advanced course after you’ve read the previous volume. Lots more
about how material factors affect culture, though there’s a bit too much
railing against alternative theories.
Herodotus, The History (-5C)
An entertaining and wide-ranging view of all the cultures known to the
Greeks, building up to a history of the war with Persia. Herodotus’s
own biases and assumptions are part of what makes the book
fascinating.
Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities (1970)
Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984)
Two books which do nothing less than demolish and rebuild
macroeconomics. Jacobs thinks economics went wrong with Adam
Smith, who built his analysis around nations rather than cities. Cities
are the engine of economic progress, and if you don’t have healthy
cities, you’re hosed.
Archer Jones, The Art of War in the Western World (1987)
A survey of war from ancient times to the 20C, with plenty of useful
detail and attention to strategy and tactics. Really, every other page I
was taking notes.
Olivia Judson, Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation (2002)
A witty tour of sexual behavior in nature. Gimmicky in tone— it’s
framed as complaints and questions about sex from animals— it’s
nonetheless great science, and a treasury of models for interesting
aliens.
John Keegan, A History of Warfare (1993)
Really a theoretical analysis of war: the types of war culture, the
limitations on warmaking, the key military inventions, the impasse
created by Clausewitz. An excellent resource, as Keegan is very
interested in the same thing as writers: what it’s like to be on the
battlefield.
Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years
(1995)
Despite the title, it’s basically a history of the Islamic Middle East,
 from its origins through its heady heyday to its current dilemmas.
Again, a great choice for the one book on Islam you should read.
C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An introduction to medieval and
Renaissance literature (1964)
A masterly exposition of the medieval worldview— the order of the
cosmos, the components of the body, the tripartite soul, and how
everything relates to God. Full of surprises for anyone whose
understanding of the Middle Ages derives from pop culture.
Alison Lurie, The Language of Clothes (1981)
A witty introduction to the history of fashion and what clothes tell
about us.
Scott McCloud, Making Comics (2006)
The bits on storytelling are good, but I’ve included it here for the
amazing section on facial expressions.
Colin McEvedy, The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History (2002), etc.
As discussed in the Historical Atlas section (p. 105). There’s a
sequence of four volumes devoted to Europe, plus volumes for North
America, Africa, and the Pacific Rim. Great for getting the big picture,
and enlivened by McEvedy’s dry wit and lapidary character portraits.
Jack Miles, God: A Biography (1995)
If you want to understand religion, this is a great place to start. It’s a
reading of the Old Testament with fresh eyes, seeing what’s there
without theological presuppositions.
F.W. Mote, Imperial China 900-1800 (1999)
Westerners are often pitifully ignorant of Chinese history, but how do
you catch up? This book will take you a long way there. As a bonus,
Mote examines the Central Asian nomads in unusual detail.
Claudia Müller, The Costume Timeline: 5000 Years of Fashion History
(1992)
 A huge fold-out book showing 800 color pictures of costumes from
around the world— a great reference for designing your own clothing.
James F. O’Gorman, ABC of Architecture (1998)
A short explanation of the basics of architecture, focussing on the
Vitruvian trinity of utility, structure, and beauty.
Mark Rosenfelder, The Language Construction Kit (2010)
Advanced Language Construction (2012)
The companions to this volume; everything you need to know about
creating languages and writing systems.
Bernard Rudofsky, The Unfashionable Human Body (1971)
An amusing survey of the most user-hostile features of clothing
through the ages. Clothing designers seem to have some strange ideas
about what the human body looks like.
Index

!Kung, 164
