1. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    Do People Enjoy Reading Sci-Fi fiction/Fantasy History Books?

    Discussion in 'Research' started by LordWarGod, Oct 3, 2018.

    Does the idea of a historical fiction book written like a history book along with fake top secret documents/declassified files sound appealing? Essentially, it would go into great detail about the important and influential people of each time period and the battles/wars/events that occurred in those time periods.

    It would also go into detail about demons as they are placed into different categories according to their power and strength. It would explain what weapons they used, how big they grew, their powers and which God they were loyal to. It would include illustrations and some diagrams as well to show the monsters/characters/weapons/ships and so on.

    It would go into detail about everything like scientific books/historical books do. I'll link an example here of a "declassified top secret document" that I wrote to give you an idea of what it would sound like: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/the-gaunt-first-encounter.159370/#post-1708823

    Another example of an illustration/scale diagram that I did:

    If people do enjoy reading this sort of stuff, do you know where I might be able to post this sort of stuff to gain a reader audience? Note that I said "reader" audience, not a "writer" audience because readers generally want to read and writers often care about their own works and will just critique your stuff instead.
     
  2. Bone2pick

    Bone2pick Conspicuously Conventional Contributor

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    Personally speaking, it's only appealing if I've fallen in love with the world. And I can only fall in love with world if I've read several amazing stories set there.
     
  3. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    It has been done. I've only seen World War Z on screen, but I understand the book is set as an after-action report. The Mad Max movies have been explained canonically as a series of oral traditions handed down from the civilizational interregnum, and Heinlein had his "future history."

    The one thing I'd like to say, though, about your world-building is I wonder if it might be possible to scale it back an order of magnitude or so. Now, I'm quite probably not your target audience, so I won't be at all offended if you think I just don't get it, but, well, I just don't get it.

    Your drawing above of a baby monster that's five times taller and....square-cube law whatever times more massive than Mt. Everest would probably melt the Earth's crust if it was made of the sort of unobtainium that would allow it not to collapse into a puddle. You mentioned an individual (iirc) with a 60,000 year history, yet human history is maxed out at somewhere between 6-10,000 years. All fiction requires a suspension of disbelief, but I think you're likely to be asking rather much of your readers with numbers and sizes like that.

    Just my 2 cents, feel free to drop them in the "take a penny / leave a penny" bowl by the register if you don't need them. :)
     
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  4. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    I've read this sentence seven times and I still don't quite understand what it means. What do you mean that the Earth's crust would melt? How would it melt from it's presence? The monster depicted above comes from an alternate dimension that does not obey our laws of physics or any scientific law that exists in our universe. It is so big and yet it's body does not break and collapse even though it should. Something of that size should require a lot of energy to sustain it but it does not need to eat or sleep, it will live for an eternity against all known logic.

    I still don't get how the planet would melt, I understand that the crust would be crushed under all that weight but for it to melt? You'll need to explain that one to me, please.

    I didn't say it was an individual, I said an entire human civilization, so it isn't about one person but about a civilization that lasts for around 60,000 years.

    Maybe you could explain what you think should be scaled back because this is quite vague and I'm not sure what elements stand out to you. I did try to scale some stuff back, it was previously going to involve a multi-verse as well but I decided to scrap that idea and focus on one universe instead.
     
  5. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    I never heard of Warhammer 40k before and I decided to read some of it's lore for fun and I had a great read anyway. So, it's probably personal preference but I think the majority need a source material to enjoy before enjoying the really detailed stuff.
     
  6. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I would not enjoy this. I want to read a story, and meet characters, and follow a traditional narrative. I don't want to read a bunch of backstory without a front story.
     
  7. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Personally, I would have to have already created an investment in the world to genuinely enjoy something in this format. I have a few such books: A Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, The Dune Encyclopedia, Star Trek: TNG Technical Manual, Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe.

    That list will likely also give you an idea of my age, which I think is at least part of the why for my answer. I come from a time before the idea of perusing franchise related wikis for fun. Not that I don't do it because I certainly do, but it would never be the first thing I do as regards engaging a franchise or world or setting. I need the original, contextualized story first, and then maybe I could enjoy it.
     
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  8. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    You may be better off looking into RPGs perhaps? I'm sure they need people to create whole worlds and histories for them, and players would probably buy the history and universe books as companion books for the game. Judging from only the picture you've shared here, your art quality isn't good enough to sell yet, but if you could get a publisher, there would be artists hired for this stuff. No idea how one would get into the world of writing for RPGs, but perhaps looking into who the publishers of those books would be a start? From there, you could probably find appropriate forums and avenues.
     
