Is worldbuilding pointless?

[Giovanna Clairval]

The invention of the Fremen, their story and culture are part of Herbert's worldbuilding, Marvolo, while the oxygen production details he did not deem essential, and with reason.

The writer must know where to stop giving details.
It is Sephiroth's iceberg.

 

[Marvolo]

The invention of the Fremen, their story and culture are part of Herbert's worldbuilding, Marvolo, while the oxygen production details he did not deem essential, and with reason.

The writer must know where to stop giving details.
It is Sephiroth's iceberg.

Paul and the Fremen are the story. The rest just enrich their story. The Fremen give credibility to the created world of Dune because they exist in it. He doesn't have to explain why oxygen is there. It obviously is because his characters couldn't live without it. He built that world so that he could tell the story of those characters. Then he got money hungry and wrote that world to death, but that is another tale.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Characters and plot come first, we all agree.

Do we all agree? When I read a book like Titus Groan or The Worm Ouroboros -- or for that matter The Pastel City -- it's not for the plot or characters. I am drawn to these books because I am swept away by their powerful use of language and by the glorious excesses of the authors' imaginations. I would gladly revisit Gormenghast Castle -- if it were possible -- even if it were not populated by the same cast of characters acting out the same plot.

Now an author like Dickens, I read for plot and characters.

 

[Wiglaf]

I have been reminded of Flowers for Algernon lately. It took me a while to realize, "Hey, it is SF!" I always thought of it as a great story about this guy who's hopes were raised and then... I don't care if you world build or not at the moment (could change my opinion by next week) but I want a great story about some guy, girl, elf, whatever. I want to have to stop and smack my forehead because, I just realized that hey, this is fantasy; there were dragons. Just my opinion. If you know of such a book, let me know.

 

[iansales]

A couple of points -

IIRC, Dune does explain why there's oxygen on Arrakis. I think it's during the scene where Liet-Kynes dies.

My "two important issues" were in reference to Harrison's comments, not writing per se. Although I do think that if you privilege world-building over story, you're not going to get a good story. You might get a successful one, though - Steve Erikson's magna opera springs to mind...

 

[Sephiroth]

I don't agree with you there.


If the story's good, the story's good, regardless of how much effort has been expended in world-building.

 

[iansales]

Even a good story can die under a weight of useless extraneous world-building detail. If the first chapter isa blow-by-blow account of the invented world's last one thousand years of history, and of no relevance to the plot, then that's a bad story. If you bury every plot event under paragraphs and paragraphs of invented rationale - "The battleship left Earth orbit and travelled by FTL to Alpha Centauri. The FTL drive was invented in 2098 by Bob Masterman in his secret laboratory on the Moon. The greatest scientific genius since Hawking - in fact as clever as Newton, Einstein, Freud, Hawking and Brantano rolled into one - Masterman took only twelve years to build his prototype FTL ship..." And so on. One sentence of story, and reams of world-building...

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

Wiglaf[/font];966307]I have been reminded of Flowers for Algernon lately. It took me a while to realize, "Hey, it is SF!" I always thought of it as a great story about this guy who's hopes were raised and then... I don't care if you world build or not at the moment (could change my opinion by next week) but I want a great story about some guy, girl, elf, whatever. I want to have to stop and smack my forehead because, I just realized that hey, this is fantasy; there were dragons. Just my opinion. If you know of such a book, let me know.

Try "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", by Roger Zelazny. I posted a link to the full text, in the Zelazny sub-forum. It's SF, not F. And JD Worthington said (to my immense joy) that he compared "A Rose" to "Algernoon". Both stories elicit the effect you describe.

I think that we agree on the essence of the question, Marvolo.
Now, we might have a slight problem with the definition of worldbuilding.
When you say, "the story is about Paul and the Fremen" (and I understand that you mean Fremen=characters), and when I say that the Fremen are part of the worldbuilding, we are both right. The Fremen are characters that define the world.

Iansale, I think, if memory serves me well, that the explanation on oxygen was in the appendix, where the planetologist gets to explain the ecology of Arrakis. I could be wrong, but that is what I remember. I also remember not reading the appendix the first time.

