Space Elves

[liquidcitrus]

Eragon was one of the first big book series I ever read. And Eragon's atheist science elves were a serious missed opportunity.

Okay, so they didn't have magic until the dragons came along. But the elves in Eragon have a thorough understanding of biology (having at least one spell that thoroughly describes how to repair flesh on a living being, magic-based morphological freedom) and physics (knowing the existence of vacuum, wave-particle duality). They also have at least some of the prerequisites of air travel (a spell that compresses air to the thickness needed for lungs to breathe it in the extremely thin upper atmosphere). They can sing houses and caverns out of living wood, have artificial lighting, can create batteries, live indefinitely long.

So why are they not in space? I guess the ones we still see could be the ones left behind after all the explorers have gone, you know, Space Amish-style.

But imagine! Imagine the more restless of Eragon's elves among the stars, in great ships sung out of living wood, with solar sails and nuclear power and gemstone-based instrumentation studding the hull. Imagine their calling is preserving the biodiversity of the cosmos, with vaulted halls inside their many ships simulating alien rainforests and tundras and oceans. Imagine them using magic mirrors to communicate across untold lightyears. Imagine them landing among new worlds, coming in little pods strapped to the backs of dragons. Imagine portable life-support within those pods, toughened glass tanks filled with specific plants, scattered with spelled artificial diamonds to make those plants give a whole life's worth of air and fruit within perhaps two or three days. Imagine exploratory parties molding themselves lungs and eyes and skin suited to surviving the new worlds they discover. Imagine researchers collecting oceanwater samples in delicately filigreed canisters, or taking color plates as their cohorts use magic to encourage local plants to flower and fruit and seed. Imagine landing a tree-ship on a dead world, using it as the center of a new colony, terraforming the surrounding area with algae and fungus and amoeba, reeds and ferns and ants, birch and pine and birds.

Perhaps someone could write that, one day.

Comments

[fictitiouswhimsigot]

I find this really cool and inspiring. I love the conceptual blend of science and magic, the cool aesthetics and the bright-noble air of the space travel. I agree 100% that they are such a missed opportunity for so much more than they were.

I haven't read Eragon in quite some time, but it's nice to see such a wonderful concept extracted from it and spun out a bit. It's made my day brighter, and I wanted to thank you for that!