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Hate it or love it, none can doubt the beauty of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. He was one of those minds ahead of his time. He took fantasy “way too seriously,” sometimes overshadowing his “real” work as a philologist. Now, a hundred years after he wrote his … read more »
Scifi characters have lots of ways to get around, from hovercraft to instant teleportation, but fantasy characters are always stuck riding a horse. In particularly edgy stories, characters might get to ride a camel or ride in a horse-drawn carriage, but most of the time … read more »
When building a fantasy setting, it’s important to consider the distribution of resources across the world. This is true no matter what technology level you go with, but it’s especially important in lower-tech settings, because people will have a much harder time synthesizing any resources … read more »
While there isn’t exactly a hard line that separates science fiction from fantasy, there are elements that most people will identify with one genre or the other. Elves and wizards are considered fantasy, outer space is considered scifi. So what happens when you mix them … read more »
This week, the normal voting process for deciding a topic was suspended, and it was decided by tyrannical dictate that we would discuss democracy in speculative fiction. Why is there so little of it? Can it be used to tell good stories? Why are we … read more »
In real life, we are always part of an economy. We exchange currency for goods and services, and we work in exchange for currency. Most of us understand the basics of economics, but even so, it’s easy get the details wrong in our worldbuilding. When … read more »
While fantasy settings are usually far less technologically advanced than the real world, flight is still a common feature of the genre. No one bats an eye at wizards casting levitation spells, dragon riders soaring overhead, or powerful airships launching skyward. But authors rarely examine the … read more »
One of the most common mistakes in worldbuilding is treating culture like it’s arbitrary. Clothing styles, gender roles, and religion are decided as though they just popped out of the ether one day. In reality, few aspects of culture are arbitrary; most are the result of … read more »
Once you’ve gone through all the work of creating a world, setting multiple stories there seems natural. You’re a busy writer after all; you don’t have time to create a new world from scratch every time. If these stories are not directly related, then congratulations, you’re … read more »
Technically we’re all time travelers, moving forward at a rate of one second per second. That’s boring time travel though; let’s talk about the interesting stuff where doctors with bow ties hang out with medieval knights. This week we discuss good and bad uses of … read more »