The Pearls & Perils of World Building
April 18, 2021
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I was ten years old when I realized that J.R.R. Tolkien was equal parts freak, savant, and genius.
I’d just read his classic, The Hobbit, for the first time and was midway through the first book of his infamous trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, when I did something I’d never done before:
I flipped back to the appendices. And there, I found an entire world, one far larger than “just” what Tolkien had described of “Middle-Earth” in his narrative pages.
The writing was small, complicated, and detailed. It contained so many words I’d never heard before. It read like some boring entry I would’ve found in the Encyclopedia Britannica about finches or iron smelting. But it wasn’t boring at all once I realized that Tolkien had provided an extensive back history of an entire world of his own making.
What?!?!?
He cited books with titles and contents he’d entirely made up himself, that had never appeared anywhere but in his own mind. He recounted the centuries-long lineage of main characters, articulated the regional differences and internal conflicts between nations of dwarves and elves and humans, and even wrote an entire freaking language and explained its structure in detail.
Yes, an entire language. Elvish. He invented a language.
Just to make his fantasy story - and its fantastical world - more believable. More real. Worth investing in Here and Now.
[Editor’s Note: You can even learn Elvish in a series of courses at Oxford now. Yeah - Mega Nerd Alert.]
Even as a ten year old, I knew this was a level of investment and literary realism that went beyond what most- if not all - authors in history had ever done. In the three decades since, I’ve tested that theory against the other great authors I’ve had the privilege to read, and no one yet comes close to the depth, breadth, and detail of Tolkien’s world building.
Tolkien’s close friend, C.S. Lewis, created a more kid-friendly world with Narnia but never bothered with appendices; Anne McCaffrey painted words on a broad canvas with her extensive series The Dragonriders of Pern; George R.R. Martin continues to do his best to drown readers in detail with every sentence in his still-not-finished Game of Thrones series - may they end on a better note (if they ever do end - get on it, George), and with better reception, than the television series did; And, of course, J.K. Rowling did wonderful things with various backstories and made-up volumes of books that don’t exist in the Harry Potter sub-universe of our everyday world, yet…..
She never wrote an entire language. Tolkien (still) for the win, in that area at least.
My point isn’t to denigrate those authors (that would be insane), nor to compare their work unfavorably to Tolkien’s, because each of those authors does things in their books uniquely better than Tolkien does, in my opinion. In particular, all those aforementioned authors do dialogue better and don’t do maddening things like write only one paragraph to describe a pivotal battle yet spend two entire pages describing an old growth forest or the history of pipeweed smoking.
My point here is that in world-building, Tolkien still holds the championship belt that he first won sometime before / during World War II.
Tolkien blew my ten-year old mind (and still does) with his world-building, and it inspired me back at age ten to someday write books where I could do my own world-building and hopefully make it believable and “worthy” of extended reader interest and investment.
Which brings me to “Krelle’s World,” the pseudo-official (or quasi? I still can’t get those straight. Neither can you, so shut it) name I’ve given the alternate history world of 1946 that I’ve created as the basis for my novel, Krelle’s Inferno. Unlike Middle-Earth, Narnia, or Pern, Krelle’s World is an alternate version of our own world, free of elves, dwarves, centaurs, talking lions (as far as we know - how cool would that be, though?) and other fantastical creatures. Instead, this world is our own, just with a major What If shift.
That’s what makes Krelle’s Inferno an alternate history novel.
In this case, the What If is “What if the Allies had failed on D-Day?”
A while back, I talked about this in my post on the “Butterfly Effect,” but didn’t delve too deeply into the world-building part, or the challenges and “art” involved in doing it well. But I thought I’d circle back to talk about how I did it and why, and where my training as a historian and my own creative threads / impulses / talents merged to build something unique and more than a little scary.
As I’ve said before, those two terms - “historian” and “creative” - are often assumed by the general public to be contradictions in terms. It isn’t true - at least not entirely. Certainly, academic histories studies can be dense, intricate, long, and extensively detailed, while more “popular” histories can sacrifice quality of research and nuance in the name of flash or spicing up a story. But some of the most creative and engaging writers out there are historians who can blend quality storytelling and research together to help readers imagine the worlds of the past and connect with them despite the gaps in context, culture, and time.
For a historian like me writing an alternate history fiction piece, world building has to meet a similarly high bar, because the world I am altering has to feel plausible in its changes, yet still familiar in its feel. This isn’t an easy balance to find or maintain, I found out, and it certainly took all the skills I’d developed as a historian and new fiction writer to figure out.
[Editor’s Note: JDK just put on his historian hat. Proceed carefully with an eye for detail, and please exercise patience. Carry on.]