3-D modelling, 332–50
3ds Max, 342
Abaoji, 154
Abbott, Edwin, 203
abortion, 165, 201
abstinence, 165, 201
Accademia della Crusca, 135
Acre, 270
Adobe. See Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash
adornment, 234
Aegis, 277
Afghanistan, 276
Africa, 67, 129
Africans, drawing, 311
Against Peace and Freedom, 281
Against Peace and Freedom, 21
aging, 88
agriculture, 58, 86–99, 149, 183, 236
AI, 77, 83, 278
Ain Jalut, 270
Ainu, 126
airbrushing, 288, 290, 318–25
aircraft, 271
aircraft carriers, 143, 282
airships, 242
Akkadians, 92, 141
Albertus Magnus, 198
alchemy, 223, 238, 240, 241
alcohol, 183, 236
Alexander, 246, 251, 256, 260, 265, 267
Alexander, Christopher, 180, 351
Alexander, Jeff, 127
Alexandria, 235
algae, 80, 98
aliens, 71–81, 78, 203, 214, 281, 353
Almea, 11, 29, 30–36, 49, 61, 66, 69, 87, 105, 110, 112, 118, 131, 150, 157, 158–61,
168, 183, 192, 208, 218, 221, 224, 233, 242, 273, 297
almonds, 86
Alpha Centauri, 39
alpha textures, 337
alternative history, 116
Americas, 50, 98, 241
Amerindians, 86, 194
Amis, Kingsley, 116
ammonia, 77
amusements, 187
Anatolia, 106, 134, 141, 174, 249, 250
ancestral environment, 57, 151
androids. See robots
anglicization, 87
animals, 85, 88
Ann and Roger, 23
Antarctica, 281
antibiotics, 194
antimatter, 278
antlers, 78
Apaches, 90, 154
apes, 68, 72, 88
apocalypse, 151
Apoyin, 293
appliances, 82
apprentices, 184
aqueducts, 237
Aquinas, Thomas, 198, 240
Arabs, 93, 142, 154, 162, 247, 264, 266
Arashne, 112, 113
Arcél, 36, 62, 87, 287, 290
arch, 177
architecture, 175–80, 332, 351, 355
arctic, 50, 60
arcuated, 177
area, 43
Ariès, Philippe, 351
Ariosto, Ludovico, 221, 241
Aristotle, 38, 198, 240
Arius, 217
armies, 243–84
armor, 237, 249, 256, 263, 269, 272
arquebus, 240
arsenic, 235
Art Nouveau, 242
Artemisia, 154
artists, 131
ash (tree), 252
Asians, drawing, 308, 311
Asimov, Isaac, 25, 277
ask culture, 182
Assassins of Alamut, 67
Assyria, 91, 256
astronomy, 237
Atanda, 166
atheism, 190, 191, 196
Athens, 91, 97, 130, 153, 251
athletics, 188
atmospheric engine, 51
Attila, 249
Augustine, St., 186
Augustus, 266
Austen, Jane, 22, 242
Australia, 69, 74
autarchy, 128
authority, 216, 241
Autodesk Softimage, 350
automation, 83, 149
avatars, 340, 344
axe, 253, 269
axial tilt, 44
Azande, 166
Babylon, 137, 184, 236
Bach, J.S., 164
Bacon, Roger, 198
Baganda, 131
Bahaiism, 196
Baibars, 270
Baku, 271
Balaclava, 256
ballistae, 238
bandits, 136
Bank of England, 145
banks, 114, 144, 236
Banks, Iain, 47, 81, 83, 146
barbarians, 92
barley, 86
barrel vault, 177
baths, 167, 188
bats, 71, 222
Battlestar Galactica, 283
Baxter, Stephen, 38
bayonet, 258
Bé, 158–61
bear, 89
bedbugs, 156
Bedouin, 181
beer, 236
bees, 157, 165
Beijing, 141
belief systems, 189–217
Bessemer process, 253
Bester, Alfred, 279
Bethesda, 11
betleH, 253
big man, 140, 187
binary stars, 41
biochemistry, 76
biography, 30–36
biology, 65–99
bipedalism, 73
birth control, 154, 164, 194, 201
Bissell, Tom, 127
Black Death, 96, 185, 215
Blade Runner, 13
Blender, 342
blockades, 258
bodies, drawing, 316–18, 324
body plan, 74, 85
Bologna, 240
Bond, James, 190, 222
bonobos, 157
Borneo, 63
Boswell, James, 242
Bourgeon, François, 12, 241, 284, 332
bow, 92, 248, 254
brachiation, 73
brass, 235
Brazil, 194
breasts, 65, 77, 174, 316
breeding, 88
bride-price, 155, 163
bristle worms, 158
Britain, 141, 143, 186, 192, 242, 259, 262
bronze, 146, 235, 237, 253, 263
brushes (Hammer), 346
bubonic plague, 96
Buddhism, 93, 155, 193, 204, 206, 207, 217, 238
buffalo, 89, 298
bugs in robots, 85
buildings, 175–80, 341
Burlew, Rich, 28
Bushmen, 94, 193, 244
buttresses, 177, 179
Byzantines, 264, 266
Caďinas, 21
Caďinorian paganism, 212
calligraphic pens, 285
Calvin (comics), 215
Calvin, John, 129
Cambodia, 174, 185
camels, 93, 143, 256
camera, 330, 333
canals, 134
Cannae, 262, 266
cannibalism, 98
cannons, 240, 242, 257, 258, 261
cantilever, 178
Cáo Cāo, 268
cape, 172
capitalism, 114, 149
caravel, 143
carbon, 77, 253
cardinals, 128
carnivorism, 72, 76, 88, 98
carrack, 143
cartels, 142
Carthage, 117, 128, 133, 251, 262, 266
cartridges, 258
cashmere, 170
castles, 260
catapults, 260
Catholicism, 192, 197, 210, 241
cattle, 88
Caucasus, 271
cavalry. See horses
caves, 71
