UESP Forums

This thread for all of UESP’s worldbuilders, prospective worldbuilders and critics to get together and discuss what else other than worldbuilding. I’m hoping this thread will be a good source of discussion, feedback, (informed, reasonably justified, and polite) criticism. But, also a place where people can post extracts of their latest work, whether that be timeline segments, event write-ups, character write-ups, or whatever else. Following a much-less-than-exhaustive search I couldn't find a thread that I thought was a good enough fit for the contents below so I decided to create this one. Whilst the Writers Guild exists this thread intends to be much more focused on ideas than placing them in any sort of coherent narrative. Of course, move it, if needs be. I would also appreciate if people remained within the rules and, where politically-sensitive issues crop up, discuss what you think the consequences and outcomes of certain developments will be, but refrain - please - from discussing the ethics of the issue. If that kills the fun for you, then you were in the wrong thread to begin with.

---

So about a year ago I put off a worldbuilding project - forgot about it - and only returned to it yesterday. It’s set in the near-future - timeline is complete from 2017 - 2080 - and takes place on our Earth. I imagine if I was going to set a narrative here it would either 2034, after democratic protestors stage a biological terrorist event in China, or 2080, when Earth is first setting its eyes to space as not just a zone of exploration, but of bounteous commercial exploitation. In these sort of settings there is three themes I typically look to report on:

The first one is Identity. What is the role of our physical community in a world where advances in communicative technologies have made distance and geography increasingly irrelevant, is a favourite. In the worlds I build nation-states - or at least least finite regional coalitions - typically still dominate and I look to explain that as the product of groups or coalitions rent-seeking; that is, the established limiting the competition to their social and economic livelihoods. I also think it’s interesting to explore what it means to be human when our lives are increasingly - in both extent and intimacy - tied with that of machines. It’s the more subtle manifestations I find more interesting: For example, where our broadband connection is increasingly displacing the need for memorisation, what does it mean to be informed or knowledgeable.

But there’s also a tonne of other avenues one can take here, when it comes to communicative technologies. There internet allows considerable scope for self-segregation when it comes to considerations of our civil-society; The advancement and mainstreaming of technologies such as Tinder has resulted in a massive increase in ‘outside-options’ for young people and that probably diminishes the incentive to invest in stability (as polyamory historically has). That’s a good example of a minor question that tends to be at the forefront of the writing I do: what will it mean to be ‘in a relationship’ in forty years, for example.

The second one is The Environment, and what it means to us. I guess what interests me here is the human inability to act strategically in the long-run, especially when the costs or benefits are diffuse. So, in the world I am building I have elaborated in particular on a movement called Intelligent Urbanisation, a reaction to, and rejection of, planning methods that emphasise utility and functionality in building. In a number of cities, vertical-farming, vertical-parks, sky-gardens, and the level of biodiversity that entails, are prominent features. But, in a broader context, climate change has resulted in there being tens of millions, broadly African-based, ‘climate refugees’ from about 2050 onwards, super-hurricanes have forced Southern Europeans to migrate much further inland.

There is also an emphasis on the politics. Whilst some regions - Central Africa, in particular - were profoundly and negatively affected by climate change, others - Russia, Canada and the newly independent Republic of Greenland, for example - were huge beneficiaries; de-icing allowed them to access previously unattainable recourses, in particular Helium3, opened up huge expanses of land to agriculture, and granted access to shipping lanes of considerable strategic worth. So, as environmental engineering becomes an increasingly viable prospect, you have this set of states dragging their feet on acting. There’s an irony because the cities in Southern Canada were where a number of the main ideas behind Intelligent Urbanisation originated.

I guess the third ‘theme’ I tend to hit on, is rather a lack of concern for a number of traditional problems addressed in this sort of fiction. I entirely ignore ‘overpopulation’ since it’s a non-issue, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t address the function of capitalism at all (sorry MARS, Kerr), since I see it as a relatively benign, if not an outright benign, force. I also write corporations in as being a neutral element of the narrative. The main economic concern of mine is low-skill labour, what is its function in a world where routine operations can be competently automated. Being as modern technological change is skills-biased (upwards) in terms of income, what does that also entail for the politics of economic growth? In my world the middle-class typically colludes with the upper-class to protect the rents from this; and, much more-so in anglo-states with FPTP representation.

What I still need to work on is gender, racial and trans inequities. I guess that’s one of the more particular questions for sci-fi worldbuilders that I have. In a world where cybernetic-augmentation calls on us to radically re-define what it means to be human, where does that leave us on what it means to be a man, or women, or black? Disability is another question I still need to broach; in particular: intellectual disability, what does it mean to ‘cure’ an intellectual disability. Your thoughts, and links, appreciated.

I can elaborate, or post bits of the timeline, as needed.

---

You also don’t have to respond to the above - You can discuss your own material. Though, of course, I’d appreciate it.