By Jed McPherson — World building is difficult. If you scrimp on the details your world feels hollow and empty. You go too heavy, and you may as well be writing a Dungeons and Dragon’s source book. Now, if you’re working on a series set in the real world, you can cheat it a little. After all, we all live in the real world — it’s familiar. But for fantasy and sci-fi, you’ve got to do the work.