In One of Tolkien’s widely recognized essays "On fairy stories" he emphasized that the happy ending, the "eucatastrophe", is an essential element of Fantasy, necessary for it to fulfill its major functions: Recovery, Escape, Consolation. It is ironic ...

Last we looked at why it's worth creating a solid world for your original work. This time, we're going to look at what you'll need to "know" about your setting, and how one small question can define an entire plot. ...

Parallel Earths are a classic element of writing, almost as commonly accepted as aliens, faster-than-light-travel, magic, and cyberspace. Indeed, my entire Xai project is based on the idea of parallel worlds - so it's a subject close to my heart and a few other vital internal organs

Writing parallel Earths however is more difficult than it seems. It's easy to slap a few changes on our world or on a particular time period - but this doesn't mean it produces a consistent, coherent, or believable ...

Maybe you hadn't heard the news - but HarperCollins apparently wants to write more Narnia stories - but without the Christian influence.

Check out:

http://slate.msn.com/culturebox/entr...-18_110460.asp

Now, normally I don't cover current events in this column, but this one is important to me, and important to building and writing worlds.

Yes, there's debate ...

During the latest American election, I bitterly noted that too much politics was based on three excuses; blame God, blame Darwin, blame history. I think it was a nicely lucid moment of utter bile.

It struck me later that I'd also hit on something in writing - that people often used excuses for elements of their worlds. In fact, as I looked at it, the same three excuses popped up in writing and worldbuilding ...