Worldbuilding and Setting
Part of an ongoing discussion with the esteemed Tom Simon.
Be forewarned that I am sure to be bested when matching wits with so well read and broad an intellect: but, if I am humble, perhaps the experience will school me.
We are discussing whether the element called “worldbuilding” is unique to science fiction and fantasy, and, if so, how.
Me: “My contention is that there is a element of storytelling present in otherworldly and extraterrestrial stories — whose laws of nature include technologies and magic powers and strange beasts invented by the author that must be introduced to the reader — which is an element not present in stories taking place on Earth, even if taking place in foreign setting.”
Mr. Simon: “My contention is that the difference is one of degree and not of kind.”
Me: “I call that element worldbuilding. What do you call it?”
Mr. Simon: “You may recall that I call it ‘legosity’. It is a part of worldbuilding, but not the whole of it; and no writer, even of SF, excels at all facets of worldbuilding. Tolkien himself has been lambasted by critics for his ‘paucity of imaginative invention’ – meaning that the critics in question wanted one kind of invention and he supplied another.
“At bottom, this is the same disagreement we had over the classification of the Gormenghast books as fantasy. They are, in fact, Ruritanian fantasy, which is a legitimate subcategory. I would argue that if you leave out the dragons, the ‘Game of Thrones’ monstrosity is Ruritanian pornography in which the principal ‘kinks’ are torture and betrayal. We are stuck with these things; we cannot wish them out of our country, any more than the hobbits could wish Mordor out of Middle-earth.”
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My comment: I confess I do not understand the distinction you are making. As best I can tell, you are using the word “worldbuilding” to refer to the whole craft of writing.
I am discussing a specific element that enters a story when it leaves the fields we know for future times, alien planets, elfin realms, myth, and wonder.
Let us explore whether this is a difference of kind or of degree.
I submit that to be a difference of degree, it must of the same kind but have one property more or less, as when a strong men has more strength than a weak man.
A difference in kind means no growth or deficit of the property in question will make them the same: a man with a big nose cannot pick up straw with his trunk like an elephant, no matter how big his nose. A nose is like a trunk, but a trunk is a different kind of thing.
In this case, we are discussing story elements.
A story element is something that has to be introduced to the reader: character, plot, theme, props, setting. There is a class of stories, tall tales, wonder tales, fables, myths, where an additional element needs to be introduced telling the reader what is possible and not possible, the rules of the world, when those rules differ from the world we know.
This is what has been traditionally called “worldbuilding” because the world, not merely the setting, in invented by an author’s imagination.
World is not setting.
John Carter of Mars can be seen in several settings in his yarn: the dead sea bottoms where Green Martian hordes roam differ from the pole-top cities where the Red Martians dwell, or the forbidden valley at the south pole, and so on. But in each setting, John Carter can leap over buildings in a single bound, because his earth muscles overmatch Martian gravity. He can also, so it happens, read minds, as can all Martians. Hence, it is reasonable to expect him to be able to leap to the top of a tower, or to read the mind of a man who means to kill him.
These things operate by laws unknown on Earth, and must be introduced to the reader.
World here does not literally mean world, but means the reasonable expectations of what the characters, props, setting, is allowed and not allowed, only in the specific case where what is allowed in the story is not allowed in the world we know.
So, then:
A time machine story either offers an explanation for how time travel works, if it is seminal, or relies on the protocols of the genre, expecting the reader to know the explanation. Likewise, a story with faster-than-light drive either offers an explanation, if it is seminal, or relies on reader familiarity with prior stories venturing explanations.
These are not explanation of character, or plot, or settings, or props. They are explanations of the laws of nature and the expectations of what is and is not possible in the invented world.
In the invented world of such stories, characters can do things that differ from the known world, such as travel in time or fly to other stars. These are not merely difficult, but possible, they are impossible.
If a story has a time machine in it, the character can visit A.D. 802701 and return to tell the tale. If the story has a space-traveling sphere in it, the character can visit the moon and meet the socialist insects living in the hollow interior. To explain the time machine and the space-traveling sphere, since these things do not exist (except, perhaps, in other stories) these elements must be introduced by the author.
He has to build them. He has to build, in other worlds, not a prop, but the laws governing the prop; not the setting, but the ways in which the setting differs from an earthly one.
