The Rite of Spring: How this work came into being

How The Rite of Spring came to be written


Writing as a Leisure (pronounced 'lee-zhure') Activity

This book was started just as I was finishing another, and I wrote 30,000 words in six days - for fun. In effect, relaxation after effort. Initially, at least, I had no intention of writing anything serious; rather a mildly pornographic fantasy in the daydream sense. The fact that it didn't work out like that is simply due to the fact that the characters didn't let me. But in as much as this started as writing for leisure, so it started by poking fun in a lot of directions.

Genre: Dallas with Dragons

Fantasy, as a genre, has a number of sub-genres. There's the classic 'Swords and Sorcery', sub-Tolkien, dealing with elves, men, halflings etc, pitted against a non-human incarnation of evil. There are 'Tales of the Barbarian Ages', sub-Conan, dealing with heroism and treachery in outlandish places. And there is 'Dallas with Dragons'. This last irritates me most, and the worst examples of it irritate me so much that I can't even remember the titles or authors (yes I can. Anne 'Precocious Adolescent' McCaffrey and Melanie 'Boring' Rawn).

Dallas with Dragons involves the interaction of various groups of variously nasty and ambitious aristocrats, against a background of a more or less oppressed peasantry, with dragons thrown in to provide extra colour. Always involved is a heroine of unimpeachable lineage, fiery character, and overwhelming ambition.

On the Nature of Dragons

A tremendous amount of fiction has been written about dragons over the last fifty years; probably quite as much as about any other species of animal, real or fantastic. What is shocking is the lack of critical imagination employed by the authors of such fiction. Dragons are portrayed as being four legged flying creatures of enormous size, breathing fire, and, usually communicating intelligently with human beings. Let's deal with each of these points.

Size, Mass and Flight

For a body of given density, mass varies with the cube of linear dimension. Consequently, a creature 'a' similar to, but twice as long as another, 'b', is not twice as heavy, but eight times. By contrast, lift from an aerofoil varies with the area and with the square of the airspeed. Consequently, ignoring structural problems for the moment, if 'a' can fly, so can 'b', but only if it can fly eight times as fast. But as the drag also increases with the square of the speed, if must expend four times as much energy per unit area to do so - but it's surface area has also squared, so that's sixteen times the fuel consumption.

Strength and Stress

An elephant's legs are much thicker in proportion to it's body size than those of a horse; a horse's than a deer's; a deer's than a spider's. This is simply a consequence of the relationship between size and mass described above. To take the weight of a creature twice the size, or eight times the mass, a support of eight times the cross sectional area, or about 2.8 times the thickness, is required. This proportional increase is required of any load bearing element under compression stress.

However, wings are not - broadly - under compression stress (in fact the wing muscles do put a high compression stress on wing bones in flying creatures, but that is additional to (and, incidentally, proportional to) the loads created by the mass of the animal. Wings are placed under transverse bending and twisting stresses - especially bird's wings, where the support is under the leading edge only. Bat's wings, and, presumably, the similar dragon's wings, suffer less torsional stress, but only if the wing membrane is attatched to the body for a considerable length. The classic illustration of a dragon's wing, with the trailing edge of the membrane attatched at the shoulder, suffers at least as seriously from torsional stress as a bird's wing.

Bone tissue is highly adapted to resist compressive stress. Nevertheless, compressive stress over time leads to breakdown of joint tissues in conditions like arthritis. These problems can be alleviated by increasing the bearing area of the joint according to the cube law. However, bones are much less well adapted to cope with torsional and bending loads. These are the circumstances in which bones break. Now, of course, such loads can be designed against by increasing the thickness of the bone; but once again, the proportion is more than linear.

As a flying creature doubles in size, so it's mass increases eight times, and so, consequently, does the total loading on its wings. But the centre of pressure of those wings also moves twice as far from the body, requiring sixteen times the strength in the biceps. OK, that's easy; all we need is a muscle with sixteen times the cross-sectional area. That means four times the thickness. But if the original, smaller creature had an effective airodynamic section, the new wing, with twice the chord but four times the thickness, has not. Consequently, it will have more drag and may have less lift.

