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Rabia Gale

alchemical fantasy

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Friday Fun: Transportation

Ideas come to me at the oddest moments. I was passing a truck on the highway about a week ago, did the quick sidelong glance at the monster beside me, and my brain flashed “turtle!”.

Maybe it was something about the angle, the curve of the headlights, the positioning of all the parts you find on the front of a semi, but it reminded me of nothing more than a snorting, determined, slightly mad turtle.

Of course, me being me, I came up with a turtle-truck hybrid to put in a far future world I’ve been putting together from fragments of inspiration for several months. Farscape has introduced the term biomechanoid into my vocabulary, a concept that fits very well into this world. Cargo-carrying,wheeled, snapping, red-eyed, repitilian, with high-domed shells–I think these will make it into the background of the story very nicely.

I enjoy an original twist on common everyday things, like transportation. I’ve read about Liveships and Brainships. In Paula Volsky’s The Grand Ellipse (sorta like Around the World in 80 Days meets World War 2 in a fantasy world), the characters get around in a number of a different ways–two-man bicycles, golems, boats pulled by water buffalo-like creatures, horses, trains, ships, and of course, their own two feet. Cables and trams and trains play big roles in my more steampunk stories. And I just get a kick out of airships.

Have you read any books with a memorable twist on transportation? Or come up with one of your own?

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Comments

  1. Megs - Scattered Bits says

    January 22, 2010 at 10:51 am

    In Calindria, I wanted to break from the standard horses as fantasy worlds’ standard personal transportation. So when I evaluated the actual fauna alive on the world, I settled on the big cats. Well, cat isn’t quite the word, but it will do nicely since I have to describe them somehow.

    Reply
  2. Rabia says

    January 22, 2010 at 1:42 pm

    So, these are carnivorous? How big are they? Do people ride them or are they used to pull vehicles?

    Reply
  3. Megs - Scattered Bits says

    January 22, 2010 at 2:46 pm

    People actually ride them. They are carnivorous, but they do their hunting mostly on their own time (at least the desert ones–I haven’t asked the mountain-dwellers yet). I think in some societies they are used to pull carts, etc., but I haven’t glimpsed any in action yet (goodness! I sound like a tourist!), but I highly suspect the Vas’heri of this in particular. In Míkran, they actually live inside the Clan fortresses and are a huge part of the culture because they are able to draw out poison by licking and they produce an extremely effective astringent/sanitizing agent that the Clans use to clean EVERYTHING. (What’s with all my vague “theys”? I mean the cats, of course. Different species depending on location. Only the desert ones (kinatei) have the cleansing/healing properties.)

    Reply
  4. Rabia says

    January 22, 2010 at 2:53 pm

    They do sound interesting. How do people tame them? Or are they sentient beasts who choose to bond with humans, like Pernese dragons?

    Reply
  5. Megs - Scattered Bits says

    January 22, 2010 at 3:03 pm

    I’m not positively sure because I popped into the world and poked my head around a few hundred years after the prides (or whatever I’ll call them) had been domesticated. I know the Clans (Míkran) migrated from the mountain folk (the Yakhwein folks anyhow), who had already domesticated the mountain ones. So they applied the same techniques to the desert ones.

    Now, what ARE those techniques? Ack! You’ve given me a new writing/mental playground project. But it would make an interesting Feb. short story. To find out. Perfectly good research reasons.

    🙂

    Reply
  6. Rabia says

    January 22, 2010 at 3:06 pm

    Well, the point of my Friday Funs is to give writers a chance to play around, so I feel perfectly smug that I succeeded. 😀

    Reply
  7. Megs - Scattered Bits says

    January 22, 2010 at 4:10 pm

    Smug? I’m shocked at you! :mock horror:

    All right. February fiction is now a short story in honor of Rabia Gale to explain how the cats got to be the way they are now.

    Reply
  8. Rabia says

    January 22, 2010 at 11:34 pm

    I don’t think anyone’s every written a story in honor of me. I feel… honored. 😀

    (Sorry, it’s late and I’m sleepy, and I always get silly when I’m this tired :P).

    Reply
  9. LisaM says

    January 23, 2010 at 4:30 am

    Hi Rabia!

    Just a question on the turtle-truck hybrid vehicle…. Does it move slowly?

    Reply
  10. Rabia says

    January 24, 2010 at 3:09 pm

    It’s not zippy like a sports car, but it does have wheels, so it moves about as fast as you would expect a truck to. Unless I decided to give it caterpillar treads, and make it a tank! The possibilities abound.

    Reply

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