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Well, yeah, absolutely. Not that I imagine myself in a league anywhere even near that of Niven and Pournelle, but nobody sees most of the work I did in figuring
by throwanem 5y ago
Well, yeah, absolutely. Not that I imagine myself in a league anywhere even near that of Niven and Pournelle, but nobody sees most of the work I did in figuring out what would be plausible on the Earth of 170mya, either. But I've also encountered, and I suspect you probably have too, stories in which the work of worldbuilding was far too obvious, to the detriment of the story. That's really all I'm speaking against here, although I grant I didn't do a very good job making that clear in my prior comment.
- bradknowles 5y agoWorldbuilding AS the story definitely does not work. If you’re going to do worldbuilding at all, then you have to have a story and a plot that will hang on that worldbuilding as the surface visible material over the structure provided — or the skin over the bones. And that skin still requires some flesh that occurs between those two extremes. IMO, the Silmarillion made for good worldbuilding. But not so good as an actual story.