Worldbuilding Wonders: Transportation Through Time and Space
Haly's getting twisted with this week's theme of transportation. A look at keystone modes of travel through human history leads to contemplations on magical means and travel's sci-fi evolution.
Twisted Tuesday: The Magic and Science of Transportation and Travel
Your hero has an important mission to accomplish and, if you’re doing your job right, it’s going to require them to travel. Whether it’s standing up from their chair and going into the kitchen to stare into the fridge or carrying a ring across the land and over, under, and through the world’s most treacherous mountains, the means and modes of transportation and travel available to your heroes depends entirely on your worldbuilding.
Yesterday, I covered some of the reasons why people travel from place to place so it’s only natural that I follow it up with some examples and ideas of how to accomplish travel in your fictional worlds!
Key Modes of Transportation Through Human History
As humans, we’re always looking for better ways of doing things, be they safer, more efficient, more comfortable, or just plain faster.
Ancient modes of transportation began, of course, with walking. This led to the development of roads to make travel quicker and less dangerous. In some areas, we adopted beasts of burden such as horses, donkeys, and elephants, as riding animals. Roads, and the need to move goods and not just people, led to innovations such as the chariot and the carriage. We encountered water, and learned to build boats, and eventually ships.
The Renaissance saw increases in speed and efficiency, through adaptations and improvements on carriages and eventually stagecoaches. Rafts and rowboats gave way to sailing vessels which gave way to steam ships. Quicker, more reliable transportation made moving perishables easier. The transition into the industrial revolution brought about the railways and coal-burning steam trains.
All of these evolved into the cars, busses, trains, and subways that we see in the Modern world. Increased speed coupled with a more dynamic and scientific understanding of the world allowed the rise of modes of travel such as airplanes, helicopters, rockets, and the space shuttle.
All of these are familiar within contemporary worldbuilding. If you’re reaching for a particular region or historical timeframe, doing research on the transportation methods available, and to whom they were accessible, is pretty critical if you plan on incorporating those details into your story. This is not a case where “fake it ‘til you make it” applies.
Incorporating Magical Means of Transportation
Once you’ve established the rules of magic in your world, it’s fairly easy to apply those rules to any of the travel modes listed above, plus many, many more.
Common household items such as broomsticks, carpets, and beds (via their knobs, of course) have been portrayed in folklore and popular media as magical modes of transportation. What unique items in your magical world could be used as an unexpected form of transportation?
Portals, gateways, and other instantaneous magical travel can make it quicker and easier to travel great distances. But don’t forget that magic should have some sort of cost; consider making such things extremely rare or unreliable. A portal that will get you out of a bad situation, but drops you somewhere random? That’s an adventure waiting to happen!
Mythical creatures such as dragons, griffons, and yes, even giant eagles can be urged, coaxed, or compelled to work with people through magical means. Maybe this is even a tradition or political relationship. Might magic be able to give sentience to normal creatures such as horses and cows? Or even to vehicles to make them charismatic and self-driving? It’s magic! It’s your world!
Scaling into the Future for Sci-Fi
Self-driving cars used to be a dream of the future, and now we’re sharing our roads with them. Drones, tablet computers…it’s not difficult to imagine how these will evolve over the coming generations.
Self-driving cars will lead to self-driving trucks hauling tons of cargo over long distances, then eventually self-guided sun-powered ships that sail heavy cargo across the sea. Smart roads will make hovercrafts possible through the same technology that now powers maglev trains. And as our understanding of the physical universe expands, who knows where new branches of physics will lead technology?
Drones might lead to single-passenger flight systems, a much more likely prospect than the dangerous combustion propellant-fueled jetpacks. Advances in our understanding of gravity and magnetism might increase the power of such devices. Single-person space travel, a quick jaunt into the ionosphere? Not out of the realm of possibility.
Ideas such as teleportation technology, wormholes, and faster-than-light travel are all commonplace in sci-fi. How might the edges of astronomical physics such as dark matter and black holes be imagined for transportation purposes?
Integrating Transportation into Your Worldbuilding
As you develop your own unique ways of transportation within your world, don’t forget to consider how it will affect your societies and their cultures. How does transportation affect the economic structure, and how is that structure represented in access to different modes of transportation?
And I don’t think I need to reiterate how travel can be not just a plot point, but the entire plot itself? (Or did y’all skip The Lord of the Rings?
Tomorrow
Another week means another Worldbuilding Wednesday and your opportunity to get your questions answered and find help in my weekly worldbuilding advice column, “Ask the Bard!” So drop your question in the comments, slide into my Substack DMs, tag me in a note, or reply to this email with your questions! I’m here to help YOU build the best world to support YOUR story!
