Worldbuilding: Tolkien wrote from experience too

Writing from experience is usually the first lesson that writers have hammered at them. Write what you know. It’s certainly the most important part of building a credible world for your story. But what does that really mean? Does it mean that we should write about our own lives? Of course not.

Take J R R Tolkien. I looked last week at how he became iconic. He created the deepest, best developed and most thorough fantasy mythos of the twentieth century. He had everything from languages – several of them – to alphabets, deep history, mythology that echoed – but did not repeat – western-northern mythic stories and symbolisms.

A vast work of a vaulting imagination that set the standards for every fantasy since. Not everybody’s cup of tea, and his work took time to pick up sales momentum. But when it did – wow.

The thing was that Tolkien, too, wrote from his experiences. And the way he did it shows us how great writers use their experiences to fuel, enrich and colour their stories.

Cor Blok’s art: Eomer meets Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli

He used what he saw around him to add narrative colour. His descriptions of the Shire in particular – and of many of the lands around – echoed what he knew well from his homes in Oxford and, earlier, Birmingham. The Old Forest was Moseley Bog. The mill at Hobbiton was actually a mill in his childhood home village of Sarehole. Old Man Willow was a tree he knew of. Perrott’s Folly apparently inspired some of the towers – Orthanc and Minas Tirith especially.

People made their way into the book too. Treebeard’s hoom-hom voice was parodying the way Tolkien’s friend and fellow Inkling C S Lewis spoke.  A lot of Tolkien’s settings also reflected his First World War experiences, especially his portrayal of the Dead Marshes. That, really, was a description of the Western Front in all its horrible detail. Including the smell. (I discussed this connection in more detail in my book Western Front (Reed, Auckland 2004)).

Tolkien also portrayed the rough-house talk of soldiers, via his orcs – particularly in the sequences where Frodo and Sam were sneaking into Mordor. This was pure British troops-walking-to-battle speak. In a way it was inevitable. Tolkien was in the trenches of the Western Front when he began writing the Silmarillion. The environment framed him in ways he perceived.

The brilliance was the way Tolkien abstracted everything. He took what he knew, filtered it through his fantasy setting – and created a world that embodied the fantastic, yet which also carried a haunting familiarity for readers. It was one of the reasons why The Lord Of The Rings did so well. And that shows us how to write from experience – and still be creative.

Tolkien also used his experiences to create the philosophy of his story, particularly the nature of evil, attitudes to mortality, and the way people confront their fortunes. Is it coincidence that his Numenoreans are obsessed with extending their lives, that Elves are immortal – in a fantasy setting originally framed by the slaughter-house of the Western Front? I think not.

After The Lord of The Rings was published in the mid-1950s, critics suggested his tale was metaphor for the Second World War. It wasn’t. Tolkien always insisted there was no particular meaning. Actually, meanings did intrude – but they were metaphors for the issues of the First World War and pre-1914 England. Most of it came from the fact that Tolkien had infused a lot of what he knew into the book.

Here are a few links to some of the places – and to Hobbiton, which really exists in New Zealand, near Matamata. Peter Jackson had it built in wood, concrete and durable materials:

http://bardscribe.hubpages.com/hub/Interesting-and-Little-Known-Facts-about-JRR-Tolkien
http://www.cromwell-intl.com/travel/uk/oxford-lewis-tolkien/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/centralengland/739039/Sites-that-shaped-Tolkiens-Lord-of-the-Rings.html
http://www.hobbitontours.com/

As always, Tolkien has shown us how it should be done.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

 

Tips and tricks for better dialogue

I always think that writing good dialogue is something of an arcane art. Ever listen to somebody talking? You can follow them pretty easily. Now make a transcript and look at it as prose. Rubbish, isn’t it. We don’t even talk in full sentences. Phrases frequent intrude. But we understand each other perfectly well.

That’s because when we speak, usually, it carries a raft of body language, expressions and gestures with it. Or even if we’re on the phone, we’re following a line of thought. Humans are good at doing it. That changes when it’s written down, and the problem for novelists is making dialogue work.

