Episode 62: Otherworldly Worldbuilding ft. SEANAN MCGUIRE

Critters, creatures, and things that crawl -- part of the fun of building a new world is getting to populate it with not just sapient characters, but all the flora and fauna. And sometimes, that means the things you find in the smallest corners and crevices. Guest Premee Mohamed joins us to talk about the role of bugs and other biology in worldbuilding! Bugs are a critical part of our world, performing so many essential functions that we never think about and that writers often neglect -- so, why is that? Where does our tendency towards squeamishness about bugs overlap with fears of body horror -- and how have SFF stories magnified those fears to create memorable antagonists like Xenomorphs and monsters like Shelob? How can a worldbuilder think about the health of their whole ecosystem, from those itsy-bitsy bugs all the way up to the apex predators -- and if the health of the ecosystem reflects the health of the world, how can that provide some good plot hooks for characters? All this and many, many scientific factoids are packed into this episode! [Transcript TK] Our Guest: Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Ignyte, Locus, British Fantasy, and Crawford awards. Currently, she is the Edmonton Public Library writer-in-residence and an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod. She is the author of the 'Beneath the Rising' series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com. 

From the Minotaur to xenomorphs to the undead, monsters and their ilk have long been a staple of the sci-fi and fantasy genres. But what exactly is it that makes a monster? Guest John Wiswell joins us to discuss how monsters in fiction often reflect not only our primal fears, but also the people that society seeks to Other. When monsters reflect what a real or fictitious society values and doesn't value, what sorts of things do writers need to consider when placing monsters in their world? In this episode, we explore how, while monsters can sometimes just be plot obstacles for Our Heroes to overcome, they can also be coded -- intentionally or as a matter of unconscious bias -- in the same ways that disability, poverty, non-heteronormative sexuality, and other marginalized populations get coded. We also pull apart the idea of recontextualizing monsters: As is often said of Frankenstein and his creation -- who's really the monster? Who's the true beast? [Transcript TK] Our Guest: John Wiswell is an American science fiction and fantasy author whose short fiction has won the Locus and Nebula Awards and been a finalist for the Hugo, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His debut fantasy novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, will be released in spring 2024 by DAW Books. John's work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Tor.com, LeVar Burton Reads, Nature Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Weird Tales, the No Sleep podcast, Nightmare Magazine, Cast of Wonders, Podcastle, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and other fine venues. His fiction has been translated into Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Hungarian, Turkish, Hebrew, and Romanian. He graduated Bennington College in 2005, and attended the Viable Paradise 17 workshop in 2013. He has multiple disabilities including a neuromuscular syndrome, and thinks healthy people's capacity to complain is very funny. He finds a lot of things very funny and would like to keep it that way. He is frequently available for interview and for talks at conferences. He has done panels at places such as Worldcon, the Nebula Awards, and the World Fantasy Convention. He posted fiction daily on this blog for six straight years, and has left every embarrassing and inspiring word of it up to read for free. If you'd like to see a writer develop style, it's all there. You can point and laugh. He probably can't hear you.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to work with worldbuilding as writers -- but how does a reviewer approach the topic when they're reading works of sci-fi and fantasy? Guest Paul Weimer joins us to share his insights as a prolific consumer and critiquer of speculative fiction! Paul talks about the details that he pays attention to, the things he looks for, and the things that draw his attention, as well as discussing the purpose of reviews and who they're for (hint: it's not the authors!). In this episode, we spin things around to look at how we approach worldbuilding and narrative construction as readers -- since we are, of course, readers as well as writers! We explore of aspects of how a writer can set and, hopefully, meet expectations through worldbuilding -- and where that can sometimes become challenging as a series goes on. What makes a world exciting to enter in the first place? What grips a reader and keeps them with it? And how can you use worldbuilding to make your wizard chase sequence a more cohesive part of your world? Also, here's Natania's rock, as promised: [Transcript TK] Our Guest: Not really a Prince of Amber, but rather, an ex-pat New Yorker living in Minnesota, Paul Weimer has been reading sci-fi and fantasy for over 40 years. An avid and enthusiastic amateur photographer, blogger and podcaster, Paul primarily contributes to the Skiffy and Fanty Show as blogger and podcaster, to Nerds of a Feather as a reviewer and interviewer, to the SFF Audio podcast, and turns up elsewhere as well. If you’ve spent any time reading about SFF online, you’ve probably read one of his reviews, comments or tweets (he’s @PrinceJvstin).