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  9. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    This is actually also a problem in GRRM's Westeros magnum opus. And it's the kind of thing that could have been fixed without altering the story in any way. Westeros, as I have mentioned often, is very typically stuck in Medieval Stasis, yet they have family histories that are spoken of in terms of thousands of years. With next to nothing in the way of long-term media storage, the denizens of castles and wattle & daub hovels alike tap stories that reach back further than our entire recorded history in the real world. It seems rather improbable that people would make these sorts of references in a way that answers to factual happenstances rather than just the odd bit of history surviving into the future in the form of mythologized stories. I've mentioned the idea of brushing aside the fact that no one in Westeros seems to be very proactive about dealing with the coming winter because if we did have a story like that, it would be a very different story about people working together in order not to starve to death, and we wouldn't have all the juicy stabbings and murders and court intrigue and skirmishes and pillow biting (looking at you, Loras) and kickass female knights and etc. etc. etc. We would instead have a story about communal living, working, sowing and harvesting, which, I think, would sell poorly in an American market because it smells like communism in the form of high fantasy.

    So, we don't have that, and I understand why, and I'm okay with that.

    But ffs, simply taking the last superfluous zero off the end of every number of thousands of years in the past that some event took place would not change the story one iota.

    "My family has lived in this castle for three thousand years, and we've been lords and ladies of this land for just as long."

    "Really? And not one of you has thought to invent a toilet that flushes or toothbrushes in that whole time?"​
     
  10. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    That thing could easily create a supervolcano caldera given that it's a measurable percentage of the size of the Earth and its rear end brushes the mesosphere. A single supervolcano caldera erupting would be a serious catastrophe, the effects of which would be global. More than one and humans likely don't survive. Our last major genetic bottleneck event has a strong theoretical link to the Toba supervolcanic caldera and its eruption 75k-ish years ago.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck_theory

    If more than one of these beauties showed up in any kind of proximity to one another, you could possibly be looking at something more akin to the Siberian Traps.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps#Impact_on_prehistoric_life

    And you've called that thing the Lesser Great Abomination, which logically means there is a Greater Great Abomination, and the presence of one of those would only, logically, be worse.

    As I mentioned in a prior post, if there's a story that's sufficiently intriguing as to distract me from these kinds of issues, then I'm perfectly willing to forgive or just not care about the issues. If there isn't anything else upon which to focus, then yes, I'm going to start taking things apart and engaging analytically rather than for the enjoyment of the creation.

    An example would be Wayne Barlowe's Expedition, from which the Discovery Channel created the show Alien Planet. Barlowe gets full marks for stupendous creativity in this book, but there were times when he strayed a little too far and risked losing me and my level of enjoyment. The book and the creations therein have moments of strength and also moments of weakness. Two of the creatures that never make it to the TV adaptation are a kind of mountain goat analog on Darwin IV. They are closely related to each other, have a very similar morphological presentation, yet have wildly different mouth structures. One has something akin to a mandible which it uses to graze, and the other has nothing but a face that ends in a point with something like cheese grater notches in the sides that it uses to scrape lichen analogs from rock faces. That makes very little sense with respect to two closely related creatures.

    So I agree with @Iain Aschendale that, there being nothing else to distract my analytical mind, I too would get real pick-aparty, real quick.

    ETA: Also, never underestimate how demanding readers can be. There is the story of how Larry Niven was accosted by a group of fans chanting "The Ringworld is unstable!", making reference to his Ringworld novels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld#Errors

    And Marion Zimmer Bradley was constantly vexed by requests to create a definitive map for her Darkover novels because of the multitude of apparent inconstancies* over the stretch of her long-lived and much-beloved series. She eventually made it clear that no map would ever be forthcoming and that she was perfectly well aware of the inconstancies and if this is what was causing people to lose sleep at night, maybe tinder or grindr was the answer. ;)

    * There are also temporal inconsistencies in the books where a couple of characters pop up across two or three books that technically span a period of time well in excess of what any human could expect to live, especially in the reverted, feudalistic society in which Darkover finds itself, but... that's not fixable via a map.
     
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  11. 8Bit Bob

    8Bit Bob Here ;) Contributor

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    Personally, I very much enjoy this kind of stuff, however as others have stated usually people want to experience your world through stories before delving into the lore of it. For example, I love the lore of the Elder Scrolls universe (an RPG video game series), but I would never like to delve into the lore to the extent that I do without playing the games. I'd think "what's the point? I'm learning about this world, but what am I doing with this information?" But, since I play the games, the lore helps me better understand the world in which I'm engaging and allows me to further enjoy and appreciate the art since I know more about it.
     
  12. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    Great Abominations are meant to be world-enders, they exist to wipe out planets. If their presence alone would trigger super-volcanoes and bring about a serious catastrophe then that's a good thing for the Great Abomination, a bad thing for the inhabitants of the planet. The bigger ones will literally rip apart a planet with it's hands and eat the pieces. The smaller ones just drag themselves across the land, using their enormous mouths to dig into the crust and quite literally "eat" the land. If the planet goes apeshit and starts collapsing, that's pretty much what they want to happen. The God of Plague created this create to annihilate worlds, if he doesn't want a world destroyed but taken instead then he will send monsters suited to that task instead, as will the other Gods who seek the destruction of the universe.