By turning D-Day into a defeat for the Allies and a victory for the Nazis, I had to first figure out 1) how could such a defeat have plausibly happened then recreate it for the reader, then 2) play out step-by-step the ripple effects of such a different outcome on the rest of the war, then 3) bring the details of these changes to life in the narrative and integrate the characters into it, all of whom need to have believable mentalities and perspectives shaped by this different world, with no hints at all of the actual world and history we know.
It was an enormous amount of fun that engaged both sides of my brain at the same time, yet also took a great deal of time to work out. Each cause and effect I had to examine from a dozen different directions, figuring out what actual historical events would never have happened had D-Day been an Allied defeat, then also leaving room for me to put in new events that never actually happened.
It was dizzying at times, and it involved a lot of reading and review of the events in Europe from D-Day on, some really fun conversations with historian friends of mine to test out my ideas and creative choices, and a helluva a lot of time looking up minutiae like “what did Red Cross uniforms and POW relief boxes look like in 1946?” and “what pistols did Soviet officers carry as standard issue sidearms during World War II?”
In the end, it will be up to readers to decide if they agree that I succeeded in creating a believable alternate world. For my part, though, I really like - and stand by - what I decided on and rejected.
Krelle’s World is a scary world, one with distinct differences from our own past history, yet one with intriguing differences that will be really fun to work with in subsequent novels (Krelle’s Inferno is the first of a planned trilogy of books built around my main character, a former German intelligence colonel named Geren Krelle).
Because of D-Day’s failure - which occurred in large part because the Germans ended up figuring out in advance that the Allies would attempt to land in Normandy - a cascading series of factors came into play that would have created a very different end to the Second World War. After a lot of research and reading, including “what if” scenarios explored by other professional historians, I decided that it was very likely Nazi Germany would have lost the war eventually anyway, but it would have taken longer for them to be defeated without Allied troops closing in on Germany from the west. This meant that the Allies would have continued to bomb Germany and western Europe mercilessly from the air, while it would have fallen to the Soviet Red Army to do nearly all the land fighting.
And a plausible result of this, I decided, was that the Soviets would have had to conquer all of Germany AND German-occupied western Europe to end the war. This was a staggering idea to me, as it would have fundamentally changed the landscape of the subsequent Cold War. Instead of the dividing line between the Soviet / communist east and the liberal democratic west being right down the middle of Germany as it actually happened, in Krelle’s World that dividing line is the English Channel.
Gulp. Play that forward more, and that means (at the least) the following:
All of Europe would have fallen under Soviet control, and any “elections” held in Soviet-controlled territory would have resulted in friendly communist governments loyal to Stalin. Which means, in turn, no basis for the creation of NATO, the postwar alliance that bound all western European democracies and the United States together for mutual defense - a bedrock of the Cold War order in actual history. I have the war ending both in Europe and the Pacific in August 1945, after the US drops two atomic bombs - one each on Germany and Japan….Gulp again.
The Soviets would have captured the overwhelming majority of German advanced technology, scientists, engineers, and other specialists. This would have given the Soviets a massive advantage and head start on the US and its allies in developing jet aircraft and other modern weapons, as well as on efforts to put satellites and humans into space. The history of NASA, to put it mildly, would have been starkly different.
Without millions of their own troops on the Continent recapturing German-controlled territory, the Americans and British would never have recovered, catalogued, and studied the millions upon millions of German documents that explained everything from Hitler’s rise and fall to the fate of Europe’s Jews and other groups the Nazis targeted for persecution and murder. In fact, in my book, the Soviets keep a tight lid on information about the Nazi death camps in Poland and all other elements of the Holocaust. The ramifications of all this for our understanding of the roots, conduct, and end of the war are beyond huge - it would have literally created a different world and a different history of the Second World War than what he have today.
Those are just the Big Ones that are central to my novel’s plot. But the wider ripples are even more fascinating (and will be much more controversial as readers go through the trilogy). Here’s just a taste of what I’ve decided (subject to change, of course) would have likely happened in the broader world as a result of D-Day’s failure, the cascading events that would have resulted, and the factors I just listed above:
There would never have been a Korean War, at least as we knew it. With a longer war to fight in Europe to defeat Hitler, I speculated that the Soviets would not have had the time or inclination to invade Japanese-held China as they actually did, so their forces would not have occupied the northern half of the Korean peninsula. Instead, I have American forces occupying the entire peninsula with help from the Nationalist Chinese after the surrender of Japan…
.…Because without a Red Army invasion into China, they would not have been there to give the Chinese communists the thousands of tons of Japanese weapons and equipment that they captured in actual history, which gave Mao Zedong a massive advantage in his renewed civil war against Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalist government. This also suggests that the Chinese Civil War could have gone on much longer than the four years of actual history, and it might not have ended in a complete communist victory that drove the Nationalists to Taiwan.
