All language subtitles for Masterclass N. K. Jemisin Teaches Fantasy and Science Fiction Writing - 06.Worldbuilding Inventing Science And Magic

[MUSIC PLAYING]

N. K. JEMISIN: The
truth of the matter

though is that what the audience
believes is what matters.

It's not our world.

It's not our reality.

It's not our time.

And there's a lot of different
ways that you can convey that.

There's a common
perception out there

that science fiction
is purely science

and that fantasy is purely
magic and historical.

The truth of the
matter, though, is

that what the audience
believes is what matters.

And the audience's
range of what they're

willing to accept in each area
is not as discrete as that.

You know, at the end of
the day, it's all just

sort of speculative stuff.

It's not our world.

It's not our reality.

It's not our time.

And there's a lot of different
ways that you can convey that.

You aren't stuck in the past
when you're writing fantasy.

You can write fantasy
set in the future.

You aren't stuck in
space when you're

writing about science fiction.

You can write it
in the modern day.

You can write it in the past.

And a lot of the things
that we traditionally

think of as science
fiction are actually

fantasy when you kind of dig
a little bit past the surface.

So for example, "Star Wars."

You know, what's the Force?

Well.

I mean, there's lots
of incredibly detailed

explanations and midi-chlorians,
yada, yada, yada.

But, you know, at
the end of the day,

it's a person reaching
out their hand

and making things
happen with their mind.

You can call that
psionic or psychic power.

That's something that happened
a lot in science fiction.

Or you can call it magic.

It's space magic.

And people are willing
to accept that this

is space magic as long as you
don't call it space magic.

You can call it the Force.

You call it midi-chlorians.

You call it psychic power
or something like that.

But it's a cosmetic
nod to the fact

that this is science fiction
so we can't call it magic.

But I don't feel like that
constraint is something

that the writer
should feel held to.

The writer is the one who
sells the plausibility

of whatever imaginary thing
that they're trying to convey.

The writer is the
one who conveys

the feeling, or the meaning,
or the depth of that.

So if you're trying to sell
your readers on magic that

is indistinguishable
from science,

then you need to treat
your magic like science.

You have to talk about it
having replicable effects,

being measurable,
things like that.

Personally, I have a kind of
general distaste for that.

A lot of fantasy readers
and a lot of fantasy fans

have kind of been
trained over the years

by like D&D and other
tabletop role playing

games that magic and all
of these other things

can be systematized,
can be treated like just

a standard thing that happens.

You lose your hit points.

You move on.

Magic I feel should be a little
more imaginary and a little

more numinous than that.

And you can take it in a
lot of different directions

if you don't feel constrained by
the rules of some game system.

So this is why with
"The Fifth Season"

and the whole "Broken
Earth" trilogy,

I actually spent a while
playing with the idea of magic

versus science
and how much magic

can be treated like science
before it is a science.

There are two pretty well known
advances in science fiction.

There's Clarke's law,
Arthur C. Clarke,

which is that any science
which is sufficiently advanced

is indistinguishable from magic.

Well, a corollary to that
law is that any magic which

is sufficiently systematized is
indistinguishable from science.

And I just decided to play with
that throughout the series.

We've got the orogenes
whose power is clearly not

scientific.

Can't measure it.

They don't understand
fully how it works.

They're able to
sort of raise a hand

and concentrate really hard.

And they cause things
to happen miles away.

But at the-- this is a spoiler.

But partway through
the second book,

I decided to just
arbitrarily call that magic.

And then we go on to see
that there's a society that

happens in the third book.

There's a society that
actually built itself

on the science of this magic.

So you know, I just
don't see a lot

of distinction between the two.

There are conventions
which you probably

want to adhere to if you want to
keep your audience entertained

and satisfied.

But you can play with
those conventions

if you've got the
skill to do so.

And how well your audience
accepts that is up to you.

There are ways that
you can help the reader

through their learning curve.

And one of those methods
is just simply repeating

again and again the unusual
elements of your world

and explaining more than
once the unusual elements

of your world.

You have to be a little
careful with that

because some people learn
more quickly than others.

And the first or second time
that you explain, for example,

that you've got
a magic ring that

contains the soul of the
dark lord or whatever,

the first time that
you explain it,

that sinks in for some people.

But then for other
people, you've

got to hit it two
or three more times.

At the end of the
day, your job is

to write fiction,
not another textbook.

So you don't need to go
and give yourself a PhD

to plausibly depict this stuff.

But plausibility has
a kind of wide range.

Of course, if you do have actual
scientists read your work,

they're going to react
badly to anything

that you get really wrong.

And I do think it's important
to try and make sure

that you get the basics right.

A lot of people
learn about the world

and learn about
science from fiction.

And you know, in
fact, at one point

I ended up attending a workshop
sponsored by NASA called Launch

Pad that exists because science
fiction writers historically

had been getting some basic
facts of science wrong.

And because of that,
the American public

was getting basic
facts of science wrong.

And so the idea is that if
your influencers and so forth

actually kind of know what
they're talking about,

then other people will too.

But the goal is plausibility.

You want to make
sure that you've

gotten enough of
the basics right

that you're not kind of
doing anything really

horribly, egregiously wrong.

But you don't need to get
bogged down in the details

and the minutia.

And you also need to
stay true to your world.

So for example, with the "Broken
Earth" books, I like volcanoes.

I like rocks.

But I am not a geophysicist.

So what I did in order to
research and to prepare

for writing that book was I
ended up sort of following

some geophysicist
on the internet,

joined a couple
of message boards,

followed some interesting
accounts on Twitter.

I, at one point,
sat down and had

coffee with a friend of mine's
partner who was a geophysicist.

And then I ran the story past
a number of other writers

that I know who have varying
degrees of scientific knowledge

and asked them if it sort of
passed the smell test there.

