 Fantasy: November 16, 2022 Issue [#11660] |
This week: Gems and Jewels Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond fields of the mind.
—William R. Alger
I adore wearing gems, but not because they are mine. You can't possess radiance, you can only admire it.
—Elizabeth Taylor
Men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage - they've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
—Rita Rudner |
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Let me get this out of the way first: a "gem" is an uncut stone, as one might find buried in the ground; a "jewel" is a cut stone. While you'll find some usages that muddy these definitions, I'm sticking with them for this editorial. It's roughly equivalent to the difference between an ore and a metal.
One other complication: some items considered jewels have an organic, not purely mineral, origin; pearls, for example, or amber.
Jewels can have several different uses in fantasy writing. Often, they're a McGuffin. Sometimes they signify wealth and/or royalty. Perhaps they're used as magical foci, or maybe they store data in their crystalline structure (this latter use is probably more appropriate for science fiction). A gemstone might have healing properties associated with it in folklore, and some cultures associate certain gemstones with one's birth month or zodiac sign. Some jewels have other cultural associations, such as the prevalence of diamonds in engagement rings (sure, that's the result of a very successful marketing campaign, but it's still a thing).
The value of a jewel is usually based on its perceived beauty, its rarity, and its history (for example, a named sapphire from the Crown Jewels of England will have a higher monetary value than similar sapphires, if such exist). As with anything else, the price of a jewel comes down to what someone's willing to pay for it, but beauty, rarity, and history all affect the appraisal.
Beauty is subjective, but often has to do with, among other things the way a stone is cut, its refractive properties, its setting, and the presence or absence of inclusions.
Rarity isn't just about the relative prevalence of the particular mineral involved but also the size; larger jewels are more rare and thus can be exponentially more valuable than smaller examples of the same stone.
The "history" bit might be most important to storytellers. It's fine to describe a giant emerald in a story, for example; it'll really stick out in a reader's mind if you come up with a backstory for the thing.
I'll also note that the hardness of a gemstone can have an effect on its perceived value. Precious gems (diamond, ruby, etc.) are harder to scratch and thus not as subject to wear and tear as softer minerals.
In fantasy writing, the story's setting can be another world or a different time, which might change the relative value of gems and jewels. It's easy to imagine a world where diamonds litter the ground like pebbles (in truth, astronomers think planets made largely of diamonds might exist), which would make them nearly worthless (as opposed to priceless). Or perhaps there's a world where pearls don't exist, so imported ones might have outsized value.
One might also come up with one's own gemstones for the purpose of plot or just for the hell of it to remind readers it's not set in our world.
Another possibility is a culture that just doesn't value the same things we do. I vaguely remember reading an SF short story long ago where humans met aliens for the first time and all they did was trade graphite (which the aliens valued highly) for diamonds. The amusing part of that scenario is that both are allotropes of carbon, so it stuck with me how the aliens greatly valued what's essentially pencil lead while the humans were, much to the aliens' bemusement, fascinated by the rocks that were some alien equivalent of a dime a dozen.
There is at least one other thing to consider with gems, which is their practical use (apart from highly questionable healing properties). Diamond is famously hard, so it's got industrial value. Rubies were essential to creating early lasers, which is especially important if your story contains cats. Quartz has piezoelectric properties, which makes it useful in timekeeping devices.
In conclusion, jewels can really adorn a story. |
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