Swift0

Feeling hungry yet?Faced with a plate of fried crickets,most people today would still recoil,imagining all those legs and feelers getting stuck between their teeth.But think of a lobster.It's pretty much just a giant insect with legs and feelers galore that was once regarded as an inferior, repulsive food.Now, lobster is a delicacy.2 Can the same paradigm shift happen for bugs?So, give it a try!Pop that insect into your mouth,and savor the crunch.

Farming insects for food also has less environmental impact than livestock farms do because insects emit far less greenhouse gas and use up less space, water, and food.Socioeconomically, bug production could uplift people in developing countries since insect farms can be small scale, highly productive, and yet relatively inexpensive to keep.Insects can also be turned into more sustainable food for livestock and can be reared on organic waste,like vegetable peelings,that might otherwise just end up rotting in landfills.

The yellow beetle larvae are native to America and easy to farm.They have a high vitamin content,loads of healthy minerals,and can contain up to 50% protein,almost as much as in an equivalent amount of beef. To cook, simply sauté in butter and salt or roast and drizzle with chocolate for a crunchy snack.What you have to overcome in "ick factor,"you gain in nutrition and taste.Indeed, bugs can be delicious.Mealworms taste like roasted nuts.Locusts are similar to shrimp.Crickets, some people say,have an aroma of popcorn.

Bugs can be eaten whole to make up a meal or ground into flour, powder,and paste to add to food.But it's not all about taste.They're also healthy.In fact, scientists say entomophagy could be a cost-effective solution for developing countries that are food insecure.Insects can contain up to 80% protein,the body's vital building blocks,and are also high in energy-rich fat,fiber, and micronutrients like vitamins and minerals.Did you know that most edible insects contain the same amount or even more mineral iron than beef,making them a huge, untapped resource when you consider that iron deficiency is currently the most common nutritional problem in the world?The mealworm is another nutritious example.

Almost 2,000 insect species are turned into food,forming a big part of everyday diets for two billion people around the world. Countries in the tropics are the keenest consumers, because culturally, it's acceptable. Species in those regions are also large, diverse,and tend to congregate in groups or swarms that make them easy to harvest. Take Cambodia in Southeast Asia where huge tarantulas are gathered, fried, and sold in the marketplace. In southern Africa, the juicy mopane worm is a dietary staple, simmered in a spicy sauce or eaten dried and salted.And in Mexico, chopped jumiles are toasted with garlic, lemon, and salt.

As farming took off,people might have spurned bugs as mere pests that destroyed their crops. Populations grew, and the West became urbanized, weakening connections with our foraging past.People simply forgot their bug-rich history.Today, for people not accustomed to entomophagy,bugs are just an irritant.They sting and bite and infest our food. We feel an "ick factor"associated with them and are disgusted by the prospect of cooking insects.

In ancient Greece, cicadas were considered luxury snacks. And even the Romans found beetle larvae to be scrumptious.Why have we lost our taste for bugs? The reason for our rejection is historical,and the story probably begins around 10,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent, a place in the Middle East that was a major birthplace of agriculture.Back then, our once-nomadic ancestors began to settle in the Crescent.And as they learned to farm crops and domesticate animals there,attitudes changed,rippling outwards towards Europe and the rest of the Western world.

[Why don't we eat bugs?] For centuries, people have consumed bugs,everything from beetles to caterpillars, locusts,grasshoppers, termites, and dragonflies.The practice even has a name:entomophagy.Early hunter-gatherers probably learned from animals that foraged for protein-rich insects and followed suit.As we evolved and bugs became part of our dietary tradition,they fulfilled the role of both staple food and delicacy.

Once you know your world as well as you hope your reader will,set your characters free in it and see what happens.And ask yourself,"How does this world you created shape the individuals who live in it?And what kind of conflict is likely to emerge?"Answer those questions,and you have your story.Good luck, future world-builder!

Then it's time to think about day-to-day life.What's the weather like in this world?Where do the inhabitants live and work and go to school? What do they eat and how do they play? How do they treat their young and their old?What relationships do they have with the animals and plants of the world?And what do those animals and plants look like?What kind of technology exists?Transportation?Communication?Access to information?There's so much to think about!So, spend some time living in those tasks and the answers to those questions, and you're well on your way to building your own fictional world.

What past events have shaped the way it is now?Then I brainstorm answers to questions that draw out the details of my fictional world.What rules are in place here?This covers everything from laws of gravity,or not,to the rules of society and the punishments for individuals who break them.What kind of government does this world have?Who has power, and who doesn't?What do people believe in here?And what does this society value most?

I'm not sure anyone knows the answer to that question, yet fantastical, fictional worlds are created everyday in our minds, on computers,even on napkins at the restaurant down the street.The truth is your imagination and a willingness to, figuratively,live in your own world are all you need to get started writing a novel.I didn't dream up Hogwarts or the Star Wars' Cantina,but I have written some science thrillers for kids and young adults.Here are some questions and methods I've used to help build the worlds in which those books take place.I start with a basic place and time.Whether that's a fantasy world or a futuristic setting in the real world,it's important to know where you are and whether you're working in the past,present, or future.I like to create a timeline showing how the world came to be.

