B01-16 To the Reader - with Seth Ring
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Track 1: At what point do we just stop worldbuilding and let the visitant imagination wander. Do we just throw our hands up in the air and say, "Hey, go ahead and just pretend this is an alien world. I don't want to come up with anything anymore. This week we find a Saifai legend's limits.
Welcome to the WorldCraft Club podcast, a show for writers, dungeon, masters, and storytellers who want to create deep immersive settings that will bring their audience back time and time again. I'm your host, James. And I'm talking with my cohost set. This conversation took place during a weekly fireside gathering.
We're experimenting with some format changes here. So what you're getting is a relatively uncut unedited version. Have a conversation between Seth and myself about something we both thought had some utility for Worldbuilder's and writers.
This was something raised by, uh. By obsidian cross on our, on our discord server, he'd shared it with me. It was a page at the beginning of his book and he just kind of raised it idly during a fireside chat, um, every week on the server, Thursday evenings, 8 PM EST, we get together on the server and just sort of have a chat and everybody sort of talks about world building stuff, sometimes we talk about nonsense, sometimes it gets a little metaphysical, it's, it's a lot of stuff happens and, uh, it's, it's where a lot of the ideas that we develop in the podcast are sort of tested in front of people and we like discuss this.
Stuff and like build upon ideas and goof off a lot. So it's a really, really good time, but this. This letter was brought out during one of our, one of our meetings, and I thought it was really worth some discussion. So I started chatting with Seth about it, and he assured me he has lots of thoughts on this, and I certainly as well.
So it's, it's interesting. To give you, give you all some context, um, this is based on a novel. Let me just get the name of it up here. I had it Google searched, um. It was called Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. So Isaac Asimov, obviously famous sci fi author, a very foundational author of science fiction, famous for the Foundation series and, um, and for, uh, for iRobot and a number of other, uh, short stories and novels that really, um, explored the fringes of science fiction and, uh, kind of really brought the genre Uh, pretty, he, he laid some of the foundational works of science fiction down that, that a lot of authors now build upon.
So this guy's no joke, but he put this letter at the beginning of one of his books and I think it's interesting and I think it's worth discussing and I think some of your nostrils will flare as I read it. And I think it will be an interesting thing to discuss about the limits of how much we expect our audience to immerse themselves within the setting versus.
doing the work of world building and kind of placing the visitant in the, in the space. So let me read this to you. To the reader, Kalgash, the setting of the book Nightfall, is an alien world, and it is not our intention to have you think that it is identical to Earth, even though we might depict it, uh, depict its people as speaking a language that you can understand and using terms that are familiar to you.
Those words could be understood, should be understood as mere equivalence of alien terms. That is a conventional set of equivalents of the same sort that a writer of novels uses when he has foreign characters speaking with each other in their own language, but nevertheless transcribes their words in the language of the reader.
So when the people of Kalgash speak of miles, or hands, or cars, or computers. They mean their own units of distance, their own grasping organs, their own ground transportation vehicles, their own information processing machines, etc. The computers used on CalGash are not necessarily compatible with the ones used in New York, or London, or Stockholm, And the mile that we use in this book is not necessarily the American unit of 5, 280 feet.
Understand this was written in 1941 as well. So when he's speaking of computers, that is a term that, that may not ring true for us. But it seemed simpler and more desirable to use these familiar terms in describing events on this wholly alien world than it would have been to invent a long series of wholly cash...
In other words, we could have told you that one of our characters paused to strap on his quanglishes before setting out on a walk of seven vorks along the main glebish of his native's noob, and everything might have seemed ever so much more thoroughly alien. But it would also have been ever so much more difficult to make sense out of what we were saying, and that did not seem useful.
The essence of this story doesn't lie in the quantity of bizarre terms we might have invented. It lies, rather, in the reaction of the group of people, somewhat like ourselves, living on a world that is somewhat like ours in all but one highly significant detail, as they react to a challenging situation that is completely different from anything the people of Earth have ever had to deal with.
Under the circumstances, it seemed to us better to tell you that someone put on his hiking boots before setting out on a seven mile walk than to clutter the book with quanglishes, vorks, and gleebishes. If you prefer, you can imagine that the text reads, vorks, wherever it says miles, or gleezbees, wherever it says hours, or slashtraps, wherever it says...
Eyes. Or you could make up your own terms. Vorks or miles. It will make no difference when the stars come out. Signed, Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg.
I feel like we should pause here for just a little bit of level setting as Seth and I referenced the book pretty freely and don't always give context. Nightfall is about a planet, which has six sons and is bathed in continuous daylight as a result.