Can someone confirm this detail?

 

[iansales]

From the chapter where Liet-Kynes lies dying in the desert and hallucinates that his dead father is talking to him:

'How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enugh to wonder at the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen-CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover. The energy sphere of the planet is there to see and understand - a relentless process, but a process nonetheless. There is a gap in it? Then something occupies that gap. Science is made up of many things that appear obvious after they are explained. I knew the little maker was there, deep in the sand, long before I ever saw it.'

 

[Sephiroth]

Ian, I see your point, but that's only if the writer is (a) clumsy and (b) unable to keep their world-building and their narrative separate. I don't disagree that extraneous detail can ruin a story, but it isn't because the world-building's been done, it's because the narrative-writing hasn't been handled well.

 

[Ursa major]

I think that quote makes a good point, Ian: there is no long scientific explanantion, but we know that something is producing the oxygen; better than that, it fits in with a major thread of the series: the search for the "truth" about Arrakis.

So we have story, we have explanantion and we have a further mystery. And it's concise. Excellent.

 

[iansales]

Ian, I see your point, but that's only if the writer is (a) clumsy and (b) unable to keep their world-building and their narrative separate. I don't disagree that extraneous detail can ruin a story, but it isn't because the world-building's been done, it's because the narrative-writing hasn't been handled well.

Well, yes. Which was my point I only added that excessive world-building can lead to a temptation to include all the detail in the story - often to the story's detriment. I suppose it's a variation on "kill all your darlings".

Ursa major - yes, the quote is succint. But don't forget there's also an appendix which goes into greater detail

Having said that, Dune is an unusual novel. If Herbert had written it today, it's doubtful it would be published. Even though it was rejected by 16 publishers back in 1965, before eventually being picked up by Chilton.

 

[Ursa major]

But it's an appendix: the reader doesn't have to read it, it's free and not (badly) written by someone else just to feed off another's genius.

We are lucky that anyone would publish some of the works we now think of as the greats. (We cannot know, of course, what we have missed.)

 

[iansales]

But it's an appendix: the reader doesn't have to read it, it's free and not (badly) written by someone else just to feed off another's genius.

Is that a comment on the recent prequels and sequels? ;-)

We are lucky that anyone would publish some of the works we now think of as the greats. (We cannot know, of course, what we have missed.)

Watch the small presses. That's where it happens now. The major publishing houses have the distribution, but the small presses can afford to take chances they can't.

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

Point taken, Ian.

I had forgotten that detail... and I'm not the only one:

Big mistakes in sf.

And I still think that we agree on the essence.
Worldbuilding is pointless when badly done.

 

[Marvolo]

Point taken, Ian.

I had forgotten that detail... and I'm not the only one:

Big mistakes in sf.

And I still think that we agree on the essence.
Worldbuilding is pointless when badly done.

Aye, just as well written worlds don't save horribly written novels. So after all that discussion everyone just sort of agrees that less is more with world description. Ben Bova was fond of saying that the majority of the setting should be inferred through character's cultural reactions and dialogue/thought from the central characters in the narrative. He wasn't fond of using lots of narrative description to depict the worlds he built. I think that is a good way to go about it, personally.

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

Ben Bova was fond of saying that the majority of the setting should be inferred through character's cultural reactions and dialogue/thought from the central characters in the narrative. He wasn't fond of using lots of narrative description to depict the worlds he built. I think that is a good way to go about it, personally.

It is easier--and mandatory--not to sink into narrative description when the novel is written in the first person: you don't explain to yourself what you already know.
Still, the Editor grumps as well about too much concision (editors grump anyway). And the same reason that makes the first person narrative easier, makes it also more difficult because... you don't explain to yourself what you already know.
If your world is complex (mine is), and, you don't wish to powder your novel with a lot of exposition (I don't), writing those darped first chapters becomes a tour de force.

 

[iansales]

Ben Bova was fond of saying that the majority of the setting should be inferred through character's cultural reactions and dialogue/thought from the central characters in the narrative.

