Anachronism, Now!

We are tied to the times we live in. We write about what we know. We imagine ourselves in their shoes, and not the other way around.

One of the terrible things about writing speculative fiction are the constant self-assessments, where I ask myself, “does it make sense for X to know Y?” (“Would Abraham Lincoln know how to twerk?”) So much of our presuppositions are learned but not rightly understood.

There are many constants in humanity that I find interesting. The need to feel loved, the fear of death, the sorrow of losing a lover or long time companion. If anything can help to ground a story taking place 8,000 years ago, or 80,000 years in the future, it’s tethering a character to these fundamental experiences. After listening to Mary Beard’s SPQR and listening to her uncovering the daily lives of Romans, based on, for example, the ruins of Pompei, it’s clear that the Romans were very much like us: going to restaurants, drinking, gambling, playing sports and musical. instruments, and practicing class inequality.

The idea that our common idioms and phrases will last long into the future (or extend into the distant past) however, is pure fantasy.

Not to say that there weren’t pejorative words like, “fuck” in classical Rome and antiquity. “Futuere” was used in the same way, albeit not as versatile as our current iteration (see this post for more details). Our current day version of the word has a coarseness to it. Hardened syllables that feel abrupt and raw. To Latin speakers I’m sure that “futuere” had a similar sensation when utilizing it. (“FOO-TWher-AY,” would be my uneducated guess where the emphases would be placed in the word.) But, still, the common utilization of the word likely came from both it’s immediate lingual context (vulgar sexual intercourse), and the bracing feeling it evoked when saying it.

With that in mind, I think it’s perfectly possible to construct similar idioms or commonplace expressions in stories that are far removed from our current context. The most flexible way in doing so is by creating points of reference in the culture you are creating.

For example, on an alien planet, a tribe of creatures stand around an air filter that makes their immediate surroundings habitable. The air filter requires a mixture of chemicals to function, with various permutations of the formula resulting in more, or less, efficient outcomes. One of the creatures, in a conversation entirely unrelated to the air filter, makes a social gaff and their peer replies, “Fumbled the intermix again, Moru.”

In the immediate context above, there’s a common function that members of the culture participate in. The action of mixing the chemicals to ensure survival is of great importance in the community. Being incompetent at providing the correct components in the process can then be tied to a more general aspect of disapproval or lack of expertise in other areas of life. Once you establish a well known process/activity/concept, that can then be used to create a common expression.

Considering the same process in the example, maybe there’s a specific, critical process involved in the mixing of chemicals or the calibration of the equipment. If this process is compromised, it leads to an undesirable outcome. Colloquially there could be a word or phrase that refers to that circumstance, which then becomes a form of profanity. If the machine made a noxious byproduct at the same time, then that could be a candidate for profanity. “Slime Crumble!”

This is an underdeveloped illustration, but with enough worldbuilding up front, it’s possible to leverage that to create familiar expressions to a reader, which are grounded in worlds unlike our own.

Of course there’s also utility in Anachronism. Maybe your story features our swear words, but with the understanding that your dialogue is a “translation” in real time of a far different language. In Star Wars, characters speaking on screen in English are implied to be speaking “Galactic Basic”. So, when we watch A New Hope, Luke is jsut really well dubbed in what otherwise might be a foreign film. That said, more colloquial phrases like “Nerf-herder” are rooted in the context of the greater world imagined by George Lucas. Although the phrase is introduced without any prior reference to a Nerf, or those that “herd” them, the tone of voice that the statement is made in constitutes the clue that being a “Nerf-herder” is not a desirable thing. In literature, the vocal cue is absent, so greater care has to be made to establish why being a “Nerf-herder” is less than desirable. Don’t outright tell the reader why being a babel-schlock is bad, but maybe place breadcrumbs ahead of the word’s usage to help it land in the correct tone of voice, the reader has in their head when encountering it.

In any case, use anachronisms at your leisure, but wield them responsibly, that is, unless you want to be a word-was-er, or something…

Challenge accepted…