Nor would there have been a Vietnam War. With all of German-occupied France liberated by the Red Army and a pro-Moscow government installed, there would have been no attempt by France to retake their colonial holdings in Indochina, as communist governments wanted to see an end to European colonialism. With no French war in Indochina, as actually happened in the 1950s, there would have been no attempt by the Americans to save Vietnam from communism in the 1960s - instead, it’s highly possible Ho Chi Minh would have seen a liberated Vietnam happen quite quickly after the war, as the Americans would have had their hands quite full with occupying all of Japan and Korea while overseeing the disarmament of Japanese forces in China (which the Soviets mostly did in actual history).
Isn’t this crazy? It makes my head swim a bit, too, and I’m the guy who invented all this. There are even more eye-widening alternate realities I’m including, too, like some big ones involving the makeup of the postwar Middle East, social upheaval and change at a much faster rate in the United States, and extraordinarily different postwar experiences for countries like Iceland, Norway, Indonesia, and Argentina.
Individual histories were altered, too, because of the D-Day defeat. In Krelle’s World, Dwight Eisenhower’s military career effectively ended as a result, as did any chance of a political career after the war. So, no President Eisenhower. Also, D-Day’s failure saves General George Patton from dying in a jeep accident in occupied Europe after the war, so I have him instead becoming a vocal postwar critic of Truman and America’s foreign policy approach to the Soviets.
Another casualty of D-Day? American confidence in their position in the postwar world against the Soviets. In Krelle’s World, communism’s popularity is global, and most democracies in Europe that would have resisted it have fallen under its control. As a result, European colonial empires collapse quickly, all with Soviet support, which endears them to the populations of these newly liberated independent countries. All of this puts the United States in a position where it is very nearly the sole power left to really challenge communism, and it has no “beachhead” in Europe to leverage against the Soviets like it did in actual history. Interestingly, their leverage in Asia is actually stronger in Krelle’s World than it was in actual history….
If this all sounds grim, that’s because it is. Krelle’s World is not one that would have benefited the majority of the people living in it. Soviet communism was a monster in actual history; in Krelle’s World, it may be unstoppable (honestly, I haven’t decided yet). That, by itself, is frightening. The United States would have faced an immediate postwar crisis equal to that of fighting the war, and longer lasting. What this would have meant in American politics, social cohesion, and economic prowess cannot be known for certain, but it would have been beyond the challenge the country faced in actual history in the decades after the war.
Pick an area, issue, or individual, and it would have been decidedly different (most likely) in Krelle’s World than in our own actual history. I can only hope that I paint the picture of all this for the reader effectively enough that they find it believable and understandable. It is always a challenge for me to not bog things down in too much detail / nuance. You likely know that by now (don’t answer that). I want Krelle’s World to be unsettling, because that is what is required to drive the story along effectively and illustrate the stakes of what Krelle is tasked to do in this dark world.
Krelle’s World, in a very real sense, is a main character. So, like my other main characters, it has to be relatable and realistic and compelling.
I’ve satisfied my own sense of what Krelle’s World should look like, and it took me bringing together all the elements of my life experience, academic training, personal interests / growth, and creative talents to make it happen. It remains to be seen how many people will one day enter and explore Krelle’s World, but today I’m thrilled that I actually followed through on Ten-Year-Old Me’s dream of building his own fantasy world and liking what he built. I just high-fived him.
There’s something for all of us in that, even if alternate history (or even actual history) isn’t all that exciting to you. Any of our dreams require all parts of ourselves - past and present - to give ourselves the best chances to see them turn into reality. And pursuing them has ramifications for all areas of our lives and for those riding along with us.
Thinking through ramifications of actions, or exploring “what ifs,” is a part of that pursuit in each of us. So, in that sense, we each are world building, all the time.
Hopefully, though, your built worlds don’t turn out as grim as Krelle’s.
If they do, we need to talk - so I can figure out how to stay away from you. Just kidding. Sorta.
Here’s to all of you, world builders every one. Make them good ones.
Chins Up, Everyone.
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Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:
Soul Book of the Week: A Thousand Mornings: Poems by Mary Oliver
Book On My Nightstand: A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles
Best Show / Movie I Watched: The Warrior Season One (HBO)
Strongest Earworm Song: “Sound Your Funky Horn” by KC & the Sunshine Band
Best Triathlon Training Moment: My first session with a personal trainer ever. Amazing. Still sore.
Favorite Hangout T-Shirt of the Week: This one. It’s so versatile wardrobe-wise! And it’s Seattle.
Coolest Thing of the Week: Crushing my first two pool training sessions. Can’t wait for more.
Thing I Know Now That I Didn’t Last Week: That my mom once taught community college
Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Script less and prep more”
Current Wanderlust List: 1) California coastal drive; 2) Nagano, Japan; 3) Anywhere in Italy
