This last weekend I had a great time at Cosine Comic-con. I was on several panels as both participant and moderator and sat in on a number of great discussions. As always, I try to record some of the panels that I think might be helpful for writing or a good resource for people. You can find the recording of, Adding Diversity to your Writing, below. This panel included myself and the following panelists:
Betsy Dornbusch writes epic fantasy, and has dabbled in science fiction, thrillers, and erotica. Her short fiction has appeared in over twenty magazines and anthologies, and she’s the author of three novellas. Her first fantasy novel came out in 2012 and her latest trilogy, Books of the Seven Eyes, wrapped up with Enemy in 2017. The Silver Scar, a standalone future fantasy novel, was called “a spellbinding saga” by Publisher’s Weekly.
Thea Hutcheson explores far away lands full of magic and science with one hand holding hope and the other full of wonder while she burns up pages with lust, leather, and latex, brimming over with juicy bits. She lives in an economically depressed, unscenic, nearly historic small city in Colorado. She is a factotum when she is filling the time between bouts at the computer.
Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, The Death of the Necromancer, the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries series, media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, and Locus Awards, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her books have been published in twenty-two languages.
Recently, the editor of Anthropology News reached out to me and asked me if I would contribute an article for their fall magazine. The result was How to Build A Complex Character With Anthropology. I was really honored to be a part of AAA news since I’ve been reading and engaging with their content for a number of years.
A few weeks ago, my co-author Kyra Wellstrom and I recorded an episode with Indie Book Talk. The podcast episode was a lot of fun. We talked about worldbuilding, anthropology, and writing more generally. The episode is on the shorter side (only 24 minutes) so it’s a great discussion of the lot of the things we do in a quick and interesting episode. The episode came out this morning!
I’m an avid gamer and science fiction author in addition to being an anthropologist. So for me, worldbuilding is everything. A bad worldbuild immediately turns me off to games, and I know that as gamers become more sophisticated, many people are feeling the same. First of all, some of you may be asking, Just what is Anthropology? Well, for a quick answer, it’s the study of humans and cultures. Anthropologists like myself spend years studying culture, identity, and cultural systems. We also have a unique approach that not only helps with building a fictional world but is vital for creating a realistic and immersive world system. (For more on what Anthropology is, check out my YouTube series Anthropology in 10 minutes or Less)
Below are a few reasons an Anthropologist (or at least some anthropology) could augment the quality of your game and the experience of your gamers.
1. Holism.
The concept of Holism is a vital component in anthropology and is one of the three elements of Anthropology that make it unique from all other social sciences. Holism is the very real and applicable concept, that culture and identity are an integrated system, and that when you change one thing, it’s going to change everything. Think of the famous chaos theory concept, the Butterfly Effect, that the smallest changes can have a massive and unpredictable ripple effect outward.
What does this mean? Well, your fictional economic system, your family life, your political system, your religion, your ethnic system, your culture’s attitudes towards death, their biology, their environment, the kinds of things that they make, and more, are all deeply interrelated and connected. So when you’re building a fictional world, it’s important to consider these relationships and how they all relate to systems of power, identity, freedom, oppression, and so on. It sounds like a lot doesn’t it? It is. But it’s also why Anthropologists are essentially jacks of all trades. Our job is to understand how these systems operate and change. We look at the big picture of how societies operate as well as how biology and the environment impact us. Ultimately, culture is an adaptation to biological, environmental, and social forces. A holistic approach helps us understand those relationships.
2. More Immersive and Realistic Interactions and Game Changes
Creating a fictional world in game, film, or written form is a massive undertaking, and for gaming and other interactive mediums, considering culture can absolutely make or break a game. It doesn’t mean you have to get worldbuilding perfect, (very few games around have really truly holistic worlds but there are more with each passing year) but, it will also help you to think about the causes, and consequences of the actions of not only the NPC’s but the characters as well. Think about how much more interesting the choices in your games can be for characters if, their actions and choices early game create ongoing cultural changes. Imagine if allying with an NPC early in a game could have real, culture-wide consequences that ripple outward in interesting and meaningful ways (Not just who you get to be friends with later) What would look like? Well, that’s where an anthropologist could come in. We have more then a century of research on what culture changes looks like and how it manifests. For example, when I recently consulted for a major tech company, we talked about how the 1918 pandemic shifted our standards of beauty and made things like tanning popular, and altered our architecture to include more sunlight and open spaces in our buildings in the United States.
