Worldbuilding your own culture

I love worldbuilding. This is why I read and write speculative fiction: strange food? Unusual flora and fauna? Fun festivals and sinister rituals? Yes, please.

But the reason why I’m particularly attracted to worldbuilding is the fact that constructing new cultures around familiar concepts allows us to create a distorted mirror of our own world. To examine our prejudices and biases in a space removed from the real world by several degrees.

Ever since I started writing, I’ve been buildi...