Sure, but once you finish it, there is always that nagging opportunity to go back through it again, following links that will lead you to new content. Ignoring the limiting factors of technology (since technology is always changing), we have the costs of writing and editing. The cost of both would probably follow some kind of power law distribution, where the most frequently read material (the "main" story) requires the most writing and editing effort, and as you go deeper into the wiki, the pages require less effort, since fewer people read them, and the ones who read them are more forgiving of quality. I guess we agree in principle that nonlinear fiction would be an interesting experiment; I am just more optimistic about its advantages over linear fiction. (And to remind anyone reading this discussion: a big motivator for nonlinear fiction is to provide worldbuilding details to interested readers without bogging down uninterested readers with detail unnecessary for understanding the plot. The point of my thought experiment is to show how conventional wisdom about storytelling breaks down when you realize how much of it is merely a response to historical technological constraints that no longer constrain authors. Even if my solution is imperfect, the principle still holds: there exists some kind of solution that enables the author to provide a lot of interesting worldbuilding information without slowing down the story, even if we do not yet know exactly what that solution is.)
Not for me there isn't. Seriously. Even my favourite books, once they're over, are over. If there was something still "nagging" at me I'd consider it a flaw in the story, I think. I thought about that and decided that it shouldn't be the case. I mean, obviously there's room for experimenting, and obviously I'm not the best person to judge what others would find appealing in a category I don't think I'd ever want to read, but it feels like the same care should be taken with extra material as with the original, at least to me. But it's more of a lofty 'artistic sentiment' rather than an actual practical argument. I guess if readers are interested in reading less polished stuff, that'd be cool. I don't know if I agree with this premise, really. There have always been footnotes and appendices, right? (Well, not always, but you know what I mean). Authors have had the ability to provide extra bits to the story for a long time, and most authors don't. Is that because they were limited by technology, or because they wanted to tell (or believed audiences wanted to read) a story in a fairly compact, linear fashion? I never read Tolkien's appendices, but he's an obvious example of an author who took advantage of that structure, historically.
If people want to explore worlds in wiki form that's already possible. All the most popular fantasy series have fan built wikis. Middle Earth, Discworld, A song of Ice and Fire, Wheel of Time etc They all have wikis. I've not seen any author build wikis for their own world, but I haven't looked that hard. I think most authors prefer to write more novels and leave the wiki building to the fans who enjoy piecing everything together. I'm not particularly interested in any of those wikis myself but they'd be a useful resource for people making fan fiction or role playing scenarios and I'm sure certain fans have a lot of fun contributing to the wiki.
I think we wander far off the mark of what Harrison is even talking about. The wiki-thing that @daemon suggests is clearly possible, but that is no longer a novel. That is a different thing. I can see how people might want to engage it as they get trained on Buzzfeed and Facebook, but it's not a thing that would interest me because there's no level of investment. And I know the retort is "Exactly! You engage at your own level of choice." and that makes me sad that we chose distraction over commitment. I would not click that link. But what do I know? When I was a kid we actually got taught how to diagram sentences. Kids today learn what a link is long before they learn what a verb is. I wonder how many people reading this have read any of Harrison's work. I wonder if that matters. I wonder if anyone responding with jealous umbrage over world building has noted the number of threads here in the forum where members describe to us the exhaustive creation of world, races, languages, backstories, geographies, magical systems etc. only to end their post with the crux of the entire matter: But I don't know what to write about! What was all that for? Did you expect a story to erupt out of all that world building like jizz from a dick? Was it all just fapping? Looks that way, doesn't it.
Hyperlinks have a navigational advantage over footnotes due to the lower cost of context switching and the ability to open arbitrarily many tabs. Hyperlinks (or even footnotes) integrated in the main content have an advantage over separate encyclopedia due to the lower cost of context switching. Put them together and you have a medium that is not merely a book plus little conveniences here and there, but an entirely different medium.* The distinguishing feature of that medium is a reduction of the required level of investment, as @Wreybies says. It is merely a thought experiment in response to the idea that worldbuilding is less important than the author thinks it is because most of the details will never see the light of day. In response to the question "why will they never see the light of day?" the natural response would be "because otherwise, the book would be too long." (Harrison himself says "the results wouldn't be readable.") That response is based on the fact that readers generally do not want to wade through details of the fictional world just to get to the story. But do they really need to? In a book with no footnotes, yes. But not in a "book" composed of articles linked to each other. Without the assumption that the reader must read every word, there is no basis to argue that the editing process limits the author's freedom to provide a world for the reader to explore. The underlying theme of my argument is that we should be wary of any grand claim about what a work of fiction should or should not be. As quoted in the OP, Harrison actually implies such a claim and refutes another such claim. I like how he says exhaustive worldbuilding is like surveying every nook and cranny of a place and leaving nothing to the reader's imagination. He says this is not necessary, which I agree with. (We are both wary of the grand claim that a work of fiction needs to be rationalized by exhaustive grounding in a setting.) But he also says it is purposeless (as if the only things worth writing are the things necessary to move the story along), which is just as grand of a claim, and one I disagree with. There is always a way for a creative person to share a work of imagination with people who are interested, whether the work is geared more toward plot, characters, or setting. * I truly mean "different medium" -- I am not just describing a novel with hyperlinks to pages of exposition, but rather, a way to break the story down into narrative threads and to present each thread separately but also in connection to the other threads.
This thread has been incredibly fascinating and insightful! I have been doing tons, 'tons' of world building, for all my stories for years. And definitely, when I first got my idea for a novel that was all I did. Developed histories, timelines, technologies, factions, worlds, I couldn't stop. The plot and world building kind of came at the same time. I don't know why it was so obvious to me, but I learned you can quickly 'over-create' either way. As you begin writing, coming up with plot points, and reasons, your creations can turn on you, especially when your world is already too made-up. Meaning that you set yourself up for failure if something in your story doesn't fit to the world you have imagined. (you end up having to change one or the either, or let the plot-hole slide and hope no one notices. It's a sacrifice either way.) I usually find their is a perfect balance between the two. I have a very calculated style for my plots and what I find works best is half-building. Build general details without the smaller details. General world building details you'll need for plot. Smaller details need to be tied in smoothly with theme's or events and because of that need to be much more malleable. If you only make the general details instead of all of them, then the specifics can fit into the scenario, where you finally need the information. I like to do this for other things beside world-building too. Like character backstory. I can create general details about their backstory and not think so much about the finer details; so when I need to explain the backstory, I can tie in the finer details to events that are current in the story and make it seem like I tied it all together purposefully. I think readers appreciate that, and think of it as a tip of the hat to the reader; explaining, this is well thought out and it deserves your keenest eye.
