worldbuilding

All posts tagged worldbuilding

Phoenix Comicon 2015 – Magic Refresh

Posted by Aeon Igni on June 5, 2015
Posted in: inspiration, Science Fiction Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

pcc2015

“Science gets cooler the more you explain it, and magic gets cooler the less you explain it.” – Stephen Blackmoor

Magic Refresh was my first panel of the con, so I was very excited to get it underway. The four panelists were Beth Cato, Brian McClellan, Greg van Eekhout, and Stephen Blackmoor.

When asked why they decided to write about magic, the authors agreed it was mostly about escapism. Cato answered emphatically, “Wish fulfillment. I wish magic really existed.”

There was a brief discussion on magic versus science. Stephen Blackmoor referenced Ted Chiang in his answer:

 If you do something one thousand times and the results are always the same, that magic functions like a science. If you can’t then there is a freedom from predictable results that gives a lot of latitude to the author.

When I got home, I looked up Chiang and found a very informative, interview-type blog on science versus magic, featuring Chiang and a few other authors that is definitely worth a read: http://io9.com/5021701/science-versus-magic–is-there-a-difference-in-the-world-of-fiction.

An audience member asked McClellan if the black powder in his novels was supposed to be similar to heroin. He answered affirmatively, saying: “Magic is going to be addictive. Any time you can do something other people can’t do – you’ll want to do more of it.”

The other authors also agreed that magic has to have a cost. Just as heroin has an addictive nature, magic has to have a physical or emotional sacrifice to the characters or to the world. That cost largely depends on what metaphor you pick for magic. If you pick money, it becomes a limited resource. If you pick love, it has an emotional cost.

I found it interesting that all of the authors know where the magic in their worlds comes from, even if the characters and readers don’t. In fact, they said it was better only to give the reader what they need to know and that the best types of magic are the ones where you see the magic at work without necessarily having an explanation.

One of the final audience questions was hilarious – he asked if they had ever gotten to the end of a book and realized it was wrong. They all spoke at the same time and the answer was a resounding ‘YES!’

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Steampunk Worldbuilding III – Money, Money, Money

Posted by Aeon Igni on January 18, 2015
Posted in: Science Fiction Writing, Writing. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

moneyblog

This is the third post in a series about Steampunk Worldbuilding.

If you’re a science fiction fan, you probably know that Luke only sold his speeder for 1600 credits, and Han wanted 8,000; so Luke and Ben compromised, paying 2,000 in advance with 15,000 agreed upon arrival in Alderan.

Han also had a price on his head “so large, every bounty hunter in the galaxy will be looking for you” – according to Greedo, that is. But that price was almost motivation enough for him to desert his friends and future wife to pay Jabba off. Good thing Leia takes care of that for him later!

I knew that my Steampunk world needed to include money in a big way. Why? Well for one thing, my hero, Cyrus, is a pirate. Why do people become pirates? They are societal outcasts for some reason and are forced to steal to survive. I also have a dominant form of government, the New Alliance, and a rebellion. My world has rich people, poor people, and everyone in between – and money is both a motivating factor and an explanatory factor for the things that they do.

When asking questions such as:

• Why is Cyrus a pirate? Is he a successful pirate – and what does that mean?
• Why is Evangeline a slave?
• Why is the New Alliance so powerful?
• Why isn’t the rebellion in power?
• Why would people spy for either side?
• Why wouldn’t the common people stand up to the government?

I always came back to one answer: money. Or technology – which lead me back to money. But asking the questions above were extremely powerful because they allowed me to build the back story for each of the characters, and to discern how important money was as a primary motivation for each of them.

To build my world, I used a lot of the concepts in the book, Grain Into Gold. I came up with the idea that there would be multiple currencies still floating around from before the First War, because it does take time to mint new currencies and the United States is still across the pond, so it would be the last to receive that currency and have its use enforced. Even if the New Alliance minted a new currency, there would still probably be private exchanges in other currencies for those who have access to international travel.

Interestingly, my father was a career history teacher and he explained that one of the problems with the U.S. when it first began was that every state was minting its own currency. This practice pretty much halted trade between the states until the federal government stepped in and forced everyone to use one currency. But it begs the question of what happened to each of the former state currencies. Were they traded in one-to-one for the new federal currency? Or did some states’ currencies count more than others?

Anyway, those questions are just for the trade of an expired single currency for a new currency. The nice thing about having multiple currencies is that you can ask questions like:

• What are the exchange rates between currencies – and how easy is it to exchange them? (I mean, a galleon may be worth $10.07 USD, but really, who is going to exchange it except Gringott’s – and what if you can’t go in there?)
• If someone was rich before the new government, would they still be rich after the takeover if a new currency takes effect?
• What happens when a currency becomes worthless?
• Would the New Alliance and the rebellion be using the same currencies? Or would one be worth more than the other?
• How could the either the rebellion or the New Alliance use currencies to their advantage in a war?