When you're creating your world and bringing it into a story, how much do you let show? Guest John Hartness joins us to discuss balancing the off-page and on-page elements, and how that balance might shift based on what kind of a world you're working in and what sort of a story you're telling. How do you ensure that the worldbuilding serves a purpose and serves the characters? In this episode, you'll also get a peek behind the publishing curtain! John discusses running Falstaff Books, a publisher known for making space for authors at "the weird kids' table." That ethos translates into his work as an editor and publisher, and it's led him to think and talk about worldbuilding in different ways than when he's writing his own works! Sidebar: It's Hugo Award nomination season! If you're a nominating sort of person and you enjoyed the podcast in 2023, we'd love your consideration for Best Fancast. [Transcript TK] Our Guest: John G. Hartness is a teller of tales, a righter of wrong, defender of ladies’ virtues, and some people call him Maurice, for he speaks of the pompatus of love. He is also the award-winning author of the urban fantasy series The Black Knight Chronicles, the Bubba the Monster Hunter comedic horror series, the Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter dark fantasy series, and many other projects. He is also a cast member of the role-playing podcast Authors & Dragons, where a group of comedy, fantasy, and horror writers play Dungeons & Dragons. Very poorly. In 2016, John teamed up with a group of other publishing industry ne’er-do-wells and founded Falstaff Books, a small press dedicated to publishing the best of genre fiction’s “misfit toys.” Falstaff Books has since published over 50 titles with authors ranging from first-timers to NY Times bestsellers, with no signs of slowing down any time soon. In his copious free time John enjoys long walks on the beach, rescuing kittens from trees and playing Magic: the Gathering. John’s pronouns are he/him.

We've talked before about the difference between aesthetic-driven genres, like sci-fi and fantasy, and structure-driven genres, like mystery and romance. So what happens when you want to build a world just ripe for all your favorite romance tropes? How can your world create the obstacles to your characters getting their happy-ever-after? Guest Gwenda Bond joins us to talk about the love of worldbuilding and worldbuilding for love! A lot of writing romance means dealing with reader's expectations in a slightly different way than some other story-types. How useful are the sub-genre distinctions that might shape those expectations -- fantasy romance, romantic fantasy, fantasy with romance, romantasy, paranormal romance -- from the writer's perspective? And why are some SFF readers still worried that sex and romance might get cooties on their genre? In this episode, we look at how romance can hybridize with so many different forms and flavors of fantasy writing, and what choices writers make when directing the reader's attention more towards the romance or more towards the fantasy. Sidebar: It's Hugo Award nomination season! If you're a nominating sort of person and you enjoyed the podcast in 2023, we'd love your consideration for Best Fancast. [Transcript TK] Our Guest: Gwenda Bond is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the first official Stranger Things novel, Suspicious Minds, the Lois Lane YA series, and the romantic comedies Not Your Average Hot Guy, The Date from Hell, and Mr. & Mrs. Witch. She has a number of forthcoming projects, including a magical art heist book, The Frame-Up. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, Locus Magazine, Salon, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. She co-founded and chairs the nonprofit Lexington Writer’s Room, and lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe, and a veritable zoo of adorable doggos and queenly cats. Visit her online at www.gwendabond.com or join her newsletter at www.gwendabond.substack.com.

