You have two options:

1. Create an Earth-like world. (Earth is opt-in)

The idea is you start with starfish aliens, and then you “opt-in” to the things you want to be the same as in our world. Here you have the most freedom, but this can also be one of the harder things to get right. You also have a good deal of latitude to introduce some elements of magical realism, and just have that limited magic “built-in” to the natural physics of that world. As you already guessed however, this can take quite a lot of thought and consideration.

Two popular works that did this well include:

Avatar the Last Airbender
Game of Thrones

What those examples did well that distinguishes them from other “convergent culture” worlds (like Battlestar Galactica) is that there’s no obvious link to anything we might think is specific to our timeline (like names of famous historical figures, religious idioms, alphabets and acronyms, parliamentary procedures, units of measurement, etc.), rather we can imagine the story as being in a world with a completely different path of human development, so that the reader doesn’t get distracted by any “what-if” alternate history questions.

Instead of asking yourself what is different about your world, assume everything is different by default, except for the biology of humans (and possibly livestock), and then ask yourself what would still be the same. For example:

Is nationalism universal? (“Do countries exist?” vs “Do Britain and France exist?”)
Is social hierarchy universal? (“Does one race dominate?” vs “Do Europeans dominate?”)
Are gender roles universal? (“Are there boy/girl-colors?” vs “Is blue masculine and pink feminine?”)
Are certain types of religions universal? (“Is there a monotheistic religion?” vs “Is there Christianity?”)
Do all worlds reach a state of bi/tri/quadripolar cold war? (“Do military alliance systems reach a duopolistic equilibrium?” vs “Do NATO and the Warsaw Pact exist?”)

Perhaps even more important than the big stuff, is the small stuff:

What food conventions are universal? (“Are donuts round?” vs “Does Dunkin exist?”)
What advertising conventions are universal?” (“Do all logos evolve towards simple iconographic shapes?” vs “Does the Nike swoosh exist?”)
What rituals are universal? (“Do they celebrate birthdays?” vs “Do people wear a sash and tiara on their birthday?”)
What media conventions are universal? (“Do they watch TV in the landscape or portrait orientation?” vs “Does CNN exist?”)
What graphical conventions are universal? (“Do they make currency symbols by putting a slash through a letter?” vs “Does the $ exist?”)

2. Set it on Earth, but make it a surreal Earth. (Earth is opt-out)

This is the approach where you take our reality, and instead of trying to change it, you change the lens through which you view it. The idea is, you start with humans on planet Earth, and then you “opt-out” of the things you want to be different.

A series that did this well is Mr. Robot, which clearly takes place in the U.S.A. in 2019, yet features all the large firms of the country, and the government, amalgamated into the cabal “E-Corp”.

The key theme here is that these settings consider things like names and labels to be superficial, like tone, and therefore subject to artistic license. So in this framework, you can do stuff like change the name of “Bank of America” to “Evil Corp”, and still claim you haven’t disturbed the underlying reality, since the name “Bank of America” is nothing more than a label with an association inside peoples’ heads. Instead, what’s important is the perspective that’s being emphasized, and what is portrayed as important. In Mr. Robot’s case, the focus is on power inequality (“if you think about it, a few thousand people exert almost all the influence in our society”).

---

(0)

Login to post a comment!