Worldbuilding: share your tips and tricks!

[MillieDynamite]

Well, there are plenty of clues that replicator food tastes like what it's made from, shit!

Osyraa: [eating a replicated apple] Hmm. It doesn't quite taste like the real thing, does it?
Admiral Charles Vance: I've never eaten a real apple.
Osyraa: Well, how sad! Apples are a thing of beauty. You want to talk about oppression, you should start in your own mess hall.
Admiral Charles Vance: It's made of our shit, you know.

Like the transporter example - it seems much more interesting to explore what society would look like if it is technologically straightforward to make copies of people, than to invest energy in making excuses for why the net effect of that technology ends up being "they save ten minutes on their daily commute and the food is nicer".

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Selfish self-interest has been humanity's guiding light for nine or ten thousand years. We haven't and probably never will evolve past that. It's naive to believe we will or even can. I don't expect any alien race to be more or less self-centered than us. War is a natural outcome of haves and have-nots. Communism doesn't work, hasn't worked, and hasn't improved the lives of the average person in those states. To quote Animal Farm, it sounds good, but it doesn't work because some animals are more equal than others.

The thinking we will wake up and see the light is just pie in the sky by and by. We have the history of the world to tell us it won't happen. All we can do, as individual humans, is make things better as best we can. But don't pin your hopes on a Utopian future. For every utopia, there will be a dystopia. You're turning all first-century Christians in your view of the future. What happened to those people? Other folks became Christians fucked it all up.

I can refute ALL of that, but I don't want to derail the thread.

 

[StillStunned]

OK, poor worldbuilding: Jack Campbell's "Lost Fleet" series. Two massive space empires have been fighting a century-long war, and no-one is using any tactics beyond "Charge!" Because after the very first engagement everyone decided that to do any manoeuvring was cowardice. So they just send massive battleships to be destroyed, with everyone on board.

Right.

 

[Bamagan]

Regarding Star Trek transporters, the modern conceit is that they work on a principle of quantum entanglement, probably because that's the newest 'official'-sounding idea that's related to teleportation. So, there's no real disintegration and rebuilding being done, and ergo the person on the other end isn't a copy or a replacement or what-have-you of the person who hopped on the platform. Note that this doesn't apply to the Abrams movies, because that man wouldn't know science, or even cause-and-effect, if it bit him on the dick.
As for the food replicators, they go back and forth (in universe) on whether they're great or not, probably depending on the writer's personal feelings more than anything else. I tend to look at the discrepancy as kind of the same phenomenon as fast food. Some people love it and crave it, while I am lukewarm at best, and pretty much only eat it if I'm travelling. There's a uniformity to it I find off-putting, and I imagine that when a food replicator in Star Trek makes a slice of pizza or a meatloaf, it makes the exact same one every time (or at best, selects from a limited number of templates). Some people would probably appreciate that consistency of quality, however mediocre or aimed at the 'average palette' it might be.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I still stand by, it's made from our shit.

 

[Bamagan]

I still stand by, it's made from our shit.

Sure, but that's already true. Every organic molecule spends some portion of its time as part of a turd, whether firm or runny. They presumably just cut a few corners on a starship and skip the whole 'fertilizer incorporated into plants' phase (and the optional 'plant incorporated into animal flesh' phase).

 

[MillieDynamite]

True, but I don't eat shit! I'm not cooking with shit, and I never serve shit. Natural recycling of shit, I can handle, the changing shit directly to food, no fucking way, transporter or not.

 

[StillStunned]

OK, moving on from the transporter issue...

 

[RetroFan]

I have immense admiration for authors who are successful at world building - JR Tolkien, L Frank Baum, JM Barrie, CS Lewis, JK Rowling, George Lucas among others - because it is really hard to do.

I am able to create fictional settings within real-world places in my stories such as a creepy abandoned theme park in one; and did have aliens that live within the Jupiter moon of Europa with much thought going into the said aliens, what they do and how they think in another. I've written body swap, ghost and monster stories too, but they are set firmly in the real world. None of this is anywhere near as impressive as creating a whole fantasy world, alternate dimensions or another planet.

And while I hate to sound negative, extensive world building might be wasted in some Literotica categories. Comments are few and far between on the Erotic Horror, Sci-Fi Fantasy and Non Human, where most world building would take place. And in Incest Taboo from my experience even extensive details of interesting real settings or historical events tend to attract negative comments (that the content is boring) rather than positive ones. So whether the readers there would be interested even in something like a 'Groundhog Day' story where a guy gets stuck in a time loop and uses this every day to have sex with different attractive female members of his family would be debatable, although other writers might have found differently to me.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

...

