On World-Making

“How do people resist in the dark ages? What keeps us going, ultimately, is our love for each other, and our refusal to bow our heads, to accept the verdict, however all-powerful it seems.”

Back in 2017, fiction writer Lincoln Michel described world-building as “the most overrated and overused concept in fiction.” I can’t blame him for feeling that way. World-building has become a buzzword, thrown around in contexts completely disassociated from its original meaning until it is nothing but an empty signifier gesturing vaguely to minor acts of setting design. In a time when every corporate business hungers for immersive experiences and brand storytelling, world-building has become touted as an innovative marketing strategy with little regard for its history as a complex, challenging tool in the arsenal of artists, writers, and visionaries. 

Traditionally associated with literary craft—particularly science fiction and fantasy genres—this concept has permeated into other media like TV, film, video games, and even theme park experiences. World-building demands holistic planning and realization. Michel notes that it “expects the author to have ‘rules’ that are ‘logically’ followed to their conclusions.” This means developing specific technologies, ecologies, languages, human and non-human communities, historic traditions, and religious systems. The inclusion of little details and aesthetic minutes can often make or break the realization of a constructed world. Some are obvious (like inventing your own word for ‘champagne’ since France shouldn’t exist in your fantastical realm), while others might be more subtle (like inventing manners of speaking and dressing oneself within the confines of this setting). By establishing these spatiotemporal, political, cultural, and psychological parameters, you create a setting that scaffolds the narrative of your story, gives something for characters to navigate through and react to and for the reader or viewer or consumer to reflect on their own realities. 

When it comes to the world-building of science fiction and fantasy stories, we tend to assume that there’s an element of escapism built into it. Even if the setting isn’t exactly a peaceful break from reality (think: post-apocalyptic wastelands and war-torn kingdoms), really good world-building sucks you into an alternative world and gets you so immersed that you can pause thinking about your own life. But I find that’s rarely the case. The most effective world-building I’ve encountered doesn’t just handle little details with great thoughtfulness and care for its story; it actively reminds me to look at what’s happening in my own world, to draw parallels and make connections to these fantastical settings and present-day struggles and past histories.

Science fiction and fantasy have always been fundamentally political genres, serving as opportunities to explore ideologies and enact thought experiments with rearrangements and inventions of new social, economic, spiritual, and political systems. Far from neutral genres, SF&F grew out of and in response to histories of colonialism and imperialism, often wielded as a tool for propaganda. Yet world-building within these genres also gives us an opportunity to dismantle the systems that be, to find resistance through imagination, to incite social critique and critical self-reflection. As Ursula K. Le Guin once mused, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings…Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”

Some examples of world-building that reflect these complicated historical and contradictory dynamics include Frank Herbert's 'Dune' series and its adaptations, George R.R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series and its adaptations, the 'Fallout' video games and its TV adaptation, and the 'Star Wars' franchise with its myriad spin-offs.