Our universe is fractally strange, and so are our societies. This is a post dedicated to works of non-fiction which, if you close your eyes or change the names, give the same imaginative thrill as the most daring speculative fiction.
I'm sold *so hard* on Ed Yong's book. Umwelt exploration is consistently one of my favourite thought experiments (hence why "Other minds", part octopus biology part philosophy of consciousness, remains one of my favourite all time books).
Patrick Stuart rules, he's so good. I think about his review of Black Lamb And Grey Falcon all the time. We have to get more people reading that guy. Ideally reconstruct some of the old OSR blogging connections on Substack, a lot of it kind of fell apart once Google Plus went down.
One of the advantages of setting your RPG in the real world (the thing I'm trying to do) is you can basically just skim any book that interests you from the appropriate time period and put the characters directly into your game with minimal scaffolding. RPGs are cool because there's no obligation to be original - it's totally fine, and in fact encouraged, to steal things.
I live in a hole and had to look up RPG yet I found this list fascinating! I'm especially interested in whether An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us would work as a read aloud for my 9yo. We love reading natural history but not all non fiction is written beautifully or even in an interesting way which is always surprising to me for the reasons you listed above. Reality is beautiful, strange and surprising! Anyway, our library has a copy so I will soon see for myself. Thank you for the recommendation!
I think it would work well! You may end up skipping the more detailed explanations of biochemistry but they’re never more than a few paragraphs at a time.
A global community underground of curious people who only desire to do good and bring the world peace 🕊️.
Light topics lol it’s already in place sequencing 🇺🇸 Russia 🇷🇺 Australia 🇦🇺 India 🇮🇳 Africa Dutch roots of importance and 4 generations of good people the first of which James Burke of Sutton Nebraska took his own life with a shotgun after the stock market dropped in 1929 causing the Great Depression.
One side is overground but being attacked. This person has power no political.
They have the resources but our communication is limited due to security measures.
So I’m not sure what scientific community is already examining this quantum entanglement.
The Orion's Arm / Encyclopedia Galactica project is somewhere between fiction and non-fiction, (trying to move from the former to the latter) but definitely a top candidate for the ultimate SF RPG manual. Here's a page for "Ederworlds", a physically feasible three Earth-mass habitat design housing up to 36,000 T , by my gracious host, ISS engineer Dani Eder: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48472f9d56859
(A link to his private 15,000 volume civilization-restarting library is in your messages, Mrs. Psmith.)
One of my favorite online graphic stories, Accidental Space Spy, has amusing and rational evolutionary explanations for alien flora, fauna, and cultures. One chapter explores The Planet of the Invisible Zone, which turns things invisible after two days. Here's a sample page. If you like it, you can start from the beginning.
A lot of simulation video games have a surprisingly educational list of inspirations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimEarth - English scientist James Lovelock served as an advisor and his Gaia hypothesis of planet evolution was incorporated into the game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(video_game) - the first game's manual had an extensive bibliography of references, and the mechanisms (food, settlement, etc...) in the game take direct inspiration from various anthro/history texts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Universalis_IV - is an alt history simulator starting in the year 1444. Almost all of the events that can happen in the game are based on specific history texts - you can even sometimes tell which book they read based on how the event goes. Same deal with the mechanics of a country - for example, they even took James Scott's "Seeing Like A State" seriously and gave a "government type" complete with traits from his book to various "ungovernable" societies in southeast Asia.
Love the idea of using nonfiction as fodder for fictional world building! And umwelten are such rich ways of understanding the different forms minds take. I thought of writing some stories myself when I read An Immense World a few months ago.
Sadly I still don’t know that many examples of this kind of writing. I’ve read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series, which features intelligent jumping-spider societies using scent signals to control docile ant armies (super cool to read). And my most recent substack post was an Ed Yong-inspired look at Roger Zelazny’s book This Immortal, which has humans living alongside an alien species with a different umwelt than ours (the cultural implications of which I explore in my piece)
So I’d be curious if you know some more examples of “umwelt-literature”! There’s probably a ton of work that’s incidentally about umwelten (in the crude sense that maybe all novels are umwelt-novels) but I’d love to read something that takes on the concept more explicitly.
Off the top of my head, there’s a bit of this about scent in Terry Pratchett, and some very alien aliens (less sensory umwelt though) in Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep.
Thank you, Psmiths, for being an oasis in a turbulent world.
I'm sold *so hard* on Ed Yong's book. Umwelt exploration is consistently one of my favourite thought experiments (hence why "Other minds", part octopus biology part philosophy of consciousness, remains one of my favourite all time books).
I assume you’ve read Children of Time et seq. but if not you should do so immediately.
I ordered it based on this review. I'll be reading it with my child.
