There’s no running from worldbuilding anymore. A tidbit of information about The Hunger Games films or “Game of Thrones” leaks, provoking fans and news outlets alike into a frenzy. Entire wikis are meticulously curated for each series, every line and scene analyzed for maximum informative potential. The ability to craft an expansive fictional sandbox for readers to immerse themselves in has become as important as plot lines or characters in determining the enduring popularity or success of a fantasy series.
But in the fervor of fans, the celebration of these cultural phenomena, there is often a tendency to overlook the significance of similar works and worlds created by writers of color and those who represent marginalized or oppressed communities. Fictional worlds that prioritize the representation and reflection of the lives of people of color is vital; for just like anyone else, says sci-fi/fantasy author Kirk Johnson, people of color “hunger to see [themselves] as heroic figures, desperate parents, star-crossed lovers, or battle-weary outcasts.”
The possibilities of worldbuilding for readers are endless, yet the finished products often fit into familiar, well-worn stories and themes: sorcery and dragons; technology and space; a post-apocalyptic dystopia where all is not as it seems. For all their acclaim, series like “Game of Thrones,” The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter generally adhere to widely accepted visions of what fantasy or science fiction should be: fantastical variations on historical time periods, futuristic speculation on how humanity’s modern problems could spiral into dystopia, or fantastical imaginings of modern times. They often reflect the overwhelmingly white characters and communities whose perspectives are always given the most literary attention. Which is not to say that any of the aforementioned popular series aren’t riveting and highly entertaining — they are. But stories that ignore or overlook the realities of oppressed and marginalized groups (or seek to replace them with fictional analogues like elves, ogres, or vampires) can also undermine their own potency and potential.
For readers from marginalized communities, communities impacted by oppression and violence, fictional worlds have the potential to act as irreplaceable portals through which we can grapple with not only our tumultuous past and difficult present, but also the promise of a more hopeful future.
As writers of color continue to slowly gain space and visibility in the realm of publishing, the scope and possibility of what permutations worldbuilding can encompass also expands. We can consider worlds in which protagonists must contend not only with dark prophecies and darker enemies, but also with gentrification and unreliable subway lines. Worlds in which the physical forms and identities of deities and heroes are as multicultural, multi-hued, and complex as the ordinary humans amongst whom they live and die. Worlds in which humanity is challenged to reconsider notions of sexuality, gender, race, and even our identity as a species, each struggle just as vital and important as the others.
Authors like N.K. Jemisin, Daniel José Older, and Octavia Butler craft worlds that don’t include people of color solely as token acknowledgements. They rely on the existence, variety, and vitality of minority communities as the foundation of their worlds. And rightly so, as the stories and struggles of people of color and other groups in the margins have long served as the inspiration or basis for myriad stories within the sci-fi and fantasy genres. To quote Junot Diaz: “Without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as people of color, nothing about [science fiction] or [fantasy] culture would make sense.”
Through diverse representation and the inclusion of stories that center more people of color, the potential of what a fictional world can be or represent deepens. When done well, worldbuilding represents more than just the allure of escapism, a respite from the world we inhabit — it can also create the opportunity for a deeper understanding of our own world, by tweaking the reality we know in ways subtle or dramatic. To delve deep into comprehending our problems, our history, our differences — fictional though they may be in fantasy worlds — is to seek a more profound understanding of how societies are formed, how tiny moments and choices can have immense impact, and how each of us has the power to help to shape the narrative of the world around us. As Jemisin writes:
That’s the whole point of speculative fiction for me, really — playing the “what-if” game. What if, all other things being equal and people being people, the apocalypse happened every few hundred years? What if, all other things being equal and people being people, gods lived among us, and were sometimes real assholes? Those what-ifs don’t work without the people being people part. Which means I need to understand people, in the real world, in all their glory and grotesquerie.
So, for those of you who get frustrated by how often I post about Ferguson, or bigotry in video games, or whatever, and who wish I would just stick to writing…well. I get that you might not be interested in the stuff that interests me. But you might want to expand your definition of what’s relevant to writing, is all I’m saying. For the worldbuilder, all the world is necessary fuel.
