Dragaera

ConJose restaurant guide

Tue Sep 3 13:08:04 PDT 2002

On Tuesday, September 3, 2002, at 03:56 PM, Claire Rojstaczer wrote:

> Just a few words from Steve that were in the ConJose restaurant guide 
> that I thought I'd share with anyone who hadn't seem em.
>
> ************************************************
>
> "In building a fantasy world, I think it's a good idea to start with 
> the food and work backwards from there.  There are a couple of reasons 
> for this: In the first place, it'll remind you as the author that, 
> however intricate your world, it is full of people, and people eat.  
> It will establish a connection to the reader, who almost certainly 
> eats as well.  Second, it's a pretty good method of worldbuilding just 
> by itself.  Here's how it works: You start with a meal.  What's for 
> supper?  Maybe some beef?  Well, ok.  What are they feeding the 
> cattle.  Maize?  Fine, then you know this region has a soil reaction 
> of between pH 5.5 and 8.0, probably a prairie soil or, at any rate, 
> some well-drained loam soil.  You know that this region has at least 
> 140 frost-free days per year, a mean summer temperature between 21 and 
> 27 degrees (C), and probably 24-40 inches of rain a year.
>
> How do you know this?  Because you've looked it up in your handy copy 
> of Principles of Field Crop Production, Third Edition, by Martin, 
> Leonard, and Stamp, (MacMilliam, 1976).  Then you repeat the process 
> for something else you're eating, maybe rice (I won't go into the 
> specifics this time), and you can triangulate.  Where can both of 
> these things grow?  What conditions does it imply?  What sort of world 
> has a place like that?  All sort of fun stuff flows naturally out of 
> the food.  Besides, it will encourage you to write about food; and 
> that's good, because I like reading about it."
>
> --Steven Brust
>
> ************************************************
> ----

Hey! pretty good idea. Of course with Steve, it's always food ;-)


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