Deep Thought: Brave New Worlds
Created | Updated Feb 26, 2023
Deep Thought: Brave New Worlds
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description of socioeconomic conditions... |
'World-building' is a phrase I really wish would be retired. Not only is it sloppy and lazy, it has become trite.
– Stephen King
Horror writer Stephen King, considered the gold standard by many, if not most of the largely self-published writer population of Twitter, has just set the cat among the pigeons. He's come out against 'world-building'. A storm of protest has arisen: from scifi writers enamoured of their elaborate personal universes to professional RPG designers, they're eager to explain to the author why they absolutely, positively, must create elaborate parallel universes. And why readers must read all about them, of course.
Any book that launches into an elaborate description of its universe is immediately abandoned by me. So I'm cheering Mr King on. I want to glimpse the landscape out the window as the story car speeds on – not sit in its fictional library imbibing 'lore'.
One reason you can't tempt me with LOTR is that Professor Tolkien's oeuvre is set smack dab on top of folkloric England. I've been there, done that. I've translated Beowulf in three different seminars. I can quote Caedmon's Hymn. I don't need another version of this in my head competing with the Venerable Bede. I understand why he built his own universe. He's welcome to it. I will seek out other worlds.
The problem isn't that writers make up personal universes, although sometimes the combination of wish-fulfillment, naivete, and sheer malice can be breathtaking. The problem is that revealing the underpinnings of an alternate universe is a skill that many novelists do not appear to possess. You have to unveil your differences gradually, almost casually. Readers should be able to take it all in as they go, being sucked in as they worry about the characters and how they'll navigate this landscape.
The idea that a reader owes the writer the time to sit down and memorise their 'world' is ludicrous. Also probably a waste of time. I mean, most of the time it's 'I cribbed this from my favourite series, only the Frogstar Fighters are purple in this one. I have a really great imagination.'
We're currently rewatching the whole Alien Nation series, which I cannot recommend too highly. Alien Nation started as a film and a comic book, I'm not sure in what order. I'm not a great fan of the film, which was a scifi-noir. But things got interesting once the story became a television series and Kenneth Johnson was put in charge. Kenneth Johnson and his team did genius work creating an alternate world just to one side of ours.
The series takes place in Los Angeles in the 1990s, with the difference that in this LA there are 250,000 immigrants from a crashed spaceship that came down in the Mojave Desert. Now they live and work in the metropolis. The series, plus five television movies, centres around a human and a Tenctonese detective who are partners in crime-solving.
We can tell that there are other differences in this world. The fashions are different (and well-designed). The car brands have different names, like the little junk pickup somebody abandoned that's called a 'Yankee' and comes from Korea. The television shows, the musical instruments the kids play, there are small differences which are fun to notice.
The big differences, of course, are the ones caused by the presence of the Tenctonese. They look different: they have spotted heads. They are stronger, faster, and smarter than humans. Their bodies react to salt water as ours does to hydrochloric acid, that is, not well. They eat raw meat and can't stand the smell of cooked. They have two hearts, doesn't every alien? Oh, and they require three genders to have a baby.
You don't find these things out until they're needed for the plot. You, the audience member, get to discover things along with the humans in fictional LA. This makes the story interesting. It helps you to assess the reactions of the humans and Tenctonese at the discoveries they make.
And, oh, yes: it keeps the story from being preachy. Do you have any idea how self-righteous and pompous most of these 'world-building' descriptions sound when they're not done right? Don't believe me? Try reading a page of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. I'll bet you won't make it all the way through even one page of this mess. It's dull as ditchwater.
'Oh, that's the 19th Century for you,' you say. Go read Orson Scott Card. Anyway, so far, Mr King's remark has garnered over 6500 likes (in a few hours) and only 600-some replies, so he's doing all right with that tweet.
I just wish more writers would keep in mind that there is not a single reader out there who owes you their attention. You have to earn it, and then keep it. Which means that you need to make the reading experience enjoyable and fulfilling for the readers. This obligation extends from making sure your syntax and comma use (durnit) facilitate the act of reading to making it possible for them (not just you) to visualise what you're talking about, to making the accumulation of story matter in their heads a pleasurable experience.
