Worldbuilding

by Amelia Wiens

One of the best parts of science fiction and fantasy is the worldbuilding. A key part of creating interesting worlds is creating diverse cultures that vary in some way from our own norms. That being said, it can be so hard to get out of our own culture’s point of view and redefine elements that we unconsciously take for granted.

by Victoria Zelvin

Space is often called the final frontier for humanity, but we have explored more of space than we have our own oceans. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than eighty percent of the ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored.

by Nathan Nance,

So you’re writing SFF, and you’ve got spaceships to design. Engine systems to map. A haunted forest to populate. A talking badger to draw. If you’re not a rocket scientist writing hard sci-fi, how are you supposed to make your version of James S.A. Corey’s Rocinante, you know, fly?

by Ken Pelham

World-building is more than misty mountains, crumbling castles, dripping neon cityscapes, and talking rats. It’s also about psychology and language, and the language equation includes the everyday corruptions of jargon and slang.

We all know ‘an army marches on its stomach,’ but it’s not like Napoleon discovered something new. Vegetius (De re militari) and Sun Tzu (The Art of War) were well aware of this concept, as was Alexander the Great (Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army, 1980). And it wasn’t news to them, either. Pre-modern military commanders knew this; they planned for this. They paid attention to logistics.

Fantasy writers should, too.

by Ken Pelham

Your stiff-upper-lipped hero, Professor Jenkins, frustrated with the chicanery of Air Captain Hamm, pounds the table and shouts, “Good heavens, man! The scoundrel has hatched yet another outrageous boondoggle!”

Boondoggle. This is where your narrative gets stuck in the etymological weeds.

by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

It’s virtually impossible to do ALL of your SFF worldbuilding prior to writing your book/story. How much weight is given to each stage depends on the author (some prefer to do a lot before starting, some build nothing before writing). My own preference is to build the foundation–just enough to get me started, then build more along the way, and go back and change stuff after I’m done.

by Kevin L. O’Brien In this second part of my series on technology and worldbuilding (see Part One), I would

by Kevin L. O’Brien

Automation is defined as technology that performs work with little or no human assistance; automatic machines are known as automatons. It actually predates the Middle Ages, in that the Greeks knew about and used automated systems as early as 300 BC: examples include Hero of Alexandria’s automatic doors and fountain, and Ctesibius’s robot owl.