Writing Forum

Duchess,

A few things come to mind:

1) Magic. Obviously the options here are enumerable. Perhaps there was a magiced continent that rose from the sea like Atlantis in reverse and over time, erosion etc. has broken the magic continent into magic islands. One thing about magic, at some point you don't really have to explain it. It works... sorta like quantum mechanics.

What if magic wasn't involved OR is believed to be but something material accounts for the fantastic?

2) Islands do not float in the sea, they rise from it. Islands could float above a cloud shrouded lowland or poison atmosphere. I believe there was a scifi story long ago that imagined life on Venus only on the very top of a mountain poking out of the acid clouds and heat etc.

3) Some sort of material that has negative gravity. Is that what was doing it in Avatar? Well, this one is tricky because how does it keep from just launching off into space and why don't the islands bash into each other, but perhaps there is equalibrium maintained by the other matter on the islands and the islands repulse each other more than they overcome gravity. Hey, that might work.

4) If the atmosphere was very dense, perhaps floating blimp creatures could be populated with whole ecosystems on their backs. Perhaps the nutrient rich ummmm, leavings, ummm, of the life could feed the hydrogen producing creature, filling huge bladders with the lightest of gases.

5) Nobody knows, but our island is sinking, let the adventure begin.

6) The "world" is a dyson sphere that has rusted out leaving gaps and a few habitable islands. Good thing the central sun's pressure keeps gases from being pulled into the sun and that our bit hasn't broken off and plunged sunward or out into space. Shivers. Perhaps the sun is petering out so the dyson denisons have built huge towers to reach the effective sunlight. Too bad we forgot that we'll need to build another 5 or 6 thousand miles soon as our dying sun shrinks. (actually I think stars enlarge as they die so maybe this isn't a good idea, unless the star is very low mass)

7) Life in a gas torus.

8) Like Prachett's Disk World you live on a turtle swimming through interplanetary, eerrr or intertortinary space. Unlike Great A'Tuin, our turtle is only one of several travelling together within dragon range.

Gotta go.

LSO