I’ll take a break for a few seconds from the world building and explore the concept of fantasy and science-fiction… Out of the more than a dozen people who are participating in this little world building project, many are building a Fantasy setting, and only some of us are building a sci-fi setting. And there seems to be a very clear cut cleaving between the two.
Some of my biggest influences come from fantasy, even if I mostly write sci-fi. I find that the cross-pollination between the genres leads to very interesting concepts. One of my projects is exploring those juxtapositions.
This is the result of one such juxtapositions:
Most of you will recognize the script of the One Ring, from Tolkien’s work. It says:
Mazauk kulat ziimarum. Maaduur kulat snagaum. Nirtumob iistal kulat durbum.
Which is Black Speech, the Language of evil and Darkness…
Translated, it says:
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Which of course you recognize from Orwell’s 1984…
And the other way around we can get the Ring inscription in Newspeak, which could go something like:
One fingband to love all crimethinkers in unlight.
The Tolkien/Orwell merge is something I find very interesting, and I’m actually thinking about getting the Black Speech text as a tattoo at some point. So there you go, an humble attempt at bridging the genre gap…