Celestial Bureaucracy, 215
cellular automata, 203
Chabon, Michael, 116
chainmail, 240, 263, 269
Chang, Fuschia, 330
charcoal, 253, 257
chariots, 246, 255
charity, 194
Charon, 44
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 153, 240
cheetahs, 88
chemistry, 235, 241
Chesterton, G.K., 129, 189
chest-pounding duel, 244
Chìbì, 268
chimpanzees, 156
China, 68, 86, 89, 92, 131, 132, 134, 135, 139, 141, 153, 154, 167, 173, 175, 183, 188,
198, 208, 214, 215, 234, 238, 246, 255, 257, 258, 259, 264, 265, 266, 269, 352, 355
Chomsky, Noam, 127
Christianity, 93, 138, 189, 191, 193, 196, 198, 200, 203, 204, 206, 207, 213, 217, 240
church vs. state, 216
Cimmerians, 255
cities, 114–16, 139, 148, 237, 298, 353
city plan, 297
city-states, 91, 115, 264
civil service exams, 135, 139, 214, 238
Civil War, 263
Clairvaux, 239
Clarke, Arthur C., 282
Clarke, Susannah, 220, 273
class, 147
Claudius, 238
Clausewitz, Carl von, 353
cleanliness, 204, 212
climate, 50–63, 106
clipper, 143
cloak, 254
clock, 235, 240
cloning, 80
cloth, 169
clothing, 153, 169–75, 236, 355
clothing, drawing, 325–29
club fight, 244
coal, 259
cochineal, 173
Cody, John, 329
coins, 134, 141, 147
Cold War, 275
collar, horse, 239
colonies, 142
colony organisms, 80
coloring, 318–25
columns, 177, 179
combined arms, 252
Comins, Neil, 44, 351
command economy, 134, 140
communications, in wartime, 262
communism, 129, 131, 141, 191, 192, 196, 201
compass, 239
composite bow, 254
compressive, 176
Conan, 92, 237
condom, 164
Confederacy, 117
Confucians, 139, 155, 207, 214, 217
conphysics, 38
conscripts, 264
Constantinople, 257
continental drift, 47
controversies, 126, 215
convergent evolution, 71
cooking pots, smashing, 247
Copernicus, Nicholas, 200
copper, 234
copulatory plug, 156
coral, 222
corporations, 83, 84, 136, 145, 150
corruption, 145, 237
corsets, 174, 175
Cortés, Hernán, 96
cosmetics, 222
cosmology, 203, 235
cotton, 256
Count of Years, 9, 113, 288
courtly love, 161
courts, 136–39
courtyards, 179
cow love, 193, 352
crackpots, 196
cranes, 268
crappiness, 11
creating money, 145
creation, 204
creation of gods, 211
creationism, 74, 75
crossbows, 246, 255
crystals, 214
cults, 217
culture, 112, 116–88, 135
culture test, 118–25
Culture, the, 26, 47, 83, 146
cultures, military, 244–52
currents, 53
curses, 194
Cuzei, 9
cyborgs, 82
cycles, historic, 115
D&D, 69, 79, 140, 219, 273
dagger, 254
Dalai Lama, 131
Dalby, Liza, 172, 351
Daoism, 139, 155, 217
Darius, 248
dark ages, 98
dark elves, 71
Darth Vader, 27
Darwin, Charles, 77, 192
day, length, 44
dead, the, 223
Death Star, 273
deception, 247
declines, 151
deer, 89
deforestation, 97, 134
democracy, 130, 265
Demyansk, 271
desert, 56, 57, 76, 176, 244
desertification, 89
Detroit, 115
devils, 211
Dewdney, A.K., 38
Diamond, Jared, 50, 88, 95, 96, 155, 186, 351
diarrhea, 263
Dick, Philip K., 116
Dickens, Charles, 242
dilemmas, moral, 27
discipline, 195, 204, 212, 223
disease, 79, 94, 96, 114, 194, 262
displacements, 346
distillation, 183
diverging plates, 47
diversity, 125
Dixon, Dougal, 12, 75, 81, 352
DNA, 74
docility, 89
dogs, 67
dollar, 147
dolphins, 71, 73
dome, 177
domestication of animals, 88, 236
domestication of plants, 86
donkey, 255
dowry, 155, 163
Dragon Age Origins, 241
dragons, 274, 299
drawing, 300–331, 352
drawing tablet, 286, 300
dreams, 203
drones, insect, 81, 156
drones, robot, 82, 276
dualism, 206
Duane, Diane, 190
Duby, Georges, 351
Dunmer, 152
Dutch, 142, 234
dwarves, 66, 68
Dyson sphere, 46
ears, 75, See pointy ears
Earth, 41, 42, 45, 47, 48, 56
earthquakes, 48
Easley, Thomas, 329
Easter Island, 352
ecological barriers, 50, 56, 106
ecological disaster, 96
economies, 112, 114, 115, 134, 140–51
ecosystems, 74
Eddison, E.R., 205
Edinburgh, 148
education, 183, 212
eeeevil, 67, 127
eggs, 156
Egypt, 88, 90, 134, 141, 170, 174, 183, 188, 237, 255, 259, 260, 263, 270
Einstein, Albert, 280
Elagabalus, 131
electromagnetic pulse, 276
elements, 68, 235
elephants, 88, 256
ellipses, as orbits, 42
elves, 21, 65, 66, 68
embarrassment, 84
emotion, 84
empires, 186
Endajué, 208
England, 130, 146, 147, 167, 188, 234, 239, 241, 256, 257, 269
enterprises, 144
entities, 347
environmental degradation, 90
epicanthic fold, 308, 311
Epirus, 251
