World Building

 

In Julian Bleeker's piece called Design Fiction, he says, "Science fiction can be understood as a kind of writing that, in its stories, creates prototypes of other worlds, other experiences, [and] other contexts for life based on the creative insights of the author." For several years now, I've been world building a post-apocalyptic graphic novel based off of an alternate universe in which Tesla had been the celebrated inventor instead of Edison. So you can imagine my excitement when I got chosen for this group.

The best part about this though, was I hadn't given much thought to the world building of history before the apocalyptic event that spurs on my narrative.

In my research, I went back to the beginning and found an old article I had read years ago, the same article that helped me to come up with the idea I had for the graphic novel. A lot has happened since then, but this paragraph was the springboard for the lengthy world building process:

If Tesla's plans had come to fruition, the pilot plant would have been merely the first of many. Such "magnifying transmitter" towers would have peppered the globe, saturating the planet with free electricity and wireless communication as early as the 1920s. Instead, the futuristic facility's potential went untapped for over a decade, until the tower was finally demolished for salvage in 1917.

In the end, our group settled into making a newspaper that would exist in our world. We all felt this was appropriate as we could all demonstrate our strengths and our ideas equally in such a medium.

I wrote a newspaper article about Electro-Terrorism, thinking it would be fun to write about a new tower being threatened at a World's Fair. This reminded my of the Sun Tower in Knoxville Tennessee where I had served my mission, a giant tower that represented technology and energy, that had also been unveiled at the 1982 World's Fair. Everything came together when I decided that it would be more fun to make the link between our world and theirs (even using the name of the Mayor of Tennessee during that time). I'm just glad Amanda and Sam agreed to set our newspaper in 1982 after that idea. Thanks go to Amanda for finding a picture of the Sun Tower, a detail I overlooked.

I'll admit that a little bit of my world building for my graphic novel has slipped in, even providing a hint of what caused the apocalyptic event (those darn towers have to go pretty deep into the earth). But all in all this was a pretty great project, especially with Sam and Amanda's great ideas that made me look past my initial biased ones, and think deeper about the Teslonian world.

Click Here to find the article I refer to above.