Real dialogue doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to writing, because it is so fragmented. But written prose doesn’t ring true either. As always the answer is middle ground. It’s OK to write broken sentences. And the style of what’s written is a powerful tool for conveying character. The issue breaks down into layers:

1. The mechanics of writing compelling dialogue in the first place, with its broken sentences. Innovative punctuation helps, such as ending a fragment with a dash and close-quote.

2. Shaping the words to convey the nature of each character. How does their character come out in their speech? Are they terse? Verbose? Dreamers? Scientists? All these will carry very different speech patterns. Some characters may even have a particular speech quirk – I don’t mean impediment, I mean a structure of words or a repetitive filler such as ‘errrm’ – which characterises them for the reader.

3. Further shaping that speech to convey the particular emotion the character is showing at that time. Even if they are simply providing information, it will be done with some emotive content – and that is what readers latch on to.

The golden rule is to avoid ‘he said, she said’ enders – and qualifying adjectives.. Things like: “‘That’s a really exciting idea,’ Ronnie said happily.” If you’ve written the dialogue properly, you can show – not tell – the reader these emotions. We know Ronnie is happy from all these things.

Have you ever had trouble with dialogue? Got a favourite line? Found some dialogue that really sparks your enthusiasm?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

 

Meeting writers in exotic Rarotonga

Concluding one author’s writing adventures in Rarotonga

Those pesky vaka – loitering just out of reach! Copyright (c) Matthew Wright 2012.

Thursday 17 May
It’s been a great week, but our time in Rarotonga is coming to an end. I get in a morning’s writing while rain pelts down. Around lunchtime the sun comes out and I head into Avarua with She Who Must Be Obeyed to watch seven ocean-going vaka come into harbour – traditional twin-hull sailing canoes of the kind that once allowed Polynesia to conquer the Pacific. Rarotongan officials are out in force. The vaka appear, one by one, to the north. A school party arrives on the quayside and goes through a complex routine. Drums boom. Music echoes over a PA system.

Shore party welcoming waka into Avarua harbour, 17 May 2012

But there’s nothing doing. A few big twin-hull canoes loiter a kilometre off the entrance, teasing the crowds. Waiting, apparently, for the fleet to gather up. The sun creeps across the sky, and eventually the audience gives up and goes home. We do too, leaving the vaka standing out to sea with the setting sun playing on their sails.

We have dinner at a lovely beach-side restaurant near our resort, sitting at tables set out on the sand with the lagoon lapping near our feet. Last time we had a meal in such a setting was Thailand. I pick swordfish. A band of rain sweeps over us.

Clouds roll in…again…

Friday 18 May
The sun peeks in and out of scudding rain clouds. As afternoon draws to a close I finish writing and pack up the laptop for the last time. It’s happy hour at our resort. We go to the bar and get chatting to people who drift in for complimentary Heineken, including a lines electrician whose real interest is music. Everyone has a great time, and we are loth to end it with separate meals. Eight of us sit down to dinner at a long table in the dining room where bantams vied with breakfast guests this morning. I am still on my big-game fish crusade and select buttered wahoo.

After a while I discover the conversation has swung to book writing. One of the women in our dining group has ambitions, but never written anything, and she’s quizzing someone who – from his answers – is well experienced in the hard realities. I discover he is Russell Haley, novelist, poet and member of the New Zealand Book Council. He’s been in the business for years. So have I – but I’ve never met him before. And now, by chance, he’s our dinner companion in exotic Rarotonga.

I introduce myself. He does fiction, I do non-fiction, but we’ve used the same publishers, had much the same experiences and know a lot of the same people. He’s a good guy whose experience parallels mine all the way. He gets on to the costs of e-book production and the new world for writers opened up by the internet revolution. All this shop talk is a little rude to the others – but this is not an opportunity to be missed.

Unfortunately She Who Must Be Obeyed and I have to give our apologies early. We’ve got a ridiculous wake up time for the flight home.

