I'm currently still working on The Towers of the Moon, the small collection of short stories in the Trifold world (showing what happens on the trip to France in between Pyramids and Tangleways).
I am so not a short story writer.
By which I mean I have so far written a novelette (Two Wings) and am halfway through a novella (Forfeit). Then there should be an actual short story (possibly called The Queen of Hades if I don't outright call it Ned's First Kiss).
I started thinking about stories set in France while in Paris in 2014, walking along the Seine getting a feel for the landscape and wondering what would France look like in a world where local gods 'Answered' their people, effectively protecting and preserving many cultures that have been erased in our world? Would it be steampunk Asterix and Obelix?
Okay, I never seriously considered steampunk Asterix and Obelix, but I would pay to see some concept art.
In the end, I chose for the gods of France to not Answer. France instead was invaded - briefly by Rome, and then the people of the "Green Aesir" (which is what I've been calling the Germanic gods who are very very similar to the Nordic gods) - and later by the Cour d'lune, which are "sort of low gravity Fae dragon people", and don't call themselves gods at all.
Basically, I erased both France's true past, and her early cultural history, and replaced it with an invention of my own.
Writing the Trifold series - any alt-myth series - requires many decisions regarding appropriation and erasure. I've been thinking this over lately after reading numerous thoughtful essays about JK Rowling's "History of Magic in Northern America", which appears to have involved conflation of multiple different traditions and beliefs. The essays ask (or state an opinion on) whether it is ever okay to 'mine' other cultures for their beliefs in order to write fantasy.
Now I'm Swedish on my father's side, and Swedish/Danish/Scotch/French/English on my mother's side. But mainly Australian. I would not feel at all comfortable embarking on a series that used Australian Aboriginal cultures and beliefs as a basis - the closest I've come to that was a short story, Blue, that positioned the POV character as an outsider who is "welcomed to country" (a tradition that has grown up in Australia to acknowledge that we occupy a land stolen from its peoples).
But while I am not very French, my great-grandfather was. Does that make France 'open season' for me? I was born in Sweden: is Loki mine? If a people runs around invading other countries and attempting to imprint its culture onto the locals (as Rome did), does that make their culture mine? I'm using the Latin-based alphabet to write this blog, after all. Half my language is based on Rome's.
And what of Hades? Can I mine Greek myths, since Rome's gods apparently were rather strongly copied from Greek gods, just with judicious tweaks and renaming? If I've had Rome's gods Answer, does that mean they're really the Hellenic gods? And who gets to play in the traditions of Egypt, whose cultural disconnect was so complete that the language was lost - and yet Egypt is surely populated with the descendents of the people of Kemet.
At one point when thinking this through during the drafting of Pyramids I started wondering whether an alt-world/alt-myth series was really a good idea. Or, at the least, whether I should confine the story very strictly to Sweden and England. But that's a different form of erasure. How could I start with our world, with its thousands of cultures, and only ever mention two? That seemed rather the worse route to take.
The end result is a story that is primarily focused around cultures that I have some connection to, choosing to include cultures that have been part of the 'primary interchange' in Europe (eg. the Hellenes) while acknowledging that there is so much more world out there, and providing an outline of its shape.
This involves a heap of extra research.
The Trifold version of North America, for example, is called Stomruria (at least by the Norse, and the people who were first told about the place by the Norse). For a book that does not mention that continent at all, I spent a lot of time researching First Nation tribal boundaries and beliefs, all because I wanted to acknowledge the place existed, and give a tiny glimpse of that vast continent by the inclusion of a Wabanaki fencing master (Wabanaki being a country in north-eastern Stomruria).
I don't intend for my characters to visit Stomruria at all in the series, but to write in this world at a point where all the continents are known and interacting with each other, I had to have some idea whether Stomrurian gods had Answered, which of them had Answered, what impact that had had on tribal boundaries, what those boundaries would be after a millenia or so, and what they would call themselves.
There isn't a way to get an alt world 'right'. Not being completely, immensely, insultingly wrong involves much side-reading. But I now know (or have at least read - my memory sucks) the names of many African kingdoms that I never knew existed. I know which side of a continent 'Thunderbird' belongs to. I now know about the Lady of Yue and her influence on the art of the sword.
Trying not to be insultingly wrong is a reward in itself.
Showing posts with label worldbuilding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label worldbuilding. Show all posts
08 December 2015
'Truly alien' aliens
One of the things I very commonly come across in SFF discussion is someone saying that the aliens/werewolves/angels/other things are 'truly alien' or 'look and behave just like humans', where one is a compliment and the other criticism.
Every time I come across this sort of thing, I stumble. Not because I don't get what they're saying, but I wonder what boundaries they're intending to draw.
What makes an alien 'alien'? While 'does not look human' is an obvious thing, here's my cat Cinnamon. She doesn't look particularly human either. Does that make her 'alien'?
Every time I come across this sort of thing, I stumble. Not because I don't get what they're saying, but I wonder what boundaries they're intending to draw.
What makes an alien 'alien'? While 'does not look human' is an obvious thing, here's my cat Cinnamon. She doesn't look particularly human either. Does that make her 'alien'?
Cinnamon and I are not much
alike. She likes racing madly up and down corridors, scratching things, and has
a magnificent twitch reflex should a string move suspiciously anywhere in her
field of view. She eats stuff that would
make me vomit. She has no command of
English, though she's a rather verbal cat, and won't hesitate to meow loudly
until her humans try to guess what she wants.
She isn't into computer games or reading.
And yet Cinnamon and I and
thousands of other creatures are very alike.
Earth itself is full of things not so very unlike Cinnamon, and yet all theoretically different from each
other. All of them share a drive to reproduce
(or, well, we wouldn't know about their species at all). All seek food of some sort, and an ideal
environment. The more complex ones
generally exhibit fear, aggression, curiosity, play and something that at least
appears to humans as affection. I don't
think anyone is arguing that 'aliens' could not exhibit these qualities.
But these are animals, and not at
the intelligence level of the type of alien that SFF readers are talking about
– a being that would be able to communicate effectively with humans if given
access to language lessons and whatever mechanical aids might be necessary, while
remaining 'truly alien'.
I think we can effectively divide
aliens into 'physically similar to humans' and 'have a strong dissimilarity to
humans'. Cat-ancestry people, for
instance, might claw stuff and have a tendency to pounce, but they're still
mammals, with live births, milk feeding, and the food-in/poop-out process. Then you have, say, the 'piggies' from Orson
Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead
(where reproduction is…different from the standard mammalian process) but
otherwise these are creatures that exhibit a similar range of drives and
emotions to humans. Thirdly the
'completely different' – living rocks, or energy beings that have little to no
concept of many human physical experiences – but could still presumably produce
fear, aggression, curiosity, play, affection.
No-one is arguing that 'truly alien' aliens must not have
emotion, or biological imperatives. If
you don't go in for large physical differences, a lot of what people point to
as 'alien' seems to be "non-Western culture" – and if you got into
the alien's POV, they would read very much as humans of a different culture.
Different cultures are very
interesting! Altered experiences caused
by physical differences are also very interesting! But surely we're not arguing that beings with
cultural and physical differences are intrinsically non-human.
Cognative differences takes us into more complex territory. Humans have cognative differences too, and I'm sure no-one who is talking about "alien aliens" means to say that non-neurotypical humans are 'alien'. Where does the line get drawn? We have humans with synesthesia. We've seen robots depicted with depression, or aliens
who in theory have no concept of lying, or don't understand death or love or
friendship. And, to be honest, most of this latter type of 'alien' reads as extrapolated concepts to me,
constructed to create a plot. I am vastly, vastly more inclined to believe
that if we somehow overcome the echoing hollows of space and stumble across a
few intelligent alien species…we'll get a bunch of creatures that look an awful
lot like Earth creatures – and probably act like them as well. Aliens because 'not from here', and with some
physical differences, and big cultural differences, and not 'truly alien
aliens' at all.
What do you all think? If we started planet-hopping, would you be
all that surprised to find mammals?
Cats? Bipeds with roguish grins, a taste for scotch,
and a nice line in leather jackets? At
what point do you throw up your hands and cry: "These aliens may as well
be human!"?
25 September 2015
"Zero Difference" Worldbuilding
Sylvia Kelso, a writer friend who has had a large influence on my own writing, once riffed on Barthes' "writing degree zero" (in regards to writing without regard to the conventions of language) to describe the kind of worldbuilding I do as "zero difference".