Scientists figure out that there is a major catastrophe that occurs every 3000 years wherein a moon, invisible in daylight, obscures one of the sons, which happens at the time, to be the only one visible. It bays the world of Cal gash in total darkness. The people, there being unfamiliar with the dark and fearing it. They don't know when the night's going to end and they catch their first glimpses of the wider universe in the form of stars. They go quite mad and completely annihilate their culture. The story is focused on people attempting to predict this coming event and respond to it. I think that should be about as much context as you need. So, onward.
Seth: So here's my hot take. They were specifically trying to address a certain kind of reader. And... In my opinion, this is not a reader of science fiction. This is a reader of science fantasy who is complaining to a bunch of science fiction readers, uh, writers that their world is not bizarre enough.
Track 1: Yeah,
Seth: And the reason I say this is because there was a trend at this time for fantasy writers to try to make up all sorts of interesting, and I say that with quotes around it, interesting worlds by just literally coming up with random terms and being like, well, it's like this thing, but it's not this thing. It's a, it's a different version of this thing.
It's a fantasy version of this thing. And that was in Vogue. It was in Vogue for writers to just sort of come up with their own languages and come up with their own, uh, their own ideas and the. The tone in this letter strikes me as a couple of writers who are like, Look, we're not going to do the work for you.
If you want to do that, do that. But it has nothing to do with us. And so I resonated. With with it on sort of this visceral level of being like this is a writer come like Writing to a complaining reader.
Track 1: yeah, that's what it sounds like. You can tell they, like, it's, I, I'm a really big believer in that every sign has a meaning. Which is why signs are so funny. Where it says, like, pee on this wall. You can guarantee... Someone tried to pee on that wall, which is why, like, instructions, instructions like that are so, like, jarring.
Like, cameras are for research purposes only, put it like a urinal or something, it's just upsetting for people to read. Like, and it's, it tells you something, it signals that something happened, and you're right, like, this is, this is really a pair of authors. Sort of retorting at a, at a, at a complaining reader who's like, This is just like Earth.
Like, why, I, I don't feel
Seth: this isn't real this isn't real
Track 1: haven't done the world building.
Seth: right which is which is fascinating because I have a Another like I have a hot take on science fiction that this feeds into And it might get me strung up. Like, legitimately, it might get me strung up.
Track 1: Like, in a, such that you would still share it here, or like,
Seth: Um,
Track 1: You gonna hold that one for later, drop in one of your YouTube shorts?
Seth: no, I think, I'm willing to share it, right? And I'm willing for people to challenge me on this. And I think that would be an interesting, interesting discussion. But it really feeds into what they're talking about here, sort of under the surface. And it's this. If your alien world is not, or I'm sorry, if your science fiction story is not based around humans, then it is not science fiction.
It is science fantasy. And the reason I say that is because in order for something to be, um, I'm sorry, it's not, I said that wrong, it's not that it's not, um, or it's not science fantasy, it's space fantasy,
Track 1: Gotcha.
Seth: right? Or cosmic fantasy. Because in order for something to be science based, it has to be based on something that's real, that really exists. And so, Star Wars can sort of get away with it, even though it's not real science fiction. Um, because it's science fantasy, because there are humans. Because we have that reference point of something scientific, something real, from which we can extrapolate all of these other what ifs. Right? And everything Asimov wrote, and everything most science fiction writers wrote for a really long time, was based around humanity.
Because that is the one reference point, that if you change it, all of a sudden, there is no science in it.
Track 1: yeah. And I, there's, there's, there's a lot in there. Cause like my first thought is Star Trek, right? Like Star Trek was known to be like Star Wars is like older, more serious brother, you know, like, and, um, who like was an accountant, um, while the younger one went off to be an indie author. Right. And, um, so like you, you get, you get the good son.
Star Trek, which asked, which was actually really more, I would make the argument, it was more moral fantasy than anything else, like a lot of the idea behind Star Trek was exploring human morality when challenged by the fringes of science fiction, and like the alien races in it were basically just Humans with exemplified traits of humanity, like you have the, the Ferengi are exemplifications of greed and you have the, the Klingons have given into anger and the Vulcans have completely taken away their emotions and sort of.
Set them aside favor of, uh, of cool reasoning and logic. And these are all temptations that we have and things we want to pursue. We want to give into those passions and warlike passions sometimes. So the Klingons are there to represent that, but really they were all just sort of human humans and they had the same grasping organs and all this stuff, but I'm reading three body problem right now, which is like dense.
