Welcome back to the series on World Building. Now that we’re out of the Social Life segment, we’re going to talk about the environment, world and space.

Now, it’s tempting, when writing science fiction and fantasy, to throw in five moons of all different colors, add in a few psychedelic plants, maybe find some obscure phenomenon from a NASA research paper, throw it all in a blender, and see what comes out. If you’re writing for children or other whimsical motivations where things like tides, ...