This was in reference to Champion of the Rose, where I'd built a 'bi-normative' world. The story did not touch on the terrible discrimination and pain that non-heterosexual people regularly face in our own world - the protagonist never discusses or even thinks about her sexuality. Characters are shown in a range of situations - committed m/f or f/f relationships, disappointed in or longing for past relationships, or happily flitting from lover to lover, guided only by opportunity and personal taste. I also built into that world the concept of 'thirds' and 'tribonds' to handle different ways society would expect same-sex people to approach conceiving children. But this was just in the background: never underlined or directly examined. Zero difference worldbuilding involves making massive changes to a status quo imbalance, and presenting it without remark.
In almost all of my books I do exactly the same thing with the role of women. The Darest, Eferum, Touchstone and Medair books have no societal sexism (though individuals are free to be asses). Women have the same inheritance rights, rights to own property, right to rule, and to pursue careers, as anyone else. I don't discuss how this came about, or how awesome it is: it just is a fact of the world, like gravity.
There are a few reasons I build 'zero difference' worlds, but a primary one is to move away from the limitations of stories I have already read.
These stories are a lot of fun. Hunting, one of my earlier novels (in order of writing), is set in a structurally sexist kingdom (somewhat isolated from a wider world without such inequality), but I put her in boy's clothing specifically to avoid time spent telling the protagonist Girls Can't Do That. I've loved many a story of girls proving that they Can So Do It, but at the same time Hunting is my only book where I've even touched on that dynamic because the world itself limits how you tell your story.
Even if you allow your main female character to Do Stuff in a structurally sexist world (by putting her in boy's clothes, or giving her a Get Out of Gender-Jail Free card, or showing her valiantly Doing "Women's Stuff" because Women's Stuff is Also Important, by setting the story in a structurally sexist world, the story often revolves around and repeatedly has to deal with gender limitations.
An (unmarried) girl in such a world is unlikely to be sexually experienced, which considerably changes her dynamic in romances. Tasks such as investigation are endlessly complicated when a woman would cause comment or scandal simply by her presence at, say, a race course or a public tavern. A woman's expertise and suggestions are likely to be dismissed in worlds where they are held incapable of non-domestic skills.
And the 'cost' to the story is time. Time devoted to overcoming the problem of being female in order to tackle the problem that is the plot.
The character(s) might overcome those challenges, test different methods of tackling them, or be injured and retreat from them. The importance is in the acknowledgement, on shining a light on both the dystopian-level oppressions and the small, silent shames that are delivered to people who are not sitting on the very top of the privilege pyramid.
My particular interest as an author, however, is not holding up a mirror, but creating a window to somewhere else.
At times when reading I feel as if stories are trying to lace us into a corset of "this is how it is" and refusing to let us breathe. We are being told over and over that some things are inevitable. Not only are they inevitable, but they are the primary aspect of our Selves, and to be x or y or z means that we must absolutely, inescapably devote large amounts of time to dealing with mandatory hate.
With me 'j' is usually the morality of mages, or dissonance caused by time dislocation, or bonds of rule or friendship, with a side order of frustrated artist. And I want to put my characters through those questions, not set them on the old, familiar treadmill of "girls can't do that".
That is not to say that zero difference worlds are Pollyanna wishful thinking. Hamstringing a few invasions, of course, won't necessarily stop people from hating, fearing or demonising other races, any more than interventionist gods necessarily erase institutional sexism - Gods, after all, can be racist and sexist too. But limiting colonialism can be used to fiercely undercut the terrible lie that is the White Superiority narrative. Changes such as this allow me to look into a world where the myriad African kingdoms whose names we're never even taught in school were not dismantled to the point where people deny they ever existed. Where English is not a dominant language, and the influence of the Egyptian social imperative of Ma'at directly opposes the concept of 'serf'.
Because one of the real joys and pleasures of a zero difference world is not treating what we have now as inevitable, true, and correct. There is room for more worlds than that.
This was in reference to Champion of the Rose, where I'd built a 'bi-normative' world. The story did not touch on the terrible discrimination and pain that non-heterosexual people regularly face in our own world - the protagonist never discusses or even thinks about her sexuality. Characters are shown in a range of situations - committed m/f or f/f relationships, disappointed in or longing for past relationships, or happily flitting from lover to lover, guided only by opportunity and personal taste. I also built into that world the concept of 'thirds' and 'tribonds' to handle different ways society would expect same-sex people to approach conceiving children. But this was just in the background: never underlined or directly examined. Zero difference worldbuilding involves making massive changes to a status quo imbalance, and presenting it without remark.
In almost all of my books I do exactly the same thing with the role of women. The Darest, Eferum, Touchstone and Medair books have no societal sexism (though individuals are free to be asses). Women have the same inheritance rights, rights to own property, right to rule, and to pursue careers, as anyone else. I don't discuss how this came about, or how awesome it is: it just is a fact of the world, like gravity.
There are a few reasons I build 'zero difference' worlds, but a primary one is to move away from the limitations of stories I have already read.
I Can So Do It
I have long sought stories of "girls doing stuff". Often, the books I cheerfully gulped down were "girls can too" stories. A girl in a sexist society is forbidden from doing something, and wins through adversity to stand triumphant (often assuming and discarding a boyish disguise) having saved the colony/won the battle/defeated the Dark Lord AS A GIRL! (*gasp*)These stories are a lot of fun. Hunting, one of my earlier novels (in order of writing), is set in a structurally sexist kingdom (somewhat isolated from a wider world without such inequality), but I put her in boy's clothing specifically to avoid time spent telling the protagonist Girls Can't Do That. I've loved many a story of girls proving that they Can So Do It, but at the same time Hunting is my only book where I've even touched on that dynamic because the world itself limits how you tell your story.
Even if you allow your main female character to Do Stuff in a structurally sexist world (by putting her in boy's clothes, or giving her a Get Out of Gender-Jail Free card, or showing her valiantly Doing "Women's Stuff" because Women's Stuff is Also Important, by setting the story in a structurally sexist world, the story often revolves around and repeatedly has to deal with gender limitations.
An (unmarried) girl in such a world is unlikely to be sexually experienced, which considerably changes her dynamic in romances. Tasks such as investigation are endlessly complicated when a woman would cause comment or scandal simply by her presence at, say, a race course or a public tavern. A woman's expertise and suggestions are likely to be dismissed in worlds where they are held incapable of non-domestic skills.
And the 'cost' to the story is time. Time devoted to overcoming the problem of being female in order to tackle the problem that is the plot.
It's not easy being
Of course, sometimes the plot is primarily about being female. Books that directly examine and hold up to the light challenges faced by women (or people of colour, non-cis people, non-het or differently-abled people) are incredibly important. Many readers find it a gift and a direct aid to witness a character in a book struggle with the same issues that are a central concern of the reader's daily life.The character(s) might overcome those challenges, test different methods of tackling them, or be injured and retreat from them. The importance is in the acknowledgement, on shining a light on both the dystopian-level oppressions and the small, silent shames that are delivered to people who are not sitting on the very top of the privilege pyramid.
My particular interest as an author, however, is not holding up a mirror, but creating a window to somewhere else.
Second 'Verse, Same as the First
I've walked through thousands of fantasy worlds. There have been some very unlike our own, but the vast majority are more than familiar. Even if there are gods who can enforce their edicts, even if physics is debatable and magic a wild card altering all manner of expectation, these massive variances seem to make little difference to culture. Humans are divided into women who are domestic and men who are in charge. Heterosexuality is not only common, but mandated, with transgression punishable by law. Civilisation seems inextricably linked to a low melanin count.At times when reading I feel as if stories are trying to lace us into a corset of "this is how it is" and refusing to let us breathe. We are being told over and over that some things are inevitable. Not only are they inevitable, but they are the primary aspect of our Selves, and to be x or y or z means that we must absolutely, inescapably devote large amounts of time to dealing with mandatory hate.
Loosening the stays
So one of the reasons I both seek out and write "zero difference" worlds is simply to breathe. To not shower my characters with major threats and micro-aggressions, to not make prejudice against that character their one abiding truth, their constant preoccupation, and the required focus of the plot. To show that a person can simply be x or y or z, and also a and b and c, while focusing the majority of character time and energy on j.With me 'j' is usually the morality of mages, or dissonance caused by time dislocation, or bonds of rule or friendship, with a side order of frustrated artist. And I want to put my characters through those questions, not set them on the old, familiar treadmill of "girls can't do that".