I hope you two enjoy it!
Patrick Stuart rules, he's so good. I think about his review of Black Lamb And Grey Falcon all the time. We have to get more people reading that guy. Ideally reconstruct some of the old OSR blogging connections on Substack, a lot of it kind of fell apart once Google Plus went down.
One of the advantages of setting your RPG in the real world (the thing I'm trying to do) is you can basically just skim any book that interests you from the appropriate time period and put the characters directly into your game with minimal scaffolding. RPGs are cool because there's no obligation to be original - it's totally fine, and in fact encouraged, to steal things.
I live in a hole and had to look up RPG yet I found this list fascinating! I'm especially interested in whether An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us would work as a read aloud for my 9yo. We love reading natural history but not all non fiction is written beautifully or even in an interesting way which is always surprising to me for the reasons you listed above. Reality is beautiful, strange and surprising! Anyway, our library has a copy so I will soon see for myself. Thank you for the recommendation!
I think it would work well! You may end up skipping the more detailed explanations of biochemistry but they’re never more than a few paragraphs at a time.
Thanks. We are working on RPG theory but have hit a road block. Anyone interested in quantum entanglement please reach out.
I know a guy whose interests may overlap; what exactly are you building?
A global community underground of curious people who only desire to do good and bring the world peace 🕊️.
Light topics lol it’s already in place sequencing 🇺🇸 Russia 🇷🇺 Australia 🇦🇺 India 🇮🇳 Africa Dutch roots of importance and 4 generations of good people the first of which James Burke of Sutton Nebraska took his own life with a shotgun after the stock market dropped in 1929 causing the Great Depression.
One side is overground but being attacked. This person has power no political.
They have the resources but our communication is limited due to security measures.
So I’m not sure what scientific community is already examining this quantum entanglement.
Peace
If no overlap no worries at all.
It’s big and the right people will always come.
QE3X3X3
If any follow up questions please reach out to us at~ worldpeace333777@gmail.com
Thanks 😊
Would the Chinese Classic of Mountains and Seas count?
The Orion's Arm / Encyclopedia Galactica project is somewhere between fiction and non-fiction, (trying to move from the former to the latter) but definitely a top candidate for the ultimate SF RPG manual. Here's a page for "Ederworlds", a physically feasible three Earth-mass habitat design housing up to 36,000 T , by my gracious host, ISS engineer Dani Eder: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48472f9d56859
(A link to his private 15,000 volume civilization-restarting library is in your messages, Mrs. Psmith.)
One of my favorite online graphic stories, Accidental Space Spy, has amusing and rational evolutionary explanations for alien flora, fauna, and cultures. One chapter explores The Planet of the Invisible Zone, which turns things invisible after two days. Here's a sample page. If you like it, you can start from the beginning.
https://spacespy.thecomicseries.com/comics/116/#content-start
Loved this article!
A lot of simulation video games have a surprisingly educational list of inspirations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimEarth - English scientist James Lovelock served as an advisor and his Gaia hypothesis of planet evolution was incorporated into the game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(video_game) - the first game's manual had an extensive bibliography of references, and the mechanisms (food, settlement, etc...) in the game take direct inspiration from various anthro/history texts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Universalis_IV - is an alt history simulator starting in the year 1444. Almost all of the events that can happen in the game are based on specific history texts - you can even sometimes tell which book they read based on how the event goes. Same deal with the mechanics of a country - for example, they even took James Scott's "Seeing Like A State" seriously and gave a "government type" complete with traits from his book to various "ungovernable" societies in southeast Asia.
I miss the old Maxis manuals, reading them was almost as fun than the games themselves.
I actually still have a bunch, including original simearth and civilization, if anyone ever makes a video game museum.
Love the idea of using nonfiction as fodder for fictional world building! And umwelten are such rich ways of understanding the different forms minds take. I thought of writing some stories myself when I read An Immense World a few months ago.
Sadly I still don’t know that many examples of this kind of writing. I’ve read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series, which features intelligent jumping-spider societies using scent signals to control docile ant armies (super cool to read). And my most recent substack post was an Ed Yong-inspired look at Roger Zelazny’s book This Immortal, which has humans living alongside an alien species with a different umwelt than ours (the cultural implications of which I explore in my piece)
So I’d be curious if you know some more examples of “umwelt-literature”! There’s probably a ton of work that’s incidentally about umwelten (in the crude sense that maybe all novels are umwelt-novels) but I’d love to read something that takes on the concept more explicitly.
Off the top of my head, there’s a bit of this about scent in Terry Pratchett, and some very alien aliens (less sensory umwelt though) in Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep.
Yes Fire upon the deep is great! I’d forgotten about the hive mind wolf creatures.