Ereláe, 62, 105
Ervëa, 21
estrus, 157
ethics, 207–10
Etoro, 166
Eurasia, 50
Europe, 131, 137, 155, 161, 174, 185, 224, 234, 239, 248, 251, 253, 255, 271, 351
Evangelicals, 210
evangelism, 213
Everett, Daniel, 94, 244
evolution, 72, 75, 236, 352
ewemi, 168
exclusive gods, 197
exile, 215
extended family, 163
externalities, 135
extremophiles, 77
eyeglasses, 240
eyes, drawing, 307
E-Z Fantasy test, 15
Ezičimi, 168
Fabius, 262
faces, drawing, 304–15, 320
fae, 66, 210, 214
Fairbank, John King, 352
faith, 198
Fallout 3, 11
false retreat, 248, 270
falsifiability, 196
families, 139, 161, 163, 213
family business, 144
fascism, 67, 201
feast, treacherous, 244
feasts, 140, 187
felt, 170, 176
female dominance, 36
Ferdinand of Aragon, 105
Ferrel cell, 51, 61
festivals, 212
feudalism, 265
Feynman, Richard, 182, 194
Figaro, 185
figure drawing, 316–18, 324, 329
finance, 145
firefly, 157
fireships, 268, 269
fitted clothing, 172
fjords, 61
flail, 253
Flanders, 115
Flash, 108
Flatland, 203
flatworms, 80
flight, 70, 71, 76, 275
flintlock, 257
foederatii, 133
fog of war, 278
Fonseca, Isabel, 204
foot binding, 175
foraging, 261
Force, the, 273
Forester, C.S., 242
Forster, E.M., 215
Foster, Hal, 241
frames, 108
France, 154, 184, 239, 241, 257, 260
Franklin, Benjamin, 213
Franks, 132
free companies, 67, 185
French Revolution, 174, 192, 214, 264
FTL travel, 151, 282, 283
fundamentalism, 191, 194, 216
fur, 75, 169
furries, 66
future religions, 214
G stars, 39
Gaiman, Neil, 9, 199, 211, 218, 242
galactic core, 41
Galilee, 270
Galileo, 192, 241
galleys, 258, 267
gambling, 187
games, 188, 219
Gamow, George, 38
Gandalf, 30, 127, 218
Gandhi, Mahatma, 174
gangs, 136
García Márquez, Gabriel, 223
garden agriculture, 89, 97, 244, 245
Garry’s Mod, 342
garum, 183
gauntlet, 253
geisha, 173, 187, 351
genetic engineering, 81
Genghis Khan, 266
genitals, 156
genocide, 246
genre, 28
Gentle, Mary, 28
geocentrism, 235, 241
Germany, 107, 174, 262, 271
ghosts, 214
giants (stars), 39
gibbons, 155
GIMP, 107, 286
Gimpel, Jean, 352
girls, drawing, 304–15
glaciation, 61, 95
glaciers, 61
gladiators, 238
glass, 238
globe, CGI, 293
globes, making, 49
Gnostics, 204
go, 188
goblins, 67
God, 75, 197, 210, 240, 241, 354
gods, 211
gold, 147, 235
Golden Ages, 204
Goldenweiser, A.A., 131
golems, 275
gorillas, 155
Gothic, 177
goths, 71
government, 89, 114, 127–36, 144, 149
grains, 56, 87, 90
Graves, Robert, 238
gravity, 38, 43
Great Man theory, 112
Great Wall, 247, 260
Greeks, 91, 106, 107, 115, 130, 134, 141, 142, 164, 166, 167, 173, 174, 177, 187, 198,
211, 234, 249, 252, 263, 353
Green Party, 66
Greenland, 60, 151, 352
gridfire, 146
Groote, Gerard, 141
guerrillas, 247
guess culture, 182
guilds, 136, 187
Gulf Stream, 53
gunpowder, 146, 239, 240, 248, 253, 257, 260, 278
Gustavus Adolphus, 133
Gutenberg, Johannes, 234
Gypsies, 204
habitable zone, 40
habitat, 70
Hadley cell, 51, 57, 61
Hadrian’s Wall, 260
hair, drawing, 306, 311, 323
Hamm, Jack, 307, 316, 329, 352
Hammer, 345–50
Hammurabi, 137, 153, 184
Hàn, 135, 183, 268
Hán Xìn, 247
Hannibal, 117, 251, 262, 266
Harold, 269
Harris, Marvin, 94, 154, 193, 207, 245, 352
Hastings, 269
Hausa, 154
Hawaii, 48, 69
heads-up displays, 278
heddle, 170
Heep, Uriah, 186
Heinlein, Robert, 27, 283
helicopters, 263
hemp, 173
herblore, 222
herds, 89
hermaphroditism, 80
Herodotus, 353
heroic warfare, 246
hierarchy, 185
hijra, 168
Hinduism, 193, 204, 211, 352
hints, 182
hip-hop, 173
hippos, 89
Hiroshima, 275
Hispanics, drawing, 312
historical atlas, 105, 354
historical chart, 103
historical fiction, 29
historicism, 204
history, 100–111
Hite, Kenneth, 116
Hitler, Adolf, 116, 129, 271
Ho Chi Minh, 247
hobbits, 22, 28, 86
Hoffer, Eric, 214
Holmes, Sherlock, 167
Homer, 237
homosexuality, 165–68
horn, 254
Hornblower, Horatio, 242
Hornby, Nick, 22
horse Indians, 93
horses, 56, 92, 142, 236, 246, 248, 253, 255, 259
horseshoe arch, 177
Howard, Robert, 237
Huayna Capac, 96
Húběi, 268
Hulagu, 270
humanoids, 65, 71
Hume, David, 191
humid continental, 56, 59
humors, 68
Hungary, 249
hunter-gatherers, 94, 130, 145, 153, 154, 243, 244
huts, 175
hybridization, 69
hydraulic empires, 89
hydrothermal vents, 77
hyenas, 88, 158
hyperspace, 135
ice ages, 60
