Evolution in fantasy stories instead of creationism

Hi guys,I resent the idea that the medieval fantasy genre has been taken over by creationism. From Tolkien to The Wheel of Time and George Martin, everything is creationism. I propose a fantasy story with evolutionary origins and NO MAGIC (just alchemy instead, and alchemists instead of wizards). In fact, I have background in creative writing and I finished 2 intensive general biology courses, so I decided to little piece and wondered if people liked it.Tell me what you think. It begins with a professor just having found out about evolution.

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Somewhere beyond the edge of reality, in the middle of an isolated swamp, was a little wooden hut, its typical darkness lit only by a few glowbugs of varying shades of yellow and green. Therein, the greatest discovery about life was about to occurr, as the evergrowing findings of fossils and his knowledge about the diversity organisms morphology made the professor realize something.
"This is it!" Cried Alfred, the professor, after drawing a few diverging lines on his chalkboard.
"What?" Asked Jade, surprised, the swamp swordmistress.
"The most beautiful thing I ever realized -- don't you see? This is evolution by natural selection!"
"Come again?"
"You see, Jade, every creature upon this planet hasn't just popped into existence."
"They haven't?"
"Nope. They evolved from a simple beginnings, gradually increasing in complexity."
"Neat."
"Neat indeed, my dear. And what's even neater are the unique societies, relationships, and dependance on one another as they're intertwined throughout the ages and eras. Constantly changing, constantly evolving, for the simple purpose of SURVIVAL!"
"Wait, so evolution isn't about getting stronger, bigger and better? I was half-expecting to have titan grandkids give or take 50 years."
"Not at all! Evolution doesn't work on that rate, and natural selection is a blind watchmaker, it has no foresight. In fact, getting stronger and bigger means you'll have to consume more resources, and it might make you more conspicuous to predators. You better have a good reason for turning that big or evolution will kick you down a notch."
"So creatures can devolve?"
"No no, overtime creatures only maintain the traits that are better for survival."
"I see. Well, you know, it's all very fascinating, but when do I get to kick some fucking ass?" She drew her sword.
"Oh, right. Well, here's the plan for today. I am doing research on mushrooms diversity and their properties. I need you to collect a mushroom for me which I think may have medical use. I have one sample, and I find it has some interesting effects."
"Alright. Where is it?"
"Deep, deep in the forest. In the southern regions. Be careful, you haven't been there and neither did I, so every new territory might hold unexpected dangers. Keep your eyes open, your ears sharp, and your blade as well."
"Naturally...selection."
"Almost," said the professor, "but that still didn't make sense."

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Jade sat out from the swamp hut, the quaint locality of our story, with its worn-out roads, glowbugs, frogs and typical dampness. Low waterways nearly everywhere you go. Jade was swamp-ready with long boots, a long sword, and light armour with just a bit of scales. She's been helping the professor since forever to explore nature. Though, collecting mushrooms seemed like a boring gig, but she knew that what seems boring grows eventually into a bizarre adventure with a series of unlikely events. She walked through the timber bridges, ducking and avoiding a few goblin arrows on the way, and even grabbing one goblin she spotted hiding behind a bush and fixed him to a tree with his own sword.
As she went deeper and deeper into the southern forest, the trees were getting bigger, and the undergrowth more lush. She looked at the mushroom sample and found a perfect match to one on a tree bark. But just as she was about to pick it up she heard "Hurr!! Who goes there?" Growled an old and low gluttural voice.
Jade flinched.
"What do you think you're doing?" The tree asked, its face-shaped torso expressed anger.
"Wait, you can talk?"
"Yes, I can talk, and I can feel too. Why did you touch me? Do you like to be touched by strangers when you sleep, let alone out of your species (not to mention realm)?
"Uh, sorry about that," stepped back Jade, "I just wanted to collect this mushroom."
"With whose permission, may I ask?"
"Professor Alfred, he's the brainiac of this swamp. He figured out evolution."
"Ahh... so there's a professor here hmm?" Pondered the tree a moment, not minding the evolution referrence. "Maybe we could use his help."
"We?"
As Jade asked that, more and more trees began to move, with cracking sounds all about, they hummed and hurred and look at her with their big yellow-black gemstone-like eyes.
"I see..."
"You see, my dear" explained the old tree, "the Gorks have taken over our forest, and so we ran here."
"Ran?" Furrowed Jade her eyebrow.
"Well, paced very heavily, anyway. The point is, we could use your help. My name is Logwood, by the way."
"Jade... Jade Stourmwind. Follow me, trees....here's something I never thought I'd say."

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As professor Alfred heard the story he was horrified, but he couldn't help being charmed by the treeants standing outside his hut, and the possible clued they can give him about nature.
"So what'll we do, professor?" Asked Jade.
"This is atrocious," he said. "The treeants live in mutualism with many other species. Without then, many organisms will suffer, and the balance of the southern forest is already undermined."
"This is true," said Logwood. "Indeed. We grow fruits, and provide shelter to many little creatures, and our organic decays are being shed for the fungi to eat...some of them even live on us as you can see. Oh, I heard you're interested in a sample of our famous tea-mushrooms," Logwood picked several mushrooms off his bark and handed it to the professor.
"Thank you kindly," bowed the professor. "I can't wait to examine them. Now Jade, get Redbeard, we have a quest ahead of us."
"Where is Redbeard, anyway?" Asked Jade.
"ARRRRRRRRRRR!!! Grind me some grog ye bellyachin' cardboard-eatin' daffodils!!! Where thar be a quest, thar be a Redbeard!" Cried a mohocked redbearded eye-patched dwarf as he stormed onto the scene.
"Ah...so you're all here," said Alfred confidently and pressed his fingers together to form a perfect triangle. "Good. As you know, the Gorks have taken over the treeants forest at the southern edge of the swamp. You must vanquish them back into their mountainous corners."
"Ahhh...a gory guts-rentchin' limb-cuttin' fireblazin' show O' death n' destruction?" Readied Redbeard his axe with the most evil of golden-tooth lopsided grins. "What rrr we waitin' ferr??"

