New Worlds: Where Do Armies Come From?
Before you can send your forces anywhere, you have to get them together first. This week, the New Worlds Patreon looks at standing armies, levies, and more! Comment over there.
Posts Tagged ‘book view cafe’
New Worlds: Military Types
The New Worlds Patreon has already looked at violence on a small, interpersonal scale, but now the time has come to turn our attention to conflict on a military scale. We begin with the types of military forces that get fielded — comment over there!
New Worlds: Language Variance on the Page
It’s traditional with the New Worlds Patreon that when there are five Fridays in the month, the fifth essay is a “theory post,” looking at either some anthropological concept that’s of use in worldbuilding, or a craft question of how to get this stuff on the page. This time you’re getting the latter, with a survey of how to represent things like dialects in a story. Comment over there!
New Worlds: The Games Languages Play
Okay, I admit it. For this week’s New Worlds Patreon essay, I really let my linguistic nerd flag fly, talking about the way you can use the grammatical features of the language your characters are speaking — features not present in English — as part of worldbuilding. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Sign Languages
Not all communication uses the voice or the page! This week, the New Worlds Patreon turns to the world of sign languages. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Dialects, Pidgins, and Creoles
Last week’s New Worlds Patreon post talked about multilingualism in a way that made it sound like languages exist in separate, clearly-demarcated blocks. Since that isn’t true, now we’re turning our attention to the messy boundaries of dialects, pidgins, and creoles! Comment over there.
New Worlds: Multilingualism and Lingua Francas
Do you speak a foreign language? This week the New Worlds Patreon considers multilingualism (superpower? or not?) and the use of a common tongue to communicate across diverse communities. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Bargaining Chips
For the conclusion of the New Worlds Patreon tour through different types of commerce, we’re taking a look at bargaining! Hint: contrary to what fiction would have you believe, there’s a lot more to it than just throwing numbers at each other until you meet in the exact middle between your starting positions. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Let’s Go Shopping!
The tour of the New Worlds Patreon through various commercial topics has reached the familiar setup we mostly use today, i.e. stores. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Come Buy, Come Buy
We’ve gotten very sedate with much of our commerce, conducting it behind doors and walls. But many things used to be sold on the streets (and in a few, limited cases still are), so this week the New Worlds Patreon takes a look at that approach! Comment over there.
New Worlds: Off to Market
A new month, a new theme! The lovely backers of the New Worlds Patreon have voted for an economic motif this month, so we’re beginning with a look at periodic (and then permanent) markets. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Next in Line
The question of who inherits your money/land/title when you’re gone can get . . . complicated. This week, the New Worlds Patreon wades into the tangled thicket of inheritance and succession! Comment over there.
New Worlds: Autocrats, Dictators, and Tyrants
They say the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship — but of course there are all kinds of problems with that . . . This week, the New Worlds Patreon takes a look at absolute monarchs, dictators, and other individuals who hold supreme power. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Royal Dignity
Even though kings and queens are human beings like everybody else, they can’t always afford to seem like it. The New Worlds Patreon is taking a look at royal dignity and its role in maintaining a government — comment over there!
New Worlds: There Can Be Only One
One ruler, that is. This week, the New Worlds Patreon starts taking a look at those monarchies you see so often in science fiction and fantasy. Comment over there!
MAPS TO NOWHERE now in print!
One of my projects for 2021 is to start working my way through my backlist of BVC titles and get the majority* of them into print editions. That project starts now, with Maps to Nowhere!
It’s a slim little paperback, about the size of a novella, and you can get it now from Barnes and Noble, Book Depository, Bookshop.org (which, btw, has become one of my favorite places to order from — it’s the latest development in supporting independent bookstores), or Amazon US or UK. (Full disclosure: I get a commission from sales through the Amazon US link. Which is nice, but did I mention I really like Bookshop.org?)
The others will follow in due course — with the asterisk up above being that some titles (Never After, Monstrous Beauty) are too short for print editions, while others In London’s Shadow, The Doppelganger Omnibus) are too long. But the rest are Goldilocks-approved, and over the next year or so, I hope to roll them all out!
New Worlds: The Pace of Change
It being a fifth Friday, the New Worlds Patreon has a theory post for you! This week we’re looking at change over time, and the extent to which we may mis-perceive how fast and/or inevitable that is. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Bodyguards
The April tour of the New Worlds Patreon through interpersonal violence wraps up with protection from same, in the form of bodyguards. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Hostages and Ransoms
Would you beggar your kingdom to buy your king back? This week on the New Worlds Patreon, we take a look at hostages and ransoms. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Family Feud
In between the personal conflicts of individuals and the state-wide conflicts of wars, the New Worlds Patreon takes a look at feuds: long-running wars of retaliation (and sometimes escalation) between families and other such groups. Comment over there!
