The idea for this blog post came to me after a lengthy discussion
with a friend of mine regarding the intelligence of creatures in fantasy novels.
The collective intelligence of the various races populating the world are
displayed in ways that seems at odds with the story surrounding them.
This is a pet peeve of mine, when I read a
novel, either science fiction or fantasy where the world is a cornucopia of
wonders but the intelligence of the races encountered don’t quite mesh with
the fantastical environments they are found in.
I asked him why humans in his world are portrayed as less
intelligent culturally than the rest of the races. His response floored me, “Well
I based them off humans from long ago. So I made them just dumber.”
Where do I start? Human beings from long ago are much smarter
than we give them credit for, and functionally they are similar to us, physically
and presumably mentally. There has not been a great deal of change in human physiology
from our Cro-Magnon ancestors. So when I hear an educated person tell me that
they based their humans in their stories on our ancestors and they are
portrayed as unintelligent brutes I am boggled.
If we use humanity as the base-line for all the other races
in our stories we will see that we have a great deal of upward potential in
what can be achieved. Humans built the Great Pyramids, the Mesoamerican cities
of Teotihuacan and Palenque, the ruins at Baalbek and let us not forget the numerous
technological achievements of the Chinese and Roman empires.
That is a lot of real world advancements based on human
intelligence that we can use as the basis for how advanced the other races are.
If humans on Earth have been able to create these massive
structures and advancements Elves and Dwarfs should be able to create and craft
magnificent structures without magic. Racial intelligence should be examined
and a time-line of their achievements noted so that the wonder of magic is kept
where it belongs as an esoteric system that creates wondrous effects in the
world.
In my stories I use magic sparingly, I prefer to depict my
races not magically dependent for everything and while magic is an extremely
powerful tool it is not used in the everyday mundane aspects of life. I leave
the normalized construction of great structures to hard work and engineering.
If you create a fantastic world where vast, hoary structures
abound, magic need not be the answer or reason such things exist. Marvel at the
craftsmanship and wonder at the skill required to build these places, allow the
intelligence of your races to shine through in their construction, leaving
magic for the otherworldly aspects of your stories.
