Category: Notes on Worldbuilding Series
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Notes on Worldbuilding, Part 18: The Planet Chart
I’ve been putting together a talk about worldbuilding, distilling this whole series down into a couple of hours. As a handout I’ve created this chart, indexing planetary size against temperature to classify planets. It’s intended as a quick-and-dirty guide for people who don’t really want to go into the minutiae of planetary science. Anyway, here…
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Notes on Worldbuilding, Part 17: Aliens!
We've finally arrived at discussing actual intelligent extraterrestrial beings. I'm going to come at this concept from two directions in separate posts. This entry will discuss the science of alien beings — what they might be like, based on all the previous worldbuilding entries in this series. My next entry will look at aliens from…
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Notes on Worldbuilding Part 16: Alien Reproduction
All living things reproduce. Organisms on Earth have evolved a dizzying array of reproductive habits and anatomy. I'm just going to look at the very basics in this post, and next time we'll look at how reproduction might affect the mentality and society of alien beings. Strategies: Biologists have identified two basic reproductive "strategies" for…
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Notes on Worldbuilding Part 15: Ecologies
I'm going to begin this entry with a warning: I am not an ecologist. Some of the terms I use in this blog post may be inaccurate or incorrect, although I think I'm at least close to the technical meanings. I'm trying to generalize from what we know about ecosystems on Earth to what any…
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Notes on Worldbuilding Part 14: Low-Temperature Biologies
Most of the Universe is really dark and cold, so life which might exist in such conditions is worth thinking about. For every world with oceans of liquid water there are dozens of planets and moons with only ice. There's an upper temperature limit for As-We-Know-It life: above about 333 Kelvin (60 C, or 140…
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Notes on Worldbuilding Part 13: Weird Life at Liquid-Water Temperatures
The last entry discussed possible biochemistries for planets hotter than Earth, ranging from "hot" to "incomprehensibly hot." Such life forms may actually exist in the Universe, but for fictional purposes they're a little inconvenient. When either the aliens or the humans have to make brief visits to the other civilization wearing heavy protective gear, it…
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Notes on Worldbuilding Revived!
I know, it's been more than six months, but now I really really am getting back to the worldbuilding series. I promise. Pinky-swear. As proof of my sincerity, I've updated the entry on hot planet life forms. You can find the revised version here. Next time I'll look at variant life for Earthlike worlds, and…
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Notes on Worldbuilding Update
There's been a slight delay, due to me going to the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans, and then getting over a cold I picked up on the trip. But I'm better now, and I've started by updating the Worldbuilding series. I've added a section on Hycean Worlds to entry number 10, "Weird Worlds." Expect…
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Notes on Worldbuilding Part 12: Hot Life
Update (May 2023): I've amended this entry to reflect some stuff I've learned since I posted it. Specifically, the section on dusty plasma, and an expansion of the sulfur-based life section. Upper Update (December 2023): Isaac Arthur has a video up about silicon-based life. You can watch it here. So far, most of the characteristics of…
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Notes on Worldbuilding Part 11: Artificial Worlds
I wasn't exactly sure where to put this, since it could just as easily appear later in the series after I've discussed alien civilizations and technologies. But this feels like the right place. Until now we've talked about planets and moons which form naturally, the result of random planetesimals and interplanetary dust accreting and colliding.…
The Cambias Digression 