How can human-made squiggles on a page reflect lights into our eyes that send signals to our brains that we logically and emotionally decode as complex narratives that move us to fight,cry, sing, and think,that are strong enough not only to hold up a world that is completely invented by the author,but also to change the reader's perspective on the real world that resumes only when the final squiggle is reached?

Authors of science fiction and fantasy literally build worlds.They make rules, maps, lineages,languages, cultures, universes, alternate universes within universes, and from those worlds sprout story, after story, after story. When it's done well, readers can understand fictional worlds and their rules just as well as the characters that live in them do and sometimes, just as well or even better than the reader understands the world outside of the book.But how?

And the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe,and everything is most certainly 42.Just like real life, fictional worlds operate consistentlywithin a spectrum of physical and societal rules.That's what makes these intricate worlds believable, comprehensible,and worth exploring.In real life, the Law of Gravity holds seven book sets of "Harry Potter" to millions of bookshelves around the world.We know this to be true, but we also know that ever since J.K. typed the words wizard, wand, and "Wingardium Leviosa," that Law of Gravity has ceased to exist on the trillions of pages resting between those bookends.

According to the Wachowski's script,an awakened human only has to link up and hack the neon binary code of the Matrix to learn how to fly a helicopter in a matter of seconds.Or if you are the One, or one of the Ones,you don't even need a helicopter, you just need a cool pair of shades.Cheshire cats can juggle their own heads. iPads are rudimentary.No Quidditch match ends until the Golden Snitch is caught.

In J.R.R.'s world,Gandalf is one of five wizards sent by the Valar to guide the inhabitants of Middle Earth in their struggles against the dark force of Sauron.Gandalf's body was mortal, subject to the physical rules of Middle Earth, but his spirit was immortal, as seen when he died as Gandalf the Grey and resurrected as Gandalf the White.

Finally, there's the transform boundaries,where two plates scrape past one another.The grinding of the transform boundary leads to many earthquakes,which is what happens in the 810 mile-long San Andreas Fault. The moving Earth is unstoppable,and, while a shift of 10 cm/year may not seem like a lot,over millions of years our planet will continue to dramatically change.Mountains will rise,shorelines will recede,islands will pop up.In fact, one projected map shows the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of each other.Maybe South America and Africa will come together again, too.Only time will tell.

Because these plates move independently,a fair amount of pushing and pulling between the plates occurs.The first type of interaction is a divergent boundary, in which two plates move away from one another.We see this in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between South America and Africa.The next interaction is when two plates collide,known as a convergent boundary.In this instance, the land is pushed upward to form large mountain ranges,like the Himalayas.In fact, the Indian Plate is still colliding with the Eurasian Plate,which is why Mount Everest grows one cm/year.

Collectively comprising the lithosphere,these plates are brittler and stiffer than the heated, malleable layer of the asthenosphere below.Because of this,the tectonic plates float on top of this layer,independently of one another.The speed and direction in which these tectonic plates move depends on the temperature and pressure of the asthenosphere below.Scientists are still trying to nail down the driving forces behind this movement,with some theories pointing towards mantle convection,while others are examining the influence of the Earth's rotation and gravitational pull.Though the mechanics have not been sorted out, the scientific community agrees that our tectonic plates are moving and have been for billions of years.

Continental crust forms the continentsand areas of shallow water close to their shores, whereas oceanic crust forms the ocean basins.The transition from the granitic continental crust to the basaltic oceanic crust occurs beyond the continentel shelf, in which the shore suddenly slopes down towards the ocean floor.The South American Plate is an example of a tectonic plate made of two crusts:the continent we know from today's map and a large region of the Atlantic Ocean around it.

It's between 80 and 200 km below the Earth's surface.While the asthenosphere wraps around the Earth's core as one connected region,the lithosphere is separated on top into tectonic plates.There are seven primary tectonic plates that compose the shape of the planet we know today.Like the other smaller tectonic plates,the primary plates are about 100 km thick and are composed of one or two layers:continental crust and oceanic crust.

Though you may not realize it, the ground below you is traveling across the Earth at a rate of about 10 cm/year,or the speed at which your fingernails grow.This is due to plate tectonics,or the large-scale movement of Earth's continents.The motion occurs within the top two layers of the Earth's mantle,the lithosphere and asthenosphere.The lithosphere,which includes the crust and uppermost mantle,comprises the land around you.Beneath the lithosphere is the asthenosphere the highly viscous but solid rock portion of the upper mantle.

Once upon a time, South America lived harmoniously alongside Africa until a crack in the Earth drove the two continents apart.This breakup began about 200 million years ago during the separation of the supercontinent known as Pangaea.Their proximity back then explains why the same plant fossils and reptile fossils,like the Mesosaurus,can be found on the South American east coast and African west coast.However, this evidence does not account for how the continents moved apart.For that, we'll need to take a close look at the earth below our feet.