Earth-specific plantlife etc in fantasy

I try to avoid it describing what is the plant and what does it do, but having another (usually descriptive) name; I came accross this when my soldiers were using aloe for the sunburns

But, if I say they're giving him opium in a world that isn't ours, would that sound weird? See, I'm not that keen on just making up a magic plant that exists there, but at the same time, things like that just seem too 'earthy' as in associated with this world.

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Yes, I think it's weird to call it "opium." But why not just give it another name? "Dream Wliws: It's a strange flower that numbs pain, arouses hallucinations or trances, is addictive, etc ... (everything an opium poppy does in ours, just fittingly exotic to your Fantasy world)

If it's pretty much the same thing, what's the problem with using the same name?

The assumption is more or less that you're translating the whole thing anyhow -- since it's a different world w/ different history and influences, they're not speaking English -- so I'd say stick with the familiar English term unless there is no equivalent term. (Of course if it's different enough that there really is no equivalent term, call it whatever you want.)

(Advice shamelessly 'borrowed' from somewhere, but no idea where, sorry!)

ETA: here's one mention, in the Turkey City Lexicon: "Call a rabbit a smeerp".

Some examples:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CallARabbitASmeerp

I'd call it opium, if it's opium. As Annie says, it's all "translation" anyway.

Unless you have a plot-specific or world-specific reason to call it something else, of course.

Having said that, I'm totally renaming Angelica for my pagan world. I don' t know if it'll ever come up yet, but if it does that name would throw the reader right out.

As a reader, I wouldn't be put off by a mention of opium existing in a different world. Even Middle Earth had mushrooms.

In my WIP, I had zebras, but I decided to call them something different. George R. R. Martin had already used the term "zorse", so I started referring to zebras as "stripes".

My critiquer read the first chapter and said, "If this is a zebra, why don't you just call it a zebra?" And he was right. Zebras, like opium, are exotic enough already; there was no need to give them different names, especially names of the smeerp variety.

You can have mix breeds of animals or hybrid plants in fantasy/scifi and call them by whatever name you like. Anne McCaffrey in her Pern books had a prickly plant 'numbweed' that when boiled into a salve was used to alleviate pain. In the caverns of Pern 'glowlights' a cold burning illuminanting substance was used. 'Wherry' is her name for a bird that sounds similar to an Earth turkey.

If your horse has stripes, that doesn't necessarily make him a zebra.

There is nothing wrong with using Earth specific plants in a fantasy world. Sometimes writers try to get to clever by renaming plants and then when they are described, you think, "Oh, a daisy".

I go by one of Lawrence Watt-Evans' Laws of Fantasy, if you have Earth plants and cultures, then you'd better have had a connection to Earth in the past, even if only you know it.

Example: Your world has Earth like plants. Maybe sometime in the past there was a connection to Earth and that connection is long gone, forgotten. Your characters don't know, but in the back of your mind you know that these plants were brought by a Celtic druid fleeing persecution.

Something like that.

GRRM and Scott Lynch both use "milk of the poppy" for some kind of opiate.

George R. R. Martin had already used the term "zorse",

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Isn't a zorse a half horse half zebra? Like a liger?

HeronW said:

You can have mix breeds of animals or hybrid plants in fantasy/scifi and call them by whatever name you like.

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Names like cat-dog will probably not be a hit with many readers, though.

MattW said:

Isn't a zorse a half horse half zebra? Like a liger?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorse

Indeed.

