creating and the one we live in. Writers, in order to create new worlds,
often draw on elements of traditional or past societies. American novel-
ist Ursula LeGuin does this in The Left Hand of Darkness (1981). The
world on the planet Winter, for example, has some quite medieval
aspects to it: the merchants and processions, the royal court and the dress
have medieval resonances. But there are also motor cars on the planet, so
there is a time warp, a mixture of past, present and future.- Is your world going to have the same physical composition as our world?
Is the world going to be inhabited by human beings who need a supply
of oxygen and have cells, blood and bones as we do? If the world is to
be our world in the future, it will probably be similar in physical com-
position to our own, but if it is on another planet it may be radically
different. For example, in LeGuin’s novel, the beings she describes are
androgynous, and they only engage in sexual activities at certain times
in their cycles, a bit like animals who are in heat. Also, the conditions
these people exist in are unlike our own—they live on a planet called
Winter which is extremely cold all the year round, and their bodies are
physically adapted to this climate.
Other physical laws we take for granted might be different in your new
world: for example there might be a completely different concept of time.
Perhaps time might move backwards: a concept discussed by physicist
Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time (1988). Alternatively,
you might ask yourself the question, what would be the consequence if
people had more than five senses, or if people came back from the dead,
or if there was no death?
If we are projecting into a future world, the impact of technology would
be massive. You might want to consider some of the technological break-
throughs which could occur in the future, for example, in terms of
transport, housing, reproduction or education. The novel Neuromancer by
William Gibson (1984) creates a future world in the grip of technology: it
was Gibson who invented the term cyberspace, and who spawned the
genre of writing known as ‘cyberpunk’. You need to weigh up the benefits
and downsides of technology, if you are to construct a digitised world of
the future. And you also might want to consider a post-technological
society in which we return to simpler forms of communication.
Social organisation
Technology is, of course, related not only to physical organisation, but also
to social organisation, which is one of the most stimulating aspects of
considering a new world. Aspects of this you might think about could be:
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