Stories that handle world-building well

[ElectricBlue]

China Mieville is the best world builder I've come across.

His parallel universe City and the City is very clever, with its seeing and unseeing; his Rail Sea world, where trains move over the landscape like ships over the sea; and his brilliant city, New Crobuzon, is worth reading repeatedly. And anyone who can portray surrealistic art fighting Nazis I pretty clever in my book. Mainstream author, not here.

In terms of traditional "other world" fantasy, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy is my favourite novel.

 

[VallesMarineris]

China Mieville is the best world builder I've come across.

CM is one of my long time favorites. Don't forget Embassytown, in which human translators to an alien civilization have to be raised from birth as genetically modified pairs in order to communicate with the aliens. Crazy stuff that nonetheless pulls you in.

 

[VallesMarineris]

Feel free to cite your own story and discuss what you enjoyed about the world-building process

If I can toot my own horn:

https://literotica.com/s/the-shapeshifter

I wrote this short story as an entry to Geek Pride last year. I wanted to write about a sexually enticing nonhuman. My science and sci-fi background compelled me to build an interstellar civilization to explain her. That interstellar civilization turned out to be authoritarian, racist, and sexist to explain the dominant male who meets her.

I’m really pleased with the amount of wold-building I was able to cram into 7.4K words. Earned a red H.