Picking up from my last post on my favorite improvements to daily life in speculative fiction, today I'm talking about housing and sanitation.
Housing
No post on life-improvements in speculative fiction would be complete without talking about the system that puts everything together into one bundled package: housing.
Especially given the current housing crisis in the United States, I see this as one of the most fascinating world-building aspects to read or write about. Here are some of my favorites.
The TARDIS. I mean, who wouldn't want a TARDIS? Need I even explain? Alright, quick definition for people who know nothing about Doctor Who: it's the Doctor's spaceship that can teleport pretty much anywhere in time and space, and what's even more incredible, if possible, it's got some space-bending physics that make it a full-blown, seemingly limitless quirky spaceship on the inside and only the size, shape, and appearance of an old-fashioned British police box on the outside. (Other TARDISs were apparently supposed to be able to morph into whatever would fit in best with their surroundings, but the Doctor's TARDIS got stuck in that one form.) Not that I necessarily like the alien, sometimes weirdly organic interior design, but I'd put up with it for the convenience of being able to travel and stay at home at the same time. (I like to travel, but the worst part about it by far is having to pack and re-setup my systems on a daily basis.)
On that note, the bigger-on-the-inside, pseudo-home tents in Harry Potter sound awesome as well. Heck, I'd even take one of those suitcases (set up to be a comfortable living quarters and not an animal rescue or prisoner pit, obviously). In the wizarding world, our housing crisis would look a lot different. (Land might still be an issue, but being a landless nomad would still be 99% more comfortable and humane.)
In the adult fantasy/sci-fi Innkeeper Chronicles, the "inns" are living, magical life forces, akin to a magic shapeshifting tree, that have a symbiotic relationship with humanoids/other alien lifeforms in that the inns harmlessly absorb the sentients' off-gassing power and, in return, the inns provide a nearly impenetrable safe haven for intergalactic travelers to whom the innkeepers grant sanctuary, and, given enough power and raw materials, the inns can alter themselves into any room, shape, or design the innkeepers desire (with a TARDIS-like disregard for interior physics). The inns also frequently have portals to other worlds and even dimensions.
Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles had some fun housing quirks, such as Telemain's tower having two staircases, one that only went up and one that only went down, and Morwen's cottage with its special door that could take her to many different parts of the house.
Sanitation
If I recall correctly, in one of the Stormlight Archive books, Dalinar is amused by Navani's obsession with, of all things, figuring out the sewage system of Urithiru. My reaction was, Well, duh. That would be me, 100%.
Not . . . because I'm that interested in poo, mind you, but because sewage systems are so vital to a healthy life and community. Navani, in my mind, was totally on the right track. Cram that many people in some kind of tower/mountain thing without proper sewage, and you would be just asking for disease to wipe you out before any bad guys can.
I don't get this whole thing in fiction that sanitation (both cleansing and disposing, both the systems and associated acts) should not be mentioned at all. I'm with Brandon Sanderson and Tamora Pierce that sanitation is a fact of daily life and should be addressed at least lightly to make a world and a character's experience feel real. If the heroes are stuck somewhere without a toilet, to me, the question of where/how they can pee in a hygienic, private, and environmentally friendly way is valid. You can definitely address that without being crass.
Plus, magic (or advanced technology, in sci-fi) is the perfect opportunity to make that whole system so much better. If you don't, feels like a wasted opportunity to me. You could make it more hygienic, more environmentally friendly, more low-maintenance, and on and on. Am I really so weird for getting excited about magic/tech innovations in an area that is so vital to human existence?
Here are some examples I've found interesting:
Tamora Pierce is a huge example of incorporating little magical improvements to daily living, making medieval societies seem almost more comfortable and advanced than our own. Sanitation is no exception. She frequently incorporates some tasteful mention as to how her traveling characters responsibly take care of necessities, and in more formal settings, she is quick to point out the lavatories, how they've been set up, how they are maintained (in a very general sense), and how they've been spelled against disease spreading. One particular example that comes to my mind is the refugee fort/camp Haven in the last book in the Protector of the Small series. But sanitation was addressed much more in depth in one of her Circle of Magic books, Briar's Book—which also was a fascinating exploration of not just plagues and epidemiology but also how magic could be a contributing factor to disease-creation, which I think added a lot of realistic depth to her world. In all my pursuit of life-improvements in my own writing, I need to remind myself that magic, like any technology, is always a two-edged sword.
Not that this is necessarily an example of magical innovation, but I appreciated Brandon Sanderson's/Janci Patterson's poking fun at publisher censorship of even tasteful mentions of sanitary acts in the last book in the Alcatraz series, Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians, in which Bastille is not allowed to say why she has to tramp out into the woods on her own for a few minutes. Was that the funniest and most memorable joke in the book to me? . . . Maybe.
In The Gatherer by Kit Trzebunia, one of the elderly cats never leaves the mansion's study—and never has to thanks to a litterbox kept inside. But what's even better is that the humans never have to clean it because it somehow magically disposes of the waste. Which I am certain that anyone who has ever owned or cared for a cat could appreciate.
There are no doubt many more examples I could think of and write about if I had the time, and no doubt thousands more I haven't encountered myself, but my time is up, so I'll leave it at that (for now).