(Way With Worlds runs at Seventh Sanctum and Muse Hack)
Ironically I was about to wrap up my heroes and villains series when David Brin dropped an asteroid-sized essay in my lap.
He notes rather brilliantly that a huge part of our media is the Idiot Plot, that the story is often about a few people who save the world because everyone else, all of society, are a bunch of idiots if not evil. It’s not just Suspicion of AUthority, he notes its socially corrosive.
Now Brin’s article on its own is well worth reading. I’m not going to recapitulate it here because he did a great job. Also I probably couldn’t do it justice.
But I’m going to address the issue as a matter of worldbuilding, because the Planet of Morons, the Idiot Plot, is a serious problem for worldbuilding. That’s what I cover.
Also this idea doesn’t work for building a world.