5 ms·

I don't see a reason why playing with geology in particular should be restricted to science fiction and not fantasy. Authors often build geologically inconsist

I don't see a reason why playing with geology in particular should be restricted to science fiction and not fantasy. Authors often build geologically inconsistent worlds. The article has suggestions for fixing that by changing the geology to match Earth, but that will force the climate etc. to match Earth too. I think if an author wants to build a world with a geology different from Earth that's not a bad thing - they should just notice this and make sure it's consistent and has an explanation for being the way it is.

bluGill 9y ago
Consistency is a constraint. Authors have unwritten contracts with their readers. You cannot destroy the readers immersion with the story with something that doesn't fit (readers will get mad and throw the book down). You cannot spend so much time explaining things that there is no action (this makes for a boring story that is never read). A formula romance cannot solve the problem of a long standing antagonist by having the hero grab a magic wand from nowhere and kill him - readers of romance generally assume a very earth like world because the story is about the romance and changing the world to add and explain magic is a distraction. So the standard course of action is for the hero to use a gun - guns already exist and so very little explanation needs to be spent on where the hero gets the gun before the story goes back to the romantic parts the reader is interested in. That isn't to say the hero cannot use a magic wand in a romance story, but magic needs to be introduced by page 2 at the latest - and some readers will decide that they don't want to read your book because magic is involved. Note that non-fiction doesn't have that constraint. I can introduce the magic wand used to kill right at the moment in history where the magic wand was used. Readers will go "what", and do some double checking and discover that a magic wand was actually used (more likely the research will discover that nobody knows what was really used, but it looked to observers like a magic wand so that is what everyone says), then you will go back to my story satisfied that it really happened that way despite being unbelievable.
- dsr_ 9y ago
  More to the point, a speculative fiction (i.e. sf/fantasy/horror) should not needlessly multiply entities. If your story is about geology, or needs a particular geological arrangement to explain things, then by all means mention it. But if your story can use known plate tectonics, or takes place in an Earth-analog environment where the geography you want already exists, you don't need to explain it and you shouldn't bother doing so. (There are probably exceptions. Douglas Adams could make a lengthy digression on geology interesting, amusing, and then call back to it half a book later in order to be side-splittingly funny.)
  - wolfgang42 9y ago
    Adams' books (and, as far as I can tell, his life) tended to be almost entirely lengthy digressions--they're practically his raison d'être. There's an anecdote in The Salmon of Doubt from his publishing editor: > There was a scene early in one book where he talked about some plates with, very definitely, one banana on each. This was obviously significant, so I asked him to explain. But he liked to tease his audience and said he'd tell me later. We eventually got to the end of the book and I asked him again, 'Okay, Douglas, what's with the bananas?' He looked at me completely blankly. He had forgotten all about the bananas. I still ask occasionally ask him if he has remembered yet, but apparently he hasn't.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    I don't think sf / fantasy / horror genres are strongly related to "speculative fiction". Speculative means "based on conjecture", and conjecture means "formed on the basis of incomplete information". Incomplete information isn't what I think is at the heart of fantasy, and usually isn't what I think is at the heart of SF either. SF is usually a story about an idea rather than a character; it's not speculation. Fantasy is usually a heightened, exaggerated world - a world with the saturation and contrast turned right up; again, not speculation. Speculative fiction I'd place in a niche area of hard SF that is more concerned with futurism than ideas per se. That is, it's interested in predicting how today turns out with some reasonable technological advance and specifically how the world deals with that advance, whether on a global level or via a character study. As to needlessly multiplying entities, I agree, with caveats. It's related to Chekhov's gun: don't introduce elements that don't matter (and similarly, if you rely on something later on, ensure it's foreshadowed rather than parachuted in as a deus ex machina). OTOH, a close adherence to Chekhov's gun can make stories very predictable, for people who pay lots of attention to plots. And other people come for prose style, and still others for world-building; neither of which are overly concerned with omitting details.

bluGill 9y ago

Consistency is a constraint. Authors have unwritten contracts with their readers. You cannot destroy the readers immersion with the story with something that doesn't fit (readers will get mad and throw the book down). You cannot spend so much time explaining things that there is no action (this makes for a boring story that is never read). A formula romance cannot solve the problem of a long standing antagonist by having the hero grab a magic wand from nowhere and kill him - readers of romance generally assume a very earth like world because the story is about the romance and changing the world to add and explain magic is a distraction. So the standard course of action is for the hero to use a gun - guns already exist and so very little explanation needs to be spent on where the hero gets the gun before the story goes back to the romantic parts the reader is interested in. That isn't to say the hero cannot use a magic wand in a romance story, but magic needs to be introduced by page 2 at the latest - and some readers will decide that they don't want to read your book because magic is involved. Note that non-fiction doesn't have that constraint. I can introduce the magic wand used to kill right at the moment in history where the magic wand was used. Readers will go "what", and do some double checking and discover that a magic wand was actually used (more likely the research will discover that nobody knows what was really used, but it looked to observers like a magic wand so that is what everyone says), then you will go back to my story satisfied that it really happened that way despite being unbelievable.

dsr_ 9y ago
More to the point, a speculative fiction (i.e. sf/fantasy/horror) should not needlessly multiply entities. If your story is about geology, or needs a particular geological arrangement to explain things, then by all means mention it. But if your story can use known plate tectonics, or takes place in an Earth-analog environment where the geography you want already exists, you don't need to explain it and you shouldn't bother doing so. (There are probably exceptions. Douglas Adams could make a lengthy digression on geology interesting, amusing, and then call back to it half a book later in order to be side-splittingly funny.)
- wolfgang42 9y ago
  Adams' books (and, as far as I can tell, his life) tended to be almost entirely lengthy digressions--they're practically his raison d'être. There's an anecdote in The Salmon of Doubt from his publishing editor: > There was a scene early in one book where he talked about some plates with, very definitely, one banana on each. This was obviously significant, so I asked him to explain. But he liked to tease his audience and said he'd tell me later. We eventually got to the end of the book and I asked him again, 'Okay, Douglas, what's with the bananas?' He looked at me completely blankly. He had forgotten all about the bananas. I still ask occasionally ask him if he has remembered yet, but apparently he hasn't.
- barrkel 9y ago
  I don't think sf / fantasy / horror genres are strongly related to "speculative fiction". Speculative means "based on conjecture", and conjecture means "formed on the basis of incomplete information". Incomplete information isn't what I think is at the heart of fantasy, and usually isn't what I think is at the heart of SF either. SF is usually a story about an idea rather than a character; it's not speculation. Fantasy is usually a heightened, exaggerated world - a world with the saturation and contrast turned right up; again, not speculation. Speculative fiction I'd place in a niche area of hard SF that is more concerned with futurism than ideas per se. That is, it's interested in predicting how today turns out with some reasonable technological advance and specifically how the world deals with that advance, whether on a global level or via a character study. As to needlessly multiplying entities, I agree, with caveats. It's related to Chekhov's gun: don't introduce elements that don't matter (and similarly, if you rely on something later on, ensure it's foreshadowed rather than parachuted in as a deus ex machina). OTOH, a close adherence to Chekhov's gun can make stories very predictable, for people who pay lots of attention to plots. And other people come for prose style, and still others for world-building; neither of which are overly concerned with omitting details.