Saturday 19 May (and Sunday 20 May).
We reach the airport in pre-dawn darkness and rain. The sun is up by the time our aircraft leaves, and we catch a last glimpse of green before we soar into swirling clouds. A little later, today becomes tomorrow, and we are back on Zulu + 12.  We swap to a domestic flight in Auckland and head south. Wellington airport has a repute for some of the world’s scariest landings. But today we touch down without a bump and roll smoothly to a halt.

Ninety minutes later we’re home, and it’s as if we’ve never been away. But isn’t that always how these things go?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

 

Rain and writing in the land of Tangaroa

One author’s Polynesian travel diary – continued

It is Monday by my internal clock, Sunday locally. I am thinking of writing, but Rarotonga is shut down for the sabbath. Work is not an option.

She Who Must Be Obeyed at the wheel of the convertible. We always wanted one…

She Who Must Be Obeyed thinks we should hire a convertible and drive around the island. We pick up a Volkswagen Golf cabriolet. The open roof tempts the rain, and by the time we get to Muri beach it is bucketing down so hard we have to pull off the road. German engineering saves us a drenching.

Mid-afternoon we roll into Avarua and jump aboard a submarine boat tour, run by a Welshman who’s been living here for years. She Who Must Be Obeyed is also of Welsh descent, and we crack jokes about coal mining with him. He is a nice guy, a dead ringer for Joe Satriani. His wife’s from Eketahuna. We look at huge Trevalli and gaze at the rusting bones of the trader Maitai, a steamer that has been quietly crumbling into ruin just outside the harbour since 1916. The huge triple expansion engine protrudes with rusty defiance above the water, a citadel of nineteenth century iron and engineering. Does this inspire me to write? Absolutely. Back then, East Polynesia was a remote, exotic location filled with mystery and promise. Robert Louis Stevenson came out to Upolo, near Samoa, in 1890 – seven years after writing Treasure Island. Today these islands have been engulfed by the global village – but, in true twenty-first century style, there is always K. W. Jeter’s word for the updated steam-age fantasies that might follow. Steampunk.

The triple expansion engine of the “Maitai” – commonly, but incorrectly, called “the boiler” by locals.

A Polynesian steampunk romance. Is the island sending my writing ideas off on a tangent?

Monday 14 May
It’s a changeable day. Later, as the rain pours down in sheets, I pick up where I left off on Saturday - not tales of hopeful Victorian-age steam engineering, but a more mundane book review and the chapters I’d promised myself I’d do on my biography of Donald McLean.

Tuesday 15 May
It is another grey morning, cool by Rarotongan standards – though still shorts and T-shirt weather. I get up before She Who Must Be Obeyed is awake and get the book review finished before breakfast. Then we head for the resort dining room, opened wide to the morning breezes. A bantam tries to join us at the table. We shoo it away. Afterwards, She Who Must Be Obeyed settles in on the balcony of our beach-side house with her Kindle and I get down to serious writing. It’s difficult. The clouds roll away and the lagoon laps, sapphire and seductive, just ten metres from our little beach house. But I persist at the laptop..

The view from just outside the beach house where I am trying to write… Copyright (c) Matthew Wright 2012.

Wednesday 16 May
She Who Must Be Obeyed has gone to Avarua to check out ukeleles (she plays ‘em), and I am writing from the cool comfort of our little beach-side house, watching azure waters lap golden sand. With steely determination, I get 6000 words written – bad first draft stuff, but better than no first draft.

For all that, the thing about writing isn’t the number of words. You have to control the word length, but the arbiter is fitness for purpose. Does the writing do what you want? Is it properly styled? Structured? How much revising will it need? And that doesn’t mean tweaking up a few words here and there – it means stepping back and looking critically at the whole, maybe re-working it entirely, yet still controlling expression of thought to keep to contracted, planned or requested length. During that time, you’re effectively writing zero words an hour. Quantity vs quality? Put it this way: you need both correct quantity and quality.

I am writing a lot about Donald McLean – the New Zealand politician from the nineteenth century. A tall, ambitious, insecure, penurious, God-fearing Scot from Argyll who hauled himself up by his bootstraps from nothing to the very highest offices in New Zealand.