Modelling possibility
Another reason I enjoy "zero difference" worlds is to take a next step. In the Darest books, I began to explore what social constructs would develop in a bi-normative world. In the Singularity Game series I'm questioning gender by introducing virtual body-hopping. In the Trifold Age books I hamstrung colonialism - the period of European invasion on the back of gunpowder and disease - by introducing gods who "Answered" and protected their various peoples.That is not to say that zero difference worlds are Pollyanna wishful thinking. Hamstringing a few invasions, of course, won't necessarily stop people from hating, fearing or demonising other races, any more than interventionist gods necessarily erase institutional sexism - Gods, after all, can be racist and sexist too. But limiting colonialism can be used to fiercely undercut the terrible lie that is the White Superiority narrative. Changes such as this allow me to look into a world where the myriad African kingdoms whose names we're never even taught in school were not dismantled to the point where people deny they ever existed. Where English is not a dominant language, and the influence of the Egyptian social imperative of Ma'at directly opposes the concept of 'serf'.
Because one of the real joys and pleasures of a zero difference world is not treating what we have now as inevitable, true, and correct. There is room for more worlds than that.
06 June 2014
Pyramids and alt-worldbuilding and language
Still making my way slowly through the first draft of Pyramids. The characters have settled and become more real to me and - as usual with my first drafts - I'm alternating between taking days over a handful of paragraphs, and then trotting merrily through the next couple of pages, and then hitting a go-slow again. I'm not someone who can "just put words on the page" and then go back and fix it. If the foundation of the preceding events doesn't ring true for me, then I won't be able to build on it.
So far, it's quite a 'busy' novel in that there's a lot of different threads all running through each other - my poor characters just want to investigate a murder, and all this other stuff keeps happening to them, and some of it is relevant and some of it isn't but is kind of overwhelmingly important to the rest of their lives (and the rest of the series).
Without a doubt the most worldbuilding heavy story I'm ever going to write - perhaps inevitable given the starting point of our world. Also by far the highest in terms of magical creatures - both Touchstone and Stained Glass Monsters technically had scads of different creatures, but you really only 'met' a couple. I'm coming up on writing the primary triskelion scene and I'm really looking forward to it - without doubt one of my most favourite (and odd!) creatures. Although I'm very fond of the folies and the amasen as well.
Amasen is a neologism for a creature depicted in Celtic art that has no known name (as opposed to triskelion, which is a co-opted word, and folies, which is simply a development of 'foliate') and neologisms are one of the big balancing acts that writing such a very alt world requires.
Technically all the characters are speaking Prytennian, which is what I'm pretending you'd get if you took the language of southern Britain around the time of the Roman withdrawal, and kept it as a distinct and defended language group (ending up with not-quite-Welsh) but then incorporated a bunch of Egyptian while expanding northward through existing Latin territories, and then territories strongly influenced by Norse, and also the various multiple waves of invasion that Britain went through - so you do still get your Anglo and your Saxon and your French in there, but all the balances are different. And all the while all the other languages are developing and evolving on their own account. Norse becomes a Swedish which is not quite current Swedish. Latin is a living language that has grown and changed.
And then I, fool author, write it all out in English anyway, and have to make a million little decisions like: what is the money called? Do I keep pound and sovereign and shilling because that's less work for the reader, even though it makes no sense etymologically? What about all the place names? Londonium has become London, but the Tamesis did not shift to Thames. Anything with 'kirk' and other Christian-rooted names don't exist because Rome had strong reasons to stick with Jupiter, and that of course makes enormous differences.
My current choice is the standard form of polite address. Mr and Miss and Mrs and all that - would Prytennian still use that? French doesn't have nearly the same ties, and Prytennians would not use an honorific to distinguish between married and unmarried women (because their rulers, the Suleviae, don't marry and so marriage has become less of a focal point of female identity). I've gone through many options to find a word I like! I ended up wishing we used the Japanese honorific system, which doesn't even distinguish between polite address for men or women (-san) or tag gender to most titles. Currently I'm caught between using "dama" for women and "daman" for men - or to just use "damin" for both men and women. Both options have advantages.
Anyway - I am always slow at first drafts, but now I have added excuses! Plus at the beginning of August I leave for three months in the UK, and it's hard to guess how that will impact my output since I do most of my writing on the train to work each morning. I am speeding up a little, because I know my characters and world quite well at this point, but I can still make no real estimates about release dates.
I am, however, really looking forward to sharing this world and these people with you all.
So far, it's quite a 'busy' novel in that there's a lot of different threads all running through each other - my poor characters just want to investigate a murder, and all this other stuff keeps happening to them, and some of it is relevant and some of it isn't but is kind of overwhelmingly important to the rest of their lives (and the rest of the series).
Without a doubt the most worldbuilding heavy story I'm ever going to write - perhaps inevitable given the starting point of our world. Also by far the highest in terms of magical creatures - both Touchstone and Stained Glass Monsters technically had scads of different creatures, but you really only 'met' a couple. I'm coming up on writing the primary triskelion scene and I'm really looking forward to it - without doubt one of my most favourite (and odd!) creatures. Although I'm very fond of the folies and the amasen as well.
Amasen is a neologism for a creature depicted in Celtic art that has no known name (as opposed to triskelion, which is a co-opted word, and folies, which is simply a development of 'foliate') and neologisms are one of the big balancing acts that writing such a very alt world requires.
Technically all the characters are speaking Prytennian, which is what I'm pretending you'd get if you took the language of southern Britain around the time of the Roman withdrawal, and kept it as a distinct and defended language group (ending up with not-quite-Welsh) but then incorporated a bunch of Egyptian while expanding northward through existing Latin territories, and then territories strongly influenced by Norse, and also the various multiple waves of invasion that Britain went through - so you do still get your Anglo and your Saxon and your French in there, but all the balances are different. And all the while all the other languages are developing and evolving on their own account. Norse becomes a Swedish which is not quite current Swedish. Latin is a living language that has grown and changed.
And then I, fool author, write it all out in English anyway, and have to make a million little decisions like: what is the money called? Do I keep pound and sovereign and shilling because that's less work for the reader, even though it makes no sense etymologically? What about all the place names? Londonium has become London, but the Tamesis did not shift to Thames. Anything with 'kirk' and other Christian-rooted names don't exist because Rome had strong reasons to stick with Jupiter, and that of course makes enormous differences.
My current choice is the standard form of polite address. Mr and Miss and Mrs and all that - would Prytennian still use that? French doesn't have nearly the same ties, and Prytennians would not use an honorific to distinguish between married and unmarried women (because their rulers, the Suleviae, don't marry and so marriage has become less of a focal point of female identity). I've gone through many options to find a word I like! I ended up wishing we used the Japanese honorific system, which doesn't even distinguish between polite address for men or women (-san) or tag gender to most titles. Currently I'm caught between using "dama" for women and "daman" for men - or to just use "damin" for both men and women. Both options have advantages.
Anyway - I am always slow at first drafts, but now I have added excuses! Plus at the beginning of August I leave for three months in the UK, and it's hard to guess how that will impact my output since I do most of my writing on the train to work each morning. I am speeding up a little, because I know my characters and world quite well at this point, but I can still make no real estimates about release dates.
I am, however, really looking forward to sharing this world and these people with you all.
28 February 2013
Travelling Fantasy Roundtable : Part 12 : Technology in Fantasy
Welcome to Part 12 of the Travelling Fantasy Round Table, a
roaming discussion on aspects of fantasy literature!
Today, Carole
McDonnell, Valjeanne Jeffers,
Theresa Crater, Sylvia Kelso and Warren Rochelle join me in discussing
technology in fantasy.
Andrea K Höst
Have you ever played Civilization?
You start with a group of settlers, and you end up in space.
Along the way you build an Empire, clawing your way up a hierarchical
technology tree where Pottery leads to Masonry, and Bronze Working leads to
Iron Working, and you don't get to skip a step. You also never go backwards,
never have your Great Library burn down, never have barbarians banding together
to crush your Empire, and you never lose half your clever construction techniques.Nor do you ever discover anti-gravity stones which allow you to construct floating cities and give every person fast, inexpensive and wide-ranging travel abilities.
I've discussed previously in my Impacts of Magic series, that it's rare to see magic used to significantly alter this hierarchical development of technology, and through technology to significantly change social and cultural development. Often magic is depicted as inimical to technology, causing more advanced examples to fail when in its presence. It is rare to the point of almost never to have a healing mage show up and start teaching non-mages that there's different blood types, the basics of immunology, and the importance of sterilisation.
