Created Worlds

[scheherazade_79]

I have the utmost respect for any author who plays God and creates a new world order from scratch. Planet of the Apes, the Narnia chronicles, Lord of the Rings, the world of magical folk in Harry Potter, futuristic dystopias, space stories set on a galaxy far, far away... The amount of imagination and planning that must go into them is breathtaking.

So what's your favourite created world, and why?
As a writer, have you ever created or been tempted to create a new world?
If so, what were the hardest parts of doing this?

Speak to me

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I have the utmost respect for any author who plays God and creates a new world order from scratch. Planet of the Apes, the Narnia chronicles, Lord of the Rings, the world of magical folk in Harry Potter, futuristic dystopias, space stories set on a galaxy far, far away... The amount of imagination and planning that must go into them is breathtaking.

So what's your favourite created world, and why?
As a writer, have you ever created or been tempted to create a new world?
If so, what were the hardest parts of doing this?

Speak to me

Pern. As in the Dragonriders of Pern, etc.

Also the world created by RAH in Starship Troopers, not the movie the book.

 

[oggbashan]

I've created two new worlds: Shelacta and Tripletit.

The hardest part is remembering the characteristics of the world and its inhabitants.

The easiest way to create a new world is to have the same world as we live in with a couple of minor differences. Exploring what effect those differences can have is an interesting exercise.

My favourite created world? Jonathan Swift's Lilliput.
Second choice? T H White's The Once and Future King starting with Sword in the Stone.

Og

 

[scheherazade_79]

Pern. As in the Dragonriders of Pern, etc.

Also the world created by RAH in Starship Troopers, not the movie the book.

What was it about these worlds that captivated you?

 

[scheherazade_79]

The easiest way to create a new world is to have the same world as we live in with a couple of minor differences. Exploring what effect those differences can have is an interesting exercise.

Never thought of that before. Thanks, Og. I'm itching to create something completely new, but slightly overwhelmed by the size of the project.

 

[Corylea]

My favorite created world is the one in Diane Duane's The Door into Fire and The Door into Shadow. It's a pagan world, where the Goddess is not a matter of belief, because everyone meets Her at least once before they die -- when she comes to make love with them. Why is the world imperfect? The Goddess admits that she fucked up, and she apologizes. Wow.

Most people are bisexual and polyamorous, though there's no discrimination against monosexuals or monogamous folks. In this world, both love and joy are things that slow down the death of the world, and so love isn't just a private thing, it's the best thing you can do for the world.

There's a war on, so it isn't all roses and honey -- far from it -- but the basic world feels like the one I'm supposed to be living in.

This author is better known for her Young Wizards series, the one that starts with So You Want to Be a Wizard, but I like her adult series better.

 

[scheherazade_79]

My favorite created world is the one in Diane Duane's The Door into Fire and The Door into Shadow. It's a pagan world, where the Goddess is not a matter of belief, because everyone meets Her at least once before they die -- when she comes to make love with them. Why is the world imperfect? The Goddess admits that she fucked up, and she apologizes. Wow.

Most people are bisexual and polyamorous, though there's no discrimination against monosexuals or monogamous folks. In this world, both love and joy are things that slow down the death of the world, and so love isn't just a private thing, it's the best thing you can do for the world.

There's a war on, so it isn't all roses and honey -- far from it -- but the basic world feels like the one I'm supposed to be living in.

This author is better known for her Young Wizards series, the one that starts with So You Want to Be a Wizard, but I like her adult series better.

Interesting. I'm tempted to get a copy. Thank you!

 

[rgraham666]

My favorite piece of world building is the Battletech series of books. The Clans were an especially interesting creation.

I liked it because it allowed the writers to create great characters. I was especially caught by Ulric Kerensky, a man forced to lead a war he opposed.