If a Ruritanian story were one where a man could visit last week, but not last year, this would be a difference of degree and not of kind; or, likewise, in a Damon Runyon story, the Sky Masterson, as his name implies, could visit the moon but Mars was too far, this would be a difference of degree but not of kind.
But Cavor can visit the moon. There are limits as to how he does it, and these limits must be introduced to the reader. The Time Traveler can visit AD 802701. Again, there are limits as to how, and an explanation to make it seem feasible, of a sort, and this also must be introduced to a reader.
But if a hero visits a castle in Eastern Europe, no reader need be told what a castle is, nor be told whether the hero can or cannot walk through the stone walls to get inside. The castle is fictional, and perhaps the whole nation but their world is ours insofar as what is possible and what is impossible.
Let us pause and be careful here, for this may be the heart of the dispute:
Consider that if Doc Savage can do feats of great strength that are amazing, like the feats of strong men but more perfectly, but not the stuff of myth or fable, this is arguably a difference of degree and not of kind. Doc Savage, as characters go, is so skilled and perfect that he is hard to believe, but not technically impossible. Even so, the story steps a toe into the science fictional by offering that he was reared on a scientifically designed regimen of education and body building.
If Hercules in a story or a tall tale can do impossible feats which are like the feats of strong men, but elevated to godlike levels, we are in the realm of myth or fable. This difference could be called “a difference in kind” or a “difference in degree” but in either case, the impossibility needs its own explanation, that is, he is the son of a god.
Travelers tales, such as we see in Swift’s GULLIVER or More’s UTOPIA have the explanation that the amazing lands visited, peopled either with dwarfs or giants, ghosts or talking horses, or perhaps with Puritans living under Platonic laws, offer the explanation that these lands are beyond the seas previously explored, but they are earthly. However, where they have a technology unknown to Europe, such as a lodestone that keeps a floating island aloft, the author must offer an explanation.
I suppose it is debatable whether these two satires differ in kind or in degree from science fiction, for they clearly involved places only visited by speculation, and do involve and element of needing the laws of nature, of what is possible and not possible, of a new world to be explained to the reader, since they are not the laws of the world we know, not what we hold to be possible and not possible.
But in a fictional suburb of New York or a fictional nation in Eastern Europe, the characters and props, while able perhaps to be more heroic and excellent than those we know, cannot do anything any real person could not do, such as have a twin cousin, or own a pair of dice with spots removed for luck. Any unlikely feat needs no explanation of a new law of nature, a new technology, a new form of psychic or magical art, an encounter with a genii, and so on.
I submit that neither Runyon nor Ruritania posit a story taking place in a fictional borough of a real city or a fictional city in a real kingdom has some small degree of different laws of nature from ours, such as that they can walk through walls, but not through churches. They cannot walk through walls. Not halfway. Not at all.
The borough or kingdom is imaginary, but not extraterrestrial or otherworldly. There is no element in the story which makes it reasonable for the character to do something impossible for mortal men to do. Indeed, the only difference from real life is a matter of exaggeration.
The Ruritanians cannot travel through time a short span but not a long one. They are not invaded by a few Men from Mars rather than many. They do not experiment with making some animals able to talk, but as many as Dr. Moreau. They do not turn translucent, but not fully invisible. They do not fly halfway to the moon.
Your term “legosity” refers to the adaptability of ideas, the playfulness of them, if you will, and has nothing to do with what we are discussing, which is making a world that differs from the real world in that what it is possible for a character to do or suffer differs from what is possible in the real world, not merely by being more excellent, but by being an invention of the author (or a prior author) needing introduction to the reader.
I am puzzled by the remark that George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones books would not be fantasy if the fantastic elements were removed. Yes, I quite agree, but this seems to favor my interpretation of how to classify it. The fantastic elements are what make it a fantasy.
Brian Aldiss wrote a book called The Malacia Tapestry , which takes place in a fictional version of Venice — there are no otherworldly or extraterrestrial elements in the book. It could be an historical novel, merely of a period not previously explored, somewhere in the Late Renaissance.
