SF/F Commentary

I’ve been playing around with a lot of different mapping software lately, in part because the epic fantasy series I’m working on has need of a map and I haven’t a clue what to do.  I’ve wandered around through all of the various programs for creating maps and the best one I’ve found that takes into account things like temperature, geographic features, etc. is one called Hero Extant (mostly because it’s free and doesn’t crash; suggestions of better programs are welcome). In any case, these are what I’ve come up with so far.  I’ll likely decide on one that gives me most of what I want and then re-map from hand to rework the mountains and other features to fit what I need.  But for now, preliminary mapping is necessary! Feel free to poke through and let me know what you think! Here goes:

1) How the heck do I write a mystery story involving a framing of a drug dealer in a fantasy world? 2) Is it possible to have a continent that spirals out from a central point with three arms (kind of like a galaxy), or is that just fantasy nonsense? Something like this: 3) How much information is too much for a short story set in a fantasy world? In a novel, you would have the option to spend a considerable amount of time establishing scene, but not so in a short story. Confusing. 4) What is it like being a giant frog person? How do I get in the head of such a person, considering that I have never been a frog before (though I may have dressed up as one when I was a youngin’)? 5) What is the best beverage for stirring the creative juices? Hmm… Thoughts? (This whole “Adventures in Worldbuilding” thing has become a real feature, hasn’t it?  So be it.  I like talking about what I’m doing in the writing world, even if it’s completely random and weird.)

If you’re going to create a science fiction world, you cannot snatch up a random ancient culture and toss it into a universe in which interstellar travel is relatively widespread, servant robots are efficient and plentiful, and so on. If you want something like slavery to exist in such a world, you have to have a damn good reason for it beyond “they just don’t like them.” You have to adapt such things to technology. Otherwise, you’re completely ignoring the impact technology has on the development of culture. This is not the same as taking an analogue of a European medieval culture and inserting it into a fantasy world (unless, of course, you have a lot of magic and have made no effort to demonstrate how magic changes the cultures of a medieval society). There are at least reasonable assumptions one can make about early technological developments in human cultures. But it does not work in a science fiction universe as a cultural standard. This is one of the few things that will make me toss a book across the room: when your world makes no sense. Mashing together ancient cultures with advanced future worlds simply does not work. No matter how hard you cram an eagle into a pig, you will not come out with a flying pig. Sadly, a lot of people try to do this, and their books suffer as a result, because the moment I stop and say, “This doesn’t make any sense,” is the moment when I’ve been pulled out of the story. It won’t be easy to go back after that.

Random question for you writerly types: I’m currently working on a fantasy world, as I said a few days ago. The world is coming together well enough. Figured out the relationship between geography and climate (though not orbit and climate, sadly, which I cannot seem to find useful information for easily calculating). My problem now stems from a problem of naming, which seems to be a trap between oddly French sounding upper royalty “houses” and oddly middle English sounding stuff for most of the lower “houses.” So I suppose the question is this: Should I change the upper houses to reflect the linguistic heritage of the lower houses, or could there be a valid reason from a linguistic perspective for those names to stay with their French influence (accidental) if there are no French-like cultures surrounding them (and, thus, no invasions, cultural transference, and so on)?  I’m leaning towards changing the names, even though I like them as they are (the upper houses are Echeler, Millard, and Dorian, with Lyemark as the only slightly Frankish/Middle English outlier). (The lesser houses, unfinished though they may be, are currently named as follows:  Leyne, Pyne, Trym, Cambryn, Caethyn, Prymsteyn, and Aestyn — yes, I am fairly obsessed with the Y right now.)