3. Anthropologists Are Intercultural Communicators
Our job as anthropologists is not only to study and understand cultural systems but to also act as intercultural communicators. We help different kinds of cultures and subcultures communicate and work together. It’s also why so many tech companies these days hire UX and Design Anthropologists because we understand elements of human behavior that a lot of other people miss. Anthropologists study human behavior and cultural trends and how people experience the world across cultures. So if you want to release an app in India, or China, or Germany, they will necessarily require different cultural considerations. Within a game with diverse populations, towns, and political factions, this becomes vital.
Remember that potential change I was just talking about early game as a potentially major change agent in this hypothetical game world? Your choice of who you align with or interact within the real world can have some hefty political ramifications. Early on in my field research experiences, I learned that not every group, even within a single culture is going to react the same way to change and some may or may not be able to communicate the impact of those changes effectively. One thing you learn really quickly when you go out in the field and work with people and do research is that even the most positive and useful changes you help a culture make will have all kinds of strange and unexpected consequences. Further, no matter what the change, someone is always going to be disenfranchised and will push back against the changes, even if they are beneficial for everyone but themselves. An anthropologist who has been in the field and studied culture for years of their life is going to help you think critically about what those changes will do and how different groups will interact with them.
4. Diversity Is A Strength, Especially if You Want An Immersive Fictional World
There’s a lot of discussions these days about representation and diversity, and rightfully so. The gaming community has been grappling with being more inclusive, not only in the makeup of companies but also in gaming content itself. The reality is, the lack of diversity in your game or film, or writing project is actually just simply, bad writing. The world is diverse and complex, your game should be too. But what do you do if you want to write a game about groups or cultures that are unfamiliar to you? Well first, do some background research at the very least. But ideally, you should reach out and work with different cultures and groups that you are portraying (yes even if they are an analogue… actually, especially if they are an analog). An anthropologist can help mediate these conversations and help all interested parties get around some of the communication traps and internal biases that we all have. Without doing the research, might inadvertently create a stereotypical culture that disenfranchises a real culture and create a headache for your gaming company. Remember, bias is not a comment on your character, it’s just the blind spots in your knowledge and it’s an anthropologist’s job to figure out, how these biases get in the way of communication across cultures.
The more complex and diverse your world is, the more immersive it will feel. You want your gamers to feel like they just stepped into an actual world with diverse characters with different skills, hopes, dreams, and inclinations don’t you? If you understand diversity, this becomes so much easier.
5. Imagination Isn’t Always the Same Across Cultures
There’s a problem with a lot of the fantasy novels. They are all the same. So many just take lifted D&D mechanics or they take place in the same European-based cultures that surround 15th– 17th-century technologies. There are some notable exceptions, but you see in the fantasy fiction world, time and time again, the same recycled tropes and storylines. A lot of gaming RPGs suffer the same fate. They don’t offer anything unique or interesting. Personally, interesting game mechanics just aren’t enough to really capture my attention for the long haul. I need an interesting story and world and characters that I care about. The reason things have become stagnant in a lot of media is that we have limited ourselves to the imagination of just a few cultures and traditions. The world is full of amazing, diverse, and unique perspectives to consider in creating fictional worlds, whether based on something real, or something totally new.
