I love well built environments. To me there is nothing more fascinating than diving deep into an amazing world through the eyes of intelligent characters. That’s a large part of the wonder of some of the best science fiction and fantasy out there. Just hearing words like Narnia, Middle Earth, Hogwarts, Tatooine, or Roshar immediately conjure mental images of an entire world filled with new sights, sounds, creatures, societies, and cultures. A tried and true plot, familiar or re-used characterizations, or even problematic and inconsistent plots are much more welcome in a well-constructed and endearing new world. 

I should point out that the opposite is also true. A weakly constructed environment or context can certainly be forgiven with excellent characters and compelling plots! I’ll avoid highlighting books and movies that suffer from this issue (if you can’t say something nice….) but I think most of us can think of a couple examples.

In this discussion, a “world” is much more than the environment or context created by the character. I’m thinking of the “universe” that comes to mind around the books. The broader context in which the environment of the book takes place. 
I think there are two main approaches to universe building, especially in fantasy and science-fiction although world building is just as important when a story is set in the “real-world.”

The first and the most obvious is that of a single author. J.R.R. Tolkien is arguably the best example of this type of world building. As the story goes, he started with a language and from the language he built a world that has withstood over half a century and has, in many ways, become the archetypal fantasy environment. Even without the inclusion of elves and dwarves, fantasy generally takes place in the quasi-medieval world established in Lord of the Rings. There may be obvious magic or it may be more subtle. There may be other creatures like dragons or halflings.  The variations can make the world the author’s own but all owe a hat tip to Tolkien. Rarely does a single author’s work get to define a genre so much as the Lord of the Rings. 

While Tolkien’s stories take place in certain parts of this universe, through his writings we get a sense of the broader universe, its history, its laws of nature, and everything that makes it up.  For Tolkien, this was intentional but for many others it comes out of a richly described setting.

Any other genre setting works or similar intentional world building that I’m missing out on?

The other approach to universe building is communal. In this context, a single person or group puts forth a world and the community grabs onto it to turn it into the world that we recognize. This is more than fan fiction, which has its place, this is active development of a universe, expanding it based on the rules and examples in original works and then building on each other.

Star Wars is an example of this type of communal construction. George Lucas had a concept of Star Wars in the original trilogy. Those movies built a completely brand new science-fiction universe. In a sense, that could have been enough. Those three movies are an incredible trilogy that tell a compelling story with excellent characters. They created a world in and of themselves. Then, the world exploded. Dozens of authors and thousands of fans wanted more. 

That universe became a starting point more than a self-contained world. Hundreds of books have been written expanding the universe. The prequels opened up the universe more. Then, the sequels added more. Now, as Disney moves to expand the universe beyond the Skywalkers through shows and new movies they are taking a more tailored approach. They’ve cast the fan written universe as non-canon and are working on building structured universe. That is fine and understandable, they need a firmer foundation from which to build new plots.

I would argue that the prequels, sequels, shows, and even George Lucas himself were heavily influenced by all of those other builders and its all the richer for it. The prequels, sequels, and ongoing plots all show pieces and parts developed in the expanded fan-generated universe. For example, its hard to say if Lucas planned for Boba Fett to survive Sarlacc. I’ve never read anything about the thought process there but I would not be surprised if they felt it was a fitting end for a villain.  Yet, here we are, 39 years after that fateful tumble and the character has his own show. That is the power of communal universe building.

Many might argue that my second point is misguided and that George Lucas is the sole author.  I’d love to hear thoughts on that. I understand that point of view although I would question why Lord of the Rings has not seen such evolution at the hands of others, or Narnia, Harry Potter, the list goes on. Some world avail themselves of multiple authors and some do not. (Yes, the owners of the IP have a lot to do with that).

Its an obvious fact that the internet has created all kinds of collaboration tools. I think that there is opportunity to use such tools and new methods of IP ownership to foster communal universe building. I would be very interested in exploring this art of building universes. I’m working on a project that I’d like to see prompt such construction. Keep an eye out, I’ll announce more soon.