What we learn about our own reality can often prove as fantastic or strange as anything in fiction. Anyone who has spent hours on a Wikipedia bender that starts at “toothpaste” and ends at “Tesla coils” understands that part of the appeal is not simply understanding the “what” of a thing, but the “why” and the “how.” Fiction encourages readers to engage with the reality we already know with our views slightly tilted — to see the world we live in with fresh eyes. The imagining and understanding of new worlds can encourage us forward in the real world, towards a different or better state.
There are potential dangers, of course: highly detailed worldbuilding can divert our attention from truly seeing the people who inhabit these worlds, or thinking critically about all of their choices. Yet the idea that worldbuilding might encourage myopic, unquestioning, or passive devotion on the part of fans both underestimates us as readers and misinterprets our love for the series that move us. There is little to be seen as passive or powerless in readers seeking to fill in the gaps of a real world that is lacking; to drive back the fog of ignorance by leaving no stone unturned — including in fictional worlds — in a pursuit of a deeper understanding of humanity.
Author Daniel José Older reminds us that writers must also take responsibility for the contexts chosen for their stories, as well as those contexts that are often ignored, unacknowledged, or suppressed. In “Context as Crisis: The Street is a Book,” he writes: “The art of contextualizing is inherently political because it defines what matters: what we place center stage, what we push to the margins, what we erase. A photographer makes this call in an instant – with a turn of a switch or the choice of an angle, a massacre can become a revolution and vice-a-versa. When crafting a story, it’s the writer’s job to let the world bleed through onto the page in a way that feels natural, unforced. What truths are told in the daily existence of each character? What secrets does the street reveal?”
The real importance and impact of worldbuilding lies in what worlds we choose to pay attention to, which narratives we choose to engage with, whose stories we choose to tell. Tell a variation on the same story enough times to enough people and it can become a kind of truth by consensus. Without diverse worldbuilding in fiction, without all kinds of characters and stories to love, we can’t see the whole picture. Only through the inclusion of a plurality of voices, of experiences, of identities, can we ensure that the fictional worlds we love to play and engage in reflect the truth and the complexity of our imaginations and our own rich, diverse reality.
Glad to see N.K Jemisin included in this. The Fifth Season is AMAZING by her. Such good word building and story. Absolutely on my list for the Hugo next year.
THE FIFTH SEASON IS SO GOOOOOOOOOOOD.
Sounds like I’m out of the loop. I read her first (?) trilogy (Inheritance?), but didn’t realize she had another series going yet.
Then again, I’ve only read one book this year and it was pretty bad.
Fifth Season is the first in a planned trilogy and just came out a few weeks ago.
She has a duology that came out after her Inheritance Trilogy. Some people like the Dreamblood series more, so it’s worth checking out. I prefer the Inheritance Trilogy, but I quite liked the Dreamblood books.
Yassss I read Fifth Season and I LOVE IT SO MUCH so when I finished that I went straight to the Inheritance trilogy and just finished book one and I LOVE IT SO MUCH it actually hurts me
It is so beautifully, terribly human I can’t stand it
Full stops are for the weak
Oh dang, gonna have to add that to my list…
Can definitely vouch for her Inheritance trilogy also!
I knew I’d seen this name recently! I got an alert that the Inheritance Trilogy (kindle book) is on sale for $7.99 total, but having nothing to connect with the name, didn’t bite on that deal. But I trust rapturous Toastie reviews, so I’m gonna try this out. I also have Ken Liu’s book waiting for me.
Anyone read Anne Leckie’s ‘Ancillary Sword’ series? It’s very good. I’m not sure it qualifies as diverse, but the culture it describes does not use gender pronouns, so you can’t tell if a character is male or female. It confuses the brain a little.
I can’t wait for Ancillary Mercy. It counts on some measures of diversity, and it’s very much about colonialism.