Until relatively recently, creating digital games was really only available in a few cultures around the world. But in the past decade or so, that’s changed. Consider the game Never Alone, also known as Kisima Inŋitchuŋa in the indigenous language. It’s a unique game that tells a story about the Iñupiaq culture. In fact, the whole game is in the traditional language with English subtitles. My favorite part as an anthropologist? Not only was the game created by indigenous people for indigenous people thus offering a unique experience, but the game offers interviews with Iñupiaq elders that unlock as you complete each level. This gives your gamers a richer experience and helps expand our imaginations and the possibilities of our future as a species. This is important, because as I said in my recent Ted Talk on this topic, what we imagine matters.
6. Anthropology is a Toolkit
All this above by the way is why me and my colleague Kyra Wellstrom decided to sit down and work on a book, just for gamers, fiction writers, and filmmakers that teaches core concepts in Anthropology. The book is called, Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers. We wanted to create a quick and easy guide for those who may not be able to hire an anthropologist for consulting on their projects and something that wouldn’t require you to dig through a bunch of textbooks to find answers. The book covers so many of the crucial elements of cultural systems because well, viewing the world from an anthropological viewpoint is a toolkit to better understand the how and why of culture and identity. With well over a century of anthropological research, we have a lot of answers and unique approaches to questions about culture. A little anthropology goes a long way.
Over the years I’ve been creating free resources for creatives to help them think about important questions in their fictional worlds, like cognitive mapping, notions of purity, the purpose of mythology, and more on my website. These resources include podcast episodes, recorded panels at cons, and a host of other tips and things to consider in your projects. I hope all of this helps you to build a better world.
Want to hire an anthropologist to consult on your game? Visit our webpage for more info.
This week I had the good fortune of chairing a panel at the Society for Applied Anthropology in Salt Lake City. My Fellow Panelists and I decided to stream it live on YouTube, where it will live for people to rewatch. The title of our panel was Virtual Communities and Imaginary Worlds. The panel was a lot of fun and it was an honor to be on the panel with two brilliant researchers.
You can watch the video here. You will find descriptions of each panelists talk and the timestamps for their presentations on the YouTube page. The last 20 minutes are Q&A.
Recently, I had a discussion with a friend about what kind of biological costs superpowers or magic might have on the biology of the brain. We discussed the impact of cognitive maps based on different biological and environmental systems, and why these are things that might be useful to consider for building fictional worlds. The reality is, the one thing so often overlooked in fictional worldbuilding, is that different species, and different mutations (in regards to superpowers or magic powers) would have a profound impact on the brain structure and perception of the living person/creature. So, it’s worth at least considering a few elements in how a cognitive map, and how a special ability or power might not just impact individual characters, but also fictional cultures as a whole.
“A cognitive map is an internal neural representation of the landscape in which an animal travels. Animals that use cognitive maps can “visualize” the landscape and solve orientation problems by referring to these maps. While it is generally accepted that birds and mammals can form cognitive maps, and that the hippocampus is the most important part of the brain in their formation, considerable controversy has centered around whether other animals, such as honeybees, can form similar maps.”
Different animals have different cognitive maps. Different kinds of sensory input changes how a particular species would navigate their environment. Say for example a Mantis Shrimp, which has the most complex visual system of any creature on this planet, would have an entirely different cognitive map than a human. Why? Because humans have 3 photoreceptors in their eyes, a Mantis Shrimp has 12-16 depending on which variety of mantis shrimp you’re talking about.
Now imagine for a moment, a mantis shrimp took an evolutionarily leap and became as intelligent and as self-aware as the human species, but still had that same complex visual system. Naturally, their cognitive map would be far different than humans.
Well, one sci-fi author by the name of Adrian Tchaikovsky, played with this idea (though not specifically mantis shrimp) in his books, Children of Time, and it’s sequel Children of Ruin.
Children of Time and Children of Ruin
Without giving too much away, Tchaikovsky’s books Children of Time and Children of Ruin, ask the question, what kind of civilization would a spider, an octopus, and a kind of fungi analog build if they were genetically engineered to evolve human level, or greater intelligence. The answer? One that is a hell of a lot different than humans. But, at the same time, a creature, regardless of its cognitive map, still has to solve the problem of energy, or rather how do you build a large-scale civilization and economic system that could support a large population with different cognitive maps. So even though their maps might be different, to build civilization there would be some overlapping concerns.
