How to create realistic sci-fi and fantasy civilizations

 Hello everyone! My name is Alex Russo, and I am a science fiction and fantasy author. All of my friends tell me that worldbuilding is my main strength, so I wanted to share my process of building a civilization with you.

Why Are Fictional Civilizations Important in SFF?

A civilization, whether its comprised of humans or not, is always a key step in great SFF franchises. Try imagining Lord of the Rings without the Elven societies, or Star Trek without Klingons. 

Setting

For starters, your civilization needs somewhere to live. If the civilization is on Earth, or a fantasy civilization set in a place like Earth, your work is done. All you need to do is fact-check for ecology and demographic information in order to make it believable. However, if you are creating a new type of civilization not based on Earth, you’ll have to build the world from scratch.

The distance a planet and its tilt affect its climate. If a planet is too close to its star, the planet will be tidally locked and only the band of land between the day and night sides of the planet will be habitable. Additionally, the distance between other planets can have an influence on tidal-locking, so keep that in mind if you are creating a whole solar system from the ground up.

Finally, not all planets are created equal, even if they are in the same solar system. You’re going to want to ask yourself some questions about the planet regarding things like plate tectonics, ecology, and ratios of landmass to bodies of water.

Biology

Next off, we have biology of your civilization. Biology is one of the fields I’m interested in, so I have some advice on how to construct an entire species.

First off, how is the species going to be shaped? Asymmetric and radially symmetric organisms typically have less mobility than bilaterally-symmetric organisms.

Taking this into account, we’re going to think about the appearance of our species. I would recommend looking at real-world animals for inspiration. Prehistoric creatures are a great place to get ideas, especially for an alien civilization or fantasy race.

Moving on from that, different organisms have different features. So, we’re going to want to outline some basic anatomy and physiological traits. They do not have to be something fit for an academic journal; they need to be realistic. For example, you wouldn’t want a species that can eat plastic “just because” — you’d want to have an in-universe explanation as to why, such as variation in gut flora or metabolic function.

Technology

So, like biology, we want to make technology believable. We don’t want to make inter-universal transportation technology without having an explanation. Additionally, we need to put it in perspective since a culture in an epic fantasy is going to retain Medieval or Rennaisance vibes whereas a culture in a space opera is going to be building starships and nuclear weapons.

We also need to consider how customs and tradition affect a society. After all, everyone was in a craze over AI, so we need to address how other civilizations might handle certain technology like gene therapy and AI when there’s a lot of controversy. Are there taboos? What do they see as positive or negative forms of technology?

And for technology, I would recommend the same thing with biology – look to the past. There are interesting forms of technology in the past that humans have rejected, but other cultures may use, and that will affect the way a society develops.

Social Hierarchy and Structure

Speaking of the way a society develops, we need to talk about how your civilization is organized. Just using Earth as a template, the way each society developed is different from each other. Just taking China and the United States as an example of how cultures can develop differently, we each have had different influences in our past, different circumstances that shaped our cultures, and differences in how far back we can trace the establishment of our respective histories. Additionally, we’re going to ask how different aspects have shaped your fictional society and how much territory they have claimed. 

The Mistake of Monocultural Species

Moving on, I feel like most franchises make the mistake of having a monocultural world, more so in science fiction than fantasy. For example, all aliens in Star Trek look and behave the same — all Klingons are dark-skinned, ruthless warriors; most Vulcans are light-skinned and are brilliant logicians; and all Cardassians have the same skin and hair colors and speak the same language. 

So, I would recommend adding ethnicities into your worldbuilding process, especially if it’s an alien species or a group of fantasy creatures over a widespread area. On Earth, we have multiple nation states, dozens of ethnicities, and thousands of languages. Because of this, why shouldn’t other sapient races, albeit fictional, be the same way? 

After that, we need to take into consideration how the different ethnicities interact with each other and who were the important figures in each nation state or ethnic group that have influenced their respective societies. Then, we need to think about how technology influences society.

How Much Worldbuilding Does Each Sector Need?

So, taking all of what I just described into consideration, I have come up with a formula to distribute these topics into different ratios. I would recommend society being the largest one, constituting around fifty to sixty percent of worldbuilding, because the culture one is raised in affects paradigms and worldview. Next, I would suggest having the planet or world the society is on being the second-largest, probably around 25% of the worldbuilding process. If you’re writing a fantasy story, I would recommend swapping these two around or making them equal since fantasy worlds need more detail in order to explain the world and your reader base will want to know its history. When it comes to technology and biology, these are a little more flexible. For example, if you’re writing a medical thriller about a doctor saving aliens from a bioweapon, you’re going to want to invest more in the biological processes of the species and more niche technology than just the tech of a species in general. So, I have left these flexible in the worldbuilding formula for you to fill in based upon preference.

And with that, that’s all I have for today. Thank you for reading!

-Alex