against the world
March 2, 2024 10:20 AM Subscribe
"It is common to describe worldbuilding projects as encyclopedic, but few worldbuilding projects have the space (or the interest) to investigate the depths of historical-psychological complexity, ambiguity, unknowability, and irreducibility that might be seen in the edit history of a single contested Wikipedia page—to say nothing of the epistemological failures of Wikipedia itself, its biases and overwhelmingly vast absences. Worldbuilding as a totalizing project cannot help but fail." Vajra Chandrasekera (author of The Saint of Bright Doors), "The Lone and Level Sands"--a brief but critical look at worldbuilding that starts with last year's profiles of Brandon Sanderson and grows to take in the entire project of writing fiction (ed. note: i died at the sentence, some books are television).
I loved Chandrasekera's piece so much that his book immediately moved to the top of my TBR list, but also he links out to some really amazing discussions, two in particular I want to mention here:
I loved Chandrasekera's piece so much that his book immediately moved to the top of my TBR list, but also he links out to some really amazing discussions, two in particular I want to mention here:
- M. John Harrison's 2007 blog summarizing his position against 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."
- Helen Marshall's "A flare of light or ‘the great clomping foot of nerdism?’: M John Harrison’s radical poetics of worldbuilding" which is a fantastic micro-history of the past 50 years of arguing about speculative fiction.
some books are television
A lot of Sanderson is, well, videogame. Which is fine, but kind of limiting.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:59 AM on March 2 [2 favorites]
A lot of Sanderson is, well, videogame. Which is fine, but kind of limiting.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:59 AM on March 2 [2 favorites]
taquito boyfriend has been on a Sanderson kick for the purposes of discussing him with a friend of ours who, idk if she likes his stuff but she's read most of it
he finished the Mistborn series a couple days ago
this morning he stuck his head into my office & said "I have been thinking about it and the third Mistborn book is bad and Brandon Sanderson is bad"
apparently it cheesed him off that Sanderson, intentionally or not, included a message about it being okay for shitty things to happen as long as that's part of God's plan
he also thinks the sentences are occasionally bad & some chapters could have been emails
sorry for only having a secondhand opinion but I have not brought myself to read past the first like 20 pages in the Stormlight Archives book he assigned me as homework for our relationship* at the beginning of the Sanderson kick
not that it's bad at this point, just, it's so thicc & I'm scared
* less oppressive than it sounds; I'm auditing the class & can skip all the assignments with impunity
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:37 AM on March 2 [1 favorite]
he finished the Mistborn series a couple days ago
this morning he stuck his head into my office & said "I have been thinking about it and the third Mistborn book is bad and Brandon Sanderson is bad"
apparently it cheesed him off that Sanderson, intentionally or not, included a message about it being okay for shitty things to happen as long as that's part of God's plan
he also thinks the sentences are occasionally bad & some chapters could have been emails
sorry for only having a secondhand opinion but I have not brought myself to read past the first like 20 pages in the Stormlight Archives book he assigned me as homework for our relationship* at the beginning of the Sanderson kick
not that it's bad at this point, just, it's so thicc & I'm scared
* less oppressive than it sounds; I'm auditing the class & can skip all the assignments with impunity
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:37 AM on March 2 [1 favorite]
The world, to be built, must be made small.
Counterpoints: Iain M Banks; Terry Pratchett; William Faulkner (?)
I mean it's true that any "worldbuilding" writer is going to build a world that's small when compared to the universe, but some do achieve great worlds
posted by chavenet at 11:42 AM on March 2 [8 favorites]
Counterpoints: Iain M Banks; Terry Pratchett; William Faulkner (?)
I mean it's true that any "worldbuilding" writer is going to build a world that's small when compared to the universe, but some do achieve great worlds
posted by chavenet at 11:42 AM on March 2 [8 favorites]
Brian Sanderson reminds me of Orson Scott Card.
