Worldbuilding Part 11: Lessons from History

I’m shocked (shocked, I say) that I had two more of these entries come to me, but here we are. Today, we’re diving into some real-world history. Okay, we’ll be wading into the shallows (shal-al-al-al-ows) of real-world history. But it’s still something. 

A warning, though: writers have gotten into trouble by relying too much on history for their setting material, so I want to start with this... check yourself before you wreck yourself. Actual history can provide many opportunities for ideas to help with worldbuilding, but you want to make sure to hew as far away from racist tropes or cultural appropriation as you can.

For example, I’ve long been fascinated by the idea that the Chinese at one point had the greatest armada in the world, and then sunk it to the bottom of the ocean. That’s just boss level. So, I borrowed that idea for what the Gallan did with their own starships. The Gallan are not the historical Chinese. The motivations for the event were different. I’m not trying in any way to cast their culture in this role. I just took the historical event and ran with it.

For the Mirdan Rimewatchers, it’s been a little trickier. I work with Native American students, and I have more personal knowledge of Indigenous cultures and some of the atrocities they have experienced just based on where I live and who I’ve met, so that has crept into my setting. The Mirdan Rimewatchers have been subjected to an aggressive colonizer from elsewhere. They have sacred creatures and a sacred river. They consider the lands being infringed upon theirs by birthright. These are historical patterns. I am comfortable including them in the game. When it comes to the specific responses of the Mirdan Rimewatchers, or specific events in which they are involved, I’m going to use my imagination and my knowledge of characters rather than specific historical events to explore this further. I think if I was to include the idea of schools where Mirdan were forced to abandon their culture, I’m wading into very dangerous waters. If I gave them specific dances or religious observations that are based on real-world belief systems, I’m treading into unintended racism by distilling a genuine, complex culture to a few rough brush strokes.

I read an article the other day that said, in effect, we’ve had enough cis white men creating stories in sci-fi worlds, and we should stop supporting them and support other voices. As a cis white man, I guess I saw that as a little hurtful, but also completely understandable. People who look and sound like me have shaped the collective narrative for a predominant part of history, and maybe we should be talking less and listening more. However, as an individual I am a creative person who wants to make stuff. I can be responsible in that process so at least I can follow the medical practice of ‘do no harm’. Maybe I’m not in a position to really push the collective narrative forward, but that doesn’t mean I will be pushing it backwards by default - and the first step of that comes with actively building awareness of what I’m putting in my setting, and where I got it from.