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(to be continued)

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Edited by Dorothy, : No reason given.

Thread copied here from the Evolution in fantasy stories instead of creationism thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

For whatever reason, text on a computer screen is incredibly hard to read if double spacing isn't used between paragraphs. Alternatively, you could use CSS justify and text indent, that might improve the readability enough.

Click on "Peek" to see how I achieved this effect, but it's kind of tedious and double spacing between paragraphs is a lot easier.

--Percy

i thought there was evolution in tolkien?the halflings, and dwarves, did not go extinct, but overtime changed into men, and men of course stayed men, in what became known as the "age of men"?

No, they didn't. They are all different and created. Man is the second race created by Eru Iluvatar, and dwarves are created by Aul, a "lesser god" in the stories. I do think hobbits evolved from man, though.

so what happend to the dwarves and the halflings. the elves left in boats, but what became of dwarves and halflings into the age of men?

I don't see how evolution can come into a story --- it doesn't happen that fast. All it can be is backstory.And I don't see how it can be backstory for anything evolving talking trees. How did they evolve? What sort of background? Only you seem to have skipped learning about direct speech.Also, you should probably read this.

Hi, Dorothy.It's an interesting idea you've got. I write hard SF when I have time (which is, actually, never anymore).One thing you don't want to do is jump into it too fast, and cram too much into one page. Efficiency is for technical writing: for creative writing, you need to spend time on things to build up the proper mood.There are two ways in which I think you've gone too fast:

1. You skimped over several potentially interesting narrative details and character-development opportunities to get to the point. Fiction is as much about characters, setting and mood as it is about the focal point, so you don't want to miss these opportunities (particularly near the beginning of the story). Give the reader more than just a passing description of a few pieces of the environment, and develop Jade's mood and personality a little more: so far, much of the setting and characters seem pretty generic and one-dimensional.
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2. You made Profesor Alfred go from having just discovered evolution to suddenly having amazing insights into ecosystem balance and conservation, which is quite a big leap. Some questions to think about:
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   What is the state of biological knowledge in the world outside of Alfred's swamp? Surely this will have major lingering impacts on the way Alfred views the world.

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   Do most people believe animals and plants were created by gods? Or, do they believe that animals and plants are constnatly regenerated from miraculous sources in the environment (spontaneous generation)?

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   In the real world, the significance of the concepts of extinction, conservation and ecosystem balance weren't really understood without evolutionary concepts like fitness, natural selection and procreative reproduction, so it seems like you're treating evolution as more of a monumental revelation than the process of discovery you wanted the reader to think it was.

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   How did Alfred come to his conclusion of evolution? You only hinted at his evidence, and Jade just accepted it without any discussion. Make her mull over it while she looks for mushrooms or something; make her (and his) acceptance and understanding of it more gradual, possibly developing her mental struggle as an important plot device.
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   Fiction has a naive tendency to treat "experts" as endless sources of knowledge, which just turns them into convenient deus ex machina devices, resources for the plot to draw from, and they miss out on a potentially interesting, dynamic side to the story (and badly misrepresent the way learning actually happens), and I worry that your Professor Alfred may become one of those.

Good stuff over all, though: I look forward to seeing what you're going to do with it. I would post a sample of my own work, but I hope to publish it at some point in my life, so I'd like to keep it under wraps for awhile. Maybe I'll paste a few snippits for comment later.Edited by Bluejay, : "publish" changed to "post"

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Well, the stories essentially end in the fourth age (which began right after "The Lord Of The Rings"), and since dwarfs, hobbits and elves are still around at that time, I guess nothing became of them. The stories simply stopped, and at the time they stopped the races were still around.

Why do you say that this genre "has been taken over by creationism?" I am not convinced this is the case. Can you please point out what you see as "creationist" claims in these stories, or creationist positions by their authors?You could make a case that this genre has largely been taken over by Christians (George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, etc). And if you interpret "Creationism" very broadly, such that you consider all Christians (even "theistic evolutionists") to be "creationists," then perhaps you could make a case that the fantasy genre indeed "has been taken over by creationism." But this is not the normal usage of the word "creationism." A number of these fantasy authors would not identify with the "creationist" movement today and would not be accepted by its leaders.For example, see the article C. S. Lewis on Creation and Evolution by Ferngren and Numbers. Lewis was a theistic evolutionist who did not interpret Genesis literally. Though he started to become critical of evolution toward the end of his life, his criticism seems to be more directed against naturalism than against biology.

One example of evolution in a fantasy novel is the mulefa, from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.The mulefa, appearing in the third book, are a race of creatures that have actually evolved wheels... sort of. They have horny claws, with which they grasp disk-shaped seed pods, through a hole at their centre. These provide them with effective wheels. They are actually mentioned in Richard dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale, where Dawkins seems rather impressed with the idea.Mutate and Survive

Let's go back to one of the first modern science fiction stories, the Time Machine.The whole premise of the story hinges on evolution.Edited by jar, : fix subtitles

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Well, they're creationist insofar as most of their "origin stories" involve god(s) creating everything.

While of course true that in the time machine humans "evolved" into two distinct species, it is meant to be more of a social commentary, than actually being about evolution, I'd say.

"While of course true that in the time machine humans "evolved" into two distinct species..."The OP resented the idea of creationism being the basis of stories. The mechanism used to carry through the intended comments and POV of the author is evolution.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!