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Scientist by day, mad scientist by night, Brandon is well-known for his super speed and magnanimity. His favorite peptide origami shape is a crane. His favorite planet is Earth (at least so far - they haven't built a better one).
From the little green men of Mars to the rubber foreheads of Star Trek, aliens persist as a tried-and-true staple of science fiction. Though the concept of alien life isn’t unrealistic, scifi representations are almost always implausible. We’ve recently deduced that Earth-like planets should number … read more »
Building a map for a fantasy setting involves a lot of details – most of them fun! Art styles, fonts, and icons need to be chosen. But some mapping concerns go beyond mere aesthetics. If you’re building a sizable chunk of continent on an Earth-like … read more »
Dr. Brandon Kier joins Oren, Mike, and Chris in discussing scientific accuracy – or lack thereof – in popular stories. They speculate on whether scientific accuracy is important, describe stories and scenes with questionable science, and highlight how science and the scientific process is itself portrayed. Read more »
Last month, we covered how the ground below a constructed world can behave. From the gradual shaping of continents to the rapid devastation unleashed by volcanoes and ice dams, geological processes define and destroy civilizations. Now that we’ve seen your world move, it’s time to see … read more »
Chances are your world is built on something. If it’s anything like Earth, your characters are living in a thin veneer of air and water sandwiched between a dark, unforgiving void and a churning sea of white-hot iron. We’ve already looked at what’s above; now let’s … read more »
Earth is a great planet. It’s functional enough as life-bearing planets go, and it boasts plenty of room – 510 million square kilometers, to be precise* – for all sorts of interesting stories. Yet sometimes you just have to change the scenery; escape your earthly … read more »
Are you cooking up a world for your story or game, and Earth-standard is just a little too bland? Want to give your setting a subtly different flavor without overwhelming your story, or adding a bad fridge-logic aftertaste? Well then, we have the perfect blog … read more »
Earth is consistently used as a setting for fiction – even speculative fiction such as scifi and fantasy. This may have something to do with all known authors and readers being from there; Earth is a friendly, familiar, ready-made planet to dump characters and plot onto. But … read more »
As a genre, science fiction frequently runs roughshod over the hard limits of the universe as we currently understand them. Above all else, science fiction writers consistently forget, hand wave away, or blatantly ignore what is perhaps the most foundational rule in the universe: nothing … read more »
Whatever your setting, you’ll probably need animal transportation and labor. Only in the past 100 years has overland transportation been dominated by machines; throughout history, most humans have relied on some manner of large beastie to haul around their stuff or themselves. Read more »