Like the transporter example - it seems much more interesting to explore what society would look like if it is technologically straightforward to make copies of people, than to invest energy in making excuses for why the net effect of that technology ends up being "they save ten minutes on their daily commute and the food is nicer".

I can understand why it happens. It's intimidating making huge changes, and no matter how long you spend thinking things through there's a risk some reader will think of an angle you didn't notice. But I'm willing to cut a lot of slack for authors who are trying to be bold in their world-building.

Practicality in the real world, too. It would be very expensive to shoot scenes in which five different characters are all played by the same actor.

Regarding Star Trek transporters, the modern conceit is that they work on a principle of quantum entanglement, probably because that's the newest 'official'-sounding idea that's related to teleportation ...

Entanglement couldn't possibly have anything to do with teleportation, though. It's like saying they used diffraction gratings to teleport--there's no relationship. It would make more sense (but still be wrong) to say "quantum tunneling".

-Annie

 

[Bamagan]

Practicality in the real world, too. It would be very expensive to shoot scenes in which five different characters are all played by the same actor.


Entanglement couldn't possibly have anything to do with teleportation, though. It's like saying they used diffraction gratings to teleport--there's no relationship. It would make more sense (but still be wrong) to say "quantum tunneling".

-Annie

With the caveat that the 'science' involved is about the same as switching Spiderman's origin from radioactive spider to genetically-engineered spider and so forth, I believe the writers who retconned the transporters borrowed the 'entanglement' term to imply that the device is creating a link between two locations in spacetime so that they're 'superpositioned' and the volumes /contents can be transferred when the effect ends. Does it make sense? No, not really, it's just an effort to keep the technobabble closer to modern terminology. I guess they felt it was more descriptive or evocative or something. I'm just the messenger in this case.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The fact that Kirk talks to Savic during transport screwed up matter conversion to energy and back as how it works. But how it works isn't explained in any of them other than they have a Heisenberg compensator due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. But if you transport Schrödinger's cat, can he exist between points A and B, or does he exist at all?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Harry Harrison has a collection of stories called "One Step From Earth", which revolve around the theme of teleportation. They explore how it impacts society (including a vivid and quite horrifying depiction of a space battle) over time. If I recall correctly (it's been a while), the final story is about a pair of scientists discussing the human race's past, and how "past" humans only had ten fingers instead of twelve.

Although it's not my favourite HH work, I've always thought it was an interesting and brave concept - and like you say, it stands out from the sea of "we have this cool thing but we're not going to really think about it" worlds.

Some of Charles Stross's stories are also good that way. Accelerando, Glasshouse, Saturn's Children/Neptune's Brood all deal with the question of what happens when minds become software and can be copied, forked, bugged, and restored from backups. I usually resign myself to not understanding what's going on in the last acts of those books but it's still a worthwhile ride.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Sometimes I feel like half of this board's enthusiasm is you, @StillStunned. You are like a furry version of Emily Miller from her more enthusiastic days. Anyway, great topic idea.

I guess Emily got tired of AH. She is still posting stories, however.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I haven't heard from her in forever.

I guess Emily got tired of AH. She is still posting stories, however.

 

[TheOtherTeacher]

For me, although I know the deep lore of my fictional universe, I only need to explain in my story the details that are relevant to the plot...plus about 10% more as background.

So for example on my current WIP, I know the deep political history that brought about the story setting (a world where everyone over 18 is effectively a prostitute and available to rent for various acts), it's not relevant to the story. So I'll throw in a statue of the political leader who lead to it, and maybe have someone quote a legal executive order.

What isn't used, can be saved for follow up stories if the world is interesting for readers.

I would also recommend using a "newbie" character. Eg someone who has just turned 18, or just arrived to this city / world. This allows them to ask lore questions and for other characters to explain (or demonstrate)

 

[gunhilltrain]

I like world deconstruction more. Forensically, preferably.

That's what the various versions of War of the Worlds do. In the novel, it's a very detailed London. For the 1953 movie, it's Los Angeles. The Tom Cruise version is spectacular, but disappointing somehow (maybe because he's the star?). They did make a convincing model of the Bayonne Bridge to destroy. The filmmakers bothered to include the houses that are actually on the site.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I think the dumbest thing in the Star Trek universe is the no money; people do what they want to, and everything is paid for by the state. No personal ownership equates to no personal responsibility. Few folks would work at anything without pay being involved.

The socialist dream since Marx, at least. Much science fiction doesn't include obvious financial questions. Too boring for most audiences and readers perhaps?

 

[intim8]

My preferred technique is to begin with a large picture of a setting and zoom in.

