In today’s post, I admit to altering my opinions in response to someone else’s argument, costing me my bid for Minister of Authority Heuristics. Speaking of which – I’m blown away by the reception to ‘A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed)’, including fantastic reviews on Tangent Online and BestScienceFictionStories.com.
After the cut: why I sneered at worldbuilding, how Kate Elliot made me change my mind, and fiction by a very capable friend.
My story ‘A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed)’ is now up on Strange Horizons, accompanied by a podcast reading in the voice of Fearless Leader Anaea Lay.
I’m very proud of this story. People often ask me whether genre writing, concerned with questions of what if and what next and what’s out there, must sacrifice some of its humanity to achieve its goals. I like to think that moving away from the mundane real doesn’t have to mean moving away from human truths. Distance can provide parallax, or make the familiar strange.
I’d like to talk about this story – and my other short fiction on Beneath Ceaseless Skies – in more depth, but Kate Elliot’s interesting points about worldbuilding are up next.
Kate Elliot, prolific fantasy author, said some very interesting things about worldbuilding that I’d like to touch on, and I’d planned to write about them next. But since it’s fresh – my thoughts on Neil Blomkamp’s Elysium, and why it didn’t work for me. (Spoiler: it’s not just because it’s pretty sexist! Really, though: spoilers.)