How does that work if the character isn't a white middle-class American male? Harsh perhaps, but the point being that Bova's technique only works if those reactions, etc., can be interpreted by the reader - which means the reader must share a whole raft of assumptions, prejudices and cultural references with the character. If you have a completely invented society, and the POV character is a member of that society, then it gets much trickier. It has been done... and I'm trying to think of examples... Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury? Nope, I'm stuck...

 

[Marvolo]

How does that work if the character isn't a white middle-class American male? Harsh perhaps, but the point being that Bova's technique only works if those reactions, etc., can be interpreted by the reader - which means the reader must share a whole raft of assumptions, prejudices and cultural references with the character. If you have a completely invented society, and the POV character is a member of that society, then it gets much trickier. It has been done... and I'm trying to think of examples... Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury? Nope, I'm stuck...

I didn't mean cultural reactions of someone from our culture reacting to their culture. I meant cultural reactions of someone living within the culture. If everyone is required to wear blue hats or they're put to death and the character sees someone with a red hat, he'll have a cultural reaction towards the person not wearing the blue hat. Even when the red hat wearer is executed, he'll wonder at the bravery of the red hat wearer. It is a stupid example but the best I can think of at 6 in the morning.

It isn't a required thing to have an everyman do all the reacting to the invented society. A good, concise third person limited narrative in which the author thoroughly gets inside the POV character's head will give all the necessary cultural references with how he handles the situations. You'll infer to the reader what the norms are, the taboos are, and what the character expects. With the example above, what made the red hat wearer risk death just to be different? Why are they all wearing blue hats? What events led to the blue hat law? All those questions arise because of the situation, and then the talented author uses one of the best SF narrative techniques, abeyance. The reader holds those questions in abeyance until situations arise where the answers are revealed.

A lot of folks never realize that readers wondering why things happen a certain way, or why the character feels a certain way, can be used as another narrative hook. In these cases the world building you did is used as a plot device and hooks the reader; they're dying to know about the red hat wearer as the POV character begins to question the notion of wearing blue hats. Since no info dump has occured, the reader gets the information trickled in where it is relevant and all the hard work you've put into building the blue hat wearing world pays off with the world being intrinsic to the situation and not only is the reader hooked on wanting to know more about the world (instead of having it dumped on him) but also cheering on the POV character as he discovers the events that led to the brave martyrdom of the red hat wearer.

So Bova's point: After constructing a character and a situation you can do the necessary world building to discover more about the character and situation. By doing it in that order before the writing process begins you not only create an internally consistent world but also make sure that the world you built is completely necessary to the plot, not only necessary but inseperably intwined with the plot.

So, another example of why world building isn't pointless and Harrison is wroooong, according to me and Ben Bova. But hey, Ben Bova is quite the person to disagree with as he is a very popular SF author.

 

[iansales]

I didn't mean cultural reactions of someone from our culture reacting to their culture. I meant cultural reactions of someone living within the culture. If everyone is required to wear blue hats or they're put to death and the character sees someone with a red hat, he'll have a cultural reaction towards the person not wearing the blue hat. Even when the red hat wearer is executed, he'll wonder at the bravery of the red hat wearer. It is a stupid example but the best I can think of at 6 in the morning.

If you want the reader to sympathise with the POV character, you can't have them stray too far from the reader's cultural template. You only have to look at how British readers react to US sf to see this. I take your point, but I still think an invented setting will by necessity be tied to the writer's environment - which makes Bova's technique of limited use. If for exmaple, I lived in blue hat land, and saw someone in ared hat, I would know how to react... but why should I explain that reaction to a reader?

"As you know, Bob, wearing red hats in blue hat land is punishable by death."

So, another example of why world building isn't pointless and Harrison is wroooong, according to me and Ben Bova. But hey, Ben Bova is quite the person to disagree with as he is a very popular SF author.

AFAIK, every character Bova has written has been a white middle-class American. So it's not like he's trying hard to present other cultures from within. And his recent win of the John W Campbell Memorial Award for Titan has been... controversial, to say the least.