Day 15: Resources

Sweet christmas; I'm half at the half way point of this escapade. I don't want to say I didn't expect to be this consistent, but I am pleased that I seem to be making progress.

I gotta admit, when I saw the title of today's exercise, I was expecting "economics" and "commerce".  I wasn't expecting this...

Check out some of the websites that relate to your novel, and pick out a book or two that you plan to read, either between now and when you start writing, or to flesh out your world after you've written your first draft.

Today's task includes a host of links to websites and books as suggestions to peruse for ideas in fleshing out the world.

I can certainly do that; but sadly, I seem to be at a loss for links to webpages.  Many of the links on the "Day 15" page are no longer active. One link that looked interesting is gone;  Joan Slonczewski on the science in science fiction.  It takes you to a "404" page on the SFWA.  That's not very helpful.

These books look intriguing if I can find them...

• Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy Includes a chapter called "The World-Builder's Handbook and Pocket Companion." 
• The Writer's Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe by George Ochoa and Jeffrey Osier. Another good one for physical world-building, defining where the mountains belong, etc. 
• The Borderlands of Science by Charles Sheffield. Gives a really good overview of science and where scientific knowledge has reached its limit. 
• A similarly-titled book The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense by Michael Shermer explores the boundary between science and pseudo-science. 

And that's pretty much it for today; research. Kind of a boring day, for you the reader at any rate.

This marks the mid-point of the process; looking forward to the next 15 days, I see a lot of nitty-gritty details getting fleshed out.  I'm going to do two days tomorrow (although I'll set one to post on Saturday), and on Monday I'll write Sunday and Monday's blog post. I don't have time to write all three tomorrow (hell, I'll barely have enough time to write two).