I really strongly remember, as a child, reading Card plot line about a gay man who had to father children with a scientist who had written a research article claiming that gayness existed to prevent unfit people from contributing to the gene pool.
posted by constraint at 11:48 AM on March 2
I really strongly remember, as a child, reading Card plot line about a gay man who had to father children with a scientist who had written a research article claiming that gayness existed to prevent unfit people from contributing to the gene pool.
posted by constraint at 11:48 AM on March 2
yeah having now actually read TFA I think it would have benefited from a definition of what the author considers to be "worldbuilding" and maybe also a breakdown of what they would prefer fantasy authors do instead? maybe that's covered & I am just dense but
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:48 AM on March 2 [2 favorites]
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:48 AM on March 2 [2 favorites]
One of the things I really loved about having read the piece, and the accompanying links, is that there's a really important debate there in which there was no particular need for me to take a side. I kept agreeing with, like, everything. And I think that's because it's not really a question of: "Worldbuilding: Good or Evil?" but, what are the implications for stories that focus on the encyclopedic--especially when that encyclopedism takes place in our franchise-fetishist, intellectually property-bound world? And if you find that a problem, how do you reject it? There's a sub-thread there of, is it good/healthy/right (pick your adjective) for a genre to exist for escapist comfort, for hiding from the world? And that can shade into the really unpleasant idea of fiction as castor oil, where we must all take our medicine for our own good. To which one might react with, life is hard enough, unpleasant enough, complicated enough, thanks, I don't need to be existentially challenged by your little story!
It's all good stuff, grappling with what science fiction is for, and how to make it go--and, for me at least, the great joy of reading people who have thought really deeply about this.
posted by mittens at 12:03 PM on March 2 [5 favorites]
It's all good stuff, grappling with what science fiction is for, and how to make it go--and, for me at least, the great joy of reading people who have thought really deeply about this.
posted by mittens at 12:03 PM on March 2 [5 favorites]
last year's profiles of Brian Sanderson
I think it’s Brandon Sanderson that’s being discussed…
posted by chavenet at 12:03 PM on March 2 [2 favorites]
I think it’s Brandon Sanderson that’s being discussed…
posted by chavenet at 12:03 PM on March 2 [2 favorites]
I am currently re-reading the first Mistborn series and yes, the third book is not great. I am not surprised I remembered literally nothing about it.
It's still better than Elantris, which was awful. So bad that I never went read more Sanderson.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:03 PM on March 2
It's still better than Elantris, which was awful. So bad that I never went read more Sanderson.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:03 PM on March 2
I think it’s Brandon Sanderson that’s being discussed…
oh my GOD, not again. literally every time he comes up, i do this. mods?
posted by mittens at 12:07 PM on March 2 [1 favorite]
oh my GOD, not again. literally every time he comes up, i do this. mods?
posted by mittens at 12:07 PM on March 2 [1 favorite]
I love world building, and often find settings more compelling than characters or narratives. I think Harrison pathologizing "nerdism" and talk about worldbuilders' "victims" is an especially dumb version of moralizing questions of taste. We could really do with less of that.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 12:29 PM on March 2 [5 favorites]
posted by The Manwich Horror at 12:29 PM on March 2 [5 favorites]
Writers can also build relatively small worlds that are nevertheless complete and whole, like the cities in China Mieville's The City and the City, or the mansion in Kazuo Ishiguru's The Remains of the Day.
posted by chavenet at 12:55 PM on March 2 [8 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 12:55 PM on March 2 [8 favorites]
Worldbuilding as authoritarian modernism is not for me. I'm allergic to dragons, I say, so stuff like Sanderson isn't for me.
My take on worldbuilding comes from another angle. I have a thing I call "The Terry Problem" which comes from Terry Pratchett's DiscWorld series only making sense to readers as a reflection of what they already know about the world around them. We understand the setup because it's a reflection and parody of us, whether or not it happens on a disc with a central ice mountain and flowing magical fields, the disc itself resting on the back of four elephants standing on the shell of a turtle swimming the depths of space.