One series which does seem to marry technology to magic is Terry Pratchett's Discworld - from the Hex computer to cameras - but this appears to be a parallel technology tree rather than advancements in practical science. Other worlds have magic assisting technology (see all of Final Fantasy), but the injection of magic into a world of technology, or technology into a world of magic, rarely seems to massively alter the technology tree. We simply get "the Industrial Age + Magic" or "Feudalism + Magic" or "Faerie + Computers" without the complete revolution which that injection of other should surely bring.
Instead magic is often depicted as stultifying and backward instead of an instrument of revelation and advancement.
Magic in our world belongs to the charlatan. Rational science disproves magic, reveals its smoke and mirrors. Instead of partners in advancement, they are foes. Thus, to the fantasy author, it is only natural to make magic an enemy of scientific advancement. Science, with its need for comprehension and proof, with its systematic testing and extrapolation, should hate "explanationless" magic. Would science want a magic which can shortcut scientific testing, point out the correct result, and leave science to merely test and prove it?
Even in the genre of 'modern magic', urban fantasy, we rarely see any significant shift of this world's technology tree. We might get a werewolf working for, say, customs, sniffing out drugs, but we rarely get technology which has undergone a paradigm shift because magic is real. The closest we seem to come is a 'steampunk sensibility' (which appears to use clockwork technology with more than an element of magic about it) or the kind of World Behind story found in Gaiman's Neverwhere or Rowling's Potter books – magic is present but separate.
But perhaps the reason for the rarity of magic altering the technology tree is simply the sheer difficulty in mapping the result. How big a change would that anti-gravity stone bring about? Think of the impact on the Age of Expansion. Trade. Wars. At what point would mapping all those changes start to distract from the story and become an exercise in overwhelming worldbuilding, leaving the reader struggling to understand the rules?
Andrea K Höst was born in Sweden but raised in Australia.
She writes fantasy and science fantasy, and enjoys creating stories which give
her female characters something more to do than wait for rescue.
Carole McDonnell
There are two fallacies often found in fantasies where
technology is concerned.
The first is that magic is purely fantastical. Of course,
some magic is. Demons, faes, and gods abound in much fantasy. But for the most
part, magic is a kind of technology in its own right, an art and lore that can
be learned from wizened teachers or from ancient books. For instance, in
Shakespeare's Tempest, Prospero has his wonderfully researched and studied
Book.
The second fallacy is that some fantasies show the same
pattern of civilization as Earth's. The Bronze Age, then the Age of Steel,
animal technology, the Industrial Revolution/Steam Age, the age of
electricity/radio/telegraph, the computer age/DNA technology/laser technology,
and the space age, etc. But this particular sequence seems wrong to me. One
culture might be more knowledgable about one type of technology than another. Or,
one culture might have a technology that is considered magical or superstitious
or "impossible" or "godly" in another culture. Also, some
aspects of a certain technology might be explored in one culture but not
explored in another. In addition, certain technologies are lauded, then
forgotten, then rediscovered.
For instance, the Chinese had "gun" powder for
many years but the Europeans invented the gun before the Chinese did. Some
western cultures used "leeches" medically in the past and have begun
using them again. Some so-called "primitive" cultures understood the
nature of homeopathy (like curing like) before the sophisticated Europeans
discovered the cowpox/smallpox connection. Other so-called "tribal"
cultures understood how to use flies and centipedes for crime detection before
European civilization got the idea. (Flies are often used by some African tribes
to determine whose murderous-but-newly-washed dagger still retained the
victim's blood and centipedes were used in ancient Korea to check if the blood
on a dagger was human or animal.)
Thus it is possible for the technology of a particular world
to NOT fall into the western model.
In my novel, The Constant Tower, the characters are
warriors. Some would say the setting is "Bronze Age/medieval." But
one tribe has solar panels because they understand the nature of light, and the
studiers of this world understand music and the effect of "unheard
sounds" in ways that would be considered miraculous by some of Earth's
less "civilized tribes" or might seem merely fantastical to those
with a western mindset.
Carole McDonnell is a writer of ethnic fiction, speculative
fiction, and Christian fiction. Her works have appeared in many anthologies and
at various online sites. Her novel, Wind Follower, was published by Wildeside
Books. Her forthcoming novel is called The Constant Tower. http://carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/
Valjeanne Jeffers
Technology and fantasy: put them together and you have a delicious
synergy that's not quite SF, not quite fantasy. Some of my favorite authors
have skirted the divider between fantasy and science fiction. Octavia Butler,
for example, while she is almost always described as a science fiction author
blended the two quite brilliantly in books like Wild Seed and Clay's Ark. Nalo
Hopkinson also combined them with sheer genius in her novels Brown Girl in The
Ring and Midnight Robber.The existence of technology in fantasy often results in the co-existence of “science and sorcery,” as Charles Saunders (creator of Sword and Soul) has described my Immortal series. In my novels you have werewolves and vampires—totally in control of their preternatural abilities and using said abilities to protect their universe; but still such characters are most often found in fantasy or horror genres. Yet, the Immortal series also has time travel, aliens... and technology to support its futuristic setting. Such as in the excerpt from Immortal book 1:
Karla walked across the wooden floor of her living area into
a kitchenette. A press of her fingers on the first sphere of a triangular pod
started coffee brewing.
She filled a cup with chicory, walked back into the living
area and pushed the second button on her remote, activating a blue panel beside
the window. Jazz music filled the apartment. Like her bedroom console the unit
kept time, transmitted holographic images and played tapes. Using the third
button, she opened the curtains.
Thus, the Immortal novels have been described as both
fantasy and science fiction novels. Use a little science and one still can be
considered a Fantasy writer. Use a bit more and you've inched into the science
fiction genre. An excerpt from Colony: A Space Opera (my novel in progress)
illustrates this point:
She was born 20 years after Planet Earth's decline. The same
year IST began building the probes: lightweight spacecrafts that humans could
live in for years, if need be, and that moved fast enough to break the sound
barrier—traveling millions of miles within weeks.
In 2065, global warning had accelerated. The final stage in
Earth's destruction had begun. Temperatures of 150 degrees scorched the planet.
Tidal waves, monsoons and cyclones tore it apart. Those who could afford it
moved underground. Food became the world's most valued resource. The rest were
herded under the domes.
Scientists scurried to genetically reproduce fruits and
vegetables—with horrible side effects. Money still ruled the world. But money
was gradually becoming worthless. That's when the government saw the writing on
the wall and created IST and the probes: spacecrafts designed for one purpose,
to seek out planets capable of sustaining human life.
When a writer uses technology in fantasy, the lines between
the genres are even more gloriously buried. Thus, what may be described as
science fiction by one reader/writer can just as easily be characterized as
fantasy by the next. The only real rule here is to make one's technology
believable; credible; plausible. Although it doesn’t yet exist—in a kind kind
of literary sleight of hand.
Pulling this off, just gives me one more reason to
absolutely love speculative fiction...even if no will ever be able to figure
out whether I'm a science fiction or fantasy writer yet. In fact, I think I
prefer it that way.
Valjeanne Jeffers is a graduate of Spelman College and the
author of the SF/fantasy novels: Immortal, Immortal II: The Time of Legend,
Immortal III: Stealer of Souls, the steampunk novels: Immortal IV: Collision of
Worlds and The Switch II: Clockwork (includes books 1 and 2), and the space
opera Colony.
Valjeanne's fiction has appeared in Steamfunk!, Griots: A
Sword and Soul Anthology, LuneWing, PurpleMag, Genesis Science Fiction
Magazine, Pembroke Magazine, Possibilties, 31 Days of Steamy Mocha, and Griots
II: Sisters of the Spear (in press). She works as an editor for Mocha Memoirs
Press and is also co-owner of Q and V Affordable editing.
Theresa Crater
I recently reread Bram Stoker’s Dracula for my Speculative
Fiction workshop. While my writing students bemoaned the fact that Stoker does
all the things they are advised not to do in their writing, I noticed Stoker’s
love of technology.
The vampire is deeply rooted in old ways. His castle sits on
a precipice, difficult for attackers to penetrate—and for Harker to escape
from. His house is lit by multiple candles and furnished with old and moldy
brocades. He uses centuries-old methods of travel for the most part—carriages
and boats—yet maintains an interest in the trains in London, in particular
their schedules.
But our group of heroes out to kill the Count rely on new-fangled
machinery. Mina practices her shorthand, which her fiancé Harker relies on to
send her secret message—although Dracula intercepts the letter. She types
manically to escape her fears, but this useful skill allows her to compile a
complete history of all the group knows about vampires and the Count’s doings.
Dr. Seward records his diary on the phonograph, a technology that still
mystifies me.
Our intrepid group also relies on a new mental
“technology”—they hypnotize Mina after she’s been bitten to gain access to the
vampire’s consciousness. Mesmerism was a new-fangled idea created by Anton
Mesmer in the early 19thcentury, but which gained popular fascination during
the spiritualist phase of Victorian society. If not technology, it certainly is
a new way of looking at human consciousness.
Stoker sprinkled his novel with the gadgets his readers were
finding popping up in their world. I don’t think he intended this contrast, but
it’s there.
Theresa Crater has published two contemporary fantasies, Beneath
the Hallowed Hill & Under the Stone Paw and several short stories, most
recently “White Moon” in Riding the Moon and “Bringing the Waters” in The
Aether Age: Helios. She’s also published poetry and a baker’s dozen of literary
criticism. Currently, she teaches writing and British lit in Denver. Born in
North Carolina, she now lives in Colorado with her Egyptologist partner and
their two cats. Visit her website at http://theresacrater.com.
Sylvia Kelso
Technically, you should excuse the pun,“technology” is any
form of applied science/knowledge, from a hand-axe to a nuclear bomb. For a
fantasy writer “technology” becomes a most pressing question in the planning or
first-paragraph stages of a novel or a world-building. The level of
“technology” you factor in, whether by planned outline or draft-impulse, will
decide almost everything about your invented societies, and quite a lot about
the actual world.A classic if rather hypothetical example is Middle-earth. Whatever Tolkien pre-invented in The Silmarilion, the pre-Industrial nature of Middle-earth was decided at the moment early in the first chapter, that he made hobbits mighty hunters with hand-thrown stones. He might have let them “take a gun out” like a Heyer Regency hero, given that Bilbo was the picture of a wealthy early 20th Century middle-class English male. Whether conscious or unconscious, or possibly prompted by the equally spontaneous choice of a children’s story genre, denying Bilbo the weapons of his Real-Earth period affected every further page of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
The nexus of Tolkien’s personal stand-points behind this
choice does generate fascinating contradictions. While the Shire’s weapons are
limited to stones, staves and bows, Minas Tirith has swords and spears, and
magic defends Lorien. But evil, paradoxically but inevitably, introduces to
Middle-earth the very technological level that Tolkien most loathed. Isengard
and Mordor are copybook unregulated high industrial complexes, complete with
waste, pollution, desolation, wheels and hammers, and “‘mind[s] of metal and
wheels.’” (The Two Towers, Ch. 4)
But The Hobbit’s original gunpowder ban does not allow these
fearsome lairs to spew out steam engines, aircraft, big guns, mechanical
soldiers or machine-guns or mustard-gas, not even rifles and muskets. The Orcs
seem to have been bio-engineered – which would not require all this mechanical
paraphernalia –and they, like everybody else, fight with sword, bow and spear.
Even the mighty Grond only uses muscle-power. The sole exception to this
pre-industrial ban is the “blasting fire” by which the Orcs manage to
infiltrate the stream-way at Helm’s Deep. Everywhere else, evil as
industrialism can affect Middle-earth only through its environmental damage.
Other fantasies happily introduce later forms of real world
“technology” in secondary worlds. Martha Wells’ Ile Rien series begins with a
just-pre-Industrial society using pistol and arquebus, then moves to a faux
Edwardian/Victorian period that still uses pistols, and in the second series,
uses magic to present WWI and later technology like airships. Here, as with
Naomi Novik’s Napoleonic War dragons, the tech. level is pre-set to industrial.
But if less strikingly than with The Lord of the Rings, much of the available
real-world technology, from cine cameras to machine guns, is again not
admitted.
More dissonant cases exemplify what has been touted as
“science fantasy” – where “science” – ie actually some form of very modern tech
– is juxtaposed with an earlier technological level. A really striking example,
and one of my favourites, is Barbara Hambly’s Windrose trilogy, whose second
title epitomizes the type: The Silicon Mage. Though the cover appears pure
fantasy, in fact, an impressive apparatus of spells, spell diagrams, sigils,
and simple wizardly capabilities is connected to and through computers, to work
in both primary and secondary worlds, with astonishing discrepancy and more
amazing lack of fuss – now THAT is a real fantasy-tech.
There is, of course, an older wholly invented technology,
the matrix science of Darkover, but though that otherwise pre-industrial world
and its societies beg to be classified as fantasy, the origins of Darkovan
“humanity” from a space diaspora make a strong claim that the whole world and
series be called SF.
Which opens the other question about“Technology in Fantasy”
– namely, if fantasy, apart from contemporary urban primary world stuff, starts
to introduce really current tech. like gene-engineering, nanotech, and less
realized forms such as cyborgs, even if the actual society is (apparently)
pre-industrial, has the form then become SF?
SF is usually seen as the genre of the future, however often
overtaken. Modern fantasy, to use a paradox, is usually seen as the genre of
“the past.” How close can such a fictional “past” come to the “present,” or
with imaginary tech, to a future, without sliding over the generic boundary?
Whatever the writer’s intent, or the bookshelf label, if the savvy specfic
reader perceives the conventions, icons and protocols in the text as SF, why
isn’t it SF?
The generic SF/fantasy boundary concerned me deeply while I
was struggling with the SF theory chapter of my PhD. Past/future-time,
science/magic as unreality’s ennabling device, evidence of change, progress; I
canvassed those and a number more of the abundant definitions. In the process I
suddenly found myself, like Octavia Butler’s heroine in Exogenesis, conducting
an experiment “in the field.” Once the opening paragraph of Amberlight arrived,
the conscious project was to see how nearly I could make a text walk the
tightrope, marked by Hambly’s Silicon Mage,between fantasy and SF.
Hence, the McGuffin in Amberlight, the “qherrique” which
turned up as opening donnée, became the basis for a thought experiment in
gender-role reversals, as well as the key to society’s shape. Only women could
“work” the mysterious – substance, entity, animal, vegetable, mineral? The
society became a matriarchy. Qherrique’s most crucial quality was its psychic
effects, coveted by every other society, making Amberlight-the-city unthinkably
rich. But qherrique had a bouquet of other attributes – pizo-electric,
photo-synthetic, it could be worked like a mix of pearl and stone to drive
machines, to power tools, to produce guns. Light-guns and horseless vehicles.
Is this fantasy, or is it SF?
It charmed me immensely when I sent the novel in ms to
Andrea (Hosth), asking outright, Do you read this as fantasy or as SF? And she
responded that she couldn’t decide. The indecision reappeared among reviewers
when I finally got the novel into print. It was political fantasy, it was high
fantasy, it was a sub-genre of feminist SF: a whole grab-bag of answers turned
up. Leading, perhaps, to the most interesting general conclusion – that the
level and type of technology a writer consciously or haphazardly bestows on a specfic novel will
not merely dictate the shape of that world and its societies, but even the
genre in which the work will belong - or,
if as with Amberlight, Loki or Coyote was around at the moment of inception,
not.
Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland,Australia
Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland,
Warren Rochelle
Fairies don’t really need machines, do they? Not the ones in
my novels Harvest of Changelings, and its sequel, The Called. Elemental
beings—Fires, Airs, Waters, and Earths—they have magical powers to use and
manipulate these elements, with extra abilities for their particular element.
Fires, for example, are best suited for heating things, so there is no need for
electrical stoves. Instead, Fires, heat up stones, and in war, create
fireballs. Airs are the most gifted telepathically and the winds answer to
their call. Waters can call the rain and raise waves. The garden of an Earth is
fertile, verdant, and productive; Earths can awaken volcanoes, make
earthquakes. Machinery as we know it Here never developed There.But the magic of this Faerie uses machines—at least it does Here. When Hazel, one of my four main characters, and one of the changelings, is called to return to Faerie, her gateway is not a wardrobe or a door in the side of the hill, rather it is a computer. Hazel has on her computer, Worldmaker, a program that allows the user to construct his or her own world from the ground up, to its people and civilization, its climate, its history. And it is through this portal that Hazel, accompanied by her loyal Siamese, Alexander, enters Faerie. As the dragon she encounters explains, “It was your machine . . . and your game. The machine knocked at the door and the game opened the door to this place; the machine answered a call from this place. It can talk to other machines, yes? Create invisible links of energy, of electricity? Such a link was made to here, which is beyond dreams . . .” (Harvest of Changelings 69). The computer, as a pegasus tells Hazel later, is “a dream-gate” (154).