If Game of Thrones were rewritten to remove all the fantastical elements, on the other hand, not just dragons, but the fact that seasons are of unfixed duration, the undead creatures beyond the wall, the growth of magic as the ice grows, the raising of the dead, all would go by the wayside, and the Stark Motto “Winter is Coming” would need to be rewritten.
What remained would be indeed a Ruritanian fantasy of something like the War of the Roses, taking place in a world so much like our own, that I would not say that any element of worldbuilding was present.
The element would not be present at all. It would be gone. Not present but to a lesser degree. If so, this is a difference of kind.
Remove the otherworldly elements, and there are no otherworldly elements to explain, and this is what worldbuilding is.
Likewise, your remark “We are stuck with these things; we cannot wish them out of our country” is opaque to me. No one has expressed any wish one way or the other. I merely am unable to see in what way Mervyn Peake or Anthony Hope invented any otherworldly or extraterrestrial element to put in their books which need any explanation.
If you recall, our prior discuss began because I said I did not know (and still do not) why Lin Carter included Mervyn Peake in Ballantine’s “Adult Fantasy” series, since I detect no element of fantasy, aside from the sheer size and sprawl of the castle Gormenghast.
I suppose a man being eaten by owls has something of the absurd exaggeration of a tall tale, but tall tales do not rely on worldbuilding for verisimilitude, but instead rely on exaggeration for humor and wonder.
Now, if one were to argue that William Morris established that fantasy stories need not have unearthly or fantastical elements to be called fantasy, this might clarify my puzzlement, or show my classifications do not fit the traditional works.
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POSTSCRIPT
HMSLion makes a comment in below which I would prefer to bring into the main column, to expand upon here:
“With F&SF, creating a setting that is internally consistent is part of the writing process.”
This is an interesting point, and I would like to emphasize it.
In a show like STAR TREK, where there are minor inconsistencies, for example, on how the transporter works, or what the Vulcan Mind Meld can do, fans will criticize or defend the inconsistency as part and parcel of what satisfies or does not satisfy them as fans.
These are both impossible elements. No one can read meld minds, no one can survive having this atoms disassembled, beamed through space, and reassembled. If the fan criticize these things, it is NOT a criticism that the details of the technology or the period of history have been portrayed incorrectly.
But, on the other hand, if the transporter is shown in one episode to be able to restore adults to childhood, or to split a man into the good and evil halves of his character, future episodes where that ability would solve the problem but it is not used, and no explanation is offered for the lapse, provokes debate, and fans will criticize that point, or defend the show from criticism.
The story element is being judged for self consistency, that is, consistency with what has been established about an imaginary world.
Whereas, in a war story, or in a historical drama, or a sports drama, medical drama of legal drama, the fans will criticize the portrayal of soldiers or their gear, period costumes or events, rules of the sport or realism of the medical procedures and so on and so forth.
The story element is being judged for consistency with things known or supposed, that is, consistency with the world we know.
In other words, while not the most important story element, consistency of the imaginary world with itself is an element that cannot exist except in stories set in an imaginary world, that is, one where the protocol of the genre (by which I mean the reasonable expectations of the reader) allow for inconsistencies with known reality.
The writer needs no explanation of how hyperdrive works or the grandfather paradox is resolved in a story where nothing travels faster than light or travels through time. He need not speculate on what form of intelligent life would be evolved to live on the surface conditions of Mars, the lighter gravity and more distant sun, if there are no men from Mars in the story.
Now, mainstream readers who have no interest in science fiction lack interest, by and large, precisely because the stories do not portray the real world accurately.
Science fiction stories take place in the setting of a make believe future or on a make believe planet, or involve characters or props from such futuristic or extraterrestrial realms into our world, or involve technologies or psychic powers or hyperspace or time travel or alien beings which do not exist in the real world.
Please note that this is a generalization, not a hard and fast rule: the existence of one superweapon in a spy thriller, even if the weapon is a science fictional gadget, does not make the spy thriller necessarily something that would appeal to the readers of Analog.
Is Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain science fiction? Myself, I would say the extraterrestrial element is so small, and involves no speculation as to its ramifications, that the book should be shelved with thrillers. There is nothing in it which makes a demand on the imagination to sympathize with a world unlike our own.