The 40 books across the series introduced parts of their world as part of the plotting, part of the difficulties the characters face and overcome. It had to change from being a parody of early 1980s fantasy to parody of our world -- or the parody would not be funny because the butt of the jokes went unrecognised.
posted by k3ninho at 12:56 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
My take on worldbuilding comes from another angle. I have a thing I call "The Terry Problem" which comes from Terry Pratchett's DiscWorld series only making sense to readers as a reflection of what they already know about the world around them. We understand the setup because it's a reflection and parody of us, whether or not it happens on a disc with a central ice mountain and flowing magical fields, the disc itself resting on the back of four elephants standing on the shell of a turtle swimming the depths of space.
The 40 books across the series introduced parts of their world as part of the plotting, part of the difficulties the characters face and overcome. It had to change from being a parody of early 1980s fantasy to parody of our world -- or the parody would not be funny because the butt of the jokes went unrecognised.
posted by k3ninho at 12:56 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
I can't read Sanderson, because I have a hard time with bad prose, but I do enjoy a little craft of worldbuilding in my reading - loved Tolkien as a kid, enjoyed C.S. Lewis until I found the preaching tiresome as an adult. N.K. Jemisin's worldbuilding in the Broken Earth series was most of what made it interesting, and the puzzle nature of The City and the City was just delightful.
And as a writer, I have to say that along with story and getting to say interesting things, world-building is fun and half the point of fiction (not just fantasy and science fiction) is assembling a small and internally consistent version of the world.
Of course, worldbuilding by itself, without good writing and story, is a game of scholarly solitaire (the Silmarillion is pretty much unreadable) but oh, all of the parts together are so satisfying when they work together well.
In my own series writing, I have been playing with the ways in which a world I have built seems completely different to different characters.
posted by Peach at 1:16 PM on March 2 [6 favorites]
And as a writer, I have to say that along with story and getting to say interesting things, world-building is fun and half the point of fiction (not just fantasy and science fiction) is assembling a small and internally consistent version of the world.
Of course, worldbuilding by itself, without good writing and story, is a game of scholarly solitaire (the Silmarillion is pretty much unreadable) but oh, all of the parts together are so satisfying when they work together well.
In my own series writing, I have been playing with the ways in which a world I have built seems completely different to different characters.
posted by Peach at 1:16 PM on March 2 [6 favorites]
I have no opinion about Sanderson because I swore off long doorstopper series a long time ago. Life is too short. But The Saint of Bright Doors was amazing so I'm going to read the link in the OP with interest even though Sanderson is way out of my wheelhouse.
If you haven't read The Saint of Bright Doors, check it out.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 1:39 PM on March 2 [1 favorite]
If you haven't read The Saint of Bright Doors, check it out.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 1:39 PM on March 2 [1 favorite]
In addition to being "allergic to dragons" there's a kind of fantasy story that accepts long-distance travel for characters without horses means walking and then stuffs dialogue and back-story into the interminable walk.
Cut that out. Have action that propels the plot and leave the rest to fanfic or novellas.
posted by k3ninho at 1:56 PM on March 2 [1 favorite]
Cut that out. Have action that propels the plot and leave the rest to fanfic or novellas.
posted by k3ninho at 1:56 PM on March 2 [1 favorite]
William Faulkner (?)
Where exposition is not just the county fair.
I would love to do a pastiche in the style of F Scott Fitzgerald about the world(s) of William Faulkner with flannery O'Connor's voice.
Faulkner reminds me of a multi-figured statue tucked away in some garden with a complex patina with rolling bubbles on a slight slant pedestal. That sumbitch could write a Shadow without any ink.
Doing a Gamma World™ novel was a whole lot of World building if one wasn't familiar with the game. to incorporate characters in a preset world, descriptive narrative seemed easy yet robotistic, still, reads as a focal point with no background.
So, slap a script like dialogue and go back and brush in the background, it's all very Bob Ross and confusing so I added a forgotten space station and hint of a moonbase controlled by Androids.
posted by clavdivs at 2:01 PM on March 2 [2 favorites]
Where exposition is not just the county fair.
I would love to do a pastiche in the style of F Scott Fitzgerald about the world(s) of William Faulkner with flannery O'Connor's voice.
