Critters, creatures, and things that crawl -- part of the fun of building a new world is getting to populate it with not just sapient characters, but all the flora and fauna. And sometimes, that means the things you find in the smallest corners and crevices. Guest Premee Mohamed joins us to talk about the role of bugs and other biology in worldbuilding!
Bugs are a critical part of our world, performing so many essential functions that we never think about and that writers often neglect -- so, why is that? Where does our tendency towards squeamishness about bugs overlap with fears of body horror -- and how have SFF stories magnified those fears to create memorable antagonists like Xenomorphs and monsters like Shelob? How can a worldbuilder think about the health of their whole ecosystem, from those itsy-bitsy bugs all the way up to the apex predators -- and if the health of the ecosystem reflects the health of the world, how can that provide some good plot hooks for characters? All this and many, many scientific factoids are packed into this episode!
[Transcript TK]
Our Guest: Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Ignyte, Locus, British Fantasy, and Crawford awards. Currently, she is the Edmonton Public Library writer-in-residence and an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod. She is the author of the 'Beneath the Rising' series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.
Episode 49: An Immodest Proposal
Episode 48: That Belongs in a Museum, ft. MARINA LOSTETTER
Episode 47: The Timey-Wimey Episode
Episode 46: Join in If You Know the Chorus, Ft. C. L. CLARK
Episode 45: Let’s Be Diplomatic
Episode 44: Old MacDonald Had a Dragon
Episode 43: Getting There is Half the Fun, ft. KATE ELLIOTT
Episode 42: Life, Worldbuilding, & Everything, ft. STINA LEICHT
Episode 41: Myths, Legends and Other Lies of History ft. Marie Brennan & Alyc Helms (M.A. Carrick)
Episode 40: The Sacred and the Profane, ft. K. B. WAGERS!
Episode 39: Episode 39: Three-pourri
Episode 38: Writing the Dark Side ft. ANNA STEPHENS
Episode 37: Names Are Hard -- A Deep Dive into WFM’s Shared World
Episode 36: Toil and Trouble
Episode 35: The Circle of Life
Episode 34: The Reluctant Worldbuilder (ft. MIKE CHEN)
Episode 33: Disability and Inclusion ft. ELSA SJUNNESON
Episode 32: There’s No Place Like Home ft. ZORAIDA CÓRDOVA
Episode 31: Living by the Sword ft. MICHAEL R UNDERWOOD
Episode 30: Fantasy Race and Avoiding Fantasy Racism ft. K. TEMPEST BRADFORD, K.S. VILLOSO, and SARAH GUAN!
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