Science fiction stuff and it's like it is definitely science fiction like they are talking about the fringes of science fringes science in it and alien races if they're not like people they're just freaking terrifying like it's just there's like there's no way to do it without just a mountain of weird coming your way because like they're going to think in a way that is just so unfathomable so like you In the three body problem, the humans take advantage of the fact that an alien race they're at war with does not understand lying,
Seth: Right.
Track 1: right?
They have no conception of lying. It doesn't make any sense to them. So the humans lie, and they're able to use, they bluff, basically. And using the bluff, they're able to secure, secure themselves for a time. And, um, it's, there, there are things like, It's, it's even just the, the, the, you never see the alien race in three body problem that, that threatens of the, the trisolarians.
They, they could be the size of a grain of rice, you know, you don't know. And they could be sort of arthropods, you know, instead of human, sort of human sort of shape, sapient shape. And, um, all of this is just so frightfully weird that I think. I'm kind of like, I'm kind of comfortable with this idea of essentially just, like, the Expanse, for example, features, and this is sort of a minor spoiler for the Expanse, there's no aliens really in the Expanse that you ever see.
They speculate as to what prior alien races might have been like, but all of it's about humans, which makes it really fun science fiction because of that. And it really is fiction. But when you include an alien race, you've got to include a thought pattern that involves a completely different physiology, a completely different understanding of their world.
And it. Like, um, Ender's Game was a little like that. They encounter a race of, of, of intelligent ants, essentially. And when they board human spaceships, they immediately went around and killed all the people inside. Because they were like, oh, that's like their sensing organs. They like, didn't even think about it.
They were just like, oh yeah, you murder, you murder all the, all the worker ants. But they were killing individuals. And when they find out that that's what they've been doing, they're mortified. That they've doing that,
Seth: Because it would be like killing the queens.
Track 1: yeah, and they are, they are horrified that each person had agency and individuality, and, and they, they are, they realize they have done something awful, and they, they are repentant, but unable to.
Even communicate their repentance to humanity before it's too late. Aliens are scary and weird. And Asimov just wanted to think about what it would be like if everyone went crazy during night. Like, that's all he wanted to talk about in that book. And, I, I, I, Asimov was always a single issue dude. Like, he just kind of was like, Wouldn't it be weird if robots were sapient?
Like, and he's like, let's write a book about that. You know, wouldn't it be weird if he could predict history by the large, the movements of large groups of people? He's not interested in aliens in the same way that a lot of sci fi authors might have been, you
Seth: hmm.
Track 1: It's interesting. It's weird
Seth: It is.
Track 1: kind of off like that.
Seth: And I think, I mean, I don't know that he's not, I'm not interested in aliens, but I think that he, I think that in his thinking about aliens, because the last book of Foundation talks about this a little bit, in his thinking about aliens, he realized that they would be so different from us. That there would be no points of commonality.
That there would be nothing that we could engage with them on. Likely. Now again, that's all speculation. I do think that, that this also speaks to, um, sort of reader expectation, right? And I wonder if science fiction When he wrote this wasn't well developed enough for people to understand what it was, or at least the hard science fiction that he was writing, right?
Because at the same time we have, uh, you know, John Carter of Mars,
Track 1: Ah,
Seth: not science fiction,
Track 1: Not. Certainly nowhere hard science fiction.
Seth: Exactly, but it's, it's technically considered sci fi.
Track 1: Yeah.
Seth: Right? And so I wonder if what was happening for him is this was sort of his polite way, his polite rebuttal. Against all of these readers, or maybe even, even publishers, or agents, who were like, Throw some weird terms in here, throw some weird stuff in here, because people will eat it up.
Track 1: we'd kind of make the argument as well, like, because we're also, granted, we are 80 years removed from this book, right? Like this is 80 years of science fiction has happened since he. Wrote this and, um, and our expectations have changed in what we want from, um, world building this idea that we always talk about, like, bringing your visitant, like, into your setting and that idea of and things like that.
And he's basically just saying. How about you just immerse yourselves? I want to talk about night. I to talk about it being nighttime and everyone going crazy. It's like, and I, there's a sense in which like, as we read it as modern readers, we're kind of like a little offended by that. And it's like, No, you put me in your setting like I'm reading.
I'm reading Redwall right now to my son and they go like Brian Jacques. I want to say Jacques has Jacques goes to great lengths in that book to constantly remind you. They're mice, right? So he's like, so for those of you don't know, red wall is, is about anthropomorphized mice, but they are very much like actually just living in the English countryside and it's like, so they have an abbey that they've built and they have like a culture and a society.
