Authors Electric

I've not been too well since I got back from Madagascar (so no change there - I was very ill the first time I went), so forgive me for taking an easy way out and using lots of photos.  We can’t invent something that is beyond our senses to detect, as we don’t have the right vocabulary to describe it. We don’t have infra-red or ultra-violet vision, we can’t hear infra sound or ultrasound, we don’t have whatever sense it is that allows a murmuration of starlings or the synchronisation swim of a shoal of fish. What we do is to recombine bits of existing creatures, and when we’re after something scary it’s the predators that spring to mind. I used a hyena to create my sinistroms in The Divide. Dragons tend to be amalgamations of bats and lizards, and may well have originally been inspired by the bones of dinosaurs. Griffons are eagles and lions. When something was first described a long time ago, either in paint or words or, earliest of all, in stone, it pays to have a think about what...

          A fantasy setting is, in many ways, closer to the world as we know it than a science fiction one. It’s more accessible, and consequently more attractive to a child who is still awed by things that are all too familiar to an adult. Fantasy is unlikely to change gravity, or body chemistry, or a breathable atmosphere. Therefore the creatures that populate that particular world would be at home in ours.  There are several ways of creating these creatures – either by changing the size or behaviour or appendages of an existing creature, or by making a hybrid of creatures already known. Many mythical beasts are clear mixtures of two or more real animals. The griffin is half eagle and half lion; the minotaur half bull, half man; and the chimera had the body of a goat, the hindquarters of a dragon, and the head of a lion, although descriptions do vary.      When I needed to invent a really scary animal myse...