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Back to the Future
This month’s Samhellion is devoted to world building. Every story has a particular world at its core. Contemporaries deal with what we know, the world we live in every day. Urban fantasies are a mix of contemporaries with monsters and fae living among us. Historicals must adhere to what was possible back “then,” as well as tie into the historical landscape. Paranormals make up their own rules, where ghosts, goblins, angels and demons can run the rules of their world while living in ours.
And then there are the futuristics, one of my personal favorite genres. Nothing like building a world from scratch. Planets where the ore is red and priceless, and the inhabitants that mine there are eight feet tall with three sets of hands. Or spaceships that make use of worm holes to travel between galaxies full of fantastic creatures. Are all the aliens humanoid in appearance (hello, Star Trek)? Or do they resemble goo, snakes, blobs of plasm like amoebas?
The potential for anything goes really exists in the futuristic world, because the author can create anything she/he wants… so long as the rules are consistent. It makes no sense to have the Falu people tall, lithe and purple in one book, while in the next they are short, squat and blue. If the Raggas are built like brick houses and miners, then they can’t suddenly have a history for being thieving, mercenary criminals who are both nimble and built on smaller lines.
I started out writing futuristics, and I had more problems with consistency than anything… until I kept a detailed notebook on my world based in the Vrail system. Once I made careful notes of which planet produced what goods and what types of people, my stories started really coming together. Fun stuff, especially since the scientists on planet Eyra threw a monkey-wrench into everything by Creating a new race of beings, quite illegally.
I love when folks break the law in the worlds I’ve created. It gives my peacemakers something to do, and they have a tendency to fall in love in the oddest places.
And that’s what makes writing to so much fun. A guaranteed happy ending among the stars.
Marie
Look for In Plain Sight, coming to Samhain in June. Shapeshifters fighting the rules and falling in love. What’s not to love?
Marie, In Plain Sight sounds interesting. Will this be out in paperback and available @ Borders? Hope so, I’m doing a booksigning in June, I’ll have to make a note of seeing if it’s there.
This title sounds familiar. Did I see it, or a mention of it/you somewhere, recently? Like in Writer’s Digest, or something?
And, I know what you mean about keeping things straight. A notebook is imperitive. Keeping one world straight is hard enough. I can’t imagine keeping a bunch of different worlds straight without keeping a notebook on it all.
I’ve got a sorceress living on Earth, but from another planet in my book. Keeping their rules and so forth straight is a little beyond my brain power. And how many generations there have been since they moved from Earth—via the Immortals—to their new planet.
Anyway, I’ll be looking forward to your book. I hope to find it, as I said, @ Borders???
Lorelei
Hey Lorelei.
Good luck at your book signing! In Plain Sight will be published as an ebook, and it’s a novella, so it won’t see print any time soon. My anthology with Paige McKellan, Feral Attraction, is in print, though. Actually, Rachel’s Totem (from Feral Attraction) is the first in my Cougar Falls, shapeshifters books. It was fun to write, but even in the paranormal world, I’ve had to keep track of clans and clan law and who can do what.
I love futuristics, though. And a sorceress from another planet sounds interesting. Love, magic, aliens and romance. Sound right up my alley!
Thanks for the post! Marie