Now that we have talked about lots of material things and places to put them the next question is how do we move all those things about. So we need to talk a bit here about modes of transportation and how we can learn more about them.
Depending on your period and locale, your characters may be walking, running, marching, riding horse or dragons or large worms, riding on bicycles or motorcycles, riding in ground vehicles like cars or trucks or hovercraft or ground effect vehicles or tanks, or may be on hang gliders, parachutes, in blimps, airplanes, helicopters or starships, or in submarines or mechasuits.
However they get about, some details into the basic mechanics of travel will help your audience relate to what you are writing, be it the midmorning commuter crawl from Boston to NYC or the trip down 1000 feet to the submerged city or even just a gearshift that offers UP as an option.
For me, it was learning how to drive a 5 speed manual transmission rally car in true European fashion…which is to say right hand on gearshift, left on steering wheel, right foot operating gas and brake, left foot operating the clutch. I have since learned that there is a Japanese drift style where the right foot operates all three pedals at once by placing the foot diagonally, and an American style where the right foot controls all three pedals while the left foot does nothing at all like in an automatic.
My first time at 150 miles per hour was memorable to say the least. But then so was learning not to let your car roll backward into the Tesla tailgating you on the steep hill.
My first off road race was also memorable but that was because a shovel and boards played an integral role in the process and there were freaking leeches in the freaking mud.
For our fantasy friends, it is a good idea to know your horse and your mule from your ass, as all three have different sizes, speeds, endurance ratings, breeding capabilities, types of saddles, types of bridles, and more. It would not be amiss to do your research here and maybe visit a local riding stable for a quick lesson on the difference between a bit and a bite.
It is also important to get your forms of transportation right for your period of history and your locale. There was a brief window for example where Calvary horses and armored tanks shared the battlefield and where motorcars and steam “engines” 1 shared the same roadways with horses and even oxen. Places where elephant Calvary ruled the day and other places where a yak is needed just to get part way home after which it’s shank’s mare.
In Europe and metropolitan Asia trains play a major role in every facet of daily life whereas in the United States they tend to be a curiosity used primarily behind the scenes to move freight.
The US has a massive car culture and a huge infrastructure to support our chosen car or truck or SUV, and there are songs, TV shows, and books dedicated to the car and to travel by car. Americans view roadtrips as a right of passage as well as a fun thing to do and distances in US cities and rural areas are usually measured in highway or road miles.
In contrast, some places still rely on boats and ships for both communal ply and commerce. Venice is a city of canals and the English fens and Dutch dike country are largely ruled by waterways.
And Venice, Oslo, Mackinac Island (Michigan, US), and Mexico City have partial or full car bans, and NYC (New York, US), Boston and San Francisco in the US being best seen by the pedestrian. In other places, walking is frowned upon, seen as aberrant, or possible as a sign of vagrancy or criminality.
Aircraft also play varying roles depending on where you are in the world with some places only being reachable by plane and helicopter such as Easter Island, some Alaskan isles, and parts of Belize and Hawaii.
How we get things and people places have shaped entire cultures and play a huge role in how our species has evolved. Remember the first roads were Roman and that those roads allowed soldiers and merchants to carry Roman goods, law, and culture far and wide forging the first real empire.
And the first thing any army wants to control is not people or media or equipment or even weapons but rather supply lines. It could be argued that entire world wars were fought over warm water sea ports and river access, and that bridges and fords were always more important than how sharp your sword was or how good your armor was.
So know your city, know your terrain, know where the traffic jams up or bottle necks, and have fun drawing your maps or finding them.
If you need help try your local library, AAA, Google maps, GPS, or hit a visitor’s center. Pick up restaurant or tour guides and consider going on guided tours. Even better, go and spend a day intentionally getting lost, maybe even in your own city2, but certainly where ever you are setting your story. Find out where the stores are, where the slums are, where the best Mexican or sushi is, locate a book or hobby shop, and find out where the courthouse is. Being consistent about locations and transportation methods will allow your reader to come to feel at home in your world, or your version of the real world.
If you want to do a deep dive consider looking into the geography of the area. The high watershed in New Orleans and the canals there effect everything from storm safety to how the dead are “buried”. Greenville, SC grew around the mills that sat on the rivers and began as brick factories and mill houses made from the cheap native clay, and it’s flooding issues to date deal with the fact it was built in a drainage basin.
Asheville, NC is built to conform to the mountains in nests in, and San Francisco is arranged around the bay areas. Manhattan is built on several layers of swamp, dirt, and ruins of the previous cities there and everything is of necessity vertical leading to both penthouse and mole people3 cultures on both sides of the economic spectrum.
Large portions of Africa are based on river cultures around the Nile, Zaire, and Congo rivers and the fact that they are difficult to access without the use of specialized forms of travel – such as fallucas, riverboats, canoes, camels, and horses as well as specially modified road vehicles or helicopters.
And large portions of the Middle East are based around desert cultures and how to travel in those.
Some great examples of this in fiction occur in Dan Simmon’s Endymion books where some cities built in regions similar to the high Himalayas can only be traversed with rock climbing gear, skis, sleds, or hang gliders and in Dune where one travels in highly specialized hovercraft, flying machines called ‘thopters, or on the back of the native worms.
And travel in space or under the seas (Terran or otherwise) also depends on your culture with faster-than-light ships in some tales, teleportation in others, or generation/ark ships in still others. Your craft there also depend on optimum survivability. Black hole travel requires gravity and radiation protection, you have to deal with vacuum or pressure, and you carry your oxygen, food and heat with you, and you or your characters deal with your waste in various ways.
Does your ship have inertial dampers, hypersleep cubicles, or resurrection creches? Can you eat at the table and cook your dinner or are you taking pills? Your vehicle will need to reflect all these needs and how the person deals with them.
A good example of this can be found in Hail, Mary (SPOILER) wherein a human and an alien with two very different set of senses have to figure out how to communicate. And Michael Crichton’s Sphere postulates aliens that may not see in the same spectrum we do, may sense the world in smell or vibration, and thus would have no use for say intercoms4 or light switches.
Is your ship manned by material creatures and thus needs doors and atmosphere and etc, or unmanned like a drone in which case doors are superfluous?
So how you move things and by what process is going to mold your world more than anything else. Cars need roads, starships need propulsion, ships need water, submarines need water outside and pressurized air inside, and so on.
Both God and Satan are said to lurk in the details so it’s a good idea to know in advance how much your reader needs to know about your world in order to enjoy your story and make sure the right stuff goes in and the extra stuff just hangs about….possibly for the much desired sequel to your bestselling book. 😉
- Any steam driven vehicle from trains to ships to “traction engines” used in early construction and/or tools like steam shovels, steam driven assembly lines and “pneumatic jack hammers” ↩︎
- A surprising statistic by the National Board of Transportation discovered that most city natives know only about 10-15% of their hometown! ↩︎
- See this article for more on the mole people. https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781556521904#:~:text=Viewed%20as%20pejorative%20by%20the,Port%20Authority%20and%20Riverside%20Park. ↩︎
- In Tommyknockers, Stephen King notes that telepaths would not have a lot of use for intercoms, radios, walkie-talkies, or telephones. ↩︎
EVOLVING MALE 