ice caps, 56, 60
ideology, 129, 214, 264
igloo, 176
iliu, 150, 273
illusions, 188
illustrations, 300–331
Illustrator, 107, 286, 295, 298
impatience, 62
imperialism, 281
implausibility, 13
In the Land of Babblers, 9
Incas, 134, 142, 256, 258
Incatena, 21, 281
incest, 161
India, 142, 146, 154, 168, 174, 188, 238, 253, 257
indirection, 182
individualism, 150, 215
industrial revolution, 153, 236, 239, 242, 352
infanticide, 165, 245
information warfare, 278
infravision, 70
Inkscape, 107
innovation, 114
Inquisition, 67, 197
insects, 75
instinct, 84
insurgency, 280
intelligence, 72, 81
intelligence, military, 247
intelligent life, 65–85
interest, 200
interglacial, 60, 95
Internet, 235
interoperability, 85
intimacy gradient, 180
iqta, 265
Iran, 129, 277
Iraq, 252, 276, 278
iron, 146, 178, 235, 237, 252, 253, 263
irrigation, 89, 137
Isaiah, 174
Islam, 183, 193, 214, 234, 264, 265, 270, 352, 354
Israelites, 237
Italy, 115, 264
Jacobs, Jane, 114, 151, 353
Jade Empire, 11, 239
jade, countenances of linked, 168
Janissaries, 130
Japan, 132, 167, 172, 173, 182, 186, 187, 188, 239, 248, 259
javelin, 252, 255
jeans, 173
Jedi, 273
Jesus, 190, 192, 198
jet streams, 52
Jews, 126, 162, 167, 185, 187, 212, 352
Jiangling, 268
Jippirasti, 209
Joan of Arc, 154
Joausi, 100–111
Johnson, Samuel, 242
Jones, Archer, 353
Journey to the West, 239
Jubilee, 200
Judaism, 193, 214
Judson, Olivia, 158, 353
jungle planet, 51
Jupiter, 40, 52, 82, 235
jurisconsult, 138
Justinian, 133, 138
K strategy, 72
Keegan, John, 243, 248, 260, 353
Kepler, Johannes, 42
Keraki, 166
Kevlar, 264
Khan, 198
Khitans, 93, 154
kimono, 171, 172
King, Martin Luther, 192
Kinsey, Alfred, 166
Kiraeku, 112, 113
Kitbuga, 270
Klingons, 127, 253
knights, 240, 263
Köppen classification, 54–60
Koreans, 185
ktuvoks, 21, 157, 192, 273
Kublai Khan, 93, 249
Lacroix, Claude, 12, 284
Lafferty, R.A., 242
lakes, 61
Lakoff, George, 207
lance, 252, 269
language, 7, 73, 84, 111, 114, 135, 214, 355
lasers, 277
Latin America, 166
laurisilvan, 59, 62
Lavoisier, Antoine, 235, 241
law, 136–39, 200
Laws of Robotics, 277
layers, 107, 115, 286, 300
Lé, 30–36, 87, 158–61
lead, 222
leather, 169
Lebanon, 97
Lechaeum, 252
Legalists, 139
legion, 251, 252, 263
Leiber, Fritz, 219
leprosy, 200
lesbianism, 157, 165–68
Leviticus, 167
Lewis, Bernard, 354
Lewis, C.S., 66, 185, 187, 189, 199, 204, 241, 354
life support, 135, 180
lifespans, 70
lifetime, stellar, 40
Light Brigade, 256
Lightwave 3D, 342
limbs, 76
lime, 169
Linden Lab, 342
linen, 170
lintel, 176
lions, 88, 157, 274
literacy, 183, 234
littoral, 106
Liú Bèi, 268
Livingston, Chris, 26
lizards, 80
Lloyd’s of London, 144
Lob, Jacques, 211
logistics, 143, 249, 261
loincloth, 171
lolcats, 85
London, 148
longaevi, 66
longbow, 256
loom, 170
Lord of the Rings, 127, 190, 218, 240, 260
lost causes, 117
Lovecraft, H.P., 242
Lowell City, 26
Luftwaffe, 271
luminosity, 39
Luó Guànzhōng, 269
Lurie, Alison, 169, 354
Luther, Martin, 116
Lydia, 141
lye, 169
M stars, 40
mace, 253, 256
Macedon, 252
Machiavelli, 264
machismo, 93
Magellanic, 59, 62
magic, 135, 188, 218–23, 272, 282
Maginot Line, 260
magnetism, 43
magnitude, 39
maize, 50, 86
males, drawing, 314, 318
Malory, Thomas, 241
Malthus, Thomas, 90, 95, 149
Mamet, David, 22
mamluks, 266, 270
management, 150
Manchu, 93, 175, 249
manipulators, 73, 275
mantises, 158
manufacturing, 149
manure, 149
Mao Zedong, 247, 264
Maori, 260
maps, 49, 50, 102, 285–99
Marchetti, Cesare, 299
Marcus Aurelius, 128
marine climate, 59, 62
marine species, 73, 275
Maring, 245, 263
market economy, 141, 237
markets, 134
marriage, 161
Mars, 45, 187
Marvel, 273
Mass Effect, 11, 283
mass movements, 214
mass, planetary, 43
matchlock, 257
matriarchy, 158–61
matrilineality, 162
matrilocality, 162
matter duplicators, 279
matter, attitudes toward, 204
Maya, 97, 342, 352
McCloud, Scott, 354
McEvedy, Colin, 90, 105, 354
McMansions, 179
meals, 182
meatbags, 84, 202
meditation, 195
Mediterranean, 56, 58, 97, 258
mega-habitats, 46
Megara, 91
memes, 195
mercenaries, 265
Mercury, 45
meshes, 340
Mesoamerica, 86
Mesopotamia, 141, 237, 256, 270
messengers, 134, 142, 262
metallurgy, 234
Metaverse, 342
methane, 77
Methodism, 241
Mexico, 50, 173
Mézières, Jean-Claude, 332
