Victor GijsbersAug 22, 2023
@jburneko @zozo If you haven't read M. John Harrisons Viriconium books, you should. They're literally written as a big middle finger to world building and lore, with major inconsistencies built in on purpose. (And they're very neat books.)
Show threadPiers Brown

@victorgijsbers @jburneko

Here's M. John Harrison:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Aug 22, 2023 at 10:13pmWeb
Show threadPiers BrownAug 22, 2023

@victorgijsbers @jburneko

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.