Empires versus Nation-States | Building Worlds
What’s the difference between a country and an empire? It depends. Annoyingly, “empire” is one of those terms that picks up several different meanings, and gets used in different …| Building Worlds
What’s the difference between a country and an empire? It depends. Annoyingly, “empire” is one of those terms that picks up several different meanings, and gets used in different …| Building Worlds
Modern fantasy/scifi seems to not feature many federal countries (or as we will call them, “federations”)—that is, countries made up of several subunits such as states or provinces, eac…| Building Worlds
This is a collection of my posts about how authors can use ideas from politics in their writing. Many of these posts have been deepened and expanded into a book, Beyond Kings and Princesses: Govern…| Building Worlds
In previous posts, we discussed Jeremy Weinstein’s argument of how rebel groups’ initial access to resources tends to put into motion a series of cascading decisions over who to recruit…| Building Worlds
We fiction writers often feature resistance movements in our stories. American culture in particular lionizes rebels and guerrillas, thanks in part to our rose-colored cultural memory of the Americ…| Building Worlds
So, the wonderful Ron Farina called me out of the blue to report that his book Sacrifice: The Final Chapter had just been chosen as a finalist in the “Military” category of the Next Gen…| Building Worlds
Why do people obey a government? And how can you use this in your fiction? At the most basic, people obey for two reasons: they want to, or they are forced to. (And for many people, both of these a…| Building Worlds
In our supposedly enlightened era, many people would like to imagine that most wars are fought for essentially rational purposes: punishing terrorists, seizing resources, profiteering off of arms s…| Building Worlds
Over the years, both as I read and watch popular entertainment and as I put out calls for short stories …Continue reading →| Building Worlds
Holly Lisle, prolific writer and teacher of writing, died of cancer late last month. I only just heard this morning. …Continue reading →| Building Worlds
It has been over half a year since I last wrote on this blog, and you would be forgiven for wondering, “What gives?” The short answer is that I injured myself rather badly in December, …| Building Worlds
Some months ago I read Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to my children. I had not read the book since …Continue reading →| Building Worlds
In the previous post, I discussed several basic functions of government—while inserting snide remarks about whether governments actually carry out these functions. …Continue reading →| Building Worlds
We’ve repeatedly alluded to the role of governments in structuring the economy. The full role of government goes well beyond …Continue reading →| Building Worlds
In previous blog posts, we discussed Jeremy Weinstein’s work on the internal dynamics of rebel groups, and how they lead some groups to commit indiscriminate violence against civilians. In a …| Building Worlds
In a previous post, I discussed the theory of Jeremy Weinstein on why some rebel groups act in a relatively restrained manner towards civilians, while other groups engage in indiscriminate violence…| Building Worlds