Michelangelo, 116, 167
micro-organisms, 241
Microsoft Paint, 107, 286
Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 48
Middle Ages, 92, 131, 137, 145, 153, 161, 173, 184, 198, 205, 224, 239, 253, 269,
352, 354
Middle Earth, 140, 224
Miles, Jack, 354
military cultures, 244–52
militia, 264
millet, 86
mills, 235, 237, 239
Minds, 83, 84
mineral acids, 240
mines, 234, 235, 239
Míng, 193
mining walls, 261, 274
minorities, 126, 145
misery, 152, 184
Miyazaki, Hayao, 242
moat, 260
Moche, 167
modelling programs, 342
modelling, 3-D, 332–50
models, 329
models (Hammer), 346
Moebius, 332
moieties, 161
moles, 274
Möngke, 270
Mongols, 92, 97, 249, 259, 266, 270
mongongo nuts, 95
Monkey King, 85
monks, 213
monoculture, 125
monsoon, 53, 56, 57, 193
moons, 44, 45, 351
Moore, Alan, 116, 242
moraines, 61
morality, 27, 207–10
Moravec, Hans, 83
Morgan, 21
Mormonism, 214
Moscow, 259, 264
Moses, 200
Moso, 161, 162
Mote, F.W., 355
Moties, 72
Mounia, 100–111
mountains, 56, 64, 289
moveable type, 239
Muhammad, 93, 192, 264
Müller, Claudia, 355
multiple stars, 41
Múr, 30–36
muskets, 242, 248, 257
mythology, 112
myths, 197, 204
Nagashino, 248
naming language, 111
Nan, 287
nanobots, 98
nanoduplicators, 281
nanotechnology, 279
Napoléon, 116, 129, 265
Narnia, 75, 85, 189, 241, 243
Native Americans, 236
needle, 169
negative space, 180, 302
Neo-Confucians, 153
neolocality, 162
neoteny, 72
Nero, 131
Neverwhere, 9
New Guinea, 186, 245
New Testament, 200, 238
Newton, Isaac, 241
niche specialization, 69
Nicholas I, 259
night goggles, 278
Nineveh, 298
Niven, Larry, 46, 72, 74, 221
Nobunaga, Oda, 248
nomads, 92, 106, 153, 170, 176, 237, 238, 247, 248, 264, 270, 355
Normans, 269
north, 44
North Korea, 276
not enough planets, 48, 51, 69
Not the Net, 50
nothing fights, 245
Novazema, 100–111
Nubia, 260
nuclear weapons, 248, 275, 279
nudity, 174
nursing, 94, 158, 164, 165
nutrition, 86
O’Gorman, James F., 355
oaks, 87, 169
obi, 172
Objectivism, 27
oblique views, drawing, 312
Oblivion, 11, 67, 113, 152, 219, 241, 272
obsessive-compulsives, 212
Occam, William of, 198
oceanic planets, 61
Odysseus, 186, 211
officials, 132
ogee arch, 177
ogres, 275
oil, 149, 259, 271
oil tanker, 143
Ojibwe, 168
Okura, 21
Old Testament, 133, 213, 237, 354
oligarchy, 129
Ombuto, 100–111
omens, 246
omnivorism, 72
onager, 255
orbitals (habitats), 47
orbits, 42
orcs, 26, 67, 140, 211, 302
ordeals, 137, 204
Order of the Stick, 28
Ottomans, 188, 249
outline history, 10
overexplaining, 22
overhunting, 98
oxen, 143, 255, 261
Oxford, 240
Pakistan, 276
Palestine, 270
Pangea, 48
pants, 329
panzers, 271
paper, 239
paper money, 239
parabolic arch, 177
parasites, 78, 94
parental investment, 72
Paris, 240
Patagonia, 52, 60
paterfamilias, 164
patrilineality, 162
patrilocality, 162
Paul, St., 198
peas, 86
pell, 88
Peloponnese, 251
peltasts, 252
penguin, 157
penis fencing, 80
penis, detachable, 156
pens, 285
Pentecostals, 241
Pépin, 132
peppers, 86
perfectionism, 63
perfume, 185
permafrost, 60
Persians, 93, 107, 116, 134, 142, 248, 249, 255, 260, 263, 267, 353
personal space, 181
Peru, 50
pet peeve, 26, 51, 65
phalanx, 250, 252, 264
Philistines, 142
phlogiston, 38
Photoshop, 107, 286, 304, 320, 333, 337
photosynthesis, 98
Pichard, Georges, 211
pictures, 300–331
pigs, 56, 193, 245, 352
pike, 252, 256
Pilgrims, 96
pilum, 252
pincer movement, 271
pipe-weed, 127
Pirahã, 94, 187, 244
pistols, 242
Pizarro, Francisco, 96
plague, 90
Plains Indians, 176
planets, 42–50, 76
Planiverse, 38
plasma, 278
plate armor, 240, 253, 263
plate tectonics, 47
Plato, 183
plesiosaurs, 71
plow, 234, 239
Pluto, 44
Plymouth, 96
pneumonia, 263
pointy ears, 21, 65, 66
pointy hats, 172, 239
Poland, 256
polar cell, 51
polar region. See Arctic
polarity switches, 44
politeness, 181–82
Polo, Marco, 249
polyandry, 163
polygamy, 163
polygons, 340
polygyny, 163
poncho, 171
Pope, 265
population, 78, 90, 245
population density, 78, 92, 98
porcelain, 239
porcupine, 156
Portuguese, 142, 234
posts, 176
potatoes, 86
Potter, Harry, 219, 242
pottery, 234
Powers, Tim, 242
prayer, 212
precursor race, 74
predators, 78, 86, 244, 274
pregnancy, 164, 194, 245
prey, 78, 86
prices, 147
Pride and Prejudice, 22
priests, 213
primogeniture, 128, 162
