The lack of attention to agriculture in fantasy is something I've thought about before (that is, it's all people living in towns and castles, no apparent farmers unless someone needs to borrow a convenient horse or something) but, wow, I never had noticed the same problem in sci-fi settings, and it's even more prevalent there! You can handwave it in a lot of cases because SF settings are more networked than most fantasy settings -- that is, you don't need to live close to the means of production when you have refrigeration and fast transport; it's enough just to assume there are a few agricultural planets out there. Still, I thought fantasy was bad for ignoring this aspect of the worldbuilding, but at least it acknowledges that rural/farming country exists -- most SF doesn't even do that much.
Interestingly enough, the fantasy story that I sold this spring was completely stalled out until I realized that my worldbuilding of the culture's means of production was completely inadequate -- all I had in mind was the vague idea that it was a fishing village, but the story was going nowhere until I actually sat down and figured out what they caught, how they caught it, and how the catch was divided between commercially viable fish and the ones that were used at home. Then all of a sudden the rest of the story fell into place.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-08-24 11:34 pm (UTC)Interestingly enough, the fantasy story that I sold this spring was completely stalled out until I realized that my worldbuilding of the culture's means of production was completely inadequate -- all I had in mind was the vague idea that it was a fishing village, but the story was going nowhere until I actually sat down and figured out what they caught, how they caught it, and how the catch was divided between commercially viable fish and the ones that were used at home. Then all of a sudden the rest of the story fell into place.