Tag: World Building

  • Researching a Novel:
    Trekking the Rain Forest

    The untouched or virgin rain forest was called primary jungle. Primary jungle was what most people thought of when they thought of rain forests: huge hardwood trees, mahogany and teak and ebony, and underneath a lower layer of ferns and palms, clinging to the ground. Primary jungle was dark and foreboding, but actually easy to…

  • Researching a Novel:
    Lost Worlds above the Clouds

    It was a dull gray landscape, and as I gradually deciphered the details of it I realized that it represented a long and enormously high line of cliffs exactly like an immense cataract seen in the distance, with a sloping, tree-clad plain in the foreground.  That’s George Edward Challenger describing the Amazonian plateau in Arthur…

  • The Portal Opens: GenCon Preview, Part 2

    The portal opens, and for one week the city changes, reality morphs, fantasy rules. The event is GenCon, the massive fantasy and science fiction gaming convention that takes over Indianapolis each August.  Attendance this year is projected to break past records, which were well beyond 40,000 attendees. Part of the event is the GenCon Writer’s…