I’m a sci-fi author and SF&F TV scriptwriter and I get
off big time on building worlds. And fortunately, my novels and scripts have
had some nice stuff said about their world-building (for which I offer up humble
thanks to the Gods of the Review-Spigot, whoever they may be). So, if you’re someone
who likes their fiction to be immersive and thought-hijacking and
un-walk-away-fromable, tasty world building is likely high on your list of the
Next Books to Fall Brain-first Into. And those are the types of novels I recommend
on this site. Check ‘em out. And say so long to (highly overrated) reality for
a while. Cheers.
Zenn Scarlett is a bright, determined, occasionally a-little-too-smart-for-her-own-good 17-year-old girl training hard to become an exoveterinarian. That means she’s specializing…
Don’t be dissuaded by the fact this awesome and thoroughly delightful novel is a distilled, updated, and generally card-sharp-reshuffled version of Sir Thomas Malory’s storyLe Morte d’Arthurwritten in 1485. Basically, it’s a deftly imagined re-telling of the tale of the humble kid who would grow up to become King Arthur – yes, the stable boy who pulled the sword from the stone and went on kingly glory. Why notable for world building? Because: boy-educated-by-wizardly-morphing-into-all-sorts-of-animals. When Wart (the young Arthur) is bodily transformed into a fish, hawk, ant, goose, and badger, he gains first-person insight into how humans are like and/or unlike these various creatures and so gleans vital life lessons that will serve him well in his eventual rise to medieval leadership in the future – a future that, of course, is actually Merlin’s past. So, yeah, character’s-psychology-building is all part of powerful world-building.
Voyager Classics - timeless masterworks of science fiction and fantasy.
A beautiful clothbound edition of The Once and Future King, White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend.
T.H. White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend is an abiding classic. Here all five volumes that make up the story are published together in a single volume, as White himself always wished.
Here is King Arthur and his shining Camelot, beasts who talk and men who fly; knights, wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad; the masterpiece of fantasy by which all others are…
This sci-fi series starts with A Princess of Mars and rambles on for like ten follow-up novels over the next 20 or so years. Is it pulp-y and sort of goofy and vaguely offensive in spots? Oh yes. If any of that bums you out, don’t dive in. But you’ll be missing a true classic from the Golden Age of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which laid the groundwork for all the epic SF & F to come. The Barsoom books are as much swash-and-buckle as ray-gun-and-aliens, which is just part of their charm. And Burroughs’ skill at conjuring up a believable-in-a-1940’s-way take on a Martian civilization is kind of wonderful as he builds up a vision of Mars as a resource-strapped planet where a bevy of unique alien races square off against each other with our oh-so-earnest Earth hero John Carter caught in the middle.
When John Carter goes to sleep in a mysterious cave in the Arizona dessert, he wakes up on the planet Mars. There he meets the fifteen foot tall, four armed, green men of mars, with horse-like dragons, and watch dogs like oversized frogs with ten legs. His adventures continue as he battles great white apes, fights plant men, defies the Goddess of Death, and braves the frozen wastes of Polar Mars. In other adventures, the Prince of Helium encounters a race of telepathic warriors, the Princess of Helium confronts the headless men of Mars, Captain Ulysses Paxton learns the secret…
The three books of His Dark Materials are a grand example of an author tweaking our existing world in such a way that the familiar becomes bewitching and the every day is magicked-up into a glittering alt-version of itself. Drawing readers into the coming-of-age adventures of two uniquely relatable kids, Lyra and Will, the trilogy makes immersive world building look deceptively easy as Pullman transports us from a slightly strange Brit-like reality to a somewhat stranger place to a wildly new realm across the course of the three books. So, if you’re ready to take flight with some wayward witches, converse with armored polar bears and find out what it’d be like to have your own personality-compatible critter-daemon ever at your side, Pullman’s skillfully wrought, multiple world dimensions are well worth visiting.
This special collection features all three titles in the award-winning trilogy: Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.
Northern Lights Lyra Belacqua lives half-wild and carefree among the scholars of Jordan College, with her daemon familiar always by her side. But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle - a struggle born of Gobblers and stolen children, witch clans and armoured bears.
The Subtle Knife Lyra finds herself in a shimmering, haunted otherworld - Cittagazze, where soul-eating Spectres stalk the streets…
No list of this sort would be complete without the Hobbit-Meister himself and his astonishingly detailed, fine-grain-authentic realm of Middle Earth. The world building here is simply perfection itself. Part of the reason for that may be how the books draw on existing mythologies that already have narrative ecologies of their own that have been constructed, deconstructed, and then reassembled and buffed up again for literally thousands of years. From Norse legends to Greek and Christian myths to Teutonic epics, Tolkien’s lands are the stuff of dreams-made-real, somehow ancient beyond counting and yet as relatable, vital, and invigorating as a drink from ice-cold headwaters of the mighty river Anduin. Another major contributor to the credibility of Tolkien’s world is his ability as an academic linguist to have designed his own languages for his various Middle Earth inhabitants. All in all, an unparalleled demonstration of the world-builder’s art.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
With recent feature film and TV mini-series adaptations, Dune is in no danger of being overlooked by any conscious human being with a fondness for big-budget cinematic spectaculars. But the books in the series offer a much more intimate, up-close-and-personal connection to the planets that Herbert has devised as the backdrop for his sweeping sci-fi melodrama. From the watery sumptuousness of Caladan to the heat-hammered wastelands of Arrakis, Herbert makes you feel, smell, hear and somehow physically absorb the elemental nature of each global environment he creates. Herbert picks up on the innate desert-ness of an Arabic-inflected personal- and place-naming technique to draw the reader away from their comfy existence on this planet and pull them into the exotic wonder-worlds of this wildly imaginative series of interplanetary adventures.
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
Zenn Scarlett is a bright, determined, occasionally a-little-too-smart-for-her-own-good 17-year-old girl training hard to become an exoveterinarian. That means she’s specializing in the treatment of exotic alien life forms, mostly large and generally dangerous. Her novice year of training at the Ciscan Cloister Exovet Clinic on Mars will find her working with alien patients from whalehounds the size of a hay barn to a baby Kiran Sunkiller, a colossal floating creature that will grow up to carry a whole sky-city on its back.
A human child raised by the fae is an uncommon thing. But Rafi was such a child.
Now grown, half-fae but mortal, he lingers on the edge of human society in Miryoku, a nearby town sharing a border with fae territory. He doesn’t want to join the human world properly; he just wants to play music with a local cover band and avoid the cruelest members of his fae family.
Then, he meets Roxana, and his world shifts. She’s a human metalworking witch, up for a friendly fling with Rafi before she and her twelve-year-old daughter move away from Miryoku…
A law-abiding metalworking witch and a form-shifting half-fae musician embark on a secret romance, but soon become caught in escalating tensions between fae and humans that threaten their hometown. The second story after the popular Lava Red Feather Blue comes alive in Ballad for Jasmine Town.
The town of Miryoku has ocean views, fragrant jasmine vines, and a thriving arts scene, including a popular nineties cover band. It also sits on the verge, sharing a border with fae territory, a realm of both enchantments and dangers.
Rafi has been unusual all his life: a human born to a fae mother,…