And that was a few
months of research

that was me reading
books and spitting back

what I could from that.

But that's not what
fiction is about.

At the end of the day, fiction
is about making it feel right.

So in addition to all this
other research that I did,

I also traveled to
Hawaii, because I

needed to know what a
volcano smelled like.

I needed to know what lava
looked like, and felt like,

and smelled like.

And there's a limit to
that too, because there's

different kinds of
lavas and so forth.

But I did hike across
the Kilauea Iki,

which is a 50-year-old crater
from one of the last times

that that particular
part of Kilauea erupted.

It's still hot.

It's not still boiling,
but it's still warm.

So I looked at a
barren landscape.

I touched ash and felt it
and felt the grit of it

between my fingers.

I smelled sulfur.

You can't do too much of
that because it's toxic.

But I smelled what a sulfurous
draft of gas kind of smells

like.

And then I was able to
describe these things,

because this is what
fiction is really about

is helping your reader live
and immerse in that experience.

So I was able to reproduce the
sensation of grit or feeling

grit touch your face
and things like that.

So it was less
important, in some ways,

for me to get the science
right than it was for me to get

those small details right.

But I tried to get the
science right too, just

because I'm a perfectionist.

I'm going to read a section
from "The Fifth Season," chapter

20, Syenite Stretched
and Snapped Back,

from page 363 of this
version, but there's

lots of versions out there.

"It's an unspoken
thing between them.

But Syenite's not stupid.

There are a lot of
things a skilled raga can

do to help on the kinds of
sorties Innon's crew makes.

Not starting shakes or blows.

She won't and he'd never ask it.

But it is a simple thing
to draw enough strength

from the ambient to lower the
temperature at the water's

surface and thus
cloak the ship in fog

to hide its approach
or retreat."

You know, I grew up
in the South where

we had fog all the
time on cool days

because there was
moisture on the ground

and the air was cooler.

And whenever the water
vapor evaporated,

it just kind of hung
in the air, visible

like a cloud on the ground.

Anybody that lives in a
place that gets lots of fog

understands what creates fog.

So you just need to
kind of draw on that

or make it clear that that's the
principle that's at work here.

She's not pulling
fog out of nowhere.

She's using a very familiar
kind of environmental change

to create it.

People are aware
of animals reacting

to earthquakes or to any
kind of seismic vibrations

before human beings do.

I grew up in a place
without earthquakes.

I've only felt an
earthquake once in my life.

I don't know a whole
lot about them.

But I knew that from
reading lots of books,

or watching TV shows or movies
in which the dog suddenly

starts barking and then
there's an earthquake.

Now when you're using
knowledge that's

gained from movies
or TV, you have

to make sure that that's right.

So it was important to
research that and make sure

that animals did react more
quickly to seismic vibrations,

but they do.

So now I'm going to read from
chapter 5, which is actually

the first point in
"The Fifth Season"

where I actually explain
how orogeny works.

Now at this point in the
novel, you've actually

seen how orogeny works.

Essun has reacted very
badly to people in her home

village trying to kill her.

And she tried to kill them back,
except that they used a bow

and arrow and she used orogeny.

So you've already seen the
terrible effects of orogeny.

You've seen that she's killed
several people fairly quickly.

And in that narrative
passage, she

describes having destroyed
the aquifer of the town

so that they're going
to run out of water

and eventually that town will
probably die as a result.

But here is the first
place where she actually

explains some of that.

"You're so tired.

It takes a lot out of you
killing so many people.

Worse, because you
didn't do nearly

as much as you could have done
once you got all worked up.

Orogeny is a strange equation.

Take movement, and warmth, and
life from your surroundings,

amplify it by some
indefinable process

of concentration or catalysis
or semi-predictable chants.

Push movement, and warmth,
and death from the earth.

Power in, power out.

To keep the power in though, to
not turn the valley's aquifer

into a geyser or shatter
the ground into rubble,

takes an effort that
makes your teeth

and the backs of your eyes ache.

You walked a long time
to try to burn off

some of what you took in but
it still brims under your skin

even as your body grows
weary and your feet hurt.

You are a weapon meant
to move mountains.

A mere walk can't
take that out of you."

So orogeny was
intended to be my way

of playing with the expectation
in fantasy that magic has

to have rules.

You know, it's obviously a
pretty straightforward power.

You can move mountains.

You can do things
with seismic energy.

Those things range pretty
widely and are actually

pretty versatile.

And there's something
thermodynamic

going on which you can
see from the effect.

In order to draw
in energy, Essun

sucks the heat, and movement,
and life out of everything

nearby and kills it.

So I wanted it to be clear that
there was some kind of process

going on, obviously
some movement

of thermodynamic
energy, but what is it?

And how the heck does that
turn into moving a mountain?

We don't know.

She doesn't know.

There's never going
to be an explanation.

It's a fantasy novel.

Readers will see on the spine
that it's a fantasy novel.

So they go into it
expecting magic.

And they go into it
expecting a magic system.

So in fantasy and
science fiction,

there are many ways to depict
how magic systems work.

But people want to know
what the rules are.

How does it work?

What are the limitations?

What's the damage and so on?

And I wanted to establish in
this passage pretty clearly

that it's not 100%
known in this case,

that a lot of what Essun
does is pure instinct.

She has had really
extensive training.

And it kind of is
implicit in the way

that she describes all of this.

She understands
the basics of it.

But there's some pieces
of this magic system that

don't have any logic to
them, don't have anything

that is explanatory to them.

And I wanted to introduce
the idea right here that this

is a magic system
that we're never

going to really be able to fully
explain, because it's magic.

And that's the whole point.

If it were easy to explain,
predictable, measurable, it

would be science.

And that's really it.