science fiction
-
Review: Time Travel And Warp Drives
As a science fiction writer, I find examining science’s current stance on futuristic ideas, such as time travel, warp drives, and other possible technological advances to be fascinating and insightful. This book by Allen Everett and Thomas Roman takes the reader on an incredibly thorough examination of the science of time travel, the paradoxes of Continue reading
-
World-building Part 4 – Atmospheres and Natural Cycles
Note this is a series: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. In order to have a planet house life, an atmosphere is absolutely essential, unless the sentient species is capable of enclosed domes, which even then they’d still have an atmosphere within that enclosed dome. This brings us to the fourth part of building Continue reading
-
Planet Geology – World-building Part 3
Note this is a series: Part One and Part Two. Now that you have a sketch of your solar system, we can focus on the individual planets. Terrestrial Planets First, planets made of rock – terrestrial planets. They are largely powered by geological processes such as hot spots, volcanism, and plate tectonics. Rocky planets tend Continue reading
-
Creating a Solar System – World-building Part 2
Note this is a series: Part One Once you’ve built your sun and solar system, now you have to focus on the planets. There’s various ways to tackle this issue depending on how detailed you may wish to go. I’ll highlight a few things to keep in mind during your creation of the planets part Continue reading
-
Physics of a World
Since I study physics at my university, I often will read articles of new experiments in the field. I like to start with Scientific American, and from there access the original papers of the researchers. Recently, I came across this article: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Is_Space_Digital.pdf and this article: how-the-hippies-saved-physics-science-counterculture-and-quantum-revival-excerpt The second article is about Bell and his theorem, Continue reading
-
Creating a Solar System: Part One – A star
Often, when I world build, I’ll start with an idea for a planet, and then build a solar system around it. The idea may stem from a random scene of a group of characters. From that seed, I build a solar system. What are the first two aspects to consider for such a project? The Continue reading
-
Effects of Environment
When world-building, the effects an environment has on a culture is fairly profound. For example, if the world has a fairly small star, the planet has to be fairly close to this sun in order to even be habitable. However, if the star is not particularly massive (a small star generally wouldn’t be), then the Continue reading
-
Elivera Universe – Maps
In my explorations of my Elivera universe, I draw a lot of maps. I find them not only to be useful in keeping track of the layout of cities my characters visit, but also to help me understand aspects of their society. To start, I often will draw a zoning map, like the one I Continue reading
-
Time to Communicate
Sometimes, when I’m in need of inspiration or just deep thoughts in general, I go to Writing Excuses. Today I focused on their world-building podcasts, and this one in particular caught my attention: Writing Excuses 6.13: World Building Communications Technology. One of the main points of this particular podcast was how the technological advances was Continue reading
Reshaping Reality 