Do you use Speculative Evolution?

[cornu aspersum]

I hope this is the right place for this question. Do you tend to use speculative evolution a lot in your worlds? While I am not against explaining away why things act they way they do beacasue of magic, it gives me some satisfaction to have a plausible, if not accurate reasoning behind it. As an example, for my world, I have the 'fire' that dragons spew actually be venom ejected from their mouths by special tissue so powerful, that the particles in the venom sizzle, looking like flames.

 

[Incanus]

Assuming I understand this correctly, I would say I often use something like this in my world-building.

Leaving out some details, I have a situation where new discoveries in the field of sorcery led to differences in opinion about them among different societies, such that a war was begun over the issue. During the course of that war, further new innovations in sorcery were quickly developed and introduced on the battlefield(s). At the conclusion of the war, these innovations were carried on and put toward non-war uses.

This creates a series of actions and reactions and evolution. A loose parallel to this might be how airplanes developed before, during, and after the first World War.

Is this the kind of thing you mean, or were you more focused on how fictional creatures might evolve?

 

[cornu aspersum]

Is this the kind of thing you mean, or were you more focused on how fictional creatures might evolve?

Yes, this is what I meant. In hindsight, I should've specified this. Your world does sound quite interesting, though.

 

[skip.knox]

I had to look up the term. Given that it's mainly an SF thing, I'd have to say I don't. OTOH, since I write alternative historical fantasy, I do a great deal of starting with some historical fact (roughly equivalent to starting with a scientific fact in SF), then speculating--oh, let's admit it's just inventing--a consistent variation or consequence of that.

It's odd that there has emerged a specific term, grandly clothed in Latinate form. Back in the day, they just called it What If?

 

[Carnary Gurl]

I have racism in my story, not meaning prejudice. And there is magic that relates to law keeping more than anything else. What you might say is stretching the imagination might be considered speculative evolutions.

If you are asking for an opinion on what constitutes magic, then I’d have to say there is a thin line between what is real and not, and that comes down to science not speculative evolutions.

Looking in some of the books I own; I’d have to say none of the magic is similar, nor is the world building, but there are patterns that derive from other patterns, giving a measurement of sorts.

 

[Incanus]

Ah, I hadn't realized this is a known and used term. Going by what it says at Wikipedia, I would say I'm not using Speculative Evolution in my world building. It seems to be mostly sci-fi, and it seems to be mostly biological/zoological. I have a few invented creatures, but they were not developed out along scientific lines.

My fantasy world stuff is more like a bunch of 'what-ifs', with many of them as part of a larger chain of developments. That said, I have adapted a pretty well-known trope from sci-fi, but I've re-purposed it for my fantasy setting.

 

[JBCrowson]

I have some elements of Speculative Evolution - for example my arthropod derived races are too bulky to work like RW bugs - gas diffusion from tracheoles in each segment of their bodies. So they have a circulatory system to carry absorbed gases away from their tracheoles to the areas too far away for diffusion to work. It makes them impossible to smother unless you cover pretty much all the tracheoles down both sides of their bodies. At no point (yet) has any of that needed to be described in any of the bits I've written, but I wanted to know how their physiology worked for my self.
Another example is a desert plant with a nasty means of self dispersal. It injects spores into the flesh of any creature that touches it, which germinate, spread through the creature killing it. The spores then have a nutrition source to grow a new plant. The time taken to die means the victim has wondered far enough away that the new plant isn't competing for scarce resources with its parent.

 

[Devor]

I’ve definitely thought about it, but… I don’t know if anything I’m using really counts. I add in magic, and then speculate.

For example, I have a variety of creatures that feed on rotting magic. There’s a powerful dead magic being buried somewhere, so that whole region is infested with these creatures. They all have the same set of magic traits, but the physical evolved differences make the six or so different creatures unique.

I do a lot of that kind of thing.

 

[Carnary Gurl]

There’s a powerful dead magic being buried somewhere, so that whole region is infested with these creatures.

That sounds like an MMO, Devor. Those things with basically no plot and entirely speculative evolution.

 

[Devor]

That sounds like an MMO, Devor. Those things with basically no plot and entirely speculative evolution.

Yes? Kind of? If I had to list ten inspirations, World of Warcraft is on the list, and it’s the one which would make me think on spec evolution like this. A secret dream goal of mine is to have a video game take place after the books, and I kind of had that in mind at times when I designed the world.

But, the individual creatures are also based on cool Celtic legends, and they aren’t a big part of the setting. The story is planned for five books, where the first feels like a tight personal story, and it spirals into an epic fantasy as the series continues. Each book also explores a new aspect of Fairy magic, and the corrupted, rotted, and undead side of fairy magic is slated for book three, even though it exists and is hinted earlier.

 

[pmmg]

Looking up the term Speculative Evolution, I can say with some certainty, I do not use this in my own fiction. I do have something that might seem like this, in which there are much pits that kind of mutate the existing wildlife into much more dangerous foes. A large cat for instance being changed in that it was larger and had inky black tentacles on its back, but to satisfy Speculative Evolution, I would have to consider its biosphere and timelines and future evolution. I did not do any of that.