I would agree to Harrison in the narrow sense that obsessively worldbuilding can be an impediment to writing. Specifically, short story and novel writing.

It certainly isn't the case with your gig, or the role-playing-game industry writing I have recently gotten back into.

Ah, but what I do is writing... it's just non-narrative fiction.

I think you need to make a distinction between authors that crank out explicit world-building wankfests (not naming names here), and authors talented at subtly doing it in a way that makes the reader actively want more. The latter category, for me, would include Vernor Vinge (Fire Upon the Deep is a great example), Iain M. Banks, Brin, and a few others.

In SF, it is a rare enough skill that I can see where Harrison is coming from; I still disagree, however.

I wrote the offical role-playing-game adaption of Brin's "Uplift" series. A fairly massive amount of filling-in was required. Brin was amazingly adept at leaving around those prop books that Jamais mentions; it left the impression of incredible richness. For the purpose of a novel, he didn't need to do anything else. But it meant a lot of work for me.

Right now, I'm working on something called "The Arcane Alphabet." Twenty-six adventure seeds for role playing games. I'm deliberately holding back on comprehensive worldbuilding in favor of gists: Colorful hints and name-dropping that create the illusion of depth and comprehensiveness.

Paintings of libraries with props in the foreground...
Such tromp d'oeuil (or should that be tromp d'esprit?) are food for the imagination. The best writers always leave it to the reader's imagination as to what lies behind that shelf or other. Show too much, and the magic vanishes: the whole thing becomes an intricate but static mechanism: clever, detailed, complete, and ultimately as boring as an expensive Barbie accessory.

(Which is where Godel comes to the rescue, but that's another thread elsewhere...)

I actually started writing this to point out that the library itself can become the subject in the foreground (ever hear of 'L-space'?)

"Potemkin Future." Awesome.

The natural weedy outgrowth of a potemkin present.

Potemkin Panopticon!

your mother fucking novel is not the place for worldbuilding. thats what we invented virtuality for. seriously, setting is just that, backdrop. all good novels are about people and events. dune was never worldbuilding, it was always storytelling, even as herbert was weaving a detailed and consistent historical context. look how much worldbuilding wasnt in neuromancer.

worldbuilding is the background work you need to tell your story: background. props.

with that, you've still got to put everything in the air and make it fly.

You need to learn to express yourself with more passion, rektide.

some of the alastair reynolds sci-fi falls for your potemkin's wager, that its possible to just entice readers into your world by waving enough candy at them. i would've traded fingernails to figure out what the shade was in Revelation Space. the nesting dolls ended though (actually i think they formed a space fold and consumed some local space time or what not) and it never really made a mark.

the best worldbuilding-as-story sci fi i can label right now would be john c wright's golden transcendence trilogy, because the virtuality technologies that define the storyline are so ingrained in the actual world itself. its a great case of a wonderful world to feed a fantastic story.

accelerando does not fit in this discussion because it is our future.

i'll try man, i'll try! :D