Is what I am writing any good? Tomorrow will tell.

Final part to follow.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

 

Writing inspirations in the exotic South Pacific

One author’s Polynesian travel diary

My wife and I are off to Rarotonga. The aim, apart from a look-see at the island, is to let me do some writing out of my usual environment. And what better place than a tropical Polynesian paradise – an effectively internet-free zone with swaying palms, coral sand beaches, sun and placid lagoons.

I took this near sunset on a day when it wasn’t raining, just outside our little unit. (Photo copyright (c) Matthew Wright 2012)

Truth be told, Rarotonga’s not too exotic for New Zealanders. Cook Islanders were among the first Polynesians to settle New Zealand. According to my colleagues in the field, these arrivals came late in the thirteenth century. The language and culture of Cook Islands and Maori, today, are still very close when set against a world stage. The Cook Islands – of which Rarotonga is the capital – were also a New Zealand protectorate until 1965. They still use New Zealand currency, and are still automatic New Zealand citizens. A lot of Rarotongans live in New Zealand, and I’ve worked closely and professionally with some of them over the years. Good people.

Too, too tempting, that lagoon.

Saturday 12 May (and Friday 11 May)
There are a lot of Canadians aboard our Air New Zealand Boeing 767, heading for Vancouver– for them, Raro is a fuelling stop on their Auckland-LA leg. Our flight is four hours – or negative 18, non-time travel courtesy of the international date line. We queue up in baggage collection to the sound of a ukelele. Our transfer van to the resort is waiting, and we’re off down a bumpy road that takes us past palm trees and taro plantations.

It starts raining. Did I mention that I am a rain god?  On the plus side, we arrive at the end of the day and there’s complimentary Heineken in our down-market resort bar. The place reminds my wife of a New Zealand camping ground facility. Just our tone -  we both hate soul-less, impersonal hotels. We meet an Australian-Dutch couple. Half my family are Dutch, and Aussies and Kiwis are really close. Lots in common. We hit it off. They want to buy my next book, on convicts. I give them the details, and we discuss how Dan Brown managed to make so much money.

Part way through the evening, our Aussie friend decides he and I must write a book together – maybe about the world’s end in 2012, except we’re probably too late to find a publisher. Only seven months to go… And both he and I get the joke. Dry humour is a trans-Tasman thing. Like pavlova and pineapple chunks.

Saturday 12 May (again)
We wake late (early by NZ time) to low overcast and wind.  I rush outside to take a photo of the beach and my camera fogs up. I rush back inside to dry the lens.

Me at my Rarotongan writing desk – and a glimpse of that oh-so-tempting lagoon outside…

There is an hourly bus to the other side of the island, where we look around the market and nose into Avarua, the main town. Around lunchtime the place closes. We get back to the hotel mid-afternoon. The wind has come up and clouds hang low. So much for a sunny Pacific isle.She Who Must Be Obeyed snoozes. I get my ancient Asus/Vista laptop running, feeling mildly like Ernest Hemingway in his house in Key West. The laptop can’t find any networks. Excellent. No interruptions. I’m really doing a Franzen. And the writing agenda is full:

1. A book review
2. At least two chapters for my biography of Donald McLean,
3. Start a sample chapter for another book
4. Finish a proposal and sample text for a novel I’ve been working up.

I keep writing, but that lagoon pleads. Eventually we go snorkelling, where I find a fish that looks exactly like a Northrop F-89 Scorpion of 1948. Later I learn it’s a Picasso Triggerfish (Rhinecanthus aculeatus). Fascinating, as Spock might say. But it doesn’t get me further ahead with my contracts.

It’s just the first day, and it’s the weekend, which it’s reasonable to have off, especially in a place like this. I decide to focus more on writing tomorrow. And, all around me, the tropical island calls.

To be continued.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

 

Worldbuilding: how writers can be iconic like Tolkien

Most authors dream of following on from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – writing a novel that becomes not just wildly popular, but an iconic pillar of western literature.