Same! I’m unhealthily obsessed with the series. But I am also not sure that I like the way she treats social justice and colonialism issues by having Breq basically stand up and say “this is why you are wrong and in fact here is how it is going to be from now on.” (I think Jemisin does much better, much more incisive and hard hitting commentary on very similar subjects because she uses the fantasy-world building to illustrate and heighten what’s at stake in the analogous “real-world” issue rather than just make an analogous situation and point out that it’s bad. I think that Fifth Season does a lot more and does it better than Ancillary Sword, basically.) However, the Ancillary books hit all of my personal buttons plus several that I didn’t know I had until I read them, and the result is that I have an Anaander Mianaai -sized conflict about whether they are the best sff series ever or not.
She’s an Ann, you know how pissed off all those Ann(e)s and Sara(h)s get you’ve got to be careful, ok?
I bought Shadowshaper and am literally afraid to open it because I know that I will not be able to stop for the next bunch of hours until I am finished. I have a vacation coming up and I plan to take a day and just read nonstop. Recommendations for more good diverse fiction are always welcome!
The real importance and impact of worldbuilding lies in what worlds we choose to pay attention to, which narratives we choose to engage with, whose stories we choose to tell.
Oh.Yes.Yes! This! I’m ashamed to admit that I had never clearly formulated this in terms of “world building” before.
Just want to throw David Anthony Durham’s Acacia trilogy out there! Off the top of my head it’s got elements of Tolkien’s “monarchs doing epic stuff” and “immortal evil creeping in the shadows”, Le Guin’s “words are magic”, and George R.R. Martin’s “everything is terrible if you’re not royalty”, although Durham doesn’t revel in bleakness as much as Martin seems to.
It tackles politics, slavery, personal redemption, racial dynamics, economic intrigue, prophecy, drug use (enlightenment vs. escapism), family… Characters are well-rounded–even the ostensibly evil characters have complex motivations and redeeming elements.
(I apparently read a lot of books like this) but I really want Durham to keep writing fantasy! I mean, obviously he can write whatever he wants, but I read a lot more fantasy than historical novels, which is more what he’s writing now.
yes, Acacia is a very good trilogy.
*adds to to-read list*
Also in the area of “monarchs doing epic stuff” is Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings, which draws on classical Chinese traditions (and a bit of Homer) for epic plotlines and politics-intrigue-war sagas, and does incredible stuff with a variety of Asian and Pacific Islander history and culture and geography to deliberately make a worlds that isn’t any recognizable “X but with wizards.”
Oh, and Sofia Samatar’s Stranger in Olondria for amazing, non-Western-centric worldbuilding that really does what this essay is asking for and explains world-building details that might not be the details I want but are the details that matter to the story and the characters who are telling it. Also, it’s just a fantastic lyrical novel about the cultural impact of imperialism/globalism and the power of writing.
I think you are mis-reading Tolkien. Neither Bilbo nor Frodo nor Sam are monarchs.
So great to see all the recommendations in this thread! Just wanted to add to the list: Salvage by Alexandra Duncan. It starts out not so diverse on a spaceship, but in the middle the action takes place in a multi-cultural floating city on Earth, and then the last third takes place in a futuristic Mumbai.
Yes to all of this! I just recommended Long Hidden to someone today, so slightly thrown (in a good way!) to immediately come across the cover on the front page here. Another good anthology is We See a Different Frontier, spec fic stories from the perspective of the colonized. Also Aliette de Bodard’s space age Xuya stories, focused on a Vietnamese descended culture in space.
The Fifth Season is high on my tbr list – loved Jemisin’s first trilogy, and all the buzz is super positive. Not a writer of colour, but Kate Elliott has also written good commentary on worldbuilding, and I adored Court of Fives, with worldbuilding influenced by Greco-Roman Egypt, the history of Hawai’i and Ninja Warrior.
Killer of Enemies is a good read. The heroine is a badass young indigenous american woman and the setting is vivid and interesting, full of remnants of the futuristic technologies which are of the past in the post-apocolyptic setting, combined with heightened natural landscapes. The heroine makes use of the bits of tribal lore her family has managed to hold onto in her quest against sci-fi dangers.
It’s always bothered me how often humanity is portrayed as a homogenised WASP blob in Sci-Fi. It’s maybe hundreds of years in the future yet somehow everyone is white, cisgendered, and speaks English. You will see characters from other species before you see characters of different colour or gender.