The use of currency allowed me to build a more realistic world, with characters whose motivations we understand because they still mirror our reality even though the world itself is very different.

The use of multiple currencies can give some amazing potential for economic warfare. What if one state’s currency suddenly becomes worthless? What if all currencies become worthless to the New Alliance but its own – and the ruler decrees the death penalty for everyone who can’t pay taxes that year?

I hope that this has given you some food for thought. In the fourth post, I will discuss mining in the 1850s, and how I used the mines and mine lords to give depth and realism to my world.

Steampunk Worldbuilding II – Building Society and Social Problems

Posted by Aeon Igni on January 9, 2015
Posted in: Science Fiction Writing. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

steampunk1

As I mentioned in my last post, I created a world where Nicholas I of Russia took over the northern hemisphere, calling his new empire the ‘New Alliance.’ After creating the time, place, and governmental structure of the world, I needed to think about the impacts of these things on the society.

I wanted my characters to have a kind of innocent heroism that comes from not seeing war. I had never really pondered this before writing this series, but Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Neo, Katniss Everdeen, and many, many other heroes are all born in the time period after a war, where the adults are still suffering the after effects of the first war, but they go forward despite the warnings.

So I decided that when Nicholas I actually conquered the people it would be called the First War, and it would have happened around 1830, about 20 years prior to the start of my story. Cyrus and Evangeline would have been too young to participate in the First War but they would have felt its effects, and they interact with people like Dr. Riggs and Captain Madrid who had been in the rebellion during the first war.

To create the societal tensions in your story, you want to ask questions about what happened to the people before, during, and after recent major events. For me, these were questions about what happened to the people before, during and after the most recent war occurred.

These questions can be as large or small as you want them to be. For example, you could ask broad, sweeping questions such as:

1. How does a hostile takeover affect the people of a country?
2. Does it differentially affect the rich and the poor?
3. How does it affect minorities such as women or people of color?
4. What is the new money system based on?
5. Who ‘buys in’ to the new government and why? Who doesn’t and why not?

Or you could ask more specific questions tailored to your world, as I did:

1. How did Nicholas I taking over the world affect the people?
2. How did the rich people react when he swept into North America? What about the poor?
3. What happened to women’s rights since he was from conservative Eastern Europe and the United States was one of the most liberal countries for women’s liberation?
4. Who did the New Alliance make rich in their new world and why?
5. What happened to people who were members of the former rebellion? Did he kill them? Torture them? Did some escape?

These answers will then be woven into your story, providing the motivations and underlying hopes and fears of both protagonists and antagonists.

My answers to these questions are woven through the six novellas, and as they progress the characters become a lot more detailed because they have this history. There are people who were rich before the war who went along with the New Alliance despite their hatred for it, rich people who are now poor because they had joined the rebellion, and plenty of poorer people who go along with the New Alliance because the form government didn’t really affect them as long as they get paid for their wares. There are the new rich mine lords, endorsed by the New Alliance because they use slavery to make millions, and the pirates who steal from them to give to the poor. Women who had been free are now slaves to the whims of men again.

These answers also gave me running themes – class struggles, the struggle for individual freedom, women’s independence, and the struggle for individual identity and meaning. What will my characters sacrifice for their ideals? Will they lie for them? Fight for them? Die for them?

Around the time I was answering these questions, I did do some research on the United States at the time the story was supposed to take place. In actual United States history, the 1850s saw women’s rights and human rights as huge issues. The 1850s saw the first coed university, women were being granted the right to own property in their own name in several states, and the right to have separate economy from their husbands. The Civil War was fought from 1861-1865, killing over 600,000 people. The end of the Civil War saw the collapse of the south, the end of slavery, and the expansion of civil rights.

The real history at the time was rich and vibrant, and variations of the themes provided enough inspiration to make a vivid, detailed steampunk world.

Steampunk Worldbuilding I – Building the government and history of an epic world

Posted by Aeon Igni on December 21, 2014
Posted in: Science Fiction Writing. Tagged: , , . 1 Comment

Steampunk I

This post is the second in a series about Steampunk Worldbuilding. In this blog post I will tell you some of the themes of steampunk, as well as a bit of how I created my own world.

The first thing I did when my magazine submission was rejected (so I got serious about writing steampunk – damn you, competitive nature!) is research. I went to Barnes and Noble, because I was too impatient to wait for Amazon delivery, and bought Steampunk: An Illustrated History by Robb and The Steampunk User’s Manual by Vandermeer and Boskovich.

