“In this bright future you can't forget your past.” - Bob Marley

The Past is the Key to the Present and the Future

Without a history, your story may fall apart at the seams. This again is part of the building of your world or universe. However things are now in your story, you still need to inform your reader about how things were back then. As we’ve mentioned, you don’t need to beat the reader over the head with the reams of information you have hidden in the depths of your brain, but if you have given thought to the history of your story world ahead of time, your story will be easier to write than having to try and make it up as you go along.

This is also true of evolution within your story world. So, you’ve invented a multi-toed Borschtnapper that lives solely on discarded mattresses from the Empire of Gravy. Nice. But how did it evolve? You don’t have to go into the entire evolutionary mechanism here, but why would it develop? Even in comedy Sci-Fi you have to give this some thought. For example, in the Empire of Gravy, the Emperor might exude a substance that is rich in nutrients which soak into his matresses. The matresses are replaced daily and disposed of, so the Borschtnapper (it also helps to invent a creature you can spell easily) can ingest this ambrosial substance by eating the used matresses and grow strong. The strongest Borschtnapper (wish I’d called it a Fnik now) are then harnessed to the chariot of the Emperor who feeds them additional nutrients to enable their time / space travelling capability. Weird maybe, but there’s at least a reason for their existence there rather than being just gross.

On this green and blue marble we call Earth, we’re aware of our history, both recent and further back into the world of geology. But even if you start looking at alternative histories you still need to know the history up to the point of the divergence, and then work out why that divergence happened and the ramifications of that altered timeline.

Harry Turtledove is an absolute master of the Alternate History subgenre. His World War series for example has aliens landing bang in the middle of World War 2. His knowledge of World War 2 history is excellent and really carries the story, but additionally he has invented an alien species complete with their own history and evolution, who then alter the course of Earth’s history to produce a world encompassing story linking several species, both human and alien.

As mentioned before, this all comes down to the continuance of asking yourself questions. How would the species interact? Why would the aliens let humankind live? How would humans fight back if indeed they could? What are the cultural differences that might flummox an alien invader? Would the alien species favour certain parts / climate zones of the Earth due to their own evolution? And on and on. More questions = more answers = a more complete world history.

Language and Making up New Words

Unless you’re as deeply educated and as talented a linguist as JRR Tolkein, we’d suggest you don’t start inventing entire new languages. This was quite a fad at one point, particularly in some of the more fantasy based SciFi. If you have the time, inclination, and energy to expend, then go for it, but it makes it incredibly difficult as a writer to remember all the words, their exact meaning and use, and of course the spelling. It also means you have to educate your reader as you go and assume they’re engaged enough to bother joining in.

As James Blish once noted “If it looks like a rabbit and acts like a rabbit, calling it a ‘shmeerp’ doesn’t make it alien.”

There are however some great words that have come from Science Fiction over the years which are now accepted into the English language. Robot is one, and even comedy words like Frak, Smeg or Shazbot can be utilised. But these are exceptions to the rule we’d suggest. You can of course go completely off the scale and use a normal word to mean something else entirely. Douglas Adams was a master of this, and according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, - "Belgium" is the foulest word that can be uttered, except on Earth, where we're too dumb to get it.

You can convey the sense of language without having to bamboozle your reader. A commonly accepted method is to have a phrase like “Anstet pah korim!” immediately repeated in English when the speaker realises he’s talking to someone who doesn’t understand it. Ultimately though you don’t really have to use a non-English (assuming you’re writing in English) language to convey the story or even the foreignness of some of your characters.

If you absolutely feel you have to have a made up language in there, consider seriously making it pronounceable by your English speaking readers. Non-English words are a distraction. Non-English words which make no sense, or have unusual pronunciations that the reader has to learn are even more so. Some of the African languages for example have various clicks in them that Western tongues find almost impossible to re-produce. Why have a word like ‘Xxx!IpT’pssot’ when you can simply say ‘book’, or whatever the linguistic alternative might be. Putting in words like this kicks your reader off his/her imagination train and makes them stop to think about the one word rather than keeping them buried in the world you’ve created. Having strong words for places and names is essential, and there you can diversify a little, but we read aloud inside our heads and having a massive Clunk! dropped into a story like disassociates the reader.

But Slartibartfarst is cool.

There is a difference however between the clunk created between a daft and meaningless word, and pure jargon. Every group or community develops jargon, whether it be in the workplace, a village, or a subset of a community such as a gang. That jargon has a distinct meaning and can often be derived from ‘normal’ language. For example, in the film The Fifth Element, the phrase “Are we Green?” means “Are we ok / are we good / do you understand?” and is derived from the Green of a traffic light, meaning ‘good to go’. Jargon like this can be an intrinsic part of your story and everything from Firefly to Star Wars uses phrases like this to convey the SciFi-ness of the story. Just don’t over do it.

Are we green?

‘Scapes and Scenery

This is the bit most people think of when they’re creating their world. What are the landscapes, cityscapes, or star systems? Where are you and what does it look like? How does your world affect the people, their evolution, development and how they live?

This is true wherever you set your story. Whether you’re building a civilisation on a non-rotating planet, where life can only exist in a narrow ‘rim’ around the planet, in a society where magic and science go hand in hand, or in a dystopian cityscape dominated by the mutated dregs of humanity, the land will have a significant impact on its people.

Even if you’re writing as pure and ‘hard’ SciFi as you can with all the tenets of Science and theoretical physics built-in, do not underestimate the importance of the sociology and character development. You can have a wonderfully ‘correct’ story scientifically, but no-one will read it if your characters and scenery are one-dimensional and uninteresting. Likewise, you may have a wonderful main character, but if your world is full of inconsistency or dubious/inexplicable science you may also fail to retain readers.

Read some of the great stories in science fiction,and take note of how other people have written. You will never stop learning, and the more you’ve read the better prepared you will be to start writing yourself.

For example, in Larry Niven’s, The Integral Trees, the story is set in an inhabited gas torus orbiting a neutron star. There is no ground, no up or down, but the torus supports a variety of native life and the invasive species of man. Creatures in the torus have evolved with trilateral symmetry, so they can see in all directions, and there are ‘ponds’ (globs of water of various sizes which float free like everything else), the eponymous integral trees and occasional jungles.

There is a lot more to the world building aspect of the story than just the information above, but the environment Niven has created in the Integral Trees is both scientifically interesting, gives rise to an entire genera of organisms, and also shapes the human interaction within the story, as man too has evolved to cope with this new non-Earth environment.

For any world you create it’s always worth considering how the landscapes and scenery affect your characters, from simple things like moving around, to where they get their food. Niven is a prime example of a hard science fiction writer who can invent an incredible vista for his characters to play in, without forgetting he needs to create a story with engaging characters who are utterly immersed in the skyscape around then.