Humans appear to just be not present, but like they just don't exist in it. And so all the animals just talk. And so you have otters who are great swimmers and excellent slingers of stones. You get badgers who are big, fierce, um, Bloodlust enraged animals and like all this kind of thing are these different animals and they're all sort of like effectively these different sorts of different sorts of races and communities that get along together in Redwall Abbey and he goes to great lengths in those books to be like, it was no more than a pause with, you know, it's like could have said hands with could have given us like these things, but was very, very careful to continuously remind you.
We're talking about mice and like that's the effort that I think I would ask Asimov for in reading this But I think I may be approaching it in a way that he doesn't want
Seth: well see, if, he was writing about an alien race. If it was all robots, he would not describe their hands as fleshy. He would describe them as metallic, because he was a good writer. But, I read this letter as him saying, writing about humans. If you don't like it, imagine something else.
Track 1: Well, it's it's here's the deal though is we also talked about making the main thing the main thing
Seth: That's right.
Track 1: his whole thing is like if humans never experienced darkness The thing they associate it with is predators, basically. Things that are hiding in the You know, it's
Seth: though even that, even that,
Track 1: He doesn't even that far.
Seth: you know, if humans had never experienced darkness, except when they closed their eyes. Would it actually drive them mad?
Track 1: Well, I think he's kind of like just like being like, Suppose if. You know what I mean? Like, it's like a lot of like leaps in there. And it's, this why I think like Asimov is, I would actually challenge the idea that Asimov was necessarily like a particularly great writer. I think he was a concepts guy.
And I think he had fascinating concepts that were really interesting to explore. And I think he wrote. Well enough to convey them in a way that was interesting and engaging and made people think about the worlds that he was creating I know that I would necessarily place him in a in a high category of like this is excellent prose You know as I'm reading it, I'm
Seth: I would, I would say,
Track 1: away.
Seth: I would he was a great writer.
Track 1: Yeah.
Seth: Yeah, I would say that he was a great writer. Um, but that might just be because the Foundation series was in fact foundational for my understanding of fiction, right? I don't think he was necessarily... particularly gifted with his world building or his plot.
Track 1: Yeah,
Seth: I think it's because he was so focused on extrapolating from human society.
Track 1: yeah.
Seth: And so everything that he wrote feels like it could be set In a not too distant future, even the stuff that's in a very distant future, or like in Foundation when, when societies regress, they feel as if they are, um, like if, as if they could be real, but not real in a fun, fantastic way, but real in a really mundane, boring way.
I don't know. I, And again, I think that my, my understanding of his writing is probably colored by when I read it in my life, and I don't know, I haven't, it would be a fascinating thing to go back and read again and see if it still holds up to my adult eyes, you know.
Track 1: what I'm doing. I'm actually rereading Foundation and
Seth: okay, I'm gonna have do that too.
Track 1: hmm, as I read it, because like, there's, there's a lot to like about it, not, not to be like, I'm, I'm really not trying to crap on one of, You know, the most keep saying this term foundational, but like one of the most critical like if you're going to read science fiction and you have not read any Asimov, like, you should probably consider picking up a book and checking him out because like, he's pretty vital.
Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm trying to tiptoe a little bit. Well, that's the, my idea. Like.
Seth: You can be like,
Track 1: wasn't a particularly, yeah, total garbage, but it's like, I think the thing that's interesting is, is looking at these different authors and what we take away from them and what we benefit from with them. Right.
And I think Asimov. Was a, a writer who wanted to focus on a single idea, and, and as I think you said this, extrapolate that concept. And so like, with um, Foundation, a lot of it was, well, could we predict the future? Large movements of people, that seems reasonable. And it's like, it's a plausible idea, and it's what makes it science fiction.
It's like, we could sort of, I can, I can kind of like, I can squint a little bit and see that happening. And then, you also have like this idea of, okay, we've got a galactic empire, what if that collapsed? And how How would civilization rebuild itself and what phases would that need to go in if somebody could look at it like a puppet master from the top and predict big events?
And it's like, it's a really neat idea. And then what would throw a wrench in the works of such a grand design? And like, though, that's what he's talking about. He's not super interested in a Glebe specs instead of miles. You know what I mean? He's not interested in like, you know, how many can do the Kessel run Like though he would never have
Seth: of digits somebody has.
Track 1: Yeah, he's like, not concerned. It's like, know, it's, it's, that's just not his area of interest. He's not looking to explore an alien culture, right, in the same way, though I would argue things like The Expanse does a great job of asking lots of little questions and kind of exploring them about how human cultures would develop in the void and yeah, and it's, it's an interesting thing and I think it's, it's partly For me, part of this makes me think about how we place our heroes in literature.
