Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

It is 105 degrees outside with a heat index hovering somewhere above molten glass.

This isn’t really anything new, just the joy of high Summer in Oklahoma. As far as my reading list goes, it has had its influence, though. I didn’t break out Dante’s Inferno to re-read, but I have started reading a non-fiction account of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression entitled The Worst Hard Time, by.

What it mostly has me doing while I work here at the Nature Center is thinking about world building.

How creatures in our world have evolved to deal with the heat is amazing, especially given that this is one relatively small planet.

Some creatures estivate to escape the heat, which is quite similar to hibernation. A few are capable of being dehydrated completely and springing back to life when the rains come, like water bears and good old fashioned sea monkeys. Others choose to live their lives in the dark or near dark, where the heat can affect them less, like bats, raccoons and armadillos.

There are desert Darkling beetles with deeply ridged carapaces that stand on their heads atop dunes and harvest the morning dew as it condenses along those lines. Sidewinder snakes minimized contact with burning desert sands by changing the entire way they move.

And camels, well, we all know about them.

So why in the devil are so many literary worlds populated by creatures that make no sense?

Most recently it was Star Trek’s attempt at an ice monster on the planet where young Kirk was marooned that raised my ire. Why would a giant land-hunting crustacean/spider thing be hanging out in a mostly barren ice-wilderness? What in the heck is it eating when it can’t snack on Star Fleet personnel? And if that weren’t enough, there is a SECOND giant predator within panicked fleeing distance of the first.

Seriously.

If your fauna are not created and/or maintained by a rogue magic user or mad geneticist, then you need to take a little time to think about how these creatures fit into the world you’ve designed. Are they carnivores? Omnivores? Ill-tempered vegetarians?

Do they feed on land or in the water? How plentiful is their food source? What temperature are they surviving in? How do they stay warm or keep cool?

If you run out of ideas for plausible adaptations, do not panic. Mother nature has been working on this far longer than you have. A quick Google search of ‘cold weather adaptations’ will probably give you a host of ideas, which you can feel free to mix and match at will.

Remember that it isn’t so much whether a creature could actually exist that is important, it is whether the reader or viewer can believe that such a creature exists. So even though there are no four armed Snow Apes on the planet Earth, I could believe they lived on your planet if you made them fit the environment they are supposed to be hanging out in.

Anything less is like finding a pink elephant in the gas station bathroom. It kind of makes you forget about everything but how much that doesn’t belong.Find that, and you won't talk about anything else for the rest of the trip, guaranteed.

Cheers,

Michelle