Recent content by FifthView

I think that'd be a good debate. Negotiations for peace often follow hostilities, and the negotiations may be a process for deciding whether hostilities will continue or a peaceful solution may be found. The Emperor and Feyd-Rautha were all for continuing the hostilities. (Perhaps that other...

I haven't suffered from authentic worldbuilders disease. But I've had a psychosomatic version. I've sometimes focused on creating more elements of the world to try to distract myself from having to consider plot and characters in more depth than I already have, or from having to actually...

All the time. For me personally, there are two lines of thinking I have whenever I've realized I am paralyzed or at least blocked from a fear of not being able to accomplish what I've imagined in my head: 1. Yes, I really am not doing something right. 2. But, if I don't even try, I'm...

I loved that. I'm not sure that would make a satisfying climax for a novel, but maybe it'd work if what precedes it left some doubt about how that negotiation might go. (Let's say both parties are prepared to unleash devastation if the negotiation goes bad, on a single-word command during...

I keep trying to picture how to make the negotiation itself a satisfying climactic scene. I keep coming up with something like Poirot collecting all concerned parties together and revealing everything he knows in a piecemeal fashion with an eye for the effect his presentation causes, with...

This is a really great point. Often when threads about creating tension arise, the question will seem to revolve around the idea that tension can only be created through action, maybe through physical violence and the threat of physical violence. But tension can be created in so many other...

Yeah, historical fantasy has been done lots of times. Mary Robinette Kowal writes in that genre. Here's one Writing Excuses podcast in which she and others discuss the subgenre: Writing Excuses 7.7: Historical Fantasy | Writing Excuses Just in case, here's an earlier podcast in which they...

You could try reading Robert Asprin's MythAdventures series of books. They are light, comical stories, fairly short. Skeeve is a magician's apprentice who always finds himself in a position of responsibility with an overblown reputation—as far as magic goes, he's mostly a charlatan—and he's...

Ghosts and skeletons. But then it goes right through them.

Probably, how we define ideal makes a difference. I mean, I could conceive of the ideal cynical world, heh. But my picture might not be like another's picture of the ideal cynical world. I do think that the verb form, idealize, tends to carry the kind of weight you've given it. And the...

High fantasy - Idealized reality. Low fantasy - Flight from idealized reality. Hard sci-fi - Flight from idealized reality. Soft sci-fi - Idealized reality. —with the distinctions between different works resting on who (author) is doing the idealizations, heh. But I don't know...

I think I'm going to go with what I wrote in that other thread. Distinguishing between fantasy and SF may not always be easy, there may be some overlap—they are both speculative fiction, heh—but science fiction will require at least some recognizably scientific explanation for the fantastic...

No, what I concluded was this: In the bit you quoted, I was responding to someone else and referencing your original post, where you were looking for an explanation of the undead. You've since moved the goal post by deciding that these undead don't exist in your world. But if you look at my...

I agree. Just write it. It'll come across as fantasy without the explanation. What threw me off is the OP's question of trying to explain undeath and how it spreads. That's like looking for an explanation in what was called a world where magic does not exist. ("Or, almost.") So it was like...

It...depends. :D If I were writing such a story and wanted to market it as SF, I'd feel compelled to offer the scientific explanation of things or at least suggest a substructure of science. This would probably require outsiders to that planet or else individuals on the planet who know there is...