Faulkner reminds me of a multi-figured statue tucked away in some garden with a complex patina with rolling bubbles on a slight slant pedestal. That sumbitch could write a Shadow without any ink.
Doing a Gamma World™ novel was a whole lot of World building if one wasn't familiar with the game. to incorporate characters in a preset world, descriptive narrative seemed easy yet robotistic, still, reads as a focal point with no background.
So, slap a script like dialogue and go back and brush in the background, it's all very Bob Ross and confusing so I added a forgotten space station and hint of a moonbase controlled by Androids.
posted by clavdivs at 2:01 PM on March 2 [2 favorites]
I am having trouble reconciling this thread with how disappointing I found The Saint of Bright Doors. Much of that was due to the “the author can change the rules any time” magical realism sucking the weight out of everything but a lot of it was due to the patchy world building. It’s apparently based on Sri Lankan Buddhism but unless you happen to know that and can fill in most of the backstory there are just so many things mentioned without explanation that it left me feeling it would have been a better novel had it been more humble and less impressed with its own seriousness.
posted by adamsc at 3:12 PM on March 2 [2 favorites]
posted by adamsc at 3:12 PM on March 2 [2 favorites]
MetaFilter: for the metatronic among us
posted by doctornemo at 4:46 PM on March 2
posted by doctornemo at 4:46 PM on March 2
World building seems like it’s fun for the author, and if the author is halfway decent it can be fun for their readers, too. No one is being compelled to read it, just take a pass if it’s not your thing.
I really don’t understand the thesis that it’s a Christian thing. Tolkien and Lewis may have popularized it for 20th century English readers but I have to imagine that many cultures have enjoyed some element of world building in their literature for centuries. Certainly there are elements of world building in many religious texts from antiquity. Does it stop being world building if someone starts praying in earnest to its gods?
posted by simra at 5:01 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
I really don’t understand the thesis that it’s a Christian thing. Tolkien and Lewis may have popularized it for 20th century English readers but I have to imagine that many cultures have enjoyed some element of world building in their literature for centuries. Certainly there are elements of world building in many religious texts from antiquity. Does it stop being world building if someone starts praying in earnest to its gods?
posted by simra at 5:01 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
Well, okay.
The author approvingly quotes someone in a paragraph which includes this: "audience (which rarely thinks to ask itself if language can deliver on any of the representational promises it is assumed to make)"
And then in the end, says "Not everything that comes in the form of a book is the same kind of object".
And I agree, in that not everyone who reads a book, an object full of words, should be expected to critically question the assumption that words represent things. They can just enjoy reading books.
I get that this is responding to other articles arguing about Brandon Sanderson needing to be taken more seriously by literature, and this is responding to that. The response is basically "all world building is inherently bad literature".
Why are some literary critics so mad at some genre works all the time? I think it can only be because more people read them than books classified as literature (by the literary establishment). These literature people think that people should like the books they consider to be 'proper' literature more than they like the world building books.
But the argument for why the world building books are bad is essentially that they are not doing literature right. What's missing is an explanation for his "doing literature right" is synonymous with "books people should want to read". Why not make an argument as to the value of the things you want people to read?
I'm not going to complain if literature people decide that a book is or isn't literature, but the usually unstated claim they're making is that you shouldn't find things that are not literature (according to them) interesting to read or valuable to talk about. And I can imagine for someone inside the literature world that a tendancy towards gatekeeping what is proper literature is perhaps not the easiest environment for creativity. And perhaps that has something to do with why many people don't find the "proper" literature books as interesting to read.
posted by lookoutbelow at 5:36 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
The author approvingly quotes someone in a paragraph which includes this: "audience (which rarely thinks to ask itself if language can deliver on any of the representational promises it is assumed to make)"
And then in the end, says "Not everything that comes in the form of a book is the same kind of object".
And I agree, in that not everyone who reads a book, an object full of words, should be expected to critically question the assumption that words represent things. They can just enjoy reading books.
