Clik here to view.
Living on the Land
A lone river winding through the desert. A pair of wide plains. A fragmented land of islands and mountain valleys. When you’re building a world, the land matters. The land we live in shapes the way our...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Food Production: The Original 99%
We have some berry bushes and a few fruit trees in our back yard. Every spring I plant a few vegetables in a couple of small patches (some years they produce; other years they just wither under the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Some Notes on Gender and Power (Part 1)
Gender and power are two very big and complicated topics. Put them together and you get something even bigger and complicateder. (Yes, I said “complicateder.” Deal with it.) They are also two topics...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Labor
The majority of the stuff that needs to get done in an agrarian society is basic manual labor: primarily farm work, but also things like construction, building and road maintenance, mining, carrying,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Judean Date Palm Lives Again
The only living Judean date palm, at Kibbutz Ketura, Israel. Photograph by Benjitheijneb The Judean date palm was a plant of great economic and cultural importance in the ancient Mediterranean. It grew...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Headcanon: Underground Hydroponics in The Hunger Games World
From time to time, I get sucked into thinking about the pragmatics of fictional worlds. By that I mean all the mundane details of how people lead their everyday lives, starting from the very basic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Travel: Large Groups on Foot
Sometimes writing fiction means not just moving a few characters around the map but planning entire campaigns for massive armies. In previous entries in the travel series we looked at some basic issues...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Land Tenure
Land tenure. The very words sound boring. Perhaps they conjure images of gray-haired men in tweed jackets with elbow patches picnicking beside a barley field. But stick with me for a minute here,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
This Is Not the Food
When characters in fantasy fiction sit down to a meal, we have a pretty god idea of what to expect. If the setting is Europe-ish, you can count on hearty bowls of stew, roasted meats dripping with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Makes a Fantasy World Feel European?
One of the workshops I attended at Worldcon 75 was about non-European-based fantasy worldbuilding. It was a lively and enjoyable workshop, but—no doubt for logistical reasons—the discussion of what...
View Article
