What African Folklore Teaches Us About Building Alien WorldsHow oral traditions create rich cosmologies—perfect inspiration for planets like Falrus

Dear Spacetravellers,

When writers think about worldbuilding, they often jump straight to maps, star charts, resource spreadsheets, or pseudo-scientific lore dumps. Yet some of the most intricate worlds humans have ever imagined didn’t begin on parchment—they lived in oral storytelling traditions. Across Africa, cosmologies were safeguarded in memory long before they were ever written down. These narrative systems held creation myths, metaphysics, politics, environmental rules, and interdimensional entities that would put modern sci-fi franchises to shame.

For speculative fiction, and especially science fiction, there’s a powerful lesson here: worldbuilding doesn’t need scientific scaffolding to feel internally coherent—it needs world logic. A world needs rules for what reality is, how it behaves, and why people believe it works that way.

Cosmic Scale Without Space Tech

Consider the cosmology of the Dogon of Mali, where multiple planes of existence intersect with amphibious star-born beings and a cosmic system linked to Sirius. But the compelling part isn’t the “aliens” themselves—it’s the logic governing them. Who can travel between realms? How is knowledge transmitted? What obligations do humans owe to cosmic visitors? Swap divination for telemetry, and the Dogon universe becomes a fully-operational space opera.

Worlds Where Land Is Alive

A recurring feature in African folklore is the treatment of the environment as an active participant, not a backdrop. Forests bargain. Rivers remember. Mountains maintain ancient treaties between ancestors and gods. This worldview offers a blueprint for designing alien ecosystems that feel alive without mirroring Earth biology.

Imagine Falrus, an exoplanet not as a mineral sphere awaiting colonization but as a relational ecosystem. Weather might result not from atmospheric physics alone, but from deals struck between sky spirits centuries ago. Travel between regions could require learning the stories embedded in the land—stories functioning as both myth and map.

Collapsing the Cosmic and the Intimate

African oral cosmologies also compress scale in striking ways. A dispute between two village elders can shift the heavens; the birth of a child can renew a star. For science fiction storytellers, this offers narrative elasticity—personal arcs matter on galactic timelines without requiring planet-killers or megastructures.

The Worldbuilding Lesson

A believable alien world doesn’t have to be realistic. It has to be narratively integrated.

African storytelling demonstrates that meaning systems—carried through memory, song, performance, ritual, and lineage—can encode as much “world data” as any encyclopedia.

So if Falrus (or any other fictional planet) is to feel alien yet human, don’t begin with orbital mechanics. Start with who tells its stories, how its landscapes speak, and what cosmic responsibilities its inhabitants believe they uphold.

The rest—biology, starships, technologies—will orbit naturally.

Stay curious, check out my Storyplanet Youtube channel.

All my love,

Joanna