For example, (and again I am not going to give away too many spoilers and ruin these amazing books for you) Tchaikovsky, at the beginning of Children of Time, introduces a jumping spider that has been accidentally introduced to a virus that will artificially accelerate its intelligence. The spiders, with completely different senses, biological imperatives, and priorities, build a civilization throughout the book. This civilization is based on a creature that not only builds a web but uses it as a primary means of communication. In this particular species, the male is much smaller and is often eaten after mating with a female, and thus, their world also includes a component of significant gender inequality, where the larger female spiders control civilization. Tchaikovsky, uses these differences to highlight how difficult communication would be with a species with a fundamentally different cognitive map than humans.
So it’s something to think about. If you have giant intelligent snake people in your fictional world, you would have different cognitive maps.
Oh and also, another bone to pick about video game worlds like the Elder Scrolls, Argonians and Kadjit would never, ever be able to mimic human speech, and certainly not English. This is also a problem with the Planet of the Apes series. Biologically speaking, the physical apparatus of a mouth, nose, throat, tongue, teeth, pharynx, larynx, and other parts create a specific kind of instrument from which certain sounds are produced by humans. It’s why some animals make noises that humans could never mimic. So an Argonian speaking English would be akin to trying to get trumpet noises out of a violin, it’s completely impossible. Of course, with your fictional world you can certainly do what you like, but understand that even other primates can’t mimic the same sounds humans make. It’s why Koko the Gorilla, and Kanzi the Chimpanzee, both used sign language and/or soundboards to communicate with humans because they physically can’t produce the sounds for human language.
Different Cultures Have Different Cognitive Maps
In the book, Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle, linguistic anthropologist Daniel Everett discusses the Piraha tribe who live on the Amazon. Though he never explicitly discusses cognitive maps, at one point in the book, he takes some of the men from the Piraha, to a Brazilian City. While there, the members of the tribe are almost hit by cars, and have, what are basically anxiety attacks about being in the city. They really hate it. Why? Well first, Everett then talks about his own experiences in the Jungle for the first few years. In one story, he talks about a python hanging from a tree that the Piraha spot without a second thought. They try to point it out to him, but he can’t see it no matter how hard he tries. He talks about several other instances when he just wasn’t able to see or experience the things the Piraha tribe were, and he had, what was basically anxiety about it similar to the men’s experiences in the city.
One of the things that cultures do, is map their environment as they learn to navigate it. So, if you’re suddenly dropped in a new environment, say, as a Piraha person in a city they have never been to, or an Anthropologist, who grew up in a suburb and suddenly finds themselves in the dense jungle, the cognitive maps you have used your whole life will no longer function properly and you will struggle to adapt until you can construct a new cognitive map (which can take years for completely foreign environments). This is in part what creates culture shock for people who travel to other countries and cultures.
Remember, a cognitive map, is a mental picture of the environment around you. Over time, these maps become a part of our subconscious assumptions of the world and structure our biases. Different cultures are the result of different environmental conditions, and thus will have a different cognitive map as a result. Now, of course, the variation in which these maps can come in, is limited by human biology, but it’s work thinking about as you are building fictional worlds, that different cultures will have different perceptions and priorities based on the physical and cultural conditions on the ground. Of course, this certainly relates to my YouTube episode on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and is worth considering, how this also impacts language.
Neurodivergence, The Brain, and Super Powers
There are more than a few problems with the way that Super Powers and Magic use are displayed in popular fiction. Now granted, these aren’t things that occur to most people (myself included until recently) and of course, part of worldbuilding is the suspension of belief. But if you are doing a hard magic system, something you might want to consider is the physical toll that superpowers or magic might have on the nervous system and the configuration of the brain.
By definition, someone with super powers or the ability to wield magic would necessarily be neurodivergent. This term means, essentially, that the person’s brain would not work the same as the average population (Of course if your goal is to make a world where the norm is magic users, they would have normal cognition for that world).
