Creating Worlds

In British Literature we finished reading Utopia last week. This is one of those stories that I knew existed and imagined as this wonderful, wonderful life changing book. Boy was I wrong. Please don't think that I'm saying it wasn't a good book, for I am glad that I read it and I found it very intriguing. However there was zero plot (ok, not zero... but close) since it was mostly a fictional history book. Well not history... geography, anthropology, philosophy... ? I can't put my finger on it. Regardless this book covers all of these aspects of one nation: Utopia. But it never delves into the lives of the people OF Utopia. Which is really a shame because More's (Thomas More is the author, by the way) most outstanding quality, that I saw anyway, is world building!


As an avid Sci-Fi/Fantasy junkie I have a massive appreciation for fictional places (random side note: there is a book in my school's library entitled The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, I intend to read this book!). Give me a far off planet, a distant future, an alternate reality and I am hooked. Creating a world isn't easy (I know that God makes it seem like a snap but He's a unique case...). There are those pesky details to keep straight and there is always the matter of what degree of our reality you'd like to maintain. Are the chickens actually chickens or are they a species similar to the ones on earth but have experienced multiple years of micro-evolution? Is that train actually just a train or is it an intergalactic space train? [Bobbi I really hope you're reading...]

Lately I've been trying my hand at realism and I will admit that not being constrained to my made up, unconventional rules is a whole lot easier but my heart will always belong to the far off and unknown places that have yet to be thought up. More has done this very well and I envy the way that he so thoroughly covered all the aspects. I think when I write Sci-Fi/Fantasy I need to do what More does, consider the angles, minor and major. Now the difference comes in the fact that I don't want to write about that place I've created; I want to write about the people who live in that place; I want to tell the stories of what its like to live in that place. I've learned from More that even though thoroughly creating a new world is a great step to take in storytelling I must create the world for the purpose of telling the story not for the sole purpose of creating a world.

I know people have written there own variations of More's Utopia but I can't help but wonder what kind of great stories could have been told about the people living in Utopia? What stories did More not tell us? What would their lives be like? 

That's all for now!

Goodnight,

Jessica