Economic Complexity in Fantasy

[Margaret Note Spelling]

I was recently reading Terry Pratchett's Night Watch, and I ran across this passage--it's long been one of my favorite ones of all time, just because of its brilliant relevance to the way you worldbuild cities and civilizations. I had to share it.

For context, it's the night of the revolution in the city of Ankh-Morpork. Vimes, the main character, is a policeman.

Vimes climbed back up the barricade. The city beyond was dark again, with only the occasional chink of light from a shuttered window. By comparison, the streets of the Republic were ablaze.

In a few hours, the shops out there were expecting deliveries, and they weren’t going to arrive. The government couldn’t sit this one out. A city like Ankh-Morpork was only two meals away from chaos at the best of times.

Every day maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs, and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chickens, and geese. Flour? He’d heard it was eighty tons, and about the same amount of potatoes, and maybe twenty tons of herring. He didn’t particularly want to know this kind of thing, but once you started having to sort out the everlasting traffic problem, these were the kind of facts that got handed to you.

Every day, forty thousand eggs were laid for the city. Every day, hundreds, thousands of carts and boats and barges converged on the city with fish and honey and oysters and olives and eels and lobsters. And then think of the horses dragging this stuff, and the windmills…and the wool coming in, too, every day, the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay EVERY DAMN DAY…

And that was now. Back home, the city was twice as big…

Against the dark screen of night, Vimes had a vision of Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who’d never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent that life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed…

…and gave back the dung from its pens, and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions, and ideas, and interesting vices, songs, and knowledge, and something which, if looked at in the right light, was called civilization.

It's the best illustration I've ever seen of the complexity of a population's sheer day-to-day survival--things that are so easy to forget when building a fantasy city, or even world. Terry Pratchett just nailed it here. So much energy in the world is already going to be devoted to daily existence even without the addition of our epic, earthshattering events. If we just act like it's not there, our entire world is going to lack a strong foundation.

 

[goldhawk]

Not just the cities. In medieval times, about 95% of population worked in agriculture. Yet when the heroes go on quest, do you read about them passing thru league after league of farmland? Because without all that food, the other 4% wouldn't be able to make the crafts that society needs. It's another invisible part of the economy overlooked by many writers.

 

[-K2-]

In brief, 'truth is stranger than fiction.' Years past when I wrote more fantasy than anything, by picking apart the intricacies of any subject--maybe all it REALLY takes to bake a loaf of bread, hunt a deer, plant-to-harvest a crop--yielded up more fascinating aspects than any amount of *poof* there it is magic or over the top adventure. Send an army off to war for a week, see what that really takes, or even just what it takes to make a sword (don't forget the fuel for fire, leather for a grip, ore for iron, and so on). Or, just look at what it takes to make a bacon and eggs breakfast.

Real life has a LOT that most folks never consider. Many writers--I feel--just want to consider the high points. But a page of 'here's what life really takes,' can add a lot of depth and make even the smallest seeming thing, critically important. Somewhat like the old "for the loss of a nail" tale.

Good call on a topic!

K2

 

[Dragonlady]

@K2 I think that's why for plot I'm not drawn to epic quests but what it would actually be like to live in a magical world

 

[JNG01]

If you haven't yet, you may want to look at the Dagger and Coin series by Daniel Abraham. It's well-written fantasy. The main character is a banker, and economics is her weapon. Abraham works interesting macroeconomic concepts of trade, debt., etc. into the narrative in surprisingly engaging ways.

 

[Margaret Note Spelling]

@JNG01 Ooh, thanks--that does sound interesting. I'll definitely be looking into it! I do try to avoid explicit material, though, so would you know what Dagger and Coin is like in that regard? Discworld's level of "adult content" is about the amount I'm fine with, though not much farther.

 

[The Judge]

If I'm remembering right there are two or three hinted-at sex scenes (or about-to-have-sex scene in one case), Margaret. A tad more than Carrot and Angua since the scenes aren't played for laughs, but certainly nothing explicit or likely to offend. There are some scenes of violence in a later book, and one involving children which could be distressing, but the POV there is distanced which stops it being overwhelming.

I agree with JNG about The Dagger and the Coin series -- the banking system is used as a weapon as much as blades are, hence the title -- though I confess I never did understand the effective national debt issue in one of the later books!

 

[The Big Peat]

It's not particularly graphic, no, but there is a great deal of violence for political gain (mostly off screen) and some casual bigotry. Depending on how you define "adult content" it might not work.

It's the best illustration I've ever seen of the complexity of a population's sheer day-to-day survival--things that are so easy to forget when building a fantasy city, or even world. Terry Pratchett just nailed it here. So much energy in the world is already going to be devoted to daily existence even without the addition of our epic, earthshattering events. If we just act like it's not there, our entire world is going to lack a strong foundation.

Then our worlds don't need strong foundations. I have seen too many popular books, and loved too many books, that clearly have the wonkiest ideas on what it takes for the world it describes to survive.

Sometimes I suspect show foundations this strong actually hurts books for it is words and scenes spent on things that don't impart a sense of wonder or tell us about the characters. You can tie it in deep (and if you really like that, look up Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, very free of adult content but hugely full of grown up thinking and applying deep worldbuilding to fantasy conceits) and really make it a part of the story, like it is here in which we see Vimes makes his final commitment to the machine without accepting it at any cost. But most books? Most books aren't about that.

And I'm not saying this because I don't want to do the work. I probably love this sort of worldbuilding a little too much to be honest. But I think it is often given too much weight in writing advice because the evidence shows others just don't need it.