I tend to hold back on the full description, and give a few scenes that illustrate characteristics of the place and set the vibe, then at some point, once the reader is interested, back out to give a more full picuture. But the big picture first technique is definitely legit.

I try to imagine the kind of world I want the story to be in. Desert planet, the halls of an empire, whatever. Then I look at where it is and how it got that way, and that often informs some details about it. So my pantsing will often have a big back story where I work that out, most of which will get cut.

I'm working on a story now about a galactic junkyard, a star with no other stars anywhere near it, that civilizations around the galaxy have sent their old and obsolete ships for a million years. The MC is a scavenger in the junkyard (inspired by "Roadside Picnic") who discovers something both horrific and enormously lucrative.

The world building there is more about the kinds of people he encounters at the one planet where he can try to sell the stuff he's scavenged, so I opened it with a scene in a bar populated with all kinds of strange aliens, including one race that has a human fetish. Picture the bar in Star Wars, but seedier and full of various varieties of whores and degenerates.

I built up the vibe without describing the junkyard at all, only implying it, introducing a couple of secondary characters. Then after about a thousand words, after he got back from an unsuccessful sales trip, I backed up to describe his junkyard, where the star is, the way the ships drifted in from every direction, the rings of collision debris around the star, the who-knows-how-old derelict ship in an accidentally stable orbit that he lives on, etc.

 

[intim8]

I think the dumbest thing in the Star Trek universe is the no money; people do what they want to, and everything is paid for by the state. No personal ownership equates to no personal responsibility. Few folks would work at anything without pay being involved.

That's a feature of my all time favorite book series, "Culture" by Iain M Banks. I hate it, but damn, does it make for a compelling world.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I've never been fond of MI boy!

That's what the various versions of War of the Worlds do. In the novel, it's a very detailed London. For the 1953 movie, it's Los Angeles. The Tom Cruise version is spectacular, but disappointing somehow (maybe because he's the star?). They did make a convincing model of the Bayonne Bridge to destroy. The filmmakers bothered to include the houses that are actually on the site.

Yeah, but you'll always have some that are higher (in rank, wealth, or power).

The socialist dream since Marx, at least. Much science fiction doesn't include obvious financial questions. Too boring for most audiences and readers perhaps?

It just won't be a workable world. There will always be a Harry Mud around, a Khan, a Trump (Oh, god, say it ain't so).

That's a feature of my all time favorite book series, "Culture" by Iain M Banks. I hate it, but damn, does it make for a compelling world.

 

[karina_jayde]

I care less and less about worldbuilding the more I read and write. If I want to know about neat lore I'll just browse a Fandom wiki.

Worldbuilding, at least in terms of what I publish here, is a tool to facilitate romance, sex, and interesting relationships.

In my generic derivative fantasy setting, there's a barbarian culture that is very open and permissive about sex. Lots of sexual rituals, lots of public sex, less emphasis on monogamy, etc. There are a dozen tribes and countless gods and countless strange sexual rituals. All of this exists not for its own sake, but to contrast with the more reserved and less-sexually permissive empire that exists nearby. All of the 'worldbuilding' is done solely to create contrasts and culture clashes, which make for interesting relationships.

I could not give less of a fuck how cool your magic system is or how many years of history are in your lore bible. If the worldbuilding doesn't service the function of helping to establish relationships between characters (sexual or otherwise) I really don't care about it.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I've grumbled before about how GoT asks "what if winter could last for decades" and somehow ends up answering that with "society would look pretty much the same".

Have you read NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy? It was a more thoughtful take on the sociological consequences of living under threat of apocalyptic natural disaster (due to seismic activity rather than winter).

 

[SimonDoom]

Like the transporter example - it seems much more interesting to explore what society would look like if it is technologically straightforward to make copies of people, than to invest energy in making excuses for why the net effect of that technology ends up being "they save ten minutes on their daily commute and the food is nicer".

I think transportation is theoretically possible, but it would have to be very different from the way it's done in Star Trek, which I think is mumbo jumbo (but still cool as hell).

If we eventually find a way of duplicating a person's consciousness and memories into a digital file, then theoretically that file could be beamed across a long distance and downloaded into an android body, and within a relatively short time "you" could transport from Earth to Mars.

I'm not well read enough in science fiction to know if anybody has already treated the subject this way.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

The socialist dream since Marx, at least. Much science fiction doesn't include obvious financial questions. Too boring for most audiences and readers perhaps?

I see @Bramblethorn got there first, but Stross loves this stuff! Neptune's Brood is all about (roughly) accounting shenanigans with interstellar stablecoins. Merchant Prince series is about interdimensional trade.