When you've put your heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into building a world -- what happens when you then have to leave it behind? Most SFF authors will, at some point, close up their work in one world and start building a new one, but that comes with its own set of challenges! You know the old world so well; it's become comfy and familiar. The new world still has all its work yet to be done, and while it has the shiny lure of new discoveries, it also may seem daunting to start the process of figuring out how a world works all over again. In this episode, Fonda Lee and Melissa Caruso re-join us to discuss shifting focus from one world to another! Where do you start? How different do you need the world to be? We also chat about not just the mental challenges of clearing out one world to make room for the new one, but the emotional challenge of pulling yourself away from a place you love and know so well! Our Guests:  Melissa Caruso writes books of murder, magic, and mayhem. Her published fantasy novels include the Swords & Fire trilogy (THE TETHERED MAGE, THE DEFIANT HEIR, THE UNBOUND EMPIRE) and the Rooks & Ruin trilogy (THE OBSIDIAN TOWER, THE QUICKSILVER COURT, THE IVORY TOMB), all from Orbit Books. Her debut novel was shortlisted for the Gemmell Morningstar Award in 2017, and her books have received starred reviews and made countless Best Of lists. Melissa is a tea drinker, larper, and mom, and lives in Massachusetts with her video game designer husband, two superlative daughters, and assorted pets. Fonda Lee is the author of the epic fantasy Green Bone Saga, consisting of the novels Jade City, Jade War, and Jade Legacy, along with a prequel novella The Jade Setter of Janloon and a short story collection, Jade Shards. She is also the author of the science fiction novels Zeroboxer, Exo and Cross Fire. Her most recent work is the fantasy novella, Untethered Sky. Fonda is a winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, and a five-time winner of the Aurora Award (Canada’s national science fiction and fantasy award), as well as a multiple finalist for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Oregon Book Award. Her novels have garnered multiple starred reviews and appeared on Best of Year lists from NPR, Barnes & Noble, Syfy Wire, and others. Jade City has been translated in a dozen languages, named to TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time, and optioned for television development. She has also written acclaimed short fiction and been an instructor at writing workshops including Clarion West, Viable Paradise, and Aspen Words. Fonda is a former corporate strategist and black belt martial artist who loves action movies and Eggs Benedict. Born and raised in Canada, she currently resides in the Pacific Northwest.

When you're creating tomes of information about your world -- spreadsheets of demographics, maps at every level of geography, tomes of lore -- how do you keep tabs on it all? How much can you keep in your head, and how much has to be written down, codified, and carefully tracked? In this episode, we explore our tools of worldbuilding. We use all sorts of different methods and platforms, some of them physical and tangible, others entirely digital. From nebulous notions of "the world is like this" to a fully indexed world bible, the methods vary! Like so much else in writing, this isn't a thing where there's One Right Answer that will Unlock the Mysteries of Successful Publishing: it's all about finding what works best for you, your habits, your preferences, and even for individual projects. In other news: If you're a Hugo-nominating type person, you've got til the end of January to become a member of Glasgow 2024! (If you weren't a member of Chengdu 2023, that is; if you were, you already have nominating privileges!) We think we had a pretty great year in 2023, and if you think so, too, we'd adore it if you became a member and thought of us when nominations open.

Why do we worldbuild the way that we worldbuild? The start of a new year seems like a great time to take a zoomed-out view of how we do this thing that we do. In this episode, we consider, contemplate, and cogitate on the major concepts that guide our worldbuilding. Why is it important to us? What parts of it are important for us, and help us find our story and develop our characters? Too, how do we worldbuild in a way that reflects the glorious weirdness of humanity? How do we ensure that our cultures don't seem like monoliths? How do we show individuality within the collective? And since it's resolution time, we also share some of our goals, intentions, hopes, dreams, and aspirations around worldbuilding and writing!

In this final episode of 2023, we have a momentous announcement! Rowenna Miller is stepping down as a full-time co-host of the podcast, because... well, life! It happens to us all sooner or later. But fear not! Rowenna will still be joining us from time to time, and she's still working with us on the Traveling Light anthology. And we're welcoming an amazing, fantastic, glorious new co-host! Please give your attention and accolades to Natania Barron! Who's Natania? Well, listeners may remember her from Episode 72: This is Cerulean, Right?: Fashion, Politics, and Power. Natania is a fantasy author, fashion historian, Arthuriana expert, and all-around awesome person! So as we say farewell to Rowenna as a full-time host and welcome Natania, we also discuss the very concept of eras, epochs, and other meaningful periods of time. What gives an era its flavor, its vibe, its aesthetic? How much of it gets defined by a ruler, a dynasty, or celebrity figures? How much of that is real, and how much is illusion or a carefully crafted fiction? When it comes to your worldbuilding, do your characters think they're part of a defined period? Are they trying to consciously create one? Do they look back to an idealized past? And how do you communicate that to a reader? Join us for the discussion and get to know our new cohost Natania! [Transcript TK]

It's another listener Q&A episode! Many thanks to the folks who submitted their questions! In this episode, we tackle some things that can block and stymie your worldbuilding, how to approach research that's not really in your preferred milieu, and some details about how we interact with our guests. Also, learn what your hosts' favorite holiday pies are! No one asked us that, but we're telling you anyway. [Transcript TK]