Those two encyclopedias went through the history of steampunk and the main themes: rebellion against a tyrannical government, individual freedom, and the equality of women being a few. There are also the sci-fi themes of new technology, discovery of new worlds or new frontiers, and encountering strange and/or dangerous unknown phenomena.

After reading, I began to think about the setting. I wanted a time and place in history that would have been interesting to write about, where many of these themes would have come up naturally. Most steampunk work is set in England, which is fair, since a lot of it the clothing and setting is derived from Victorian culture. But I wanted to provide a unique perspective on steampunk, and give my characters room to grow in a different setting, so I set the work in the United States.

I wanted the world to be a lot smaller than it is today – with a populated eastern seaboard but the west as a yet unknown frontier. A wild land that had yet to be fully explored would give me the opportunity for exploration, new technologies, and a lot of places for the rebellion to hide from a New Alliance. The mid-1800s fit the bill nicely in that respect – now I needed to build my government.

When you are going to create a world, probably the most important thing you need to know is:

1. Who rules it?

Why do you need to know this? Well, the end of pretty much every epic story is the overthrow of the ruler, so you’re going to be building up to it over your series. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Emperor, Voldemort, the machines, or the Capitol, you need to know who the supreme ruler is. You don’t need to tell the reader all of the specifics, but as the author, you need to know them so you can give depth and breadth to your plot.

Going further, you need to ask questions about the supreme power and its motive.

2. Why is the supreme ruler in power?
3. How did it come to power? – Bloody battle between two powers? Multi-faction war? Economic overthrow? Superior technology? Did the opponents fight, or simply give up?
4. How does it keep power? – Fear? Economic means? Technological means?
5. Who are its allies?
6. Who are its enemies, and how much power do they have?

To create my supreme ruler, I began poking around the 1850s, and for some reason Russia came to mind. Growing up during the Cold War between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., I have always been intensely curious about Russia, its people, and its government. So I started reading about Russia in 1850, and what I found blew my mind.

In 1850, Nicholas I was on the throne, a ruthless, obsessive man who had crowned himself the Emperor of Russia and brutally quashed several uprisings from the people. While his reign saw massive geographical expansion, his view of himself as the ruler of an ethnically diverse people who spoke over 100 languages at the time was one of a benevolent dictator; although his reign was characterized by censorship, educational repression, and a fanatical devotion to nationalism.

The traits above made him the perfect dictator – but the characteristics that made him the perfect character for a steampunk story were that he was aggressive, land hungry, and trained as an engineer. He already had a million-man army, and it seemed the only things he lacked to expand his empire even further were sufficient transportation and technology.

I had the idea that if Nicholas I would have focused his engineering skills and the might of the people and the army into developing technology – steam-powered trains and railroads, airships, weapons, etc., perhaps he would have swept across Europe and into the west, creating a one-world government that was mostly bureaucratic but squashed revolts with its military might.

In my steampunk world, I gave him those technologies, and that’s exactly what he did. He brutally conquered most of the Northern hemisphere, creating the ‘New Alliance’ in the wake of his armies. I love the fact that the new government is called the New Alliance. When I was living in South Korea, I learned to appreciate the irony of the dictator in the North calling his land the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, or the communist regime to the west calling their empire the People’s Republic of China.

So, that’s what I did to create the background of my world. I found the time and place, and then a man with the motive to rule it. I stretched my imagination to give him the means.

What I did next was to imagine the outcome of such a war, asking questions and creating my society from there. I will discuss that in the next blog post: Steampunk Worldbuilding II: Building Society and Social Problems.

Steampunk Worldbuilding Overview

Posted by Aeon Igni on November 23, 2014
Posted in: Science Fiction Writing. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

How does one begin building a viable steampunk world? Well, not like I did. My first introduction to writing  Steampunk was in response to a call for stories for the second edition of Science Fiction Romance Quarterly magazine. I briefly wrote Cyrus and Evangeline’s story as a piece a little over 8,000 words.

I had the airships, the two main characters, and the plot; but what I didn’t have – and what really makes Steampunk unique – is the world. Steampunk requires more of the writer than simply a compelling plot and 3-dimensional characters. Like all subgenres of science fiction, it takes the detail to the next level, requiring the author to build the world around the characters with depth and fine detail of historical, scientific, and social aspects which make the story extraordinary, yet believable.

Over the next few weeks, I will share with you the aspects you need to consider to build a viable, unique Steampunk world; and what I did to make my own world a wondrous and compelling place to test my characters and allow them to overcome all obstacles and become who they were meant to be.