World-building that’s less dragon, more nitrogen

So, as you know, world-building has been a part of fiction–especially fantasy–for a long time. Think of Tolkien’s crazy maps, his­to­ries, lan­guages. Think of Star Wars.

Here’s some­thing awe­some: Chris Wayan is a world-builder “more inter­ested in plan­e­tary ecol­ogy than in nar­ra­tive.” Inter­viewed by David Cole, he says:

One week­end in late 2001, I biked by a flea mar­ket behind Cell­space in the Mis­sion Dis­trict. I bought a globe for a few bucks. At home I started play­ing with it–pried it off its stand, tilted it so the trop­ics turned polar and poles turned trop­i­cal. Sud­denly an intel­lec­tual prob­lem snapped into focus: “We have one pole on land, one under the sea. So we have one cold pole–Antarctica–and one mild. Could Earth be tilted so we had two Antarc­ti­cas, or none? ARE there ori­en­ta­tions where land or sea is under both poles? How would all that ice–or lack of it–affect sea level and cli­mate?” It turned out there were a cou­ple of solu­tions for each. So I got out my drill…

I love this. It’s totally related to coun­ter­fac­tual, but it takes it in a really inter­est­ing direc­tion, towards ecol­ogy and systems-thinking. It also expands the whole endeavor–it’s not just words but maps, mod­els, math.

Chris Wayan’s Plan­e­to­copia is here.

Spe­cial props to David Cole for doing such a deep inter­view. Here’s another one with Snark­mar­ket favorite Gre­gory Weir, the game designer who cre­ated The Majesty of Col­ors.

Via Wil­son and Laura.

One Response

Benjamin Kudria says:
September 16, 2009 at 10:49 am
Kim Stan­ley Robin­son does a good deal of informed the­o­riz­ing on the hypo­thet­i­cal ecol­ogy of Mars were we to attempt to ter­raform it in his tril­ogy Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing read.
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