I get that this is responding to other articles arguing about Brandon Sanderson needing to be taken more seriously by literature, and this is responding to that. The response is basically "all world building is inherently bad literature".
Why are some literary critics so mad at some genre works all the time? I think it can only be because more people read them than books classified as literature (by the literary establishment). These literature people think that people should like the books they consider to be 'proper' literature more than they like the world building books.
But the argument for why the world building books are bad is essentially that they are not doing literature right. What's missing is an explanation for his "doing literature right" is synonymous with "books people should want to read". Why not make an argument as to the value of the things you want people to read?
I'm not going to complain if literature people decide that a book is or isn't literature, but the usually unstated claim they're making is that you shouldn't find things that are not literature (according to them) interesting to read or valuable to talk about. And I can imagine for someone inside the literature world that a tendancy towards gatekeeping what is proper literature is perhaps not the easiest environment for creativity. And perhaps that has something to do with why many people don't find the "proper" literature books as interesting to read.
posted by lookoutbelow at 5:36 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
Sanderson is also not for me but I don't think the claim that all fiction that includes world building is unserious and inherently less worthy than other fiction of being discussed seriously as literature holds up.
posted by lookoutbelow at 5:44 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
posted by lookoutbelow at 5:44 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
"Fine literature" people are constantly building worlds--worlds where (generally mediocre) middle-aged male authors (or professors) are found to be super-hot by beautiful women much younger than they are.
posted by maxwelton at 9:54 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
posted by maxwelton at 9:54 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]
Maybe this isn’t fair to Sanderson but my main complaint with him is about aesthetics. It’s like a novelization of League of Legends or Warcraft, complete with oversized swords and shoulder pads. Maybe this is part of his appeal to readers of a certain age.
posted by simra at 10:21 PM on March 2
posted by simra at 10:21 PM on March 2
My take on worldbuilding comes from another angle. I have a thing I call "The Terry Problem" which comes from Terry Pratchett's DiscWorld series only making sense to readers as a reflection of what they already know about the world around them. We understand the setup because it's a reflection and parody of us
It occurs to me then that maybe the Discworld isn't really an exercise in World-Building(TM) at all. It's fundamentally our world. This is a terrible metaphor, but it's more like Star Trek than Star Wars.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:26 AM on March 3
It occurs to me then that maybe the Discworld isn't really an exercise in World-Building(TM) at all. It's fundamentally our world. This is a terrible metaphor, but it's more like Star Trek than Star Wars.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:26 AM on March 3
"Fine literature" people are constantly building worlds
This is a really good point -- and even for other genres that lack "fine literature"'s painful shortcomings. All forms of fiction are going to involve constructing a world that accentuates some aspects of the known world and downplays others.
I mean, just look at all the "good cop" (and even less plausibly "good wannabe cop") novels that get filed under "mystery/crime" instead of fantasy. Building an imaginary world where good cops and good wannabe cops exist takes a lot of work, even if that work is artfully concealed by setting the story in a world that otherwise bears an uncanny resemblance to our own.
posted by Not A Thing at 9:48 AM on March 3 [1 favorite]
This is a really good point -- and even for other genres that lack "fine literature"'s painful shortcomings. All forms of fiction are going to involve constructing a world that accentuates some aspects of the known world and downplays others.
I mean, just look at all the "good cop" (and even less plausibly "good wannabe cop") novels that get filed under "mystery/crime" instead of fantasy. Building an imaginary world where good cops and good wannabe cops exist takes a lot of work, even if that work is artfully concealed by setting the story in a world that otherwise bears an uncanny resemblance to our own.
posted by Not A Thing at 9:48 AM on March 3 [1 favorite]
"Fine literature" people are constantly building worlds--worlds where (generally mediocre) middle-aged male authors (or professors) are found to be super-hot by beautiful women much younger than they are.
I have my disagreements with the OP, but this reads like a pretty cheap shot against a "fine literature" writer whose book is, judging from this thread and the promotional material, a magical realist fantasy informed by Sri Lankan Buddhism, emphatically not the blend of Cheever, Updike, and Roth that the less savvy "genre" defenders use as a caricature of literary or realist fiction. If The Saint of Bright Doors features a prominent relationship of this kind, I would be unpleasantly surprised, but I would have to withdraw my objection.