    There are other things that just literally do not make any sense, like The Flood. The Flood is a parasitic type of plague demon that multiplies at a rapid pace the more biological matter it consumes. Often, they will end up multiplying to the point where they literally become a giant tsunami that reaches the atmosphere and consume the planet entirely, which is how they got their name. Does any of that make sense? How could these creatures bear the weight of their fellow Flood members crushing down upon them from above? How could there be enough biological matter to allow them to multiply so much in such little time? It's all because these are demons of a dimension that does not obey our scientific laws.

    The diagram I showed was not the Great Abomination being on Earth but rather to show the scale of it next to something people are familiar with.

    That's fair but keep in mind that you're dealing with beings from an alternate dimension that literally does not obey any scientific laws we have here. Whatever comes out of that Hell is not going to suddenly start obeying our laws, it's just going to defy them and do what they do best; consume and destroy. That's my justification for a lot of the demons' powers in the world. Everything else still more or less follows traditional sci-fi logic that follows closely with real world logic.
     
  13. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    Do you enjoy reading the SCP creepypasta stories? If you do then you know there was no original game or book before all of that and it was a series of top secret documents like what I posted in the original post. SCP has many fans all over the world and it didn't even need a story to begin with, so I figured that I could try that same approach.

    I think it's more about personal enjoyment rather than "what am I doing with this information?"
     
  14. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    I was also thinking about looking into RPG but I have no idea how to get into that sort of thing. Do I just turn up in some RPG forum and pitch this world I have to them? I might try the "role-playing" sub-forum on this website, maybe they can help me.
     
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  15. badgerjelly

    badgerjelly Contributor Contributor

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    I do find the idea bery appealing. I am just not sure how easy it is to pull off though.

    I’ve been toying with several ideas in my head about how to take on such a feat. Nothing has come of it yet though.
     
  16. 8Bit Bob

    8Bit Bob Here ;) Contributor

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    Oh, you're talking about that sort of thing. I was thinking more along the lines of the Silmirilian or something.

    Well yes, you are correct many people do enjoy those, but I think part of the appeal is the fact that anyone can contribute, as well as the very "in-universe" style of the website/project in general.

    Of course it boils down to personal enjoyment in the end, I just meant that it might not be super captivating to people if they simply just learn about a world they haven't previously invested in. For example, if an author publishes a fantasy novel, and then a year later publishes a book about the history of the world, reading the second book can further your appreciation and understanding of the former novel. That is what I meant by "doing something with the information."

    However, if you're talking about something like SCP where each "case file" is a story in it's own right, I think that might be easier to pull off.

    I will say it is an interesting idea. If done well I think it could be awesome, and I'd definitely be interested in it :);)
     
  17. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    RPG communities as well as gaming communities, probably. I just went and googled "Game story writer" and got this:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_writing#Writers

    Probably read up on it and go from there.
     
  18. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    I thought about doing that for my duology (as an extras kinda book),
    but then I concluded since my book doesn't have that kind of mass
    love, that it would be a waste of time to write about all the neat little
    bits and species between the two books.

    So unless you have an already mass following, it might not go over
    so well.

    Though you could do like @Mckk and come up with your own type
    of RPG book series that would benefit better, than just as a general
    book tossed in with the more traditional story books.

    IDK. Good Luck. :superidea:
     
  19. Glen Barrington

    Glen Barrington Senior Member

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    I read an Alternate history 'novel' set up like a History textbook from the future. It really "felt" like a textbook, and it was every bit as boring as a REAL textbook. I simply couldn't finish it even though the premise was really cool.

    I like what Christopher Nuttall has done in some of his books. He started each chapter with a relevant passage from a fictional history book that expands and mirrors what is going on in the story he is telling. With that little extra, he adds a fictional 'weight' to the novel AND leaves himself room to tell a whopping good story.
     
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  20. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I mistakenly assumed from the picture that the Abomination was crawling on the ground, which inspired me to do some quick googling on the maximum height of a mountain on Earth (Olympus Mons on Mars is 27km tall, while Everest is only 8 and change), and I found that eventually the weight of the rock above presents enough energy that the crust beneath will start to melt.

    Whoops, my bad, totally misremembered it.

    Basically, the things that don't appeal to me are how everything is so, so much more than our experience. As I mentioned, human history is about 6k years, yours is ten times that. Actually, now that I understand that's a civilizational history, that's not really so much of an issue but... The largest creature ever on Earth is a blue whale, at around a hundred feet long, while your Abominations would be difficult to overfly with anything other than a U2, Blackbird, or Soyuz capsule. I'm fine with a certain amount of handwaving and "physics don't apply," but your story has, in my mind, moved well out of science fiction into the realm of pure fantasy.