In The Golden Boy, a novel-in-progress, I explore this link between machine and magic. In this novel the world is dominated by the Columbian Empire and the New World and a rational, science-privileging super-church, which is in opposition to the Old World and those who would also embrace magic and those who use magic, and those who are, the fey. Fairies, who are again Elementals, are iron-sensitive. The only way they can touch a car without pain is to touch one sealed in a plastic coating. Magic and machine in this universe are ways for one to fight the other.
So what? Is this just another take on the famous quote by
Arthur C. Clarke, one of his Three Laws, “Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic”? On reflection, no; rather I find myself doing
something perhaps connected, but still different. Machines give us the power of
magic: they can enhance speed and allow us to travel over great distances in a
short amount of time—seven-league boots and aircraft. The magical can call down
the lightning; laser rifles and cannons harness light for war. Software such as
Hazel’s Worldmaker and the software that creates virtual realities allow us to
enter the hills, go through the wardrobe. Through television and film, through
computer monitors, we enter, and for a time, live in any number of alternate
worlds. Technology, then, allows us to explore just the kind of world my
changelings find in Faerie, the kind of world the heroes in The Golden Boy are
trying to save.
Magic, in the literature of the fantastic, in counterpoint,
allows the reader to contemplate a world without the mechanical. It reminds us
that we can—really we can, despite what my students tell me—survive without the
machine. It reminds us that the Morlocks and the Eloi are possible. Magic warns
of the possibility of the Borg.
Technology then, is magical; it is fantastical. Technology
allows us to create a magic of the mind, and magic reminds us that it is the
mind that we can find real magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology really
is indistinguishable from magic.
Warren Rochelle has taught English at the University of Mary
Washington since 2000. His short story, "The Golden Boy” (published in The
Silver Gryphon) was a Finalist for the 2004 Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best
Short Story and his novels include The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings
(2007), and The Called (2010. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and
has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. Most recently,
his story, “The Boy on McGee Street,”was published in Queer Fish 2 (Pink
Narcissus Press, 2012). http://warrenrochelle.com
31 December 2012
Travelling Fantasy Roundtable : Part 10 : Food in Fantasy
Part
10 of the Travelling Fantasy Round Table, our roaming discussion on aspects of
fantasy literature, is up at Sylvia Kelso's blog.
This month we're talking about food in fantasy.
25 April 2012
The Travelling Fantasy Round Table: Part 2: The Baggage of Language
Today, Theresa Crater, Carole McDonnell, Warren Rochelle, Deborah J. Ross and Sylvia Kelso join me in discussing the baggage of language.
One of the seminal essays dealing with language in fantasy is Ursula K Le Guin's "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie". Le Guin examines a passage from a secondary world fantasy novel which, she notes, could very well depict politicians in Washington DC. She suggests the problem is with the style, which does not transport the reader away from our world to a world of heroes and magic, but instead creates cardboard scenery, leaving the reader feeling cheated, as if they were promised another world, an Elfland, but travelled no further than Poughkeepsie.
Although few fantasy novels today resemble the master stylists Le Guin recommends, her point stands that a secondary world which sounds exactly the same as our world will ring untrue, and any writer venturing to create a whole new world needs to pay attention to language.
Stepping back from style to focus on word choice, we can look to the example set by Mary Robinette Kowal's regency fantasy Glamour in Glass, where Kowal pared her word use down to words which existed prior to 1815, creating an exceptional level of verisimilitude.
For writers who create secondary worlds (instead of alt histories), the challenge is not dissimilar, for even though a truly secondary world novel would not employ a language of this world at all, terms which are particularly modern or wedded to a time and place on Earth will jar the reader – and thus most fantasy writers don't reference "freeways", or name cities New York or Mumbai.
But all words bring their own baggage, and you don't have to mention a warp drive to slingshot a reader to Poughkeepsie and beyond. A word such as "okay", though debatably around since the 1800s, has a very modern feel which will not ring true when spoken by a Knight of the Round Table. And certain words and phrases are so absolutely embedded in a real-world event that use of them is fraught with extra meaning.
One of my favourite phrase origin stories is that of "Sweet F.A.", which means "nothing at all". It has a semi-modern feel and the common incorrect expansion of the phrase (sweet fuck all) would not feel too out of place in a hard-speaking warrior's mouth. But "Sweet F.A." has its origin in 1867, when an eight year-old girl named Fanny Adams was murdered and dismembered. With a turn for dark humour the Royal Navy began to refer to newly distributed tins of mutton as "Sweet Fanny Adams". It is a phrase which means "worthless", "nothing", but it means that for very specific reasons.
A writer creating a secondary world, aware that our modern languages are not the language of that world, must pick and choose from broad vocabulary to eliminate terms which will throw the average reader out of the story, while accepting that the story is still being written in a modern language, because the reader is a modern reader. Is it unreasonable, for instance, to say "Beowulf stood silhouetted in the mead-hall's doorway", even though 'silhouette' is derived from one Etienne de Silhouette, a French minister of the 1700s?
The word choice I struggle with most frequently is that of ranks and titles. To neologise or not to neologise? If you create a new hierarchy of titles for aristocracy, priests, or civil positions, the reader must learn a series of new words and their relationship to each other. Kier, Kierash, Keridahl...they mean nothing to the reader, and an entire hierarchy of neologisms may swiftly lead to reader overload. So why not fall back on Emperor, Crown Prince, Duke...?
There are two layers of meaning which come with most Earth hierarchies – an assumed culture, and gender issues.
I recently noted that I started placing guns (flintlock pistols) in my fantasy novels to signal to the reader that the book was not set in the middle ages. Too often I have seen one of my stories described as "pseudo-medieval", even though the people in those stories clearly had far more education, upward mobility, and freedom to move about than those generally enjoyed under a feudal or manorial system, and usually a highly different relationship to God(s). But clearly I had conjured an entire culture by the use of the word 'King'. If I had used Shah, or Daimyo or Pharaoh I would conjure entirely different cultures – but none of those cultures would match the world I had created.
Most problematic of all is the baggage, the immense complexity, which comes with the use of the word "Queen".
There are very specific terms for different types of queens (helpfully provided by Wikipedia):
- Queen regnant: a female monarch of equivalent power to a male king.
- Queen consort: the wife of a reigning king.
- Queen dowager: a former queen consort whose husband has died.
- Queen mother: either a queen dowager, or a queen regnant who has abdicated, whose son or daughter has become the monarch.
Of all the words which have baggage in fantasy, rank carries one of the heaviest toll. Baggage-free neologisms may be the better option after all.
Andrea K Höst was born in Sweden but raised in Australia. She writes fantasy and science fantasy, and enjoys creating stories which give her female characters something more to do than wait for rescue.
Theresa Crater
“The Baggage of Language in Fantasy” is the topic this month, and my short answer to this dilemma is “that’s why I write urban fantasy.” But even then, problems arise. I like to explore alternative theories in my work, and people naturally bring their preconceptions and own certainties to the text.
My partner – now there’s a language problem for you. If I say “partner,” most people will think I mean I’m a lesbian and I’m referring to a woman. If I say “husband,” most people will think I’m 100% straight and we did a traditional marriage ceremony. If I say “domestic partner,” I sound like a social worker. I sometimes say “my guy,” which is quite ambiguous and sometimes causes confusion, but I sort of enjoy that.
Anyway, my partner is an Egyptologist, but not exactly. He came up with a new term. He says he’s created a new field, “Khemitology.” This is the study of pre-dynastic Egypt sort of. Or the study of Egypt as seen from an indigenous perspective, because his teacher was an indigenous elder of Egypt. His teacher claimed that Egyptology was created by the Greeks, who were imperialists, and as such didn’t get told the whole truth about the civilization they were dominating.
One of their ideas that I put into my first fantasy, Under the Stone Paw, was that the word “pharaoh” was a misunderstanding of the term “Per-Aa.” The Greeks, being patriarchal, assumed there were male rulers in Egypt, but Egypt was a matriarchy. (We could pause here and say this doesn’t mean that matriarchy is the reverse image of patriarchy, with women in charge and perpetrating whatever acts they wish upon men with no repercussions. But let’s not.) Descent was from mother to daughter. “Per-Aa” meant “the High House,” which was the woman’s house. The woman chose her consort to help her rule. He was perceived to be the king by the Greeks and the term “Per-Aa” became “pharaoh.”
How would you put this idea into action in fiction? You can’t have someone standing there explaining it. Who are they explaining it to? All the characters belong to that world and understand this as the basis of their reality. So in comes the stranger who needs things explained. Or the text just lives in this world and tells a story, but will the reader relate to and enjoy the story? It might take a while for the reader to acclimate. The Big Six publishers might not like that. They’re in Business. And not in the business of changing minds and hearts primarily. The book must make money first.
