Science Fiction Themes: World Building (Part I)
What does the planet look like?
This should directly relate to the 'where' question. For instance, if the planet is orbiting a cooling, dying star, it will not look like a tropical world with abundant plant and animal life. There are plenty of appearance issues that are not affected by where. The planet's geologic formations and its mineral and ore content will be determined by its history. You will not need to describe the planet's entire geologic history (unless you want to) but it will help you to have an idea of a planet's history when writing a story. It may even have an impact on your story. In Jack Vance's novel Big Planet, he describes a planet with metal pour soil. For this reason all metals are extremely valuable on Big Planet. We have looked at the natural factors of appearance, but we must also look at the unnatural features. The Eastern Seaboard of the United States would look very different if it were not filled with man-made structures. Have the natives of this world built many structures to alter its appearance? Has human settlement had a great impact on the planet? The idea of terraforming is an important concept to consider. For those unfamiliar with terraforming, it is the idea that human scientists and settlers will take steps to make an alien planet more earthlike and more hospitable to humans. It's not hard to see how terraforming can have a big impact on your story. How successful was the attempt to terraform the planet? What negative repercussions have resulted due to the terraforming efforts?
Who lives here?
Depending on your story or what sort of world you have created, you may have different dominant species. You may choose to make the dominant species on the planet some form of sentient alien life. What these creatures look like will be a direct result of what sort of planet they live on. A world where the chief environment is water will likely be dominated by a fish-like creature. The alien species may have a story of their own to explain why they are the way they are. Perhaps their world was a very different sort of place less than a hundred years ago when a meteor struck greatly altering the environment. Perhaps the aliens are settlers themselves, refugees from another planet. Maybe the dominant species on the planet is human scientists or settlers.
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