Oddly specific question. No particularly interesting reason for asking it–the notion just popped into my mind and I think I’m too exhausted to have a well-working mental filter right now.
Here’s my question.
Has there ever been a work of Fantasy in which the characters knew themselves to have evolved from apes through natural selection? Or if not that, then it is known by the reader at least that this process is explicitly part of the history of the world of the book?
Also: Has there ever been a work of Fantasy (outside of Spelljammer from D&D) in which a fantasy world was invaded by sci-fi style ufo-riding aliens?
Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade, which I’m almost finished reading, is about an alien invasion of 1300’s England, including barons, knights and so forth. I guess it’s not so much a “fantasy world” in that there aren’t wizards and magic. But it’s a really neat concept and the book is very good.
Larry Niven’s Magic Goes Away series includes evolution. He recognizes it explicitly in one of the first stories, in which he talks about how wizards and warriors fight and how if the wizard wins the intelligence of the human race goes up, and if the warrior wins the human race also improves because a wizard who can’t beat a warrior was incompetent. The effects of evolution is also included indirectly in several other areas, in which Niven talks about how species have changed in response to the decline of magic in the world.
R A Lafferty was mostly considered a science fiction writer. He generally avoided the sword & sorcery stuff but his “world of today” is pretty damn weird. Googling his name & Evolution provided a link to an old thread on this board. I think he used evolution in several stories. I’ve got spare time next week & will check out my Lafferty collection. Hope I don’t get lost!
Then there’s Philip Jose Farmer’s The Alley Man, about the last Neanderthal. Of course, this was before we knew that most of us whose ancestors left Africa all those years ago have a Neanderthal or two in the woodpile.
Obviously, any number of works of urban fantasy fit the first question, since they’re set principally in our world or (in the case of the Incarnations series Waldo mentions) a science fiction world extrapolated from ours. Evolution is well understood in the Dresdenverse, the Greywalker setting, Lackey’s SERRAted Edge, and many others.
I assume, then, that you mean more of a swords & sorcery fantasy setting, with pre-Industrial Revolution tech levels, feudal societies, and so forth.
It’s not all that explicit, but a couple of Mercedes Lackey’s settings sort of fit the bill.
The Sorcerer-Adepts in her Gryphon trilogy are capable of genetic engineering of sufficient scope and detail that they can create new species with traits from multiple different species. This isn’t entirely handwaved as “a wizard did it” (even though that is precisely true in this case); at one point, a huge library full of manipulation and breeding records is shown, and characters discuss why a particular trait of one species developed. They don’t actually say “natural selection”, but an understanding of it is implicit.
The setting of her Bardic Voices series is fantasy (pseudo-medieval with magic and elves), but it is also set long after the apocalyptic fall of what seems to have been a technologically advanced society. There are a large number of nonhuman sentient species in the setting, at least one of which is explicitly alien (they retain a lot of their tech and records of interstellar travel). None of the aliens appear to have been invaders, however; it’s more like the world was an interstellar hub of some sort, and lots of aliens were stranded there when everything went boom.
In Michael Moorcock’s Swords Trilogy, protagonist Corum Jhaelen Irsei notes that his race, the Vadhagh, had evolved from marine mammals millions of years before.
The Fantasy RPG (and Polish fantasy books) The Witcher uses a lot of evolutionary talk; the witchers (monster-hunters) are described by the mages as being genetically mutated via magic. Not sure if evolution per se is ever brought up (if it is, I don’t remember) but I would not be surprised.
Would Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series count as fantasy? It is set in a future where spacefaring humans are marooned on a planet (with dragons) and have lost much of their advanced technology, but so far as I can recall there is no reason to think that they lost knowledge about evolution. I am not sure if evolution (of humans or dragons) is ever explicitly discussed, but I would not be surprised. There is no actual magic in it (unless you count telepathy/empathy stuff) but the fact that it is largely about dragons and low-tech humans gives it much of the flavor of fantasy.
Firstly, no, never mind the flavor, it doesn’t count as fantasy.
Secondly, this would be a matter of interpretation, but I’d be very surprised if the knowledge of evolution lasted for very many passes of the Red star - until the AIVAS archives were accessible again, that is.
It’s not just technology that was lost, but lots of old knowledge that didn’t have day-to-day application to the Pernese lifestyle. ‘Dragonsblood’ covers the brief rediscovery of genetic tech to cure a dragon plague, and by the time of ‘Masterharper’ and ‘Dragonflight’ the two crossings, (humanity travelling through space to reach Pern, and the mass migration from the South Continent to the North,) had become confused and conflated into one vague legend.