How we place our, um, our favorite writers and the people that really influenced us. It's like, did they really do, like, when we say that someone's a great writer, sometimes I think we mean it only along one spectrum. And they could be exceptional element of a given spectrum, but we could also say, but their prose doesn't make me weep.
Like, Tolkien will make me cry when I read parts of Tolkien, because it's Beautiful writing. Other parts will bore me to tears, frankly, like he was, he was lavish in his descriptions, but like, there are like, yeah, sometimes tears of boredom, sometimes tears of whimsy, you know, uh, but it's like tears nonetheless.
Um,
Seth: I do think that when we say, And this is, this is sort of getting off topic here a little bit, but I do think that we say, you know, that this person was a great writer, what we often mean is, at the point in my life in which I read this person, they had a significant impact on me, right?
And I think that's what we really mean, because The reality is that, like,
and maybe, maybe my, my eyes are jaded being a writer, um, like doing this for a living. But, like, the really, like, the greats aren't always that good.
Track 1: yeah. I mean, this, this, brings me back to the Brandon Sanderson is your God article. Um. And like I guess like it's so this is an interesting thing and I think actually we should probably have this discussion at some point on here because I think it's actually an interesting thing to talk about.
And now we're a few months removed from it. There's less controversy kind of whipping about it, and I think it would actually be interesting to discuss it because, like, essentially. It was written by a guy who just didn't like Brandon Sanderson's prose. But, like, we don't really go to Brandon Sanderson for his exquisite prose.
We go to him for, like, a really neat hard magic system, and sort of, like, moments of kind of badassery that we sort of want to see, like, with using the tools, and because it's a hard magic system, you can sort of piece it together, and you're like Sherlock Holmes, and when they do the thing, you're like, THEY DID THE THING!
And, like, that's Brandon Sanderson's majesty right there. But, He's good at that, like, does not need to be Shakespeare to be really good at that and to, to move people and to, and to, you know, draw people in and to get them excited. It's kind of like, you don't need to be all things to all men. You need to be something to a group of people who want to buy your books.
Like, that's what
Seth: ha.
Track 1: You know what I mean? Like
Seth: That is, that I've never heard it said better. You don't need to be all things to all men. You need to be some things to a group of people who will buy your books. That is writing in a nutshell.
Track 1: all right. Can we soar any higher Seth? Now
Seth: I don't think
Track 1: it together. All right.
Seth: I,
would, I would like to just say, sort of in closing, um, that I am a huge proponent of the idea that you should just be able to write what you want to write, and... And if people don't like it, that's on them.
Track 1: Yeah.
Seth: So, as a writer, just do your thing. Write what you want to write.
If you don't want to write about aliens, don't write about aliens. If you want to write about aliens, write about aliens. You know, same thing.
Track 1: write it, write it. A curt but polite letter explaining to people that you didn't want to do that.
Seth: Literally just being like, shove off. I'm doing
Track 1: I wanted to write it this way. I wrote the book I wanted.
Seth: That's right.
Track 1: That's perfect. All right. Go enjoy the couch with your wife. I'll see you,
Seth: Alright, dude.
For those of you keeping a WorldCraft Club podcast, bingo card. This episode was pretty well loaded with entries. Right. What you want to write? I can see this letter, polite though. It was, stirring some folks up. It's frustrating in some ways to distill all the worldbuilding and setting development to, 'Hey, why don't you just pretend these words are different. But I don't think it's reasonable to divorce it from its time and the trends that were present 80 years ago in science fiction, that Asimov was responding to. Perhaps more importantly though. You do not have to write things you don't want to. write. Right. What you're interested in and let your audience come to you. That will mean that sometimes you develop extremely sophisticated elements of your settings, such as in the case of Brandon Sanderson, where he had a hard magic system that was incredibly involved, but might sometimes have struggled a little with the pros. But other parts of your setting may be left feeling to you. Conspicuously blank. This can be fine to do at times. if Asimov can get away with it. So can you, I hope you enjoyed sitting in with me and Seth drilling down on this topic.
If you catch a moment, please go ahead and rate us and review us on your favorite podcasting app. And also, if you want to find Seth stuff, it's all
[email protected]. That is S E T H R I N g.com. You can find his entire catalog there.
There'll be a link for it in the show notes. Don't forget to check out our link tree to join our discord. If you want to have more conversations like this with us in real life, or if you want to pick up your copy of The Worldbuilder's Journal to help you level up your worldbuilding game. For Seth, I'm James. And this has been another episode of the WorldCraft Club podcast. Thank you so much for listening.