Yeah, and while you're at it, you shouldn't have them making their bread out of plain ol flour. And the clothes they're wearing, There wouldn't be any sheep, so they are out there shearing the six-legged Mackleblex (careful, they spray blood from their eyeballs!). And forget about pork sandwiches. First, there's no such thing as a pig, second, there never was an earl of sandwich. People eat slices of Hangaveit between two pieces of Bluneoscruteon. Milk comes from the common Unygomalix, which must be kept in stone barns and milked wearing an asbestos suit. Of course they don't call it 'asbestos' they call it 'stone dragon fiber.' Of course, most people don't drink milk (and its not really 'milk,' either, its more of a secondary sexual secretion), they drink an alcohol-like substance called Quirniffle. I say alcohol like, because its not real alcohol, because yeast doesn't exist here either, why would it? Things don't ferment, so the drink must be gathered from the secretions of the Alaby tree, by people wearing gloves to protect them from the bites of the Ouarnax, which lives in the tree, blissfully drinking the Quirniffle. Of course, to get the gloves you have to skin the wild Dimrack, because the skin of the domestic Unygomalix contains irritating chemicals, and the Dimrack is only found in the Land of Veril, where hunters have to watch out for the man-eating Horn-Wolves. Only, they aren't really Wolves, they're kind of a 9 legged hyena, but not really. And the horns are actually just big teeth. And the men that they eat aren't really men, after all, why would they be? They are kind of a land going mollusk, except different.

You know, when I started writing this, I had a point, but damn it got fun, didn't it?

crashcourse said:

I go by one of Lawrence Watt-Evans' Laws of Fantasy, if you have Earth plants and cultures, then you'd better have had a connection to Earth in the past, even if only you know it.

Example: Your world has Earth like plants. Maybe sometime in the past there was a connection to Earth and that connection is long gone, forgotten. Your characters don't know, but in the back of your mind you know that these plants were brought by a Celtic druid fleeing persecution.

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Wouldn't that be a Law of Science Fiction?

In fantasy, you can have whatever you want;
In science fiction, if you've got Earth life, there must have been a connection to Earth in the past.

I just realized I've been running into this issue (what to call things) in my own WIP. For some reason I have no problem with the upper-class characters drinking spiced wine, but when one of the villagers showed up smuggling whiskey, that threw me completely out of the story. (This was during NaNo.) So for purposes of the first draft, it's iske (from the original Bolognian Gaelic, right? ) Later on I'll go back and figure out what it's actually called.

So maybe that's another twist on the rule -- first draft, smeerps can run free; after that, they'd better justify their existence.

Sarpedon, you are my hero.

funny, I would of guessed it would be Orlando Bloom.

http://www.erowid.org/plants/poppy/poppy_article2.shtml

I'm sure they can figure out "boiling poppy bits in watter" to get morphine bricks. That could be enough of an anesthetic for you.

Fun fact: heroin was originally created to get people off morphine addictions.

Shweta said:

Having said that, I'm totally renaming Angelica for my pagan world. I don' t know if it'll ever come up yet, but if it does that name would throw the reader right out.

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Not really, no. Angelica was the pagan sorceress in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, so the name is perfectly suited.

AnnieColleen said:

I just realized I've been running into this issue (what to call things) in my own WIP. For some reason I have no problem with the upper-class characters drinking spiced wine, but when one of the villagers showed up smuggling whiskey, that threw me completely out of the story. (This was during NaNo.) So for purposes of the first draft, it's iske (from the original Bolognian Gaelic, right? ) Later on I'll go back and figure out what it's actually called.

So maybe that's another twist on the rule -- first draft, smeerps can run free; after that, they'd better justify their existence.

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If its from the Gaelic then "Whisky" is very close to the Gaelic word for Whisky (usque..something). That's one reason (or yet another reason) to imagine that your fantasy worlds (I mean in this case mine) are all put together from bargin items left over when better worlds were made: the better worlds got the Gaels and their liquours and your (ie mine) got the Depression-era softdrink machines.

Yeah, I'd heard of the Gaelic word -- just hadn't/haven't decided yet how close I wanted to stick to that model.

Love the bargain basement image! Shades of Jasper Fforde.

You might find some of the discussion here helpful:

"World Building Gotchas"
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35480

Maple trees play an important part in my fantasy story, but I'm not going to change the name.