Why was The Lord Of The Rings so iconic ? Tolkien himself had no such ambitions. He had to be prodded to finish and publish the book. For him the pleasure came from the creation – not the publishing, and certainly not the fame.

The Lord Of The Rings was released in three books during the mid-1950s. It sold OK. But then, in the mid-1960s, it was published in the US – at first illegally, then in an authorised and revised edition. Instantly it took off. I think there were several reasons:

1. Tolkien accidentally keyed into the counter-culture.
The mid-1960s was the age of the counter-culture, who consciously rejected the industrialised, mechanised values of their parents in favour of romanticised fantasies about pre-industrial life. Tolkien’s Hobbits – with their rustic, rural settings – keyed directly into hippie fantasy imagery of a perfect, de-industrialised world. So did his immortal, moonlit elves.

The link was clear enough at the time; Beard and Kenney, authors of the brilliant 1969 LOTR parody Bored Of The Rings, skewered the whole accidental LOTR/drop-out culture connection with their send-up of Tom Bombadil. Well, Tim Benzedrine and his wife Hashberry.

The actual origins of these themes and icons in Tolkien’s work was significantly deeper; he was harking back to earlier ‘counter-culture’ ideas of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, including the ‘Merrie England’ fantasies of pre-industrial Britain.

2. Tolkien deliberately keyed into our culture at many levels
The links between Lord of the Rings, Middle Earth and western thinking ran far deeper than just hippie dropout culture.  Tolkien had quite consciously written a mythology for Britain – a land which, he felt, lacked it. His broader themes and ideas struck chords with a much wider slab of the populace than the drop-out movement. As I have outlined elsewhere, he drew from his own experiences in England and on the Western Front to lend colour, depth and emotion to his writing. These ideas were shared by a very large part of his generation.

3. Success begats success
Once the momentum of sales began – driven by the way the book keyed into our society at so many levels – it kept going. Tolkien became iconic. The result was a marketers dream; a word-of-mouth spread through western culture that transcended any paid advertising.

And all of it – certainly the level to which the book and mythos became such an integral part of western culture – was unplanned and accidental.

The question for novel writers today is whether this feat can be repeated?

I suspect that anybody who deliberately tried – who engineered a book to key into what they suppose society triggers from today – would end up with something obviously contrived. What do you reckon?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Postscriptum: I’ve been away on a writing break the last 9 days – had some surprising results (including some wonderful discussions with other writers and people about books). I have some posts to follow – my adventures and some thoughts on the writing processes involved. Plus all the usuals – worldbuilding, grammar and writing tips – and some surprises.

 

I’m doing a Franzen

I’m going offline for 9 days. Doing a Jonathan Franzen – getting some writing done, no distractions. Hopefully…

I’ll be back in internet land on 20 May (NZT)/19 May (EST) – first post is about one of my favourite writers. Someone who’s a favourite for a lot of other people, too. Coming up after that – all the regular stuff, more Worldbuilding posts, more writing tips and tricks, more stuff about some of my favourite writers, and some new surprises. Plus explaining what it is I’m up to, writing-wise.

Meanwhile, here are some great bloggers and writers – check ‘em out, and visit them often. They’re really good:

Caitlin Kelly http://broadsideblog.wordpress.com/
Gene Lempp http://genelempp.wordpress.com/
Julia Indigo http://juliaindigo.com/
Karen Huber http://kmhubersblog.com/
Kristen Lamb http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/
Piper Bayard http://piperbayard.wordpress.com/
Susan Kiernan-Lewis http://susankiernanlewis.wordpress.com/
Karen Rought http://themidnightnovelist.wordpress.com/
Roger Colby http://writingishardwork.wordpress.com/
Robin Oyeniyi http://teamoyeniyi.com/
Lemuel Lyes http://historygeek.co.nz/

Have fun, take care, and I’ll see you all on the 20th.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

 

Musings on the Kiwi music scene

J. Eric Smith, inventor of the concept of ‘blanga’ as a way of describing some Hawkwind tracks, contacted me this week. I’d referenced his idea in a post last Xmas eve. His blog’s a great read (spot the Zappa title references, among others). And he mentioned that Kiwi musicians punch very much above their weight, internationally.

