Episode #327: Building A Brand New (Fictional) Society Is Not For Weak

As you can see, the Peace Treaty of G.B. Squirrel is now in full effect. Squirrel has claimed the uncomfy chair under the unshady tree as his home away from home, and is no longer interested in hanging from the bird feeder; and I have no interest in chasing after him for munching out of his species class.

Today's post is a deeper dive into a concept that I had first touched upon nearly two years ago, which is prominently featured in my fantasy series: sentient beings.

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I had first became enamored with the concept of sentients while watching Star Trek: DS9, when one of the primary characters was a host to an internal being, aka a symbiont/sentient. I had originally seen that concept first applied by Star Trek: TNG, when other beings were often, albeit temporarily, take over another person in order to properly communicate with the outside world.

Fast forward several years to the mid 200s. We had decided to buckle down and get serious with our writing, and so I started searching around for ways to make my storytelling stand out. One way was writing in that vast genre called "fantasy". Another way was to write half of my characters as hybrids (which gradually changed over the years to around 90%); and yet another way was to liberally use the concepts of sentient beings and hosts.

With my first major novel: Line 21 (trad)/The Inner Sibling (indie after rights reversion), I applied all of those concepts mentioned above. I was very happy with the end result, and while it did do much of anything for sales (a mixture of my naivete and the publisher's marketing philosophy), it was a great way to see if that genre was one that worked for me.

I subsequently spent the next decade or so tweaking and fiddling with my usage of sentients in my stories. I eventually published a novella that featured a moderate reliance on having a sentient character.

We now fast forward to the spring of 2022. I started working on the last of four writing projects that I had saved from a minor basement flood in 2021. By the time I wrote the proverbial "the end" in 2025, I had created a brand new society/culture of sentient beings.

Now I went pretty deep with this entire concept, which included such concepts as a Almighty Sentient Deity; a very strict code of ethics and behaviors for both the sentient and the host to follow; guides that would help them in times of crisis; I even included rules where they were allowed to reside on their host's body.

Even though death was a prerequisite for becoming a sentient being, how one came about to be dead was an essential component too: by violence, legal or otherwise.

To me, I equate becoming a sentient being to the concept of reincarnation. So to that end, I wanted to make this particular concept available to only three who had passed away to violence, legal or otherwise. My definition of legal is crimes against the state. In this aspect, they're giving the choice of death or reincarnation as a sentient being, with the option of choosing a host.

I have two examples of this philosophy: one of my sentients was giving a snap choice of being a sentient or experiencing an infinite loop of death for the crime of killing another; the second is of a sentient being who was convicted of terrible crime and not only was turned into a sentient being, but was turned into what 1984 would call an 'unperson'.

The otherwise option is basically this: death that isn't sanctioned by the state; or to put it bluntly for the purpose of this series, military-style raids/battles.

I have three such examples of this particular philosophy: one who was killed during the initial raid that started the series, and returned as a translucent semi-solid; one who was kill during the first attempt at capture; and finally, one who was killed during the second attempt at recapture.

The last one mentioned is the one where I decided to showcase how one became a sentient, from the initial death all the way through to when they find their host. It does make an interesting read about death and reincarnation.

In conclusion, I'm not sure if doing two kinds of world building is something I would want to pursue again. While it was definitely an interesting learning experience, doing world building can be exhausting, if only for the amount of detail that is required to make everything as realistic as possible.

I sincerely hope everyone has a fantastic sunshiny week.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved