Two contrasting views on worldbuilding in fiction

[M. John Harrison thought worldbuilding was unnecessary and dull](http://web.archive.org/web/20080410181840/http://uzwi.wordpress.com/2007/01/27/very-afraid/):

> Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

> Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

> Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there.

[Charlie Stross (who points to Harrison in this piece) thinks it’s the defining part of science fiction](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/02/why-i-barely-read-sf-these-day.html):

> [Humans] exist in a context provided by our culture and history and relationships, and if we’re going to write a fiction about people who live in circumstances other than our own, we need to understand our protagonists’ social context…

For instance, stories about modern life (non-science fiction) fall flat if they don’t connect with the increasingly-bizarre context we live in today:

> We’re living in a world where invisible flying killer robots murder wedding parties in Kandahar, a billionaire is about to send a sports car out past Mars, and loneliness is a contagious epidemic…These things are the worms in the heart of the mainstream novel of the 21st century. You don’t have to extract them and put them on public display, but if they aren’t lurking in the implied spaces of your story your protagonists will strike a false note.

By the way, [here’s that sports car](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=128&v=aBr2kKAHN6M), which launched today and is currently orbiting Earth:

The big opportunity, to Stross, is building worlds different enough from our own context to illuminate other ways of being; where you can tell other types of stories:

> SF should—in my view—be draining the ocean and trying to see at a glance which of the gasping, flopping creatures on the sea bed might be lungfish. But too much SF shrugs at the state of our seas and settles for draining the local aquarium, or even just the bathtub, instead.

Intelligent and docile

> The first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. – [I. J. Good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._J._Good)

Self-preventing prophecies

Nice explanation by David Brin of the role science fiction can play in preventing dystopia:

[More good “Previsions” episodes here](https://www.facebook.com/pg/FuturismSciFi/videos/).

We already think about the future a lot

Contradicting [Jane McGonigal](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5585), Martin Seligman says that [we already spend plenty of time thinking about the future](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/sunday/why-the-future-is-always-on-your-mind.html?_r=0):

> We learn not by storing static records but by continually retouching memories and imagining future possibilities. Our brain sees the world not by processing every pixel in a scene but by focusing on the unexpected…

> Even when you’re relaxing, your brain is continually recombining information to imagine the future, a process that researchers were surprised to discover when they scanned the brains of people doing specific tasks like mental arithmetic. Whenever there was a break in the task, there were sudden shifts to activity in the brain’s “default” circuit, which is used to imagine the future or retouch the past.

Though there are limits:

> Less than 1 percent of their thoughts involved death, and even those were typically about other people’s deaths.

I’m surprised this was found to be mostly a positive phenomenon given the stress it causes, but the absence of prospection would cause much bigger problems. Makes sense that this is baked into our natures.

Why thinking about the future matters

Jane McGonigal on why and how to think about the future:

Some people regularly connect with their future selves, but a majority does not. And this matters, beyond the links between future thinking and greater self-control and pro-social behavior. Thinking about the five-, 10-, and 30-year future is essential to being an engaged citizen and creative problem-solver…

Make a list of things that you’re interested in—things like food, travel, cars, the city you live in, shoes, dogs, music, real estate. Then, at least once a week, do a google search for “the future of” one of the things on your list.

The shape of time

I thought I’d posted about this before, but I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of the [“B-Theory” of time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-theory_of_time), and [world lines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_line), and the possibility of our actions in the present forming something visible outside of time. So here’s a post that includes all those words that I can add to when I find new stuff.

• The Growing Block universe is another formulation: “The present is an objective property, to be compared with a moving spotlight. By the passage of time more of the world comes into being; therefore, the block universe is said to be growing. The growth of the block is supposed to happen in the present, a very thin slice of spacetime, where more of spacetime is continually coming into being.”

[](
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/a20784)
“Pretty good. The ending was a bit predictable.”- [New Yorker](
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/a20784)

So perfect no one will need to be good

So much for futurism?

They constantly try to escape

From the darkness outside and within

By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.

But the man that is shall shadow

The man that pretends to be.

– [T.S. Eliot](http://www.tech-samaritan.org/blog/2010/06/16/choruses-from-the-rock-t-s-eliot)

The Museum of Tomorrow

> We wanted to bring to the Museum of Tomorrow a different concept of time: the idea that in the present, you prepare, you make a different path to different possible futures. It’s not a river in the sense that you have one source and one end. You have, in fact, a delta of possibilities.

I love that image: “a delta of possibilities”. [A great interview](https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/always-tomorrow-now.html) with the chief curator of [this new Rio de Janerio museum](http://museudoamanha.org.br/livro/en/02-um-museu-singular-para-um-futuro-plural.html) by Stuart Candy. A better reason to visit Rio than the Olympics!

Absentee futures

> We congratulate ourselves on the accomplishment of democracy…But regardless of who votes, what is the real meaning of any such choices if the alternatives among which we are selecting are underimagined, or clichéd – or simply absent? – Stuart Candy

My most influential role these days is less “tastemaker” and “decider” than simply “option generator”.

Designing better futures for Syria

My own career goal is to “[help people think about the future](http://bob.ryskamp.org/design/).”

I can’t imagine a better application of that than [a group from the University of Washington](http://syria.ischool.uw.edu/) which [helps Syrian refugee children design a better future for themselves and their families](https://slate.adobe.com/cp/zlibu/).

> We asked the participants to work in pairs to fuel creativity and help ease literacy barriers. They used LEGO Mini-Figures and Bricks, art supplies, color pens, and FUJI Instamax Cameras to create the devices…

> Magical devices often depict means of transportation…Mobility is a challenge in Za’atari for different reasons–many people have physical disabilities, exasperated by war trauma, and there is no public transport to assist with lack of roads…

> Teams also designed devices similar to existing technology, such as Google glass, but that address particular needs in the camps. One team, who called themselves “Future’s Butterflies,” designed glasses that help discover and cure diseases.