I agree. I’ve been meaning to post on that for a while. Music is an interest of mine – in fact, I spent longer learning music than I did writing or history.To me, music and writing are the same thing – expressions of imagination that evoke emotion.

Nobody’s far from the music scene here. For instance, one of my friends at high school in the late 1970s had a sister who sang in a local band, Raven. Her name was Debbie Harwood, and she went on to a hugely successful career, including When The Cat’s Away, whose songs were iconic in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Friends of mine in Dunedin were around the music there in the early 1980s. This city had its own sound – epitomised by bands like The Chills, Netherworld Dancing Toys, Verlaines and The Clean. Mostly based in George Street. They were universally smart, clever and really innovative. One of the Verlaines, Dr Graeme Downes, heads the music department at Otago University today.

I have to mention The Gordons. Prototypical thrash and well known for being loud – as in, they had more amperage than anybody else. You didn’t have to go to a concert. All you had to do was arrive in some town nearby. Or park a spaceship off an adjacent planet…

There was even a Kiwi synth-pop band, The Body Electric – complete with manually triggered sequencers. Pre-MIDI days, this. Alan Jensen, one of the keyboardists, later produced OMC’s ‘How Bizarre’ (1996).

I’d done electronic music and knew how Moog synths worked, but this was something else. A friend of mine who later fronted a music slot on TV under the curious stage name ‘Crispy Fresh’ worked in one of the instrument stores and introduced me to this new world of synths in the mid-1980s. ‘Ooh,’ I said. ‘Polyphonic’, and promptly whapped out the first bars of Bach’s 2-part invention in F-major. ‘Skite,’ said Crispy, who wasn’t formally trained (but he had a better music career than I ever did).

Some of the people from this era are cultural icons today – notably Dave Dobbyn, who has been writing anthems that capture the New Zealand spirit for 30 years. I think the single from his Footrot Flats album, Slice of Heaven, would do as our national anthem. So do a lot of other people.

The venues these bands inhabited were legends. The Gluepot at the top of Auckland’s Ponsonby Hill - now demolished. The Cricketers Arms in Wellington. The Cabana, nestled against the Napier hill. That’s still running – it’s owned by a friend of mine, and he’s getting some top names in there.

And that’s without mentioning the dozens of others since -  like Flight of the Conchords – who have done so, so well. The Kiwi sound today is international, slick and utterly professional. There’s Shihad/Pacifier, who were big-big-big in the States – changed their name to Pacifier, then changed it back. Three weeks ago, they performed 200 metres from my house. Loud. I listened to the concert in my lounge. Heard of Fat Freddy’s Drop? They’re local in my town – but internationally known. You need to listen to their stuff. 

Not forgetting the Wellington International Ukelele Orchestra, featuring Brett McKenzie. Here’s a clip from a 2009 concert they did in the Michael Fowler Centre. I was there. It was a wonderful evening.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

 

Being ironic with annoying people

Do you ever get curb-crawled by people wanting something? Happens in New Zealand a lot. There you are, squashing along deep in thought, and an eager-eyed enthusiast with a clip-board lurches out at you in support of what they regard as a Good Cause..

Sometimes I think of these things as Good Causes, too. But the way it’s couched is off-putting. Its worse if you’re waiting at a pedestrian crossing, because some eager beavers hammer you while you wait for the lights to change. ’No’ means ‘yes’, it seems. Fortunately their seriousness counts against them – I often have this fantasy of winding them up. Like this:

‘Will you sign this petition?’
‘No, go away.’
‘Please. It’s for a good cause.’
‘Which part of ‘go away’ escaped your comprehension?’
‘I just need a two seconds of your time.’
‘OK.’
‘I represent a -’
‘That’s your two seconds up.’
‘Oh please. I have something to tell you.’
‘All right. What is it?’
‘I represent Students Rage Against Whaling.’
‘So why should I sign that?’
(sniffs) ‘It’s against whaling. If you don’t sign, you are by your silence showing that you support murdering those poor helpless creatures.’
‘Obviously your classes in philosophy haven’t got to ‘false syllogism’ yet. But sure, I’ll sign. I love whales. They taste like chicken.’

