And No Maps, Either!
April 18th, 2007For all you fantasy fans who keep banging on about world-building, some words from 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.
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.
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Passing Rant
January 24th, 2007The one-line description of a dvd box set on sendit.com:
‘4 movies from Orson Welles, star of The Muppet Movie.’
He really did waste his time making Citizen Kane - film critics’ choice of greatest movie EVER - didn’t he?
Idiots…
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The Author
The Books
