A little bit of a mini rant here.
When people here about the lower life expectancies in the past, they tend to think that everyone died off by fifty. I have even heard women say that menopause is not natural and only occurs because we are 'living too long'.
Here's the truth...and this is important for fantasy writers to consider.
IF you survived early childhood, IF there was not a plague and IF you did not fall off a horse or experience some similar fatal accident, then you had a good chance of living to at least seventy. Most advances in geriatric medicine improve the quality of life for the elderly and somewhat increase the chances of somebody who reaches seventy making it to ninety or even a hundred.
It's not unrealistic to have a guy who's a hundred in your fantasy novel. It would be rare and it would be remarked upon, but it would happen.
Here's another thing to consider. In ancient Egypt the life expectancy of peasants was actually longer than that of the upper classes. Why? Because the upper classes were too well fed. The pharoah Hatshepsut most likely died of complications of diabetes. Something else to consider when world-building. Do your priests get too much rich food making them all fat? It's an odd reversal of today's society, where obesity is more common amongst poor people, caused by poor quality food and lack of free time to exercise.
Obviously, you also need to consider the medical technology available...and with magic, you can do all kinds of weird things.
But no. Everyone was not dead by fifty in any human society we know of. That simply did not happen. The statistics tell very little of the story.
That's always bugged me in fantasy stories especially, yes. Always have to consider the presence of magic in your story when dealing with medicine, weapons, or any other element of the world. We commonly see fantasy stories set in "X time period, but magic is real." That never /quite/ works for me, because the development of our culture would be significantly change by the presence of magic--depending on what that magic was, of course.
ReplyDeleteStories which just say something like "vampires are real" can work, for instance...if they aren't super-common, it's certainly feasible that the world would develop along the same lines. And, of course, if they're shadowy enough, who is to say that there couldn't be some lurking in our shadows? ^_^
But if we make magic a big, powerful, common thing, we see major points of potential difference. For instance, let's take the gun. When first created, guns were unreliable and slow to reload, not to mention loud. Humanity stuck with guns because they were convinced they'd be able to eventually outperform other ranged weapons such as bows or crossbows in particular situations, and nowadays we have quick-firing, quick-reloading, accurate, and even (somewhat) quieter guns.
If I could raise my hand and shoot a magic death bolt that blows a person apart, though, I don't need a gun. The more people there are that can do that, the less likely guns ever got past that initial stage. Muskets look pretty unimpressive when compared to a moderately competent mage in most fantasy stories. So, if you want to do "it's the modern world, but with magic" for weaponry, you'd necessarily have to justify the presence of modern firearms--why did people bother with their development when they had a good option in magic?
Easy enough to justify in some stories--if magic is ceremonial in nature, you can't use it fast and the speed advantage is taken away. Or, if only a few can use magic, then the masses would still want a good weapon of their own. But in others...well, if everyone and their mother can fling a fireball, why did guns ever come about?
Not necessarily the best example as I don't honestly recall that one being used too badly in most cases, but it was what came to mind. :-P
It depends.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best ways to handle 'real world plus magic' is to make your magic subtle. Magic does not have to equate to throwing fireballs and death bolts around.
There are many different ways to do magic, ranging from the subtle and ambiguous, leaving the characters and even the reader wondering if magic was really there, to magic as a substitute for science with, yes, fireballs everywhere.
The trick is to find the right kind of magic for your story. (And this digresses majorly from medicine, but eh).
I think a mix of ceremonial, time-consuming magic and scarcity works well. If magic-capable people are 1 in 10,000 of your population and trained, skilled, mages are something like 1 in 100,000 or even less common, then science may well develop along paths close enough as to not matter. I've seen various authors even go so far as to imply that some of the greatest "scientists" were actually wizards dabbling in science as a "day job" or to hide out from problematic religious organizations.
ReplyDeleteHaving those period Salem witch trials or Inquisitions also keeps wizards from being too overt in their arts. Yes, I can cast a fireball today. But that won't prevent the mob from overrunning my home. Or from killing my kids. OR stop an unseen arrow from an inquisitor. Or from making me murder them in self-defense-- something I'm not keen to do!
There are also possibly "police" within wizard societies to prevent wizards from harming others with magic or other such rules, in part to keep evil wizards at bay, partly to prevent the non-wizard population from going all crazy-wizard-culling on them.
Jim Butcher's Dresden Files universe does an excellent job of this, I think.
I really need to read the Dresden Files *glances at her to be read stack*.
ReplyDeleteEventually.