Criticism is easier than creation: a better world is possible

I was reading a thread on twitter a while back about the importance of world building in fantasy and science fiction. The author pointed to how important it was to have a fully fleshed out world to make it believable. In a fantasy novel, we need not just kings and queens but also celebrities in culture and other amusements.

This is entirely true. How many times have you been reading a book where it just doesn’t ring true to itself so the entire plot that the writer puts into motion on the stage of the setting so the whole thing tumbles. This is harder when you’re creating a new world than when you’re relying on the past or the present to do all the heavy lifting. If I’m thinking of writing a historical novel based on WWII, then there is a lifetime of history that people have absorbed.

World building isn’t just important in fantasy. It’s important in real life. One of the appeals to me for the Manifesto over Capital is that it looks more forward (and is shorter, let’s not kid ourselves). Capital is about looking at the totalizing capitalistic system on its own terms. But what we need to worry about as socialists is the transformation problem. Not esoterics in volume three turning from value to quantified dollar amounts, but the real transformation problem in turning this world into the better world that is possible. We can criticize, but we need to be world builders first.