I myself have a form of neurodivergence called Prosopagnosia, also known as faceblindness. This means that I am not able to hold faces in my memory the way that most people can. It can be incredibly frustrating when dealing with large crowds, but once I discovered I had the condition, I was able to create new strategies for moving and interacting through the world. You could say, in fact, that I, had to have a different cognitive map to function. Neurodivergence comes in a lot of flavors, it’s most often associated with people with psychiatric disorders, autism, ADHD, and a host of other conditions that humans have in the modern world. Divergence doesn’t make anyone less of a person, but it does mean that their cognitive maps are different.
Take Albert Einstein for instance. There are many who suggest that he was neurodivergent. There is speculation that he might have had one or all of the following: Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, on the Autism Spectrum, and possibly ADHD. There are a number of reasons for these speculations including his difficulty with social situations and his inability to function in traditional European school systems. But here’s the point, he was a super genius and that had a cognitive cost. His cognitive map was far different from the average human and the way he navigated that environment was different from most people. This, in turn, allowed him to tackle questions that most human beings could not, and he changed the world as a result.
Again, this isn’t saying that one kind of brain is necessarily better or worse than another, but that, in fact, different brains will approach problems and solutions differently. It’s one of the reasons that, I argue in my Ted Talk, that diversity is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal as humans. But be warned, I’ve met quite a few people who believe they are better or worse than others because their brain is different, that’s simply not true. It’s like arguing which fruit is objectively the tastiest. It’s pointless. But it is empowering to understand how your own brain works isn’t it?
So, back to superpowers. One thing you might want to consider if your character has, say, telepathy or telekinesis, is that they would in fact be neurodivergent. They would have completely different senses that were required for those abilities to function.
Different sense perceptions necessitate different cognitive maps. After all, cognitive maps are built from our sense perception. You use all of your senses to build a mental model of the environment around you. So if you could fly, that would necessitate different sense perceptions and thus a different cognitive map. Consider the Marvel character, Daredevil, who has the ability to see based on what’s basically sonar, but the cost of that ability, was the standard human trichromatic visual system that we experience. That gave him some advantages, but anyone who watches the Netflix series, or reads the comics, knows that it comes with some significant disadvantages as well. Though personally, I think the advantages are a bit unrealistic even though I definitely enjoyed watching Matt Murdock kick ass in the Defenders.
So if you have a hard magic system, genetically engineered super powers, or something similar, you might want to consider what things your characters would have to sacrifice in order for those abilities to be viable. Much of the world’s fiction is filled with examples of this done horribly wrong, but then, a lot of the time, imagination is about playing with the unrealistic isn’t it? Considering the above could be a really interesting way to build a different kind of fictional world. After all, one of the problems we face in fiction is repetitive stories, so perhaps different cognitive maps could help us ask different kinds of questions about ourselves and what’s possible.
This past weekend I had the good fortune of moderating two panels at Denver Fan Expo 2021. The whole event was fantastic with lots of amazing costumes, artist’s and authors.
With permission from each panelist, I recorded the discussions so that you can enjoy them here. Panelists are in order of introduction.
Below you will also find links to each of the panelists work. Definitely check out there websites by clicking on their names.
Looking at Myth, Religion, and Folklore in a New Light
Recently I sat down with the very wonderful Joanna Penn on her podcast, The Creative Penn. Her podcast has more than 500 episodes on just about everything you can think of when it comes to writing and she’s also a very well published author. Definitely check out her podcast and her books.
Good morning everyone, Today, Kyra Wellstrom and I go live to read a sample chapter from our worldbuilding book and answer worldbuilding questions on YouTube at 11am MST. You can find the stream at https://youtu.be/QS3Yse-rv3g
The discussion will be recorded so if you miss it don’t fret! You will be able to find it at the same link. But if you can come live, we’d love to field your questions about worldbuilding and anthropology.
Loridian's Laboratory 