Inspiration from the droughtlands [part one]

One of the most important things I look out for when I crack open a new book to read is the character of the world itself. By this, I specifically mean “does the world building treat the environment that the plot takes place in as a character that is just as —if not more— important than the protagonist?” A world can have depth, it can have history, it can have an endless number of spiralling tangents to explore. However, if it doesn’t have the ability to grow and change, to interact with the plot and the characters and make them react, then I find it a rather dull place to explore.

For me, it creates a perception that the environment is simply a blank canvas, a white-space at the mercy of the framework of a plot that gets dropped onto it. It’s hard to care about a character’s actions when they are alone, or about the effects of a character’s actions if none of their fellows are present in the scene.

As such, I’ve always been drawn to narratives where the world itself is an ominous threat, where it moves at plots from behind the scenes to throw a wrench in the works of the protagonist. This affinity first began for me with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of video games, a trio (with a soon to be released fourth) of survival based first-person-shooters that first put you in the mud-spattered boots of an un-named mercenary as they attempted to track down their memory in the abandoned and ransacked exclusion zone that surrounds the remains of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

It quickly pitted you against gun-totting bandits, mind-altering monsters and most dangerous of all, a litany of programming bugs that could crash the game at any second. However the most captivating threat of the world was the warped areas of anomalies that dotted the twisted landscape.

These took the form of grassy fields that emitted poisonous fog, dark tunnels wracked by spiderwebs of lighting and gravitational pitfalls that could compress and subsequently tear apart anyone unfortunate enough to stray into their path. Treasures could be found in their midst, artifacts that could either aid your gameplay or be sold for a high bounty on the black market.

Why were they intriguing? A fantastic question, especially as the games didn’t immediately explain the anomalies’ origins, workings or even reasons for being without delving into folklore and myth. The other residents of The Zone treated the area as a fickle beast that would take a man one day and spare him the next, moving with its own intentions and desires. As you progressed through the game, fighting your way towards the radioactive ruins of the powerplant itself, the mystery grows. The anomalies take new and dangerous forms, all seemingly at the whims of whatever’s contained in the long-destroyed reactor the game drives you towards.

Years later, I’m still struck by an ominous wonder for the concept of this type of phenomena. Something which simply exists without a perceptible reason or comprehendible answer. It’s from this I drew inspiration for the fractures and paralicts that dot the Droughtlands, and while they both have vastly differing reasons for existing, I won’t share either for fear of spoiling both. What is most important to keep focus on is the origin of this phenomena.

For the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, I eventually found out the inspiration lies in the novel Roadside Picnic, a piece of Soviet science-fiction from the 1970s’ that presented the concept of how humanity would deal with the discarded debris of an extra-terrestrial visit. The name of the novel encapsulates the exact premise, explained in the book through an interview with a scientist that outlines the nature of the areas once visited by these aliens.

“A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around... Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind... And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow.”

From the perspective of these forest critters, these are material of impossible compositions, devices which have no purpose, chemical reactions that do not obey their understanding of the world, and the results of actions which have incomprehensible purposes. How do they prescribe these things meaning? How do these new elements integrate into their world?

This is where the ruins of those-of-glass can be brought up. Taking the form of the remains of a civilisation far more advanced than the living can currently comprehend, they leave behind the markers of both technology and magic that must be untangled, no matter the cost. It is through these elements that I’ve sought to focus the Droughtlands as a character of its own, an element which —no matter the story— has to be dealt with.

I’ve encountered more worlds which have played off the concept of Roadside Picnic. The novel and subsequent film adaption of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer is a phenomenal homage that takes the reader closer to the origin of the “anomaly” than Roadside Picnic did. Novels like Sand by Hugh Howey or Lotus Blue by Cat Sparks also deal with a sand dusted world where its people deal with the remnants of an old world which has been forgotten. And I could not forget to mention the Metro 2033 novels and resulting video game adaptions when the subject of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is so present here.

However, I’m yet to encounter a setting of this nature which has introduced magic to the mix, which is why I created my own. Stay tuned for more, because I REALLY should talk about where all this desert sand came from.