Avatar did something many other texts do, and here I’m thinking of some South African anti-apartheid films a few decades back that told the story of apartheid beginning with a naive white guy who had good intentions, but learned the nasty truth through a series of shocking (to the white guy) encounters. Avatar begins in a world familiar to the viewer, then slowly takes us into a foreign world. We learn that world through the character until we suddenly look back at that once familiar world and see . . . . Well, perhaps T.S. Eliot said it best: “The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
Theresa Crater has published two contemporary fantasies, Beneath the Hallowed Hill & Under the Stone Paw and several short stories, most recently “White Moon” in Riding the Moon and “Bringing the Waters” in The Aether Age: Helios. She’s also published poetry and a baker’s dozen of literary criticism. Currently, she teaches writing and British lit in Denver. Born in North Carolina, she now lives in Colorado with her Egyptologist partner and their two cats. Visit her website at http://theresacrater.com.
Carole McDonnell
Recently, there was a bit of an uproar about the Hunger games. Apparently, many folks who had read the book were not aware that certain "dark-brown" characters were what we in the United States would call "a black person."
Words are a powerful thing. I've had moments when I simply wanted to describe a character as a Native American or a Chinese person -- but such countries and groups did not exist in my story. I therefore had to use words such as "crescent-shaped eyes" (which only made a few people wonder if my characters were aliens.
But there are other issues besides physical descriptions of characters. I always seem to trip over what to call eating implements: Forks...meat spear? Pronged utensil?
Of course, Language can be revitalized in fantasy as well. We all know what a zombie does without calling them "zombies." Same for "vampires" and "witches." It's great using words in a new way. 'Friend age-long' for a best friend. 'Unfleshed ones for spirits.' By changing language, a Christian can do a lot with the idea of zombies versus Resurrection -- true spiritual growth versus a spiritual legalism herd-mind. Or vampires and cannibals and the Christian idea of taking on the lifeforce of another. Or witchcraft and the spiritual power of words to curse or heal.
My biggest issue in fantasy is all the high english or high fantasy language. Noble folk should speak nobly, and poor uneducated folk should speak badly. But even if one creates a world without class distinctions, there will be different cultures who all use different greetings, vocabulary, customs. Of course if the fantasy takes place in a world that is very like Europe, one can fall into the old patterns created by other fantasy authors. But how does one create a Native American fantasy language with a folkloric language when high fantasy Arthurian words are whispering in one's ear? And how does one get one's reader to understand the grammar, vocabulary, lingo, of the various non-European clans and castes one has created?
Carole McDonnell is a writer of ethnic fiction, speculative fiction, and Christian fiction. Her works have appeared in many anthologies and at various online sites. Her novel, Wind Follower, was published by Wildeside Books. Her forthcoming novel is called The Constant Tower. http://carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/
Warren Rochelle
The problem or the question posed for this round is this: we write our fantasies in English—usually—and those words have their own history that does not—usually—match up with the history of our fantasy world.
What does this mean? Does this refer to the language of magic? Or Elfspeak in some form or another? No, I don’t think so. Rather, that by using English to write stories set in worlds which cannot possibly be using English—words particular to the Anglophone world, with their etymologies, words that are charged and layered with meaning and history—we cannot possibly match the world we have imagined. This means that on some level the created fantasies cannot be truly described or expressed. Our language must invariably fall short of the fantasy we have imagined.
Give up in despair, go home? Contemplate the wasted years spent on this stuff?
No, because this is always the case when one is trying to tell a story in words, to write down the dream. The idea—the dream—the vision—must be translated into a narrative through language. We can only retrieve an approximation of that dream, a suggestion of the vision, the idea, no matter what genre. The task becomes one of process and an approximation of a product. The added element of the fantastic would, it seems, push this approximation even farther away from vision and dream. The other world of fantasy is at even farther remove than that of the mainstream writer of fiction.
Back to going home, deleting that file?
A solution that I have tried (although solution doesn’t seem to be the right word—we are not going to stop writing just because writing is more process than product) is to set my fantasies here, in the world in which I and my readers live, albeit a skewed, peripheral distortion of said world. My goal is to weave the fantastic into the reader’s world—whether that world is North Carolina, particularly the central Triangle region in which I grew up—or another real-world locale. This is the vision I am trying to capture and express and tell my story—currently in Richmond, Virginia, and various places in England. So far.
But, the created worlds of any writer is a personal vision, whether it is North Carolina or Virginia, North Queensland, or Prydain/Wales, or the world behind the walls where Mary Norton’s Borrowers live, or something far more divorced from primary reality, such as George R. R. Martin’s Seven Kingdoms.
I think a more hopeful way to approach this question of the gap between the language employed by the writer to describe a world which has no connection to this language is metaphor and symbol and myth. Language is inherently metaphoric and symbolic and the created world of the fantastic is, more often than not, a metaphor, a symbol, of the world of the writer and the reader. And it is the reader we want to connect to with our fantastic vision and so we use their metaphors, their symbols. We want them to glimpse our dream and the language of metaphor is the common ground for this glimpsing.
This may be easier when the writer, as I do, employs the stuff of his or her world. Perhaps. The writer is still speaking in metaphor and is still describing a vision, regardless of the distance between the writer and the imagined world. The stuff of the dream is still inherent in the language weaving the tale. And that dream, its people, its places, is still made out of the writer’s stuff, as it were.
But the gap remains.
Perhaps the gap should be there, as long as one is mindful of it, and if one remembers it is the process, the telling, that matters. It is the process that casts the spell, that allows the reader to make his or her way into to the product of the fantastic world, world, if created successfully, is there before the reader arrives, and will be there when the reader leaves—an ongoing world revealed in metaphor and symbol, glimpsed in words.
Mind the gap. Enter the dream. Write.
Warren Rochelle has taught English at the University of Mary Washington since 2000. His short story, "The Golden Boy” (published in The Silver Gryphon) was a Finalist for the 2004 Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Story and his novels include The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings (2007), and The Called (2010). He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. http://warrenrochelle.com
Deborah J Ross
This topic brings two things to mind. One is the level of diction in fantasy prose, the other the role of language and languages in fantasy stories.
Once upon a time – and you see right away that this phrase conveys a host of expectations about what follows – “fantasy” conveyed images of far-off lands, usually exotic, times-gone-by, and heroes of courage, dignity, and high rank. Whether fairy tales for children or the Arthurian cycle, these stories often (although not always) centered around royal or at least aristocratic characters. Even those who weren’t (the poor woodcutter, the third son off to make his fortune) partook of the same elevated language. The works of E. R. Eddison and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings did much to cement this association in the mind of the reader.
The subsequent explosion of Tolkienesque fantasy stories varied tremendously in the skillfulness with which prose language was handled. We can undoubtedly all come up with examples of laughably inept examples that stem from lack of research or incomplete understanding of diction.
Almost in reaction to the “high-falutin’” language of kings and elves, the “cozy hedge-witch fantasy” introduced contemporary slang (and social attitudes) into medieval and other “fantastical” settings. Again, the results ranged from fresh and innovative to awkward to inadvertently hilarious. Many of these represented attempts to reconcile fantasy elements (including what was regarded as the necessary pre-industrialized setting) with “the way people really talk.” The style of narration had shifted from omniscient to tight-third person (or first person), and this required that the diction level in exposition be roughly equivalent to that of dialog and internal monolog.
Finally, as fantasy expanded into properly contemporary urban settings, prose language and setting regained a measure of congruence. The language itself became as modern as the surroundings.
For most of us, the way people spoke three or five hundred or two thousand years ago might as well be a foreign language. We have to take classes in order to properly understand any writer before Shakespeare (and most of us need a “Reader’s Guide” to Will). With the exception of literature classes on Middle English, Chaucer gets read in translation. So those of us who are not linguists approach creating the “elevated” language of high fantasy with several handicap. If we’ve grown up in a single-language community (or worse yet, a single-class community), we’ve never had the direct experience of the interactions of culture, language, attitude, and personality, or of public versus private languages, or of separate men’s and women’s languages (although one could argue the latter does exist in English). We have to stop and think about how people who speak different languages learn to communicate – sign language? Translators? Trade dialects? Telepathy? How does a long-established, stable mutual-language/translation convention differ from those that have come before? What are the cultural assumptions that come with each language and each social class within that language-culture? What are the occasions for misunderstanding and what are the consequences? I find these questions fascinating in themselves, but also fertile ground for exploring character, culture, and conflict (not to mention alliteration). Fascinating in themselves, but also fertile ground for exploring character, culture, and conflict (not to mention alliteration).
