Episode 155: The Rule of Cool, ft. JIM C. HINES

Worldbuilding for Masochists

We often think about "making things make sense" in worldbuilding and building internal consistency, scientific realism, and other logic-based considerations into our fiction -- But what happens when your worldbuilding principle is “What would be awesome?" Jim C. Hines, who embraced this principle for a forthcoming book, joins us to explore the possibilities!

The Rule of Cool, credit to, is defined thusly: "The limit of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its awesomeness." In other words, if it's cool enough, you can get away with it. This often applies to sci-fi tech and fantasy magic. Let's be real, things like faster-than-light travel, lightsabers, and starfighters will always be "rule of cool", in one way or another (so far as we currently understand physics), and magic doesn't have to be something you break down and quantify and explain perfectly. So what can we play with? And where do those decisions intersect with narrative tone, genre standards, and reader expectations?

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Our Guest: Jim C. Hines is the author of the Magic ex Libris series, the Princess series of fairy tale retellings, the humorous Goblin Quest trilogy, and the Fable Legends tie-in Blood of Heroes. He also won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. His latest novel is Terminal Peace, book three in the humorous science fiction Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse trilogy. He lives in mid-Michigan with his family.