On the other hand, the Pernese might have kept smatterings of the ideas of evolution, and would certainly be more open to it than most Earth cultures who don’t believe in it, simply because a Creator myth religion has never gotten established there. If anything, they seem to have a steady-state view of life to me, aside from the Crossings myths - the living creatures of Pern have always been there, procreating their kind, much as we see them now.
In David Edding’s Sparhawk books humans are known to have evolved. Trolls and Ogres are known to be related offshoots of humans, and they meet (via magic) the “Dawn-Men” who were the mutual ancestors of all three species.
The Five Races of Man from David Weber’s Bahzell books are known to all have evolved from the original race, humans; it’s not said if they’ve realized where humans came from.
The Birthgrave had UFO riding humans show up in a fantasy world, although they weren’t so much invaders as they had their ship hijacked by the protagonist.
Andre Norton had lots of magic/sci fi conflicts; for example:
Witch World:The Kolder came through an interdimensional gate not spaceships, but are high tech invaders.
The Ift sure seemed magical, and were largely exterminated by THAT WHICH ABIDES, which turned out to be a crashed starship computer.
Voodoo Planet: Had starship riding aliens (well, humans but it wasn’t their planet) using magic against the magic using locals.
*Star Gate: *The good guy ex-space travelers travel to an alternate world where instead of peacefully meeting the (magic using) locals they were brutal invaders and tyrants.
The Simic Guild in the Ranvica setting of Magic: The Gathering are basically the fantasy equivalent of Genetic Engineers.
The History of Krynn from Dragonlance has a sort of evolution precipitated by the Grey Gem. Basically, Sentient life on Krynn started as three races: Humans, Elves and Ogres (who started as a beautiful race). Ogres degenerated into ugly monsters (although an off shoot stayed beautiful) and a magical item called the Grey Gem transformed groups of humans into Dwarves and Kender (sort of like skinny hobbits that have no concept of property or fear).
Another close-but-not-quite; in the Garret PI novel Angry Lead Skies by Glen Cook UFOs and aliens in the form of “silver elves” show up. It’s not really an invasion though, it’s a mix of an unauthorized attempt at social engineering, law enforcement attempts against the former, and sex tourism. No one actually realizes they are aliens though.
In The Second War of the Worlds HG Well’s Martians travel to an alternate universe’s Mars (called Thor in this universe), inoculate themselves against disease and launch a second invasion against an Earth which it turns out has magic.
Dragons are revealed in one of the books to have been selectively bred by humans from the much smaller fire-lizards native to Pern. I haven’t read anything that said where the fire-lizards came from, though.
And the only reason that the Pern books have even a thin veneer of science fiction to them is that at the time, fantasy was considered even less respectable than science fiction. But they’re fantasy, through and through.
The fire-lizards evolved naturally on Pern. The founding of the colony and the genetic engineering of the dragons (and the watchwhers) is covered in Dragonsdawn. (The book also indicates that human psi abilities are the result of genetic engineering.)
Without AIVAS, rediscovering evolution on Pern would have been an interesting business. On the one hand, you have species with the native Pernese phenotype (6 limbs, boron-heavy skeletal structure) as seen in fire lizards, wherries, tunnel snakes, and so forth; their ancestors would be well represented in the fossil record. On the other hand, you have terrestrial mammals–humans, horses, cats, and dolphins–which are radically different from anything in the fossil record; they show up out of nowhere, with no intermediate forms in the record.
What would Pernese biologists conclude, absent clues from the Dawn Sisters and AIVAS? That their ancestors were colonists from another world? Or would they decide that incredibly rapid speciation sometimes occurs in the aftermath of a Pass? Or that the terrestrial types evolved in an isolated environment that they haven’t located–an island, perhaps, that has since been submerged by the planet’s rather violent seismology–and took advantage of the devastation of a pass to colonize the continents?
Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories also mentioned evolution.
If you want to summon the Lord of Reptiles, the incantation includes the line “Your children were the fathers of men. Come aid a grandchild now!”
The Melniboneans were the first hominids to develop civilization. It is not entirely clear whether or not they are a separate species from other humans, but they certainly consider themselves to be so.
The ancestors of the people of Org were an advanced civilization. That culture has long since crumbled to ruins, and the people are devolving into more apelike forms.
There are two races of demons (whose names escape me at the moment). One was shaped like human women (but with mouths full of carnivore teeth). The other were apelike hominids. The two races are now mortal enemies, but Elric states that they both evolved from a common ancestor.