Deborah J Ross began writing professionally in 1982 as Deborah Wheeler with JAYDIUM and NORTHLIGHT, and short stories in ASIMOV'S, F & SF, REALMS OF FANTASY and STAR WARS: TALES FROM JABBA'S PALACE. Now under her birth name, Ross, she is continuing the" Darkover" series of the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as original work, including the fantasy trilogy THE SEVEN-PETALED SHIELD. She is a member of Book View Cafe. She has lived in France, worked for a cardiologist, studied Hebrew, yoga and kung fu, and is active in the local Jewish and Quaker communities.
http://deborahjross.blogspot.com/
Sylvia Kelso
Time was, everything appearing on the SF and Fantasy bookshop shelf (ah, those pre-Kindle days!) could have been assessed against Ursula Le Guin’s ukases in her now famous 1973 essay, “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie.”
Forex:
"Many readers, many critics and most editors speak of style as if it were an ingredient of a book, like the sugar in a cake ... The style, of course is the book...”And:
"Why is style of such fundamental significance in a fantasy?... In fantasy there is … no borrowed reality of history, or current events... There is no comfortable matrix of the commonplace to substitute for the imagination, to provide ready-made emotional response... There is only a construct built in a void, where every joint and seam and nail is exposed...”
As exemplar, Le Guin did a masterly hatchet job on one unfortunate fantasy writer of the early ‘70s whose language could not move from the Poughkeepsie of a contemporary political or spy story to the rarefied air of Elfland.
Le Guin charted a number of the traps, now listed all over the Web, that await young players attempting such Elsewhereness. Archaisms the writer can’t handle, esp. the old second and 3rd person singular verbs (I just found a current blog purporting to speak for Chaucer and using 3rd singular for an imperative.) Exotic but evanescent oaths and ditto gods. The Dreaded X-Y-Z-apostrophe invented-word: Xard’ril the Warrior (Princess?). Yarrin the Village. Zal’ope the God of Small Things. (Many others are pilloried in Diana Wynne Jones’ Tough Guide to (High) Fantasyland.)
(At this point, please note, I am now using Elfland as a metonym for Elsewhere – elves are optional, but a successful fantasy must still transcend Here.)
Le Guin did cite two master stylists whose passports to Elfland were secure: Tolkien and E. R. Edison. The latter, I have seen dismissed recently for “too elaborate language,” and the other is probably going the same way, but everything Le Guin found in them is still true. The fantasy she wrote about does demand language from Elsewhere, it goes best with a real stylist, and, as Le Guin also wrote,
"A fantasy is a journey. It is a journey into the subconscious mind, just as psychoanalysis is. Like psychoanalysis, it can be dangerous; and it will change you."Except, nowadays, most of what’s sold as fantasy isn’t high fantasy.
So, does it need a master stylist to reach Elfland if you aren’t producing a secondary world, a “construct in a void” totally reliant on your language skills? Can you even see Elfland from the streets of a contemporary urban fantasy, even one as sharp as Katharine Kerr’s License to Ensorcell series? Or have Stephanie Meyer and Peter Jackson’s hairdressers overloaded the genre with tall pale handsome men who either glitter or carry FAR too much hair?
And if you can’t see Elfland, is the language to blame?
It’s certainly easier for the less-skilled writer to handle characters with “realist” names and venues he or she may walk through daily. But it’s also harder. Because how do you invest these places and people with “the air of Numenor?” How do you get Elfland to happen, right here?
It can be done. Peter Beagle’s The Folk of the Air transformed parts of San Francisco with no more than some SCA players, a goddess, a witch, and some time travel, but Peter Beagle, like Tolkien, is a stylist par excellence. I have to admit that it doesn’t happen for me in most current urban fantasies, where the Otherworld element either has really dorky names, or appears so mundane I feel I’m in The Gated Hell Community or Vampire Suburbia. These are Elvenlords. These are vampires. They are not the Guyz Next Door. They are danger, REAL danger, they carry the scent of Elsewhere. They should raise your neck hair, not your fashion sense.
So, yes, language in fantasy does still matter. For this reader there is no substitute for a word-smith, whether in modern San Francisco or beyond a helpful wardrobe. The old traps still pertain, and so do the old demands. By the end, as Le Guin stipulated, a “real” fantasy novel, high or contemporary, will have to deal successfully with archetypes. And hence it will need to be, “a journey into the subconscious mind, just as psychoanalysis is.” And ‘’[l]ike psychoanalysis, … it will change you."
I don’t know that huge numbers of the contemporary fantasy and paranormal romance market will reach that last criterion. It will be the language that does it, if they do.
Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia. She writes fantasy and SF set in analogue or alternate Australian settings. She has published six fantasy novels, two of which were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards, and some short stories in Australian and US anthologies.
That's it for this month's Travelling Round Table! Feel free to join in the discussion in the comments.
22 September 2011
Interview at Adarna SF
My first ever interview! Frida at Adarna SF took me into the nuts and bolts behind what I write and why. A very interesting process which left me with a question of my own - WHY are there so few fantasy novels with egalitarian societies? It's not uncommon to see it in SF, but rarer in fantasy.
Can anyone recommend to me some good fantasy novels set in egalitarian worlds?
And on a related note, anyone interested in Indie SFF (or, indeed, just SFF) should definitely add Adarna SF (formerly Frida Fantastic) to their blogroll. I've been really enjoying the level of analysis in the reviews!
Can anyone recommend to me some good fantasy novels set in egalitarian worlds?
And on a related note, anyone interested in Indie SFF (or, indeed, just SFF) should definitely add Adarna SF (formerly Frida Fantastic) to their blogroll. I've been really enjoying the level of analysis in the reviews!
28 August 2011
Impacts of Magic: Shelter
The next topic on the cards for my series of posts on the impacts of magic on worldbuilding is one which follows closely on from food on the basic essentials list: Shelter.
You've filled your belly, and now in your magical world you're looking for a place to rest, to get out of the sun, the wind, the rain, the cold. To keep the monsters out.
Construction of an adequate shelter will have a large impact on your ability to be not eaten, not sunburned, not frozen. Literally, to not die of exposure.
Materials
Where would the classic tale of The Three Little Pigs be with the introduction of magic? The first little pig is a cautionary warning against taking the easy route, and is summarily eaten for choosing a building material which was in plentiful supply and simple to work with. It just wasn't any use at keeping the local smooth-tongued wolf out. Yet a quick spell could have transformed that house of spun straw into close-knitted Kevlar.
Unless transport is cheap and easy, buildings are generally constructed from material which is locally available. Wood, stone, brick, mud and dung. A little glass, if you've reached that point, but it's rare that we see any attempt to build with other materials, even in worlds of magic. Ice occasionally shows up as an option, and the sylvan races like to tailor their trees to include living quarters, but other than the occasional mad wizard building their towers out of solid ruby, it's exceptionally rare to see any non-standard materials used in construction.
If you've awarded your world a truly galumptious amount of magic, what's to prevent you from building your house out of giant rose petals which retain their texture, but have the strength of titanium? A must-have for the truly ostentatious mage (or faerie queen).
Construction Methods
A more likely use of magic is in the method of construction. One of the reasons the pyramids are a wonder of the world is the sheer difficulty of transporting stone of that size and weight – even today it would take quite some doing, let alone when your primary transport is wooden rollers and slaves. Levitation would certainly increase your ability to produce towering monuments.
Beyond assisting standard construction methodology, magic can add a lot of variety to your home building options. Straightforward conjuration. Growing your buildings from seeds. Taking the Mickey Mouse route and having your broom do all the hard work. Or enchanting giant arachnids to spin tents with the tensile strength of spider web.
Architecture
When you mix magic with both construction methods and building materials, you can produce buildings which would make a structural engineer sweat bullets. Gravity-defying spires. Bridges that cross mile-wide expanses without caring for little matters like pylons. Huts on chicken legs which permit a nomadic lifestyle with all the luxuries of home.
It's relatively rare to see extravagantly soaring buildings in fantasy literature, even when there's an excess of magic. The one exception is the floating city, which pops up quite regularly – but oddly enough is usually furnished with relatively ordinary buildings.
It's rare that a world is awarded sufficient magic to make magically-constructed buildings common. But monuments and palaces would certainly benefit from the best which magic could do. If you've given your mages enough pep to send half a mountain whizzing through the air, or produced an irritable little man to demonstrate the method of transforming straw into gold, then consider turning that magical ingenuity to the mundane but ever-so-important question of something to keep the rain off.
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