To me, the posts in the OP are pretty clearly intra-genre discourse about the value of inventing whole languages, mapping out every inch of a fantasy world, developing ornate "rules" for magic, etc., not an intrusion of "literary" critics determined to misread fantasy and science fiction as unfavorably as possible.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:05 PM on March 3 [5 favorites]
I have my disagreements with the OP, but this reads like a pretty cheap shot against a "fine literature" writer whose book is, judging from this thread and the promotional material, a magical realist fantasy informed by Sri Lankan Buddhism, emphatically not the blend of Cheever, Updike, and Roth that the less savvy "genre" defenders use as a caricature of literary or realist fiction. If The Saint of Bright Doors features a prominent relationship of this kind, I would be unpleasantly surprised, but I would have to withdraw my objection.
To me, the posts in the OP are pretty clearly intra-genre discourse about the value of inventing whole languages, mapping out every inch of a fantasy world, developing ornate "rules" for magic, etc., not an intrusion of "literary" critics determined to misread fantasy and science fiction as unfavorably as possible.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:05 PM on March 3 [5 favorites]
My shot was not against the author mentioned above, but against the innumerable "fine literature" books written each year where a beautiful grad student proves to be the key to awakening the brilliant male protagonist (again, often a professor or author themselves) from their middle-aged doldrums, etc.
posted by maxwelton at 12:00 PM on March 4 [1 favorite]
posted by maxwelton at 12:00 PM on March 4 [1 favorite]
the innumerable "fine literature" books written each year
No, no, you have to enumerate them! What are some 2023 examples of the genre?
posted by mittens at 12:21 PM on March 4 [3 favorites]
No, no, you have to enumerate them! What are some 2023 examples of the genre?
posted by mittens at 12:21 PM on March 4 [3 favorites]
I feel like this is coming in on the middle of a conversation, really. And that both Chandrasekera and Harrison are using "worldbuilding" to only refer to works that feel like they have fallen down the hole of "I spent thirty years making up a dozen conlangs and twenty maps and 15k years of history and I still can't come up with an interesting story to tell in this world", but not to works that do a decent job of dropping enough hints and fragments to build an impression of a coherent world outside the story. Or to works like Harrison's (pretty wonderful) Virconium that drop a whole bunch of conflicting hints and fragments to build an impression of a fading world that's long since forgotten how it came to be. What should I be calling that if not "worldbuilding"?
Also I keep on remembering that Patrick Rothfuss' charity is called "Worldbuilders" and thinking about all the crazy shit around him getting wrapped up in that as a series of excuses for never delivering the third and volume of his fantasy story that is set in a pretty generic fantasy world, despite him saying that unlike some other authors he had the entire series ready to print when the first one was published back in 2007.
I dunno, I can enjoy a book that feels like it's sitting on top of multiple GURPS supplements worth of Backstory and Worldbuilding and Lore, as long as the author can actually come up with compelling characters and/or story, or if the world is crazy enough - I keep on thinking of Barlowe's Expedition, which is basically him sitting in his studio dreaming up crazy alien anatomy, painting the heck out of it, and putting a whole bunch of text about the interactions of these beasts and a tiny bit of narrative next to all these gorgeous alien paintings - but there sure are a lot of books that fail to give me a reason to care about the characters and why they're wandering around all these places in a world cobbled together from largely the same set of cliches as a thousand sf/f books before it.
I can however agree that, whatever virtues Brandon Sanderson's work has, the two books of his I've read sure didn't impress me with his prose.
I do wonder what Chandrasekera might make of games following in the footsteps of Dark Souls, which convey most of their story through oblique references in the descriptions of the objects you accumulate along your quest to trudge through a weary, dying world and a bunch of absurdly hard boss fights and turn off all the lights for good, and the way some people love organizing all this stuff into wikis and putting together Theories about what all this Lore actually means. It's definitely "worldbuilding" and there are people who eat it up.
