Artist Steven Sanders has a remarkable talent for inventing things — imaginary, impossible things. His illustrations and designs allude to whole worlds.

When I worked at Atlas Games, and Steven was drawing things for our books as a freelancer, he once turned in an illustration that so captivated me that I wrote a complete comic-book script inspired by his vision of hieroglyphic holography. In the years since, I’ve always kept an eye out for projects where I could get a chance to work with Steven again. Thankfully, my in-final-development RPG project, Always/Never/Now, was one of those projects. Steven Sanders was the artist I trusted with the beloved characters of my best friends — and Steven brought them to life with his own brilliant combination of character design and technological understanding.

Now Steven Sanders aims to inspire everyone — the whole planet — with a new world of his own devising. The project’s called Symbiosis and the Kickstarter campaign is alive and well. (He’s providing art and updates to the world-building project via his Tumblr page, too.) With our help, Steven Sanders can make Symbiosis into a beautiful artifact of a rare book, a handsome e-book, and a Creative Commons world ready for us to play in through our stories, our games, and more — wherever we are.

Curious about the scope and style of Symbiosis, I wrote Steven with a few questions about the project from a writer’s and gamer’s perspective…

Will Hindmarch: The themes of Symbiosis serve as commentary on our real-world relationships with technology, but the world of Symbiosis looks as alien as it is tangible. Is Symbiosis‘ world ours in some other time or is this a wholly new place—a new universe—you’re creating?

Steven Sanders: Ultimately, this is something I’d like to leave up to the reader, but for me, it’s on a different planet or maybe the far far future. One of those “after our civilization has been destroyed and rebuilt” sort of things. Perhaps a different Earth in a different universe. A key component of the technology of Symbiosis is the “bio-ether.” The bio-ether shares a lot in common with the ether used in obsolete physics for models of mechanical gravitation. This bio-ether is generated by two layers of bacteria. One in the deep crust, and another in the stratosphere, near the ozone layer. The two belts create a sort of “pressurized” zone of bio-ether between them. This sort of thing isn’t on the Earth as we know it, so some adjustments are necessary to time or place.

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Did I forget to mention this? I think I did. The brilliant, cunning, and highly energetic writer and game designer, Keith Baker, asked me six questions for his recurring feature, called Six Questions, and so I answered six questions.

We have much to discuss, you and I, but that must wait for I have much work to do yet, too. Irons and fires, front and back burners, all surrounded by spinning plates—the life of the freelancer.

“but I’m bailing water and bailing water
’cause I like the shape of the boat.”

—”Hindsight,” The Long Winters

I pocketed my notebook, because I often get story or essay ideas at performances like these. I thought about wearing the T-shirt with the ninja girl on it, went with one witha keyboard design on it, promoting Technoir, instead. I fussed with my hair, so I’d look good for the people I was accompanying to the show—and to make a good impression at the signing. I slipped a copy of The Bones into my bag, thinking I would give it as a gift, just as I gave him Things We Thing About Games at a previous signing for his previous book.

The author is John Hodgman. The new book is the last volume of complete world knowledge, That Is All. The event is the Chicago stop on his End Is Nigh tour, which I’d been following via his Tumblr, Areas of My Expertise dot com.

I thought about what I might say at the signing after the performance. As I put my shoes on, as I rode with my friend, Anne, up to the venue, as I appreciated the stark jacket design for That Is All—a departure from the designs of his previous books—as I drank my beer, I thought about what I would say. I wanted to be memorable and supportive, to show my appreciation for his work. I wanted to tell him that his move from squalor to literary agent, from literary agent to freelance writer, from freelance writer to popular author, gives me a measure of hope. I wanted to tell him that his work on This American Life, where he drew out the comedy and the humanity in the ridiculous, is a ruler against which I gauge other essays. I wanted to tell him how well his work works.

I, too, want to eventually come out from behind other people’s books and offer up my own. I, too, want to share a stage with the writers, artists, and musicians I know, whose work deserves to be seen. I, too, want to be complained at for my appearance on Battlestar Galactica. Well, okay, not so much that.

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This is part of a series of posts about people from whom I am learning. I’d originally saved this post for last, but I think I may keep the feature going, writing others as I am inspired to do so. Still, this was the hardest one to write:

Sara Young Hindmarch is adroit. Her photographs make me jealous. Her hand-made crafts boggle me. When she writes, she is clear and confident and funny. She sets her mind to something and she makes it happen. She embodies patience and exhibits generosity. When I waver, she is steady. She does right. She gives off light. I’d be lost in dark woods without her; I might well be dead, eaten by some grue. Would that I could learn her diligence and patience, her responsibility and dedication, we could levitate above the mud. We could craft houses and light new stars. We could feed everyone we love and fix all that ails us. Would that I could learn her ways. I promise to try.

This is part of a series of posts about people from whom I am learning:

Wil Wheaton says “don’t be a dick.” It’s a philosophy he promotes and practices. More than that, he’s an energetic creator who strives to promote positivity and enthusiasm by creating fun, funny, touching things and spreading them to his friends and fans. He’s always creating—when it’s hard, when it’s tough, when it’s easier not to, he’s always making something new to post, to share, to publish. He writes, he records, he acts, he puts himself out there and it pays off for him. I’m learning from Wil how to be funny and self-deprecating without undermining my own position, my own right to be me. I’m learning, by talking with Wil, to respect my own needs as an artist—as silly as it feels to say that—and to believe that being a mensch and treating readers right may be enough to turn good writing and hard work into success. Maybe.

And then, today, he demonstrates his enthusiasm again with this valentine to Twitter, and says it as well as I wish I could. His enthusiasm spreads and warms like good scotch. Let’s get drunk.