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Saturday, April 14, 2007
What's wrong with worldbuilding
M John Harrison's rumination on why "worldbuilding" is a pointless exercise is like a bucket of cold water in the face. Shocking, refreshing and altogether unexpected. Worldbuilding is the science fiction writer's practice of meticulously (or not) drawing up the contours of a fictional place -- from the physics to the biology.
Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.Link (via Warren Ellis)Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary 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 neccessary. 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. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.
posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:36:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
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