Anyway I should go to bed.
posted by egypturnash at 10:00 PM on March 4 [1 favorite]
Also I keep on remembering that Patrick Rothfuss' charity is called "Worldbuilders" and thinking about all the crazy shit around him getting wrapped up in that as a series of excuses for never delivering the third and volume of his fantasy story that is set in a pretty generic fantasy world, despite him saying that unlike some other authors he had the entire series ready to print when the first one was published back in 2007.
I dunno, I can enjoy a book that feels like it's sitting on top of multiple GURPS supplements worth of Backstory and Worldbuilding and Lore, as long as the author can actually come up with compelling characters and/or story, or if the world is crazy enough - I keep on thinking of Barlowe's Expedition, which is basically him sitting in his studio dreaming up crazy alien anatomy, painting the heck out of it, and putting a whole bunch of text about the interactions of these beasts and a tiny bit of narrative next to all these gorgeous alien paintings - but there sure are a lot of books that fail to give me a reason to care about the characters and why they're wandering around all these places in a world cobbled together from largely the same set of cliches as a thousand sf/f books before it.
I can however agree that, whatever virtues Brandon Sanderson's work has, the two books of his I've read sure didn't impress me with his prose.
I do wonder what Chandrasekera might make of games following in the footsteps of Dark Souls, which convey most of their story through oblique references in the descriptions of the objects you accumulate along your quest to trudge through a weary, dying world and a bunch of absurdly hard boss fights and turn off all the lights for good, and the way some people love organizing all this stuff into wikis and putting together Theories about what all this Lore actually means. It's definitely "worldbuilding" and there are people who eat it up.
Anyway I should go to bed.
posted by egypturnash at 10:00 PM on March 4 [1 favorite]
One of the things I enjoyed about The Saint of Bright Doors was the "patchy world building", which I would rephrase more positively as not feeling like there was an implicit encyclopedia of the world that by the end of the book I would be able to recreate. A lot of stuff is left in the background and never really explicated, and I kinda liked that. I definitely feel that I would prefer the 350-page book it is to the book it would be if it were 700 pages with all the worldbuilding inked in instead of sketched out.
It's been a while since I read the Viriconium books, but I loved those too, also partly because of the intentionally hazy worldbuilding.
posted by dfan at 7:32 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]
It's been a while since I read the Viriconium books, but I loved those too, also partly because of the intentionally hazy worldbuilding.
posted by dfan at 7:32 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]
I'm still very early in The Saint of Bright Doors, but it's reminding me so much of Mariana Enriquez's Our Share of Night. It's got that "basically where we are right now, except dark mysterious forces that definitely want to kill you are pulsing out of every shadow" feeling to it.
posted by mittens at 8:42 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 8:42 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]
What puzzles me about the whole thing is that the few Sanderson works I've read have not only had poor writing style, they've also had boring stories and hodge-podge, boring settings. So trying to redeem the author's writing style based on his stories or world building seems fairly doomed.
posted by madhadron at 9:03 AM on March 5 [3 favorites]
posted by madhadron at 9:03 AM on March 5 [3 favorites]
I certainly remember finding the Mistborn setting and story fairly compelling when I first read it. Admittedly I was in high school so my standards might not have been that stringent, but at least the first book was promising. And it sort of held up on re-read, it's pretty good, if not great. If you like crapsack post-near-apocalyptic worlds, it's not a bad entry into the genre. I will even defend Vin as actually quite a strongly-drawn character, and the rest of the crew (it's structured as a heist) are varied enough to be getting along with. They're not deep books at all, but (at least the first two), not unenjoyable reads.
All that said, Elantris was so bad that I only finished it out of spite. I think I didn't hate Warbreaker, but it was so unmemorable that it can't have been great.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:21 AM on March 5
All that said, Elantris was so bad that I only finished it out of spite. I think I didn't hate Warbreaker, but it was so unmemorable that it can't have been great.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:21 AM on March 5
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posted by Scattercat at 10:41 AM on March 2 [1 favorite]