Biology of Fantasy: Let’s Get Real, Shall We?

Throughout human history, mythology is alive with “humanoids”, creatures with certain human qualities. There have been particular cases in trying to justify their existence, but those cases focus on an evolutionary angle. If I were to find some…

How I generated artificial rivers on imaginary continents

Great Lakes Earth: Geography

Let us say that, in the future, some scientists have created satellites capable of something that seems science fiction for now — punching the walls of the universe to study an alternate reality. By that scenario, some hundreds of “alternate Earths” from hundreds of alternate…

Prehistory of Great Lakes Earth

In The Beginning…

Right from the start, Great Lakes Earth proved itself to be different from our own.

At least six billion years ago, what would become the solar system of Great Lakes Earth was once a cluster of…

Building a truly alien alien.

Sometimes all we want to do is to write about people. Maybe humans with a funny hairdo and some odd quirks…

Generating Terrain with Cellular Automata

An approach to building artificial worlds

What If… the Moon was another Earth?

We’ve had articles before on Universe Factory that discuss binary star systems and what…

Good Enough: How to Know When You’re Done

One day you woke up, sat down with paper and pencil or typewriter or computer, and…

Fight Earnestly

“The Sword. I am mortal against any other weapon … I will make those who fight against me weep. And I am royal and maintain the justice: I increase goodness and destroy malice.” — Fiore…