But there is a further problem. Birds power their flight by wing-flapping movements, using the natural feathering effect of the flexible trailing edge to provide forward propulsion. A bird needs to be able to do more than hold its wing level, it needs to be able to beat it against the air pressure. For a given speed through the air, the strength required to do this will increase by the square of the increase in linear measure.

Consequently, the largest flying birds - swans, albatrosses, larger raptors and vultures - are incapable of high rates of climb or particularly energetic flight. They glide, soar on thermals, or use updraughts where possible. All have dificulty at take off, often needing a long and energetic take off run in order to develop the air speed required for flight. But the largest flying birds have a wingspan in the region of four metres, a beak to tail length of less than 2 metres and a weight of around 30-35 Kg.

Estimates of the size of dragons vary. All are, however, very large. Dragons feed, according to most texts, on large grazing animal and human prey; consequently, at least estimate, a dragon cannot be much smaller than a lion. But additionally, dragons consume their prey typically at a sitting, and then fly off. Let us look at the implications of this.

A lion is approximately twice the linear dimension of a swan - less than four metres from whiskers to tassle. No-one is going to be very impressed by a four metre dragon, but let that lie for a moment. One can assume that much of the length of a dragon is neck and tail, and that these are of relatively little mass. Our dragon weighs 240Kg - about quarter of a ton. He is capable of taking off after having eaten a person - say another 120Kg for a full takeoff weight of 360Kg. He has a wingspan about eight metres. No conventional illustration shows a dragon with a wingspan twice its length, but we'll go on supposing a lightweight neck and tail. Given that the aspect ratio of bird's - and bat's - and, indeed, illustrated dragon's - wings is about 4:1, that gives a wing area of about 8 square metres for a loading of about 45Kg/sq m.

This implies that for equal aerodynamic efficiency, given that a swan takes off at somewhere between 15 and 20 Km/h, the dragon requires to run in excess of 60 Km/h in order to achieve flying speed. But must illustrations and descriptions of dragons imply relatively short legs and squat build.

Limbs

Vertebrates, as evolved on earth, have four limbs. Broadly, there is one bony girdle at each end of the body cavity, each supporting one limb pair. Any variation in the number of pairs of limbs would require an exceedingly radical redesign of the whole internal structure. This implies that a creature couldn't simply mutate an extra pair; unless it mutated a satisfactorily different layout of internal organs at the same time, it wouldn't survive. Furthermore, when mutations do happen, they are variations on existing patterns; occasionally an individual is born with six fingers on each hand, but the additional finger is broadly the same as the others. Specialisation of an additional, mutated organ would require a large successful breeding population of unspecialised mutants. But no 'dragon' book describes numerous species of non-flying, six limbed vertebrates.

There are broadly three options here. Either dragons are a unique creation, sprung full fledged from the hand of the creator (in which case you do have to assert this is so, although to be fair some 'dragon' authors suggest a old-testament style creation, everything complete in modern form). Or you have to show how six-limbed creatures could evolve. Or else, you have four limbed dragons. If two of those limbs are wings, only two are left as legs.

Fire Breathing

There's no particular reason why living creatures can't breathe fire, or metabolise a combustible substance to exhale. Bombadier beetles do so, for example. Equally, as McCaffrey suggests, they can ingest combustible material to exhale directly. There are, however, a number of problems requiring a high degree of specialisation.

The material must be ignited. Again this is not impossible; there are a number of materials which could be metabolised which combust spontaneously under controlled conditions. However, the material must not pre-ignite, or the creature would literally explode. Secondly, the mouth or nose parts of the creature must be designed to ensure that the hot part of the flame is blown considerably in front of the body. If the dragon is to be able to flame when flying, given a dragons minimum flying speed of around 60Km/h, that's a pretty substantial blast that is required.

The Plot

It's one of those hoary standards of fantasy fiction in general, and Dallas with Dragons in particular, that the rightful princess has to marry the rightful heir in order to save her people from certain destruction. Well, that's what this story is all about.

Comments, criticism and feedback welcomed.

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