If you write science fiction or fantasy, or aspire to, you’ve probably heard of worldbuilding. In a nutshell, worldbuilding means constructing an imaginary setting. If you do and it’s consistent and logical within its own parameters, however outlandish they may be, you’ve won readers. Build a world without really thinking it through and veteran readers of the genre will abandon it in droves.
And what better teacher to start with than one who pioneered worldbuilding? H.G. Wells was a thinker if nothing else, and used fiction to convey what he was thinking about, which was almost always human society and its structures and possibilities. If he pitched you an idea in a world of his own construction, you can bet he thought it through.
For my money, his great breakthrough and the blueprint for worldbuilding for all writers to follow, came in his short story “The Country of the Blind” (1904).
In this tale, Nunez, a South American mountaineer, is negotiating the treacherous high, frozen slopes of the Andes when he slips and is thrown into a remote, isolated valley. He finds a culture there, cut off from the outside world, one that has prospered without contact with the outside for many generations.
The entire population is completely blind.
Blindness has kept them contained in the sheer-walled valley. After many generations, they have simply forgotten any existence of a time with eyesight.
The world Wells creates makes sense. Dwellings are windowless. Night and day are measured as periods of work and sleep, and consequently reversed from ours. Day is defined not by light but by warmth, a good sleep-time. Night, defined by cold rather than dark, is the preferred time for work. Pathways are edged with curbs, each notched uniquely for identification, and straying from them is a societal taboo.
Aesthetics, appreciation for beauty, are based on the senses of touch, hearing, and smell. Buildings which Nunez find to be garishly colored without reason appeal to the citizens for the variations in texture of the plaster.
Wells doesn’t stop with the physical characteristics, and explores the psychology of such a world. The inhabitants are blind, and they can’t imagine a world any other way. There’s no frame of reference to sight. They do not know the words “sight” and “see,” nor even “blind.” When Nunez describes the wonderful gift of eyesight, they are incredulous. It is a wild, incomprehensible lie, smacking of insanity, beyond even imagining. Some argue that he is a dangerous heretic. At best, he is the village idiot, always stumbling about in dark interiors and bumping into people while they work during the cool, dark “day.”
Realizing he may be trapped there forever, an ancient proverb pops into Nunez’s mind:
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Yes, he thinks, he will rule this place, and soon, and sets his plan into motion.
The results are less than successful. He finds himself inferior and disadvantaged in many ways among this unsighted people, wherein all other senses have developed far beyond those of his own. He reconciles himself to a new existence as one of the blind, the least among them.
Many wonderful examples of worldbuilding abound in fiction, but I can think of no better quick-study in the craft than “The Country of the Blind.”
Veronica Helen Hart
Wow. I had never heard of this short story. Sounds like an outstanding read. Is it in a collection of his stories or can I find it as a stand-alone somewhere?
Ken Pelham
Veronica, click on the link in the last sentence of the blog. That’ll get you there. Thanks!
BJ Phillips
This was a new one for me. How powerful! Have to read it now. HGW is one of my favorites.
Ken Pelham
Thanks, BJ! Lots of readers feel that “The Country of the Blind” was Wells’s best short story. There are actually two versions of it. The one I linked to is the 1904. Wells revised it and made it 3,000 words longer, with a different ending, for a collection in the 1930s. Both are good, but I think I prefer the original.
Ruth Coe Chambers
“The Country of the Blind” has long been one of my favorite stories. It implies so much more than it says.
Ken Pelham
Ruth, you are correct. I could have written a lot more about the subtexts of the story. Much of it is definitely an allegory about Western institutions.
Thanks!
Jane McLean
Oh, thank you, thank you! Many years ago (1962) I saw this story on “The DuPont Show of the Week.” It was renamed “The Richest Man in Bogota,” and I watched it on a Sunday night on b&w TV with my mother. The story was so powerful that some details and the haunting “what if” idea have stayed with me all these years. Lee Marvin was so unlikable in the production that I could never stand him as an actor after that. I even tried to watch his Oscar-winning “Cat Ballou” twice and had to bail out. Thank you for the link to that powerful story–I shall read it forthwith (or try to, if Mr. Marvin doesn’t crowd my thoughts).
Ken Pelham
And thank you, Jane, for that information about a TV episode based on it! I wasn’t aware of that, but now I’ll see if I can find and watch it.
I like Lee Marvin, but he’s at his best when playing someone unlikable.
Joni M Fisher
Wow! Thank you, Jane, for this amazing information. Now I want to read “The Country of the Blind.” I love Wells and did not know about this.
Ken Pelham
Joni, you won’t be disappointed. It’s a great short story.