prims, 332, 339, 340
printing, 234, 239, 241
productivity, 96, 148
profile, drawing, 308
prograde, 45
programming, 82
programs, for modelling, 342
prophecy, 212
proportion, 301
prostitution, 187
Protestants, 241
Provence, 187
proxy wars, 276
pseudo-phallus, 158
psychology, 112
pterosaurs, 71, 274
Ptolemy, 241
public works, 134
Pullman, Philip, 28, 190
punk rock, 215
Pyrrhus, 251
Qadesh, 255
Qadisiyya, 93
qí, 247
Qīng, 175
Quakers, 212, 241
quest, 25
Qutuz, 270
r strategy, 72
R.U.R., 81
races, drawing, 310
racism, 68, 200, 351
radio, 262, 271, 278
rage, 247
raids, 244, 245
railroads, 145, 262
rain forest, 56, 57, 60, 62, 175
rainfall agriculture, 90
rainshadow, 52, 61
ramming, 258
rams, battering, 260, 268
Rand, Ayn, 27
randomness, 129
rapier, 254
rasputitsa, 259
rats, 352
rawhide, 169
reading list, 351–55
realism, 29
reason, 84
rebellion, 186, 192
Red Cliffs, 268
red dwarfs, 280
redistribution, 140, 187
Reepicheep, 243
Reform Bill, 130
Reformation, 116
refuge, 260
regulars, 265
reincarnation, 206
religion, 135, 145, 155, 184, 189–217, 236–42, 354
Renaissance, 114
renunciation, 213
republics, 114
reserves, 145
restraints on trade, 142
resurrection, 206
Revolutionary War, 154
rice, 56, 86, 89, 146
rifle, 257, 264
rift valley, 47
ringworlds, 46, 135
Riper, Paul van, 280
ritual, 208, 245, 250
rivers, 63, 106
roads, 134
roadside bombs, 276, 280
Robb, Graham, 125
robber barons, 150
robes, 173, 198
robots, 25, 81–85, 149, 276
Roger and Ann, 23
Romania, 271
Rome, 91, 107, 117, 128, 130, 133, 134, 138, 141, 151, 153, 164, 166, 167, 173, 177,
181, 183, 187, 193, 198, 200, 234, 237, 239, 250, 251, 260, 261, 262, 263, 265, 266,
298, 351
roofs, 176
Rosenfelder, Mark, 355
rotation, 44
routs, 245
Rowling, J.K., 219, 220, 242, 273
RPG, 11
Ruby, Erik A., 329
Rucker, Rudy, 203
Rudofsky, Bernard, 175, 355
Rwanda, 90
Ryan, Andrew, 27
sacrifice, 212
Saddam Hussein, 280
safety, 114
Sahara, 62
saints, 210
salamander, 157
Salamis, 249
salinization, 97
saltpeter, 146, 257
Sambia, 166
Sampson, Deborah, 154
samurai, 248, 258, 265
Samwise, 330
San Andreas fault, 47
sandal, 175
sapients, 65–85
Sapolsky, Robert, 212
sarissa, 252
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 116
Satan, 190
satyrs, 210
Saudi Arabia, 196
Saul, 174
Sauron, 68, 218
savanna, 56, 57, 73, 75
Sayers, Dorothy L., 153, 190
scaleable jobs, 146
scarcity, 95, 145
Schiffer, Michael, 116
schools, 135, 183
Schuiten, François, 332
science, 216, 234
scientific method, 202
Scotland, 142
scouts, 262
scriptures, 213
Scyths, 154, 248, 255
seamless textures, 334
Second Life, 342–45
senet, 188
senses, 70
Serafini, Luigi, 12
service sector, 149
sex, 140–68, 193, 201, 353
sexbots, 83
sexes, different, 80
sexes, multiple, 79
sexism, 152, 244
sexual dimorphism, 155
sexual selection, 77
shading, 318–25
Shakespeare, William, 147, 188, 240
sharks, 71
Shi‘a, 192, 216
shield, 250
ships, 143, 242, 249, 258, 268
Shirow, Masamune, 149
shoes, 175
Shǔ Hàn, 268
Shubin, Neil, 74
Shuppan, Elte, 329
Siberia, 60
sidereal day, 44
siege, 261, 267
silicon, 77
silk, 146, 170, 239
silphium, 164
silver, 147, 235
sims, 342
simultaneous inventions, 225
sin, 207–10
Singer, P.W., 277
single climate planets, 51
single-adjective cultures, 127
Singman, Jeffrey, 147
sinusoidal, 294–97
size, men vs. women, 155
size, of animals, 86
size, of armies, 246, 266
size, of cities, 91
size, of grains, 86
size, of legs, 76
size, of planets, 42
size, of sapients, 73
skins, 169, 176
skirt, 172, 328
Skouras, 118–25
Skyrim, 113, 241
slavery, 215
slaves, 137, 138, 174, 185, 192, 200, 266
slime molds, 79
slug, space, 79
smallpox, 241
Smith, Adam, 131, 134, 141, 148, 149, 150, 241, 353
Smith, Jeff, 241
snails, 173
Softimage, 342, 350
solar day, 45
soldiers, 243–84
Solon, 97, 134
Sòng, 266
soul, 205
Soviets, 271, 277
soybeans, 86
space colonization, 281
space habitats, 135, 146, 150, 215
spaceships, 47, 282
Spain, 273
Spanish, 162, 256
Sparta, 153, 251, 252, 265
spear, 249, 252, 269
speed of light, 280
speed of transport, 142–44
Spenser, Edmund, 241
sperm, 156
sperm packet, 157
sphere, drawing, 318
spiders, 158
spinning, 170, 240
spinning wheel, 170
spirits, 14, 203, 205
spoon worm, 158
spybots, 136
squash, 86
squirrels, 156
