Writing Craft
Worldbuilding with Magic vs. Science
Navigating the landscape of speculative fiction
How do you build a world that’s believable, rich, and interesting — with vampires, cyborgs, time travel, and other things that don’t exist in our world (today)?
Broadly speaking, it depends on whether your speculative world functions on magic or science. Speculative fiction is an umbrella term for anything that isn’t realism, i.e. anything that isn’t set in the real world as we know it. The two poles of speculative fiction are science fiction and fantasy, though, like everything else in life, there’s a spectrum, and the two poles aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
Below, I map out hard and soft sci-fi, high and soft fantasy, give examples of both and lots of options in between, then end with tips on how to figure out what’s right for you.
Worldbuilding in Science Fiction
Science fiction is bound by the fact that what happens in your world must be explainable by science as we understand (or can predict) it today. Some “science” is more liberal than others. After getting bit by a radioactive spider, Peter Parker could just as easily have gotten cancer instead of turning into Spider-Man, but Stan Lee capitalized on the same scientific phenomenon I’m talking about: that radioactivity often leads to mutations.
Tenet was mind-blowing but it wasn’t strictly scientific to the same extent as Interstellar, which led to academic breakthroughs in astrophysics. The Korean version of the trailer explicitly ends with a firm suggestion to “Feel, don’t think!” while you watch the movie.
How much of the science should you explain? It depends. Worldbuilding is basically the point of older works, like the expansive space opera Dune. The book’s claim to fame is microdetails of the interplanetary spice trade, politics, war strategies. Like others of its era, the story was meant to stretch and massage the brain, to captivate with the possibility of what could happen.
This sub-genre where every conceivable detail is fleshed out is known as hard sci-fi, as in the science is tangible and infallible. This is typically the type of science fiction in age-old sci-fi magazines like Asimov’s and Science Fiction & Fantasy.
We’d probably never get to the interesting questions of sexual fluidity if the writers had spent time explaining all the tech; we might not have the episode at all if the writers found the technology impossible with no workaround solution.
Black Mirror episodes are completely different. Each episode takes a technology we already know (baby/child monitoring, dash cams, “likes” on social media) and only slightly updates it because the main point is to use technology to reveal more about humans.
- Are virtual, simulated interactions the blue-pill nightmare of The Matrix, or could they be the only place we can be our true selves, as in San Junipero and Striking Vipers?
- Will the ability to record, store, and review almost unlimited footage of our lives help us honor and preserve relationships, or could it become an addiction, a way to cling to the past when the present is broken, or to surveil our lovers, as in The Entire History of You?
Though never quite hard sci-fi, some episodes of Black Mirror lean more towards soft sci-fi, in which the technology isn’t really explained. How does the earpiece in Striking Vipers produce immersive reality (with full tactile capabilities) without invasive wires that hook up to your neurological system? We’d probably never get to the interesting questions of sexual fluidity if the writers had spent time explaining all the tech; we might not have the episode at all if the writers found the technology impossible with no workaround solution.
It doesn’t have to be all one or the other. Most comic book superheroes can be cast as soft sci-fi, though writers will often answer a few of the hard sci-fi-type questions to appease major criticisms. We don’t really need to know why Flash and QuickSilver are super fast to enjoy them, but the writers have indulged us with suits that are heat- and friction-resistant (Flash, in Justice League, 2020) and goggles to keep out the wind (QuickSilver, in X-men, 2014 and 2016). Even then, we don’t really get what exactly is helping get rid of the friction, or why the goggles aren’t flying off, or how their suits and clothes aren’t billowing behind them.
Worldbuilding in Fantasy
Fantasy has the opposite problem: in a realm of magic, where anything could be possible, the job of the writer is to restrict the world in order to preserve opportunities for tension and conflict. In the simplest “war between the good and bad” premise, what would be the fun if anyone could be resurrected from the dead? If you have necromancy, what are the limitations? Does it drain the necromancer? Do the undead return as not-quite-themselves?
Just as with science fiction, how much you want to enhance the world or explain it depends on what your purpose is in writing it and what the reader needs. If you want to show off a world for a sake of it, you need to be meticulous because readers who read fantasy for the sake of worldbuilding are meticulous nitpickers. Tolkien set the bar for this sub-genre, high fantasy, with his expansive, footnoted canon of Middle Earth; Lord of the Rings is just the tip of the iceberg.
Harry Potter similarly revamped well-known mythology but took the soft fantasy route. The magic is somewhat explained — we know they wave wants and chant spells and that practiced wizards can cast spells without wands — but some of the details of the world are fuzzy. Do wizards need plumbing, or can they just wave their poo away? At what point do wizards get to fly, and why does it seem only the bad guys can do it?
Harry Potter also built a world within our world. The wizards are among us, we just don’t see them. This leads to some obvious benefits: it’s cool for readers who want to believe magic could exist in their own world; there’s less worldbuilding required. The biggest drawback is that the worldbuilding has to be tight in order to convincingly gel with the real world.
I have no problem believing muggles and wizards co-exist without knowing much about each other; the same happens in our own world amongst different races and ethnicities. (Case in point: White people asking Asian girls if we have sideways vaginas, or non-Black people referring to Africa as if the continent is a country.) I have more trouble believing there are so many owls. What’s the backup plan for message delivery?
Beyond that, Karen Russell and Carmen Maria Machado are pushing the frontier of speculative fiction today. They don’t fit neatly into any one sub-genre; that’s why their work is widely classified as speculative fiction, though they’ve also been associated with magical realism (in which fantastical elements are presented as normal) and fabulism (a subset of magical realism largely associated with fables).
They write the softest fantasy if you will. Their worlds are more like alternate realities.
By changing the scope of the magic, Machado and Russell emphasized different aspects of our lives as individuals versus our shared experiences as a society.
