A “non-Earthlike world” in fantasy by J. Patricia Anderson

Today, J. Patricia Anderson comes to talk about her “non-Earthlike” fantasy world.

The thing I love about creating fantasy worlds is that they can be anything. You can add any conceivable differences from our world, combine them in interesting ways, and follow them to uncountable conclusions. You can go as big or small as you want with these differences, from changing only the name of existing Earth countries all the way to changing the laws of nature. Any changes you make at a higher level will inevitably trickle down through your created peoples and their societies to the character level, generating further changes along the way, which all work together eventually to make the story. The limit is only your interest and imagination.

As I built the fantasy world that I consider to be my life’s work over many years, I found it becoming a very different place from our real world. It is so different that it has been difficult to describe to potential readers without getting deep into its construction. Luckily this article is the exact place to get deeper into it, but as a short-hand, I frequently say the stories that feature it take place in a non-Earthlike world.

Unfortunately, applying the descriptor “non-Earthlike world” to fantasy and having it mean anything specific becomes difficult immediately due to a common factor in many fantasy works. The fantasy “world” is often not defined as a planet in the way our Earth is, which makes them hard to compare. And further to that point, is Earth really what we would call a “world”? Or is our entire universe the world?

What is a world in fantasy?

It seems like a lot of authors use the word “world” to describe the entirety of their created setting. The name ascribed to a fantasy world might be given to an entire universe (or multiverse) or it might simply be whatever appears on the map of a single continent. A lot of fantasy seems to ignore the question of whether it takes place on a planet (contained in space) or not, and focuses only on what the characters know to be true about the environments they occupy, which—due to the low-tech nature of many fantasies—often isn’t a lot. Thus many fantasy worlds are smaller than our Earth-world-universe.

To make the term “non-Earthlike world” as clear as possible, and to have it apply or not apply to as many fantasy works as possible, it can be thought of as referencing just the immediate surroundings of the characters featured in the story. If you have widespread altered biology or physics, you may have a non-Earthlike world.

“The world I’ve created is called existence because that’s what it is meant to be—all of existence!”

My non-Earthlike fantasy world

In my series, Children of the Trees, which consists of one published book so far in Daughters of Tith, the world I’ve created is called existence. Nice and direct because that’s what it is meant to be—all of existence! Inside this overarching world called existence, which could be described as a multiverse, the word “world” is used for eleven places.

“Derkra simply exists the way it has always been and never changes.”

First there is Derkra, which is the homeworld of the non-human point of view characters featured in the series. Derkra is a flat, infinite plane of existence made up of half water and half desert. There is no sun or moon on Derkra and therefore no day and night, no directional light and no true darkness. There is no weather of any kind and there is arguably no need for ‘air’. There are no animals or insects on Derkra—nothing alive but trees, grass, and moss on the land (none of which ever grows or wilts and dies) and nothing at all in the infinite ocean. There is one wooded island in the water and one valley with trees in the desert. Derkra simply exists the way it has always been and never changes.

Derkra is the most obviously non-Earthlike world in existence and it contains the least humanlike characters because of that. The people who inhabit a world must be able to survive it, and so Derkra’s inhabitants do not eat, drink, or sleep, and they rarely take note of time.

The second world, closely associated with Derkra, is Coralynth. Coralynth is essentially the world of the gods (as much as Derkra’s people have gods), and is used as a transit point between Derkra and the other worlds of existence. It is accessed through portals from Derkra which open onto a path on a mountaintop. The world is undefined in size but as far as the characters in the first book are concerned, it is made up only of the mountaintop area they travel through and two distant, snowy, volcanic mountain peaks that appear to hang in the sky among clouds and steam. Coralynth holds nine additional portals that open near the World Trees on the remaining nine worlds of existence.

“The humans vary as well to match up with their worlds.”

The nine human worlds, which hold the nine “Earths”, vary in their Earthlike-ness at the time of the first book but are necessarily more Earthlike than Derkra and Coralynth because they must support humans. The humans vary as well to match up with their worlds.

This is best read as a list because it is a lot:

The Earth on World One is flat and infinite like Derkra and makes up the whole world on its own. It is also half water and half land like Derkra, though the land is not all desert.
Worlds Two and Three are made of more Earthlike Earths, having defined sizes and ends, though they are not planets.
World Four is only one great forest with nothingness beyond its borders.
World Five grows and shrinks based on the intention of its sole inhabitant but it was not always that way.
World Six contains an Earth that is a real-world-Earth-like-planet (longest compound word in the article) but its inhabitants are unconcerned with space and so nothing is known of the darkness beyond.
World Seven…has had some problems, and we’ll leave it at that.
World Eight has a planet Earth and a known solar system.
World Nine held an entire universe not unlike our own around its Earth before things went wrong, but at the time of the first book is a vaguely defined plane of existence like the early Earths.

Of course, this non-Earthlike world also exists in time so there are many iterations of these eleven smaller worlds still to be seen in future books!

If any of this sounds interesting to you, you might want to check out Daughters of Tith. I read fantasy to experience new things and I write it for the same reason :).