![]() If you cut sliced your hand open with a dirty knife tomorrow, you’d probably be irritated but not terrified. The escalation of physical violence is an ancient authorial impulse – Beowulf isn’t content to wrestle Grendel he rips his entire arm off and hangs it from rafters – but it’s encouraged by the calibration of the modern reader. When the rules of healing are murky, there’s no reason for an author not to raise the stakes in every battle, and it is oh, so tempting to raise the stakes. It does, however, invite a sort of macabre escalation. The magic-as-medicine approach works, and can work elegantly. This is the whole point of healers and potions in games like Elder Scrolls. That arrow straight through the gut? A few runes and a muttered incantation ought to do the trick. The unpleasant end of a dagger stuck in your leg? Have the local witch lay hands on it. Lizard men leave a nasty gash in your shoulder? Heal it up with a little magic salve. Moreover, to be fair to writers of fantasy, magic often fills the void left by the absence of modern medicine. No one wants to read that book, least of all me. If the Lord of the Rings played out in the real world, Sam would collapse of dengue fever contracted in the Dead Marshes, Gollum would be long dead from some raw-trout-borne illness, and Frodo, rescued from the taint of the Morgul-blade, would succumb to a staph infection. A fantasy novel in which the main characters languish in the grip of chronic illness hardly sounds like delightful reading. When was the last time you saw a fantasy character die of tetanus? Or malaria? Or anaphylactic shock? Or salmonella? I get it, of course. During the American Civil War, two out of every three soldiers fell to disease or infection. Wounded soldiers will occasionally battle infection, the odd woman will die in childbirth, but by and large the heroes and villains appear blithely unconcerned by the mortal threats surrounding them. You’d rarely know that, though, from the way the characters carry on. In traditional epic fantasy, of course, no one has access to modern medicine. Get it while mountaineering in the Brooks Range and you die. ![]() Appendicitis is easily treatable when you live in Columbus, Ohio. In fact, everything starts to look like a potential death sentence. Without a hospital nearby, a broken leg can be a death sentence. Take notes about the experience so the rest of us can appreciate your observations after your death, which will probably be imminent. Hike a week into the backcountry or get dropped off by a float plane. To feel the gravity of the situation, just try the following experiment: go somewhere remote. So, without further ado, I give you Brian Stately and 'Gandalf's Hand Sanitizer - The Wounds of Fantasy.'Ī very partial list of the things that could kill you in the absence of modern medicine: bees, thorns, nuts, horses, mosquitoes, childbirth, chicken, spinach, farming, dogs, rats, rusty tacks, ticks, and shit.* If you live in a part of the world without access to cipro and epi pens, doxycycline and tetanus shots, penicillin and measles vaccines, chances are one of these things will kill you. Brian posts these articles on his blog, but he was kind enough to submit one here, on Written-With-A-Sword. ![]() It's a refreshing take on things that we either overlook or forgive our favourite authors for. From swearing in fantasy to what motivates the bad guys, Brian isn't afraid to sugar coat his insight into the fantasy realm. Brian's a busy man, and when he's not doing any of the above he's sharing his thoughts and opinions on topics within the fantasy genre. Yesterday I introduced you to the one and only Brian Staveley - writer, editor, father, teacher (in no particular order, of course). ![]()
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