Of course, when talking about genre, we are talking about reasonable reader expectations, what they expect from a book with a spaceship on the cover, and this cannot be defined with robotic precision.
Imprecisely, then, we can say that the mainstream reader simply is neither thrilled by the wonder of the unreal, nor spooked by the terror, because the thing is not firmly enough in the realm of the possible.
For mainstream readers this, more than anything else, breaks the suspension of disbelief. They cannot or will not form an imaginative picture of the unreal setting, props, or characters with sufficient sympathy to make the pretend events seem real to them.
History may well abolish these distinctions, if it has not already. The film APOLLO 13 had the look and feel of a science fiction story more than even some stories proffered as science fiction, whereas THE MARTIAN was so diamond-hard realistic that it imposed no more effort on the imagination than rescuing a man from a mine collapse or submarine disaster would impose.
An ironic aside: while I have heard of folks who don’t like ghost stories because they do not like ghosts, I have never heard of someone who regard such things as lacking entertainment or artistic value because ghosts are not real.
I am sure there are such people: the shades of the dead would not frighten or beguile or sadden the reader because the matter seems to remote from the reader’s real life — but I have never met one, whereas muggles to whom science fiction is merely daydream and soap bubble are legion.
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POSTSCRPT II
After a lengthy debate with the wife (who wisely sided with Tom Simon) I realize there is another point to be emphasized.
Suppose we were discussing not future-war stories but historical war stories, or any historical romance like IVANHOE by Walter Scott. I submit that historical verisimilitude is an element that is and must be present in an historical romance in order to make it an historical romance, even if the romance is full of invented characters, props and places.
That is, this element must be present, and will be judged as a separate story telling element, because this is one of the criteria used by the readership to judge the book. Whether they forgive a gaff or not is a separate question, as is the question of how skillfully the historical information is portrayed.
This element is not an element of judgment in a mainstream book. Readers still may balk at gaffs, such as if the writer gets some details wrong about how some present day event, or prop, or place is described — such as if a revolver is said to have a magazine, or New York City is said to be the capital of New York — but these are not historical elements.
Perhaps every genre has a story telling element which distinguishes it from other genres. As to that, I cannot say. But science fiction and fantasy have an element which is independent of the other elements of story telling, and this seems a difference of kind, not of degree.
What is labeled (or, if you ask me, mislabeled) “hard” and “soft” SF differ in the degree of real science added to the baloney to make it seem real. We do not have a parallel term for fantasy stories, albeit I wish we did, for fantasies set in a realistic version of a make believe Middle Ages, where the author knows his period and has a knack of making the details seem real, I place in a different sub-genre as the generic fantasy worlds of “Isakai” anime — albeit here the difference is one of degree but not of kind.
But the real world is not a realistic version of a fantasy world, merely more realistic. Modern Earth, despite what I would prefer, is not six or seven ages after the events of the Middle Earth in the Third Age, nor is the Modern Age the post-cataclysm version of the Hyborian Age. The laws of nature differ. One has Manwe and Tsathoggua. (That said, there is still considerable overlap. Illuvatar, albeit called by other names by the sons of Adam, exists in both worlds, as do worshippers of Set, Dagon, Crom Cruich, and so on.)
Likewise, for science fiction and fantasy, there is an imaginative element, the element of a world different from our own, with rules that allow for wonders and terrors our world has never known, what the reader must grant as one would grant a premise in a hypothetical argument: the hypothesis is not that the setting is new, nor the props are unique, or the characters are fictional.
The premise, the conceit of any tale properly called science fiction is that the world contains some element, even if it is only one, not from the mundane world.
A reader unwilling to grant the conceit cannot enter into the imaginary world. For science fiction and fantasy stories, the conceit is the explanation, even if only implied, to excuse the impossible — such as the story takes places in years yet to come, or that the antagonist comes from another planet, or the hero is the son of a god — whereas mainstream stories can portray unlikely events, even unbelievable, but the reader is not asked to imagine a counterfactual rule of nature.
You cannot tell the story of Wager’s Ring Cycle without a magic ring, nor Tolkien’s trilogy, nor, for that matter, THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW by CS Lewis. But there need be no magic rings to explain the action and events in PRISONER OF ZENDA. All that is needed there is the unlikely event of two cousins being identical twins.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