In Pretty Women Have Real Bodies (PWHRB), Machado crafts a world where women start fading, essentially turning into ghosts without dying. No one knows why; the characters scour the internet; media goes mad. The main character’s love interest starts gnawing spinach like Popeye because she read somewhere that could help.
Machado uses this world to explore how physical touch affects human connection, and how a woman’s value is determined by her body. People in the story act as if faded women are dead; the men in particular act as if faded women are useless at best because there’s no “Hips and enough for you to grab onto.” At worst, the men treat faded women with mistrust, which topples over into hysteria towards non-faded women who might start fading.
In Russell’s The New Veterans, a female masseuse takes on a new male client who needs physical therapy after returning from deployment abroad. While on the massage table, he walks her through the mural of a tattoo on his back and how it symbolizes the story of his last mission. Over their sessions, the story of his last mission changes along with his tattoo.
There’s no indication shape-shifting tattoos happen anywhere else in the world of the story. The masseuse barely believes it’s happening as she watches it unfold before her eyes, and she doesn’t share the information with anyone. Though the masseuse is clearly not the most emotionally healthy person, there’s nothing to suggest she’s outright crazy or that the tattoo is a hallucination.
The point of the story is to explore the shape-shifting nature of memory, especially when fraught with trauma. It’s to explore healing, both physically and emotionally, and how healing can heal the healer.
But beyond that, it makes sense that Russell’s magic affects only the microcosm of the two main characters, as opposed to the societal sweep of fading in Machado’s PWHRB. Machado was exploring how sexism underpins American society, which then has trickle-down effects on individual interactions. Russell was emphasizing how healing from trauma can feel like a deeply individual, isolating experience, especially because we don’t talk about it. Like sexism, most of us share the experience of healing from trauma; like sexism, most of us have experienced this in myriad different ways. Both are bonding and isolating, depending on how you look at it.
By changing the scope of the magic, Machado and Russell emphasized different aspects of our lives as individuals versus our shared experiences as a society.
Magic or Science? Why Not Both?
Like everything else in this world, don’t fall into the trap of false dichotomies.
Science and magic are not mutually exclusive.
- Each can inform the other. My favorite series growing up was The Young Wizards. Each book had wizards using their magic to explore scientific phenomenon (think Harry Potter meets The Magic School Bus). The heroine shrinks herself to fight cancer cells in her mom’s body; the heroine’s little sister accidentally beams herself to another planet when testing her newfound magical powers, then plugs into the “source code” of the planet to populate it with robot life.
- Some “magic” is a form of science that hasn’t been proven by scientific methods yet. Eastern medicine is often categorically scorned and dismissed as snake oil, upheld as an example of the inferiority of the East. Then every day there will be some new study about the healing, medicinal, or otherwise beneficial properties of XYZ food — the underpinning of Eastern medicine. The East understands the best healthcare plan is to eat well and to understand what you’re eating; the best offense is a good defense, preventative over reactive medicine. Missteps are about as common as Westerners using leeches and lobotomies to cure depression.
- Some science really seems like magic. Forget quantum physics and time crystals. Why is the Earth a magnet? Why do dogs poop, pee, and run along geomagnetic poles? We don’t have nearly enough dog superhero stories to capitalize on this.
- They really can be intertwined. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has done a beautiful job of creating a parsimonious framework to explain all of its aliens, cyborgs, and witches. The Infinity Stones seem like magical gems but they’re actually supercomputers, artificial intelligence so advanced they seem human. Like any talisman, the Stones imbue the wielder with certain powers. The Mind stone produced a witch, Scarlet Witch, and effectively became her android boyfriend, Vision. Wizards who can warp reality protect the Time stone, and with it the space-time continuum. Beyond the Stones, Black Panther relies on ancestral magic just as much as cutting-edge vibranium-based technology.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” — Arthur C. Clarke
Beyond that, many genres can be offshoots of either science fiction or fantasy. Horror is a great example. Aliens is total sci-fi; The Haunting of Hill House is probably fantasy with its spectral threats. Ring seems to be both; the work couldn’t function without fantasy (ghosts) and technology (the TV and phone).
How “hard” should your sci-fi, how “high” should your fantasy be?
It depends on:
- Why you’re writing it. For fun? For escape? To blow your own mind with the limitless possibilities of the world? If the former two, the details matter only inasmuch as you gain pleasure from them. If the latter, you’ll need to do research — which, it sounds like, is fun for you!
- Your readers. You’re not enslaved to your readers but you need to understand them. Think about your ideal reader. Does she feel immersed or overwhelmed when you hit her with nitty-gritty details that aren’t strictly necessary for the plot? Do you mind if he gets lost, taking breaks to look up articles on the technology you describe, or would you rather keep the blinders on to make sure he gets to the moral lesson?
- Consistency. I quite liked the cheesy “love is the strongest force in the universe” ending of Interstellar, but a workshop buddy walked out of the theater. I don’t blame him. I don’t mind the jump from rigorous differential equations to fable-esque moral, but it’s quite an “ask.”
At the end of the day, you need to help your readers suspend disbelief. Some are more willing to do so than others, but they shouldn’t be impeded by your lack of clarity.
It’s important to note that some cultures are more okay with the supernatural than others. Some of us are already living in a world of magical realism. Long before Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House, Koreans openly talked about seeing ghosts during sleep paralysis. Reading now-deleted Tweets by Brandon Taylor about his family’s protocol of how to deal with the local ghosts reminded me of the casual acceptance of the inexplicable in (some parts of) Korean culture. All this in turn reminded me of how women can just fly away in 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, among other works in the canon of magical realism, spearheaded by Latin American writers.
I think the best question to ask yourself is:
What drew you to this speculative world?
What can you say that can’t be answered by realism? What do you want to say?
