Full Title: Collections: Why Rings of Power’s Middle Earth Feels Flat
Highlights
Speculative fiction – be it fantasy or science fiction – is a genre where a great deal of the weight is carried by the fictional world being constructed.We want the fictional world to feel real or at least like it could be a real world, with internally consistent rules and clear lines of effect and consequence. In part that is because the deep, rich real-ishness, as it were, contributes to the sensation (be it joy or horror, depending on the work’s tone) of exploring and discovering a new fictional world and in part it is because a world that feels real and bounded by rules, the way our world is bounded by rules,2makes the stakes of the story itself more engaging. T ()
Note: The purpose of speculative fiction is to create a world that feels real and has internally consistent rules. This contributes to the experience of exploring the fictional world, and also makes the stakes of the story more engaging. The world must feel bounded by rules, similar to our own, in order to make the story more captivating.