Stalingrad, 271
Stalinists, 67
standard class, 130
Standard Fantasy Kingdom, 15, 125
standing army, 264
Stapledon, Olaf, 81
Star Trek, 74, 283
Star Wars, 12, 79, 224, 242, 273
stars, 38–42
steam, 170, 235, 238, 241
steampunk, 242
steamships, 143, 259, 262
steel, 239, 253
stellar class, 38
stellar flares, 41
Stephenson, Neal, 82, 342
steppe, 56, 58, 60, 92, 153, 249, 255
stereo vision, 72
stink, 184
stirrup, 256
stone, 151, 176
storytelling, 21–37, 117, 126, 197
strategic defenses, 260
strongholds, 114, 260
Stross, Charlie, 150, 281
subcreation, 190
subcultures, 126
submarine, 143
subtropical, 56, 58
suicide bombers, 280
suits, 173
sulfur, 257
Sumer, 92, 97, 144, 183, 260
sumptuary laws, 173
Sūn Quán, 268
Sun Tzu, 246, 264
Sunni, 216
superheroes, 116, 326
Superman, 273
supernatural beings, 210, 218
Süskind, Patrick, 184
suspension, 178
sustenance, 86–99
Sweden, 133, 253
swimsuit, 326
Swiss, 256, 265
sword, 253–54, 263, 269
symmetry, 179
synchronous rotation, 45
synthetic fibers, 170
tablet. See drawing tablet
taiga, 56, 59, 60
Tale of Genji, 239
Taleb, Nassim, 146
taming, 88
Táng, 89, 134, 139, 141, 173, 185, 222, 238, 247
tanks, 143, 262
tannery, 184
Tannhauser Gate, 13
tanning, 169, 239
Tau Ceti, 39
taxes, 133
technical pens, 285
technology, 90, 219, 224–42
technophilia, 85, 150, 201
teddy bears, 199
teenagers, 164
telegraph, 145, 262
telekinesis, 220
telepathy, 279
telephones, 262
teleportation, 279, 299
temperate zone, 50, 87
Tenochtitlán, 96
tensile, 176
tentacles, 70, 75, 76
Tepper, Sheri, 161
terraforming, 135
terrain (for war), 259
terrain, drawing, 287
terrain, modelling, 340, 345, 346
testudo, 263
textures, 333–40
theater, 187
theocracy, 129
Third World, 265
Three Kingdoms, 268
Thuggee cult, 67
Tibet, 131
tidal locking, 41
time travel, 279
time, attitudes toward, 181
Timur, 92, 248
tin, 146, 235
Titan, 77
Tlingit, 161
tobacco, 86
toga, 171
Tokyo, 91
Tolkien, J.R.R., 9, 22, 26, 66, 68, 86, 127, 190, 240, 290
tomatoes, 86
totalitarianism, 149
tournaments, 263, 279
trabeated, 176
traction animals, 88
trade winds, 52
transparencies, 337
transportation, 114
traumatic insemination, 156
travel, 142–44
trench warfare, 262, 278
trireme, 143
Trojan War, 246
tropics, 50, 54, 57, 87, 89
Troy, 107
truss, 177, 179
tuataras, 74
tuberculosis, 263
Tuchman, Barbara, 185, 240
tundra, 56, 60
Turkestan, 247
Turks, 93, 257, 264, 266
Twelve Tables, 138
two-spirits, 168
Tyre, 267
Tyrian purple, 173
Uganda, 129, 131, 136
UI, 82
ultimogeniture, 162
universities, 184, 198, 240
unobtainium, 46, 278
Uranus, 44
urbanization, 91
urine hosing, 156
USA, 131, 141, 143, 145, 150, 151, 192, 199, 241, 252, 262, 266, 275
USSR, 154
utopia, 146
vaccines, 241
Vader, Darth, 27
Valve, 345
vampires, 211
velociraptors, 74
Venus, 41, 44, 45, 52, 82
Verduria, 180, 298
vermin, 86, 114, 176
Veyne, Paul, 138
Victorians, 153, 167, 175, 207, 242
vicuña, 170
video games, 12
Vietnam, 154, 247, 263
Vikings, 142, 253
Vilcaconga, 256
virginity, 155
vision, 72, 73, 76
Vitruvius, 355
volcanoes, 47
voussoirs, 177
Wacom, 286
wages, 147
war, 78, 92, 94, 114, 133, 183, 236–42, 243–84, 353
warlike cultures, 127
warlords, 129
water, 77
Waterloo, 116
Watson, John, 167
weapon, 252–59
weaving, 170
Wellington, Duke of, 273
Wells, H.G., 81, 215
westerlies, 52
wheat, 86
Wife of Bath, 153
wikis, 11
William the Conqueror, 269
willow, 176
winds, 53, 61
wine, 236
Wise, Arthur, 253
witches, 353
Wittfogel, Karl, 89
wizards, 218
women, 137, 140–68
wonder, 195
wood, 176
Wookieepedia, 11
wool, 115, 170
work week, 94
World of Warcraft, 241
World War I, 262, 263, 278
World War II, 214, 252, 262, 266, 271, 278, 283
worship, 195, 212
writing, 236
Wú, 268
wuxia, 223, 239
xenophobia, 186
XSI Mod Tool, 350
Xuánzàng, 238
yaks, 25
Yangtze, 268
Yanomamö, 94, 165, 176, 181, 244
year, calculating, 42
Yellow River, 97
Yemaya, 211
Yingtian, 154
Yoda, 273
Yuán, 198
yurt, 176
zeal, 196, 214, 241, 251, 264
zebras, 88, 89
Zelazny, Roger, 211
zhèng, 247
Zhèng Hé, 258
Zhū Xī, 153, 214
Zhū Yuánzhāng, 193
zinc, 235
Zinn, Howard, 127
zombies, 68
zoom, 303
Zoroastrians, 126
zygotes, 79

[1] This section assumes that “north” is the pole that revolves counter-
clockwise (p. 44), which makes “east” where the sun rises.