 

[Vermilion]

It's got to be the Discworld. I love it because it's a perversion of some of the things we humans have believed about our world in the past, twisted to extract the utmost humour. Pratchett is just such a funny man and when you look behind the humour, you realise how fucking intelligent he is, too, the way he's assimilated all sorts of scientific and theological theories and used them to create this new world.

x
V

 

[Le Jacquelope]

I have the utmost respect for any author who plays God and creates a new world order from scratch. Planet of the Apes, the Narnia chronicles, Lord of the Rings, the world of magical folk in Harry Potter, futuristic dystopias, space stories set on a galaxy far, far away... The amount of imagination and planning that must go into them is breathtaking.

So what's your favourite created world, and why?
As a writer, have you ever created or been tempted to create a new world?
If so, what were the hardest parts of doing this?

Speak to me

I absolutely love worldbuilding.

The hardest part of worldbuilding, to me, is making up a new language. And coming up with names that fit the major species of the new world.

Other than that I let worlds create themselves in my stories.

 

[starrkers]

I love the concept of the Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer. The first couple of books were wonderful, but I think the idea was too big for the author and got away from him. The series kind of ended with a whimper. But whenever I think of it, I wish I'd come up with it. I could spend the rest of my life writing stories in that world.

For those who haven't encountered it:
Everyone who ever lived on Earth is resurrected along the banks of a river. The majority in any one area are from one time, a minority from another, and a small spattering from any time. Any deaths are resurrected the next morning in another spot along the River.

 

[oggbashan]

Minor differences in practice

This is an example of what I mean by minor differences for my Shelacta series:

Prologue

Shelacta (pronounced She-Lacta) is a contemporary parallel world very similar to our own early 21st Century world except in its sexual practices.

Sexual changes have affected the human race. Young women have become forced to be sexual predators. Once a woman has reached the age of 18 she is mature but she must force five men to orgasm before she becomes potentially fertile. At least one of the five of the five men must be killed by the sexual act of the pre-fertile woman. To help her achieve this women have mutated into developing sexual traps.

If a pre-fertile woman allows a man to penetrate her she loses her sexual trap and it is very difficult for her to become mature except with the help of consenting men. If a man penetrates a mature but pre-fertile woman he becomes immune to women’s sexual traps. If he penetrates a fertile woman her trap makes him her slave, whether or not conception occurs. The fertile woman controls whether she wants to conceive or not. The number of male slaves a woman has determines her status. Any of her slaves is at risk of death from a pre-fertile woman, or capture by another fertile woman.

A woman who has lost her sexual trap is an outcast even when fertile because she has no normal means of making a man her slave.

Chastity belts for either sex are both immoral and illegal. The possession or use of such a device is a capital offence and execution is almost inevitable.

A pregnant woman freezes her status once the pregnancy is confirmed. She can immunise her male slaves against other women by wiping her pussy over their faces at least once a week. She can do this if she is actually pregnant but the pregnancy isn’t yet confirmed.

A lactating woman is special. Even if she has lost her sexual trap she is attractive to men because her milk can free them. Every man who drinks a pint of her milk directly from her breasts becomes his own master again. He will be immune to sexual traps for life but from the first sip until he has drunk the whole pint he is the lactating woman’s slave and that slavery overrides all others even after she ceases to produce milk. Lactation is the only way for a woman who has lost her sexual trap to achieve status.

Males under the age of 18 are taboo and incapable of arousal. The best birthday present a family can give a son is to buy the services of a lactating woman until he has drunk a pint of her milk. Women who can produce a genuine pint at one feed are rare and much sought after. Most paid ‘milkers’ have to have several sessions with the fortunate son until the pint has been delivered. The procedure is embarrassing to the son because until he has drunk the full pint he is the ‘milker’s’ slave and as she is usually an outcast of low status his predicament makes him the butt of humour from his contemporaries. There have been several stage farces written around this situation. If she cannot deliver the full pint for whatever reason, he is her slave for life.

The author of these tales has limited access to view journals and magazines from Shelacta. From that access he has extracted some stories that might interest our world.

