When Worlds Become Characters

Part of the magic of SFF, aka speculative fiction, is world building, a part of the genre that I really love. And in some cases I believe the world itself can be so vividly realized that it becomes a “character” in its own right.

This is certainly true of both China Mieville’s overlapping cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma in The City & The City and Catherynne M Valente’s Palimpsest.

Recently, too, I talked about the SciFi world of Dune, which definitely infuses the story at every level, rather th...