At that point, I imagine, my pestering assailant would depart. Forever, probably making the gesture of the corma to ward off the evil spirits on the way (think, ‘Ronnie James Dio’).

Utterly impervious, of course, to the irony.

I must confess I haven’t actually done this yet. I reserve that sort of wind-up exclusively for the gentlemen from Mumbai who ring up splat on my mealtimes, pretending to be Microsoft and offering to fix my computer, if only I will first give them my passwords and bank account details.

As the saying goes, ‘yeah right.’

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

 

Worldbuilding: putting it on ice

As a kid I was always fascinated by Michael Moorcock’s The Ice Schooner – his version of Moby Dick set on a future Earth frozen from pole to pole. I had the Rodney Matthews poster of the ship on the bedroom wall.

Since Moorcock wrote that book we’ve discovered there was indeed a snowball Earth some 600 million years ago. The whole planet was one giant glob of ice, punctuated with occasional lakes. (Hope I’ve got snowshoes stashed away in my Tardis…)

Earth approximately 12,000 years ago. From http:/ /paulkiser.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/ are-we-missing-an-ice-age-part-iii-of-iii/

The more recent ice age – the Pleistocene event – started around 1 million years ago and involved a succession of flip-flops between warm periods and glaciations, themselves punctuated with periods of even more extreme cold. It didn’t freeze the planet pole to pole, though. Our Eurocentric scholarship always leaves the impression of a world swathed in ice. Actually, it was northern Eurasia, Canada-North America, and chunks in the southern hemisphere – including Antarctica. Tropical areas were ice-free. The planet was drier than it is today.

Nobody knows what triggered the ice ages of the Pliestocene. But one thing is clear; the switches happened quickly. Terrestrial climate, it seems, is a meta-stable product of a whole lot of factors. Change one, and the point-of-stability shifts - quickly - to a new equilibrium.

OK, so what DID the Neandertals actually think of us? A cracked take…

What this meant was that ice advanced and retreated cyclically, sometimes switching from one phase to another in a generation – bringing with it dramatic shifts in the environment, as taiga and tundra moved with the glaciers. Animals had a hard time. Humans had a hard time too – there is evidence that these cycles did in the Neandertals, whittling down their habitats and numbers. The last survived until 24,000 years ago, in Gibraltar. Paleo-anthropologist Clive Findlayson argues it was just luck that the same didn’t happen to Eurasian populations of H. Sapiens,  living further east.

Those same cycles repeatedly locked up vast quantities of water in ice sheets, making the sea levels rise and fall like yo-yos. This was still happening even after the end of the last big glaciation around 12,000 years ago. Changes in climate made it possible for farming to develop around the Black Sea, then a fresh water lake. But a huge area of ice remained in northern Canada – trapping meltwater as Lake Agassiz/Ojibway. Around 8200 years before the present, the ice dam was undermined and the melt-water escaped. Boom! World sea levels shot up by around a metre in just a generation – the Bosphorus was breached, and the Black Sea filled, driving early farmers off.

All this is fodder for writers. Stephen Baxter has set novels in a world where a sea wall kept Britain attached to Europe, via ‘Doggerland’. But jump back a little and we’ve got a whole different world – a Eurasia of taiga, tundra and emerging civilisation. Jericho was flourishing. So was Catal Huyuk. There were villages dotted around the Middle East and into eastern Europe.

Around them the land was undergoing dramatic climate change and sea-level shift. How would the earliest farmers – still using neolithic tools to scythe their wheat – have handled it? Would it have provoked new religions? Brought out the best in people? Brought out the worst? What do those responses say for our own future?

Archaeologists can only partially answer these questions. There’s room for novelists to play – and, maybe, to spring a whole alternate history.I think I’ve just inspired myself to have a go. How about you?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012