That prologue started Chapter 01. For later chapters I included it as an appendix.

There can be problems. By the time I wrote later chapters I thought that I needed to change some of the statements I originally made. If I rewrite the whole series, which isn't finished yet, I might change some of the prologue.

Og

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm working on one now. The Realm of the Erotic. It's an extended metaphor, a world parallel to our own where eroticism is the dominant energy form and people and things have power and presence proportional to their erotic content.

Thus, candles command great spaces in this world, while fluorescent lights are weak and niggardly. What were intimate restaurants appear as fabric-shrouded palaces, while office buildings are hovels in the ground. People are judged by their potential as lovers, not by the amount of wealth or education they have. Horse drawn coaches command the highways while automobiles are relegated to underground roadways.

It's a bit quirky because of my own ideas of what's erotic and what's not. Museums are important, for example, as are art galleries and theaters. Police stations are hidden but many homes have private jails. Clothing stores and book stores are everywhere. The place is full of dark alleys and tiny bars, strange churches and temples where mysterious rites and rituals are carried out.

 

[English Lady]

I love loads of different worlds, Pratchett's Discworld, Narnia, David Gemmell's world (can't think of the name off hand) Prydain in Lloyd Alexander's books and even the slightly tweaked world of Tom Holt's The Portable door etc. I love fantasy.

I have written one story based in another world. I did submit it for publication but they wanted me to extend it, which I plan to do. I've just not gotten round to it yet.

Names are difficult to create and keeping things consistant. I picked a world that was very like an earlier era of time here on Earth, like David Gemmell and others have done, and added in magical elements. It isn't as hard as you think, once you get into it.

 

[Corylea]

I'm working on one now. The Realm of the Erotic. It's an extended metaphor, a world parallel to our own where eroticism is the dominant energy form and people and things have power and presence proportional to their erotic content.

In other words, you'd be king?

 

[impressive]

Pern. As in the Dragonriders of Pern, etc.

Also the world created by RAH in Starship Troopers, not the movie the book.

Love Pern, too. Was just talking to Bel yesterday about screen adaptations now that special effects are so stunning. But the Master Harper would have to be very skillfully cast.

My other favorite world is the one we created for ArtiFactual. It's "mostly" normal, but the sexual artifacts are haunted with imprints of previous owners, dead doesn't really mean dead, and time travel is real.

 

[NoJo]

When we were 12 my weird nerdy friend and me made giant maps of a Narnia/Middle Earth-like world, out of forty or fifty sheets of drawing paper taped up on a big wall, and proceeded to write stories about it. Although I loved and still really like the Narnia/Middle Earth stories, I think it's basically an adolescent genre, for people who are uncomfortable with 1st life.

Having said that, Larry Niven's Ringworld is a great concept -- he creates a land mind-bogglingly large in surface area -- millions of times larger than earth, once ruled by a mysterious and technologically advanced people, now populated by various primitive humanoforms. Niven won every SF award going in 1970 for Ringworld, and the book spawned an entire genre, of which Discworld is an example.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Ditto on Pern. Also love alternative history, or heck, just good historical fiction, which in a sense is a created world.

Two sci-fi authors stand for created worlds, I think. One is Larry Niven, the other is Hal Clement. Niven's Ringworld is about an astronomical construct, a world that is a ring 1,000 miles wide (or much wider?) turning around a sun at earth-distance - c. 93 million miles. Rim walls hold in an atmosphere, and the climate everywhere is prefectly salubrious. Intermittent "shades" a few thousand miles (?) sunward create day and night as they pass overhead. Do the arithmatic and and one discovers a truly astounding land area. This is not Niven's only really different world.

Hal Clement writes books about other species that evolved in radically different environments, but are still a person for all that. One has creatures on a planet with like a 100 g gravity. They have lots of legs, are really afraid of heights, and when something falls it's said to "disappear." Another is a species that lives real fast - their three score and ten pass in a few months, yet to them it's still - three score and ten. A space ship of them and one of us pass close out in interstellar space, both sides figure out in advance what the other is, and the book is about the challenges of arranging and executing meaningful communications.

