Adventures in Worldbuilding: How to Ruin it All...

If you're going to create a science fiction world, you cannot snatch up a random ancient culture and toss it into a universe in which interstellar travel is relatively widespread, servant robots are efficient and plentiful, and so on. If you want something like slavery to exist in such a world, you have to have a damn good reason for it beyond "they just don't like them." You have to adapt such things to technology. Otherwise, you're completely ignoring the impact technology has on the development of culture.

This is not the same as taking an analogue of a European medieval culture and inserting it into a fantasy world (unless, of course, you have a lot of magic and have made no effort to demonstrate how magic changes the cultures of a medieval society). There are at least reasonable assumptions one can make about early technological developments in human cultures. But it does not work in a science fiction universe as a cultural standard.

This is one of the few things that will make me toss a book across the room: when your world makes no sense. Mashing together ancient cultures with advanced future worlds simply does not work. No matter how hard you cram an eagle into a pig, you will not come out with a flying pig.

Sadly, a lot of people try to do this, and their books suffer as a result, because the moment I stop and say, "This doesn't make any sense," is the moment when I've been pulled out of the story. It won't be easy to go back after that.

Adventures in Worldbuilding: A Question About Naming

Random question for you writerly types:

I'm currently working on a fantasy world, as I said a few days ago. The world is coming together well enough. Figured out the relationship between geography and climate (though not orbit and climate, sadly, which I cannot seem to find useful information for easily calculating). My problem now stems from a problem of naming, which seems to be a trap between oddly French sounding upper royalty "houses" and oddly middle English sounding stuff for most of the lower "houses."

So I suppose the question is this:

Should I change the upper houses to reflect the linguistic heritage of the lower houses, or could there be a valid reason from a linguistic perspective for those names to stay with their French influence (accidental) if there are no French-like cultures surrounding them (and, thus, no invasions, cultural transference, and so on)? 

I'm leaning towards changing the names, even though I like them as they are (the upper houses are Echeler, Millard, and Dorian, with Lyemark as the only slightly Frankish/Middle English outlier).

(The lesser houses, unfinished though they may be, are currently named as follows:  Leyne, Pyne, Trym, Cambryn, Caethyn, Prymsteyn, and Aestyn -- yes, I am fairly obsessed with the Y right now.)

My Current Thoughts on Self-Publishing / Traditional Publishing Gurus

To all the people out there telling me how I should publish my first book: please take your advice and shove it. You have no frakking clue what you're talking about. Anyone who says "there is only one way to do it" should be discounted as idiots. 

J.K. Rowling got rich publishing the old fashioned way. Amanda Hocking got rich self-publishing (and now she's got the old fashioned thing going). Lots of people have got rich doing it either way. Anyone who says "but my way is the only way" is full of shit. WTF do you know? Sometimes there is no right way. You just do what feels right to you and hope for the best.  Publishing is a crapshoot. Some of us make it. Most of us don't.

The only sure advice anyone can give is this: if you really want to make it, don't give up. Keep improving your writing and write better stories.

Meh.

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That more or less sums up how I feel about it all now.  My thoughts have changed a lot in the last few years.  Such is life...

(Originally posted on Google+)

The Great SF/F Novels of the Post-Millenium?

There have been a lot of lists recently of SF/F books everyone should read from *insert older decade here.*  While I enjoy these lists -- occasionally you discover something new or unusual -- I'm always driven to annoyance by the endless nostalgia for the "good ole days."  Don't get me wrong here.  I don't hate the classics.  Some of the best works of SF/F come from before my time.  But I think we need to have more discussions about the works being produced now.  Maybe that's because I like to pretend that I'll have a bead on what will be remembered 50 years from now.  Or maybe I like seeing what people feel are great works of SF/F from the 2000s (ish) so I can rub my chin and ponder.  It doesn't really matter.

Today's post is about this very question:

What do you think are the great works of science fiction and fantasy from the post-millenium period (the 2000s to the present)?  Why?

Some rules:

1. They obviously have to have been originally released at some point between 2000 and the present.  Re-releases or re-writes or pickups of self-published books published prior to that do not count.
2. "Great" should be taken to mean "a book that contributes to the genre in some significant way."  Interpret that how you will.  Entertainment value, however, is not enough on its own.
3. The books must be science fiction or fantasy.  I will not define what these mean; we can hash out suspect entries in the comments if people feel the need to do so.
4. The publisher or marketing strategy for the book is not strictly relevant.  If a great SF novel was published as a literary work in the general fiction section, then so be it.

The comments are yours.  Suggest away.

Adventures in Worldbuilding: Genealogical Obsessions

For those that don't know (which might be almost all of you), I have jokingly said that I am working on a 25-novel (1,000-page per book) epic fantasy series. In truth, said series will likely be 4 or 5 books, but that depends on how many subplots I decide to include.

Lately, I've been trying to build up the world, particularly the genealogical history of some of the main characters (it's relevant, since one of the POVs is The Bespectacled King, whose family have only recently risen back to the King's seat with said bespectacled person). This has no been easy, as there aren't many software programs that I've found that make it easy to create a chart following the familial line visually first (Freemind sort of works, but it's not designed to easily follow the lines of sons and marriages, and so on).

And, of course, I've bitten off more than I can chew. Of the four most powerful families in one of the kingdoms of my fantasy world, the first generation of children consists of 20 true blood sons (haven't started on the bastards yet...). No way to keep this all clear without better software (suggestions anyone?).

What about all of you? What adventures are you having exploring other people's worlds, or building your own?

Black Widow (The Avengers): Late Thoughts on Feminism

I realize that a lot of people have already talked about Joss Whedon's portrayal of Black Widow in the smash hit The Avengers (and that I'm coming to this quite late).  Jim Hines has an interesting response here that is worth reading.  Much of the discussion has dealt with Loki's insult ("mewling quim," which more or less translates to "whining c-word") and the fact that much of Black Widow's screen time involves being subject to the authority of men.  Most don't seem to have a problem with the fact that Black Widow is under the jurisdiction of Nick Fury (a man); neither do I.  They do have a problem with the way in which power is distributed when Black Widow is on screen, and

Film Crit Hulk on the New Yorker? Dumbest Thing of the Week...

(Originally on Google+; cross-posting to amuse myself.)

Excuse me while I call this the dumbest thing to hit Geek culture all year that happens to not be some racist or sexist rant of doom. Seriously? Your idea of how the Hulk would speak is to give him remarkably sophisticated diction...but in ALL CAPS? Because ALL CAPS = The Hulk, right? Because The Hulk is a privileged white male teenager having a temper tantrum, but who is remarkably aware of himself as a literary cliche?

Here's how the Hulk would assess Mark Ruffalo's performance in truth: Funny jokes. Smash good.

That's about it. He's a man/creature of few words for a reason. That's why he says all but one (maybe more if you count grunts and roars as words) line in the entire Avengers movie.

Pah! This is why Film Crit Hulk works on Twitter, but not on a blog. On Twitter, he seems like he's actually in Hulk character (or she, if the person behind the persona happens to be a woman). On the blog? Not so much. He's using "Hulk" as a justification for putting things in all caps (i.e., to be annoying as hell).

Meh.