Olondria represent!
Man, it is nice to get some good recommendations. I want to throw out Max Gladstone’s name, too. While he is a white dude writer, he’s writing some super enjoyable fantasy in the Craft Sequence whose cultural jumping-off points are not European or medieval, so it’s a refreshing change of pace, and he does a good job of exploring modern concerns in these settings (corrupt financial or legal systems, water shortages, environmental abuse, poverty, privilege, etc). And they’re fun novels–briskly paced, crisp writing.
Bonus points for it being a series where you can more or less jump in wherever. I’ve read Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise, and they are minimally linked to one another.
I’ve started reading Nalo Hopkinson’s “Midnight Robber” — the setting is explicitly Afrofuturist, and the language is a version of Caribbean English, with the narration framing the entire story as part-folktale, part-history. It’s really interesting and unique SF, and I’m enjoying it.
Also, “Midnight Robber” introduced me to Peter Minshall, who HOLY CRAP HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS GUY’S WORK. YouTube immediately, seriously.
Two recommendations for my favorite genre: bleak as hell science fiction.
1) Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorator. It’s set in a futuristic/ magical Africa and the protagonist is a biracial witch who is trying to save her people from her father, an evil sorcerer, while navigating her society’s disgust at biracial people. Explores themes of colonialism, revenge, and women’s sexuality.
2) The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Set in futuristic Brazil. Full of nano machines, art as political rebellion (the main character is an artist) and explorations of alternative sexuality and varied ways of being human/ post-human.
Confession time: I have never actually read any Octavia Butler and it is time to fix that. What do I start with?
‘The Parable of the Sower’ is a terrific novel, as is the underrated (incredibly bleak) sequel. Fascinating protagonist, a slow dystopian crumbling and an underlying philosophy (part Tao, part vitalism) that I find utterly engrossing. If I had to name one gripe, it’s a that the novel does seem oddly panicked about the destructive potential of the uneducated lower class and drug users – bit Hobbesian, people-without-restruictions-are-horrid-type stuff. . Apart from that, a thought-provoking, bleak, harrowing, yet hopeful read.
Yes, Sower (and the sequel “Parable of the Talents”) are amazing. “Kindred” is a good standalone, as is “Fledgling.” Also the short story “Speech Sounds” is chilling and wonderful: http://boblyman.net/englt392/texts/speech_sounds….
If you find you like her stuff, there are a couple of longer series that have been published in one volume each: “Lilith’s Brood” (3 novels) and “Seed to Harvest” (4 novels).
I find “WIld Seed” (the first of the Seed to Harvest/Patternmaster series) works well as a standalone.
I was just in East Africa recently (I live in Canada) and, while staring out at the gorgeous landscape, thinking about how awesome it would be to have a fantasy novel set primarily in that type of setting. I work in a bookstore but unfortunately diverse fantasy are not the books likely to be faced-out or put on tables. So I really appreciate this article and the suggestions in the comments!
Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor is a very good (so far) science fiction novel set in Nigeria, though I do not know where in East Africa you were.
I recommend Malinda Lo’s YA books, which are not only ethnically diverse, but have LGBT characters.
Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen) and Ian C Esslemont (Tales of the Malazan Empire) have (combined) over 15 novels set in a culturally diverse, gender equal world, in which people of colour and women feature prominently as central characters and POV characters. The settings are non-European and the range of stories within that world are pretty phenomenal.
Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant is another really engaging fantasy influenced by European colonisation of a native land. Again women and people of colour feature prominently. Also, given its focus on cultural subversion rather than military occupation, it is a fascinating read.
I would also second recommendations for Max Gladstone’s Craft series. Really interesting and engaging novels.
I love this!!!! The exact reason stated above–” it can also create the opportunity for a deeper understanding of our own world, by tweaking the reality we know in ways subtle or dramatic”–is one of the reasons I write fantasy. I love to take unsolvable problems or situations that could have played out any number of ways yet we all take for granted, and tweak them to see how they change. It’s a powerful genre for understanding our own world more deeply.
Oh, and I love N.K. Jemisin’s works!!