 

[Vermilion]

Forgot to mention - another Anne Macaffrey world - PeTayBee - a sentient planet. I guess I just like that idea of being so in touch with your world that you can communicate with it... not sure why: a sense of belonging perhaps?

x
V

 

[DesertPirate]

I've created two new worlds: Shelacta and Tripletit.

The hardest part is remembering the characteristics of the world and its inhabitants.

The easiest way to create a new world is to have the same world as we live in with a couple of minor differences. Exploring what effect those differences can have is an interesting exercise.

My favourite created world? Jonathan Swift's Lilliput.
Second choice? T H White's The Once and Future King starting with Sword in the Stone.

Og

I read White in my youth, might be time to return.
I also got into Harry Potter because of my daughter. Read the first on to see what the fuss was about and the wife and I were both hooked.
I got her to read White when we werre first married.

 

[Trombonus]

Cybertron obviously.

There's a lot of mystery involved when it comes to Cybertron. Even the Transformers themselves don't know what Cybertron truly is. Most accept it as their home. Others believe it to be a weapon, or even a gigantic starship. It has even been shown to be a gigantic Transformer in and of itself, just like its counterpart Unicron. They have religion and they have politics, and all the things we deal with in our lives as well. Every character is unique, with their own personality quirks, and there are hundreds of characters. That's what I love most about it all. There are Transformers that you can connect with, and Transformers you love to hate. What more could you ask for?

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

My absolute favorite is the world that I'm still creating: Pythea, an alternate North America populated by ancient Greeks and Native Pytheans (I won't call them Americans, since in this world, the New World is called Pythea instead of America).

There are 4 Greek colonies: Malacanos, Lysania, Etoria, and Posidonis. Then there are several neighboring indigenous cultures who have been affected and influenced by contact with the Greeks. Many of these are auxiliary or mercenary troops for the Greeks.

Malacanos is a highly pastoral civilization, with a few large towns, one major city (the capital, Panopolis), and a thousand small towns. Aside from this, there are forts and hamlets, but mostly open countryside, suitable for grazing. The major livestock were all brought over from Greece long ago: sheep, pigs, cattle, goats, and horses. Naturally, the Malacanoi are excellent equestrians, and their cavalry is the elite of their largely professional standing army. There are militia, too, but the regular army, composed of ambitious aristocrats, burghers, and herdsmen's sons, does the bulk of fighting.

The Malacanoi live a simpler, more pragmatic existence. Luxury exists, but only within limits, and even many of the rich and powerful cultivate a reputation of proving their toughness and avoiding too much ease. Idleness is treated with disdain. Their government is by a family of princes which shares power in the territory. The chief princes are three brothers who are quite elderly by the opening of the plot.

The Malacanoi are very devout in their reverence for the Olympian Gods. They are also very polygamous, with plenty of wives and concubines (and some pleasure slaves, too), not to mention male lovers. Serfdom doesn't exist, unlike two of the neighboring states. Social mobility is more fluid.

The Etorians are a much more urbane and sophisticated and yet also more servile folk. They have a monarch (at the beginning of the book, their first ruling queen in their history- it's quite an adjustment for a people used to male sovereigns only). They have a very luxurious and some might say decadent and extravagant royal court, which dominates a small, but growing bureaucracy. They have a very powerful nobility, as well as the institutions of slavery and serfdom. Only the upper and middle classes have rights. The peasants are bound to the soil, and are largely of native stock.

The military, also professional, is not as strong or specialized as that of Malacanos. There are far more cities, garrisons, forts, etc., especially since the reign of Philip the Architect, the current queen's building-crazed and spendthrift father. Etorian men are technically monogamous, but often take lovers of both sexes. The same is often also true of the women. The court also has plenty of eunuchs, who control much of the bureaucracy.

