: Re: How can my story take place on Earth without referring to our existing cities and countries? I come from worldbuilding.stackexchange because people suggested I post my question here: My story

@Si5022468

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How specifically do you need this to be Earth?

If you just want human-like people on an Earth-like planet, then just make it up. Of course you need to make up all the history, as far back as is relevant. If you think "relevant" stops a hundred years or so back, consider that language groupings over most of Europe have around 3000 years of tribal conflict behind them, and place names across the continent reflect the waves of that conflict, settlement and resettlement. Europe also has around 600-800 years of "dead time" socially and technologically after the fall of the Roman Empire, whereas China had no such "dead time" but imposed such stringent barriers on new technological developments that they were very quickly left behind when Europe got it together. In the meantime various other cultures round the world hit barriers with lack of resources and other issues. So "10-20 years in the future" is a measurement of technology level, not a measurement of time.

This need not be a world with cultural mores derived from Christianity, Islam or any religion from our Earth. So it's up to you how you want the culture to treat men and women (married, unmarried, working or not), gay people, different skin colours, and so on. Also whether you have hereditary castes. or anything like that.

If you do need this to literally be Earth, you need a reason why this is not our Earth. Typically this ends up with some kind of "parallel world" multiverse - consider reading Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series, Wildbow's epic Worm (and its sequel), Neal Stephenson's Anathem, or many other options. The reasons for having parallel worlds must then be relevant to the plot, because otherwise there's no reason to limit it to being the same Earth.

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