    Which is fine if that's what you want to write, but it's hard for me to get a handle on things of that scale and the notion that humanity could do anything to affect them in any way. There was a thread here a while ago by someone whose idea it was to convert the entire mass of a galaxy into an alien warfleet. Possible? Perhaps, but just too big to capture my interest or belief. Heck, I don't even really like @Wreybies' beloved sandworms, TBH.

    But your story, your readership, just wanted to point out some things that I think might limit that pool.
     
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  21. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Feyd and Paul are watching you. :whistle:

    4af35149e99899c33d6600c045090479.jpg

    Which only brings to mind another example of where good story paves over problematic setting or other story features. Long story short, Arrakis should have no breathable O2 in the atmosphere. There's no viable photosynthetic system or even an artificial, man-made system in place to keep oxygen free and available for aerobic respiration. Never mind the scarcity of water on Dune, they shouldn't even be able to breathe, but... the story! Fantasizing about being a wild, free, fierce fremen calling to Shai Hulud, blistering wind at your back, the smell of flint and broken rock in your nostrils, the ground-shaking hiss of His approach, your maker hooks at the ready. Run, boy! Run! You are in His presence and you either ride like a man or you die like Harkonnen scum! Make your choice.

    Sorry, did I type all that out loud? :whistle: :-D

    I keep tapping ASoIaF only because it’s a series of books younger members here in the forum are more likely to have read, or at least be familiar with HBO’s version of it. My Westeros was Arrakis, Dune, desert planet. My Jon Snow was Paul Atriedes, Muad’dib, known to his friends and sietch as Usul. And I’m only counting the first seven books written by Frank Herbert. The ones written by his son Bryan and his son’s buddy, we do not speak of those… ever.
     
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  22. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    Ah, that's fair enough. I wasn't quite sure what you meant by it since you were being very vague with what you wrote. It's still the same premise though, a Great Abomination is a world-ender, it's meant to be the end of worlds. If the crust would melt under all that weight then that's perfect for an end of the world scenario, thanks for telling me since I never knew this before!

    The thing is that the High Sovereignty has extremely advanced technology that we could only dream to have. They have a weapon called a Wreath that can wipe out an entire star system almost instantly, that weapon is used to kill those Great Abominations and powerful alien war machines that conventional weaponry simply cannot hurt. You're on point with your estimation with certain aircraft being able to overfly the Abomination, I even made a diagram showing the highest altitude a commercial airliner can reach compared to it!

    [​IMG]

    As for the genre? I have tried to tell people that it's way more into the realm of fantasy than sci-fi when it comes to my demons but people are adamant on placing my world in the sci-fi genre. Literally everything about my demons is pure fantasy that could never exist in our universe and require magical hand-waving in order to exist. Perhaps they could exist in some terrifying alternate dimension but these things are just simply too big and too powerful for this universe. The biggest of the Great Abominations can't even hold a candle to some seriously big demons the Gods created and that's saying something.

    Humanity is not trapped on Earth with current modern day technology. Humanity is a multi-galaxy faring civilization that can wipe out star systems and entire galaxies with 100 - 200 km warships in their fleets. Humanity fought against multiple advanced alien civilizations for nearly five centuries and survived. They are not your typical helpless humans, they are war criminals and murderers. But when these demons come? The only thing they can do is fire a Wreath and retreat. That's the whole premise of my world, the Suffering Legions are the big bad boys on the block that is killing everything in the universe and eventually, the Suffering Gods take over.

    It isn't that far fetched to believe that after nearly 60 centuries that humanity is at this level of technology and that there are monsters from an alternate dimension killing everything since alternate dimensions or realities are still a theoretical possibility in reality. Having said that, I fully understand your concerns regarding believability, it is quite a lot to take in and get used to.

    The biggest creature we've ever seen is a blue whale, to be suddenly introduced to a creature that is bigger than a planet is definitely pushing it.
     
  23. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    Thanks for the advice, I'm posting in the Role-play sub-forum right now to see if I can get some help.
     
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  24. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    When you say RPG book series, what are those? I'm not quite sure what you mean by that and I'm interested.
     
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  25. LordWarGod

    LordWarGod Banned

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    I don't think a Silmarillion-type book is going to go well with new generation readers, it's too dull and you have to slog through it all to find interesting stuff. That's why I wanted to do a SCP-type files thing where it gets very spooky and works your imaginations in a different way. I find it's a better approach at showing your world than to just literally write walls upon walls of text about your world. I never really contributed to the SCP stories but I always enjoyed reading them, they were creepy and spooky which is what I'm trying to go for with my stuff.

    I've got two pages done so far but I haven't received enough feedback to know if they're any good.
     
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