Planetside: The Online Magazine of SFWA

Planetside: The Online Magazine of SFWA

Planetside: The Online Magazine of SFWA

World Fantasy Nominee list

SFWA extends our congratulations to the nominees for this Year’s World Fantasy Awards. The World Fantasy Convention is an annual gathering of professionals, collectors and others interested in the field of light and dark fantasy art and literature. The number of attending memberships are limited, and usually sell out in advance of the start of the convention. The World Fantasy Awards are presented during a Sunday afternoon banquet.

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

The following list of questions is meant to aid authors of fantasy fiction who are seeking to create believable imaginary settings for their stories. While many of these questions may be helpful or crucial to certain stories, they will not all apply to every story. It is not necessary for an author to answer all, or even any, of the questions in order to start writing, (or to finish writing, either). The idea is simply to provoke people into thinking about the ways their settings and backgrounds hang together … or don’t. If it’s useful, use it. If not, don’t.

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions: Daily Life

By Patricia C. Wrede General How do ordinary people feel about foreigners? Non-humans? How ready are they to accept different ideas? How cosmopolitan are they? How much social mobility is there? Is it easy or hard for a person born a peasant to advance to the middle class, or a middle class person to the […]

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions: Commerce, Trade, and Public Life

By Patricia C. Wrede General Which peoples/countries/races fought, allied, traded, or were traditional rivals? Where are there still hard feelings about old events? Is there a “trade language” that facilitates commerce between countries that don’t speak the same tongue? Is there a “universal language” spoken by educated or noble persons, as Latin was in the […]

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