A follower of the Tolkien school of writing would create a detailed back history of the worlds medical science based on the locales own ancient language structures for terms.
Personally I like the "Go with what the reader will enjoy and what doesn't jar with the façade you've build for your world" approach. Rays answer would read easy and yet has the same flaws (as far as I can tell) on a non earth world, but does it matter? Alternatively you could drop the simile altogether as a policy to save potential mistakes but culling your writing tool kit seems a little heavy handed. On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Tim Hickey <[email protected]> wrote: > I had meant it more as that maybe he didn't need to worry about it if his > story wasn't based on our Earth because he can create the history. > On Jul 26, 2012 10:25 PM, "Raymond Feist" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Jul 26, 2012, at 6:09 PM, Nat Russo <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > I was writing earlier today and realized I may have been guilty of >> anachronism. If you are writing about a pre-industrial society, would it >> be anachronism to use "...ate away at him like a cancer" as a metaphor? >> > A pre-industrial society knows nothing of "cancer", right? Well, *my* >> pre-industrial society doesn't, I should say. >> > >> > Just one of those curious tidbits that's likely to...well...eat away at >> me like a cancer. /wink /nudge #seewhatIdidthere >> > >> > Nat >> >> >> >> OK, so YOUR pre-industrial society doesn't know cancer. As in doesn't >> understand what runaway cells are? Or they don't use that name when >> someone starts growing visible tumors? Because there are a lot of cancers, >> starting with basel cell carcinoma and melanoma and moving on to those that >> build tumors in the extremities that distort limbs, or abdominal ones that >> get up to forty or fifty pounds before the person dies. In English, the >> word goes back to the 14th Century, from a Greek root meaning "hard" >> because of the hard tumors that would be removed from the bodies of those >> who died from it. >> >> So use "ate away at him like leprosy." >> >> Best, R.E.F. >> >> >> ---- >> www.crydee.com >> >> Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by >> stupidity. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >>