Also interesting, at least to me, are the Lysanians, a militaristic state that is basically a cross of Sparta and Prussia in style. It also keeps serfs as well as slaves, and here homosexuality is even more rampant than among the Malacanoi and Etorians. There are two kings (they consciously emulate their Spartan ancestors in this), and at the opening of the book, the kings are lovers themselves from their youth. That one of the kings is also married is no impediment to this, as it is a political necessity for at least one of them to have a queen. One of the kings owes his elevation to the throne to his lover, in fact, and even though he is more gay than bi, he does agree to sleep with her once, to have a son and heir. The other king, who is actually born to royalty, is more sexual malleable, and thus enjoys his love triangle of wife and male companion.

As for the Posidonians, their society and economy have less to do with land than with skills and profits. They are half-capitalist, half-mercantilist in their republic, which is the most democratic and egalitarian state in the novel. Their city owns little farmland, and most of that is rented out to the neighboring tribes for a fat profit. The rest is awarded to the army, as pensions for the soldiers and rations for them as well. Their government is composed of 3 councils: the Politarchs, or executive council of 15 magistrates elected at large for one year terms (though re-electable); the Judges, or judicial magistrates, appointed by the legislative council for 5 year terms, with 3 for each of the city's districts- collectively, they form a sort of Supreme Court, which interprets the law and handles appellate cases; and the Council of Guilds, with 5 delegates from each guild. This includes certain guilds for women, which means that women do have a limited franchise (very limited) in this society. Among them are the guild of prostitutes and the guild of housewives. Since the franchise is corporate instead of individual, however, it does them little good.

Posidonians tolerate bisexuality, but not pure homosexuality. They allow a very restricted form of concubinage/polygamy (through younger "apprentice wives"), but generally practice official monogamy (though not actual monogamy). Marriage, like everything else, is a strictly economic matter. Incest is a crime punishable by exile (there are very few capital offenses in Posidonis). Crime is high, but so is the standard of living. The army is a purely mercenary force of native bastards and foreign auxiliaries. Ironically, the Posidonians, while the greediest of the 4 Greek civilizations in this world, are also the least sexually permissive of the societies (though not by much). One might call them the Republicans of this setting. LOL. Like most Republicans, they have plenty of affairs, but tend to be discreet about them.

They are also not very religious, at least by Greek standards, though they are still Hellenistic pagans. They are very materialistic and commercial. They are also very traditional about certain things and fiercely resist even a little change, unless it's to their profit.

 

[epiphany65]

I'm not much into sci-fi/fantasy, but here's an interesting article I read a while back on "The Top 10 Fantasy Worlds in Literature" I thought some of you might enjoy it:
http://listverse.com/literature/top-10-fantasy-worlds-in-literature/

 

[3113]

Two of my three favorites are alternate worlds--our world with a difference--the third is science fiction, the future and what it will be like "if". All three are mind-blowing:

Philip K. Dick's Man in a High Castle: takes place in the 1960's; the difference is, Germany and Japan won WWII.

Robert Charles Wilson Darwinia: astonishing novel about the change in the world when Europe completely disappears and is replaced by a bizarre, primordial land people call Darwinia.

Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon: Here it's the far future and people can download their brains into new bodies. A very hard boiled story of a detective hired by a man to find out who killed him--he was killed his brain went to another body, but he still wants to know who's behind the death of his former body. What makes this a stunning example of world building is Morgan's exploration of all the consequences of being able to move a consciousness from body to body. This with a universe and world of future technology that all hangs together.

As for an utterly different, fantasy world or alien worlds? I think Middle Earth still ranks among the highest, as it always feels as if there's a long history to every group we meet, every city we visit.

Oh, and I, myself, world-build all the time. Sometimes I think that's all I do in my stories.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Love Pern, too. Was just talking to Bel yesterday about screen adaptations now that special effects are so stunning. But the Master Harper would have to be very skillfully cast.

...

Sean Connery maybe?