Bittercon: Steal the Past, Build the Future: New Histories for Fantasy Fiction

[attackfish]

Fantasy settings have historically harkened back to the past.  Medieval European settings for fantasy are so ubiquitous that for many people in the west (and for many people outside the west who have absorbed western European fantasy literature) the first thing that comes to mind when they hear the word “fantasy” is a medieval castle and a bunch of people with swords.

Other historical settings find their way into fantasy as well, from Classical India to Imperial Rome, to Muslim Spain, to the American West.  Adding a spark of magic to a historical or nearly historical setting has become what fantasy is to many people.

Even Urban Fantasy, while most often taking place in a contemporary setting finds itself constrained to historical tradition. Medieval Europe makes a frequent appearance there too, albet in a modified form.  The creatures that find their way into Urban Fantasy, vampires, werewolves, fairies, assorted mythological creatures from all over the world almost always have medieval or classical origins.  Creatures made up from whole cloth are almost unheard of in Urban Fantasy.  Urban Fantasy is all about the past, the mythological past’s encroachment on the modern.

The more like medieval Europe the fantasy setting, the more likely it is to be idealized and the less relation it tends to bare to real history.  Is there a responsibility when portraying historical setting sin fantasy to be accurate?  Or be accurate on certain issues, and if so which?  Are fantasy worlds made of a mix of many historical periods ore entirely out of the writers’ own heads a different genre all together?  And as diversity is increasingly obvious as an issue in fantasy, is writing standard medieval history somehow irresponsible?  Do some periods of history require a greater accuracy than others?  What is the duty of Contemporary and Urban Fantasy towards history?  And what role does alternate history get to play in fantasy with historical settings and inspirations?

Written for bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic stolen from a panel at the 2010 Worldcon.

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Creatures made up from whole cloth are almost unheard of in Urban Fantasy. Urban Fantasy is all about the past, the mythological past’s encroachment on the modern.

That's an interesting thought, one that actually gives me renewed interest in Urban Fantasy. Do you mind if I quote?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Not at all! (terribly flattered, really) One of these days I will write an essay on the in story discovery of the hidden world and how it nearly always involves a "back in the old days" story.

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

Is there a responsibility when portraying historical setting sin fantasy to be accurate?

Depends on whether the setting is explicitly historical or quasi-historical, seems to me. If you're writing historical fantasy, i.e. a story set in a real historical period with added fantasy elements, then you have the same responsibility that any writer of historical fiction does. On the other hand, if you're doing the more common fantasy world that kind of looks like something historical, the the main obligation is to be self-consistent: does the world make sense in its own terms? It doesn't have to be exactly like the real historical period on which it's based (in fact, it probably shouldn't be; if it is, why bother writing in a created world at all?) but it should have its own history, society, economy, etc. in a way that feels like it could have existed at some point even if it never actually did.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

What I meant was, given the tumultuous histories of cultural exploitation, is there a duty for writers (of any race) to for example, if writing in a world obviously based on Ancient India to not at every corner show how backwards the natives are? Or I and a few other Ashkenazi fantasy lovers I know give dark glowers to fantasy set in a medieval European world, especially if said world is fairly accurate in other respects, that once again lacks a Jewish analogue. Do we have more leeway to play fast and loose with the histories of dominant groups, and should we be more respectful of histories the dominant culture has a history of exploiting?

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see what you mean.

I think the main thing is to avoid the obvious cliches. I recently gave up on reading a reasonably promising series at least partly because of the story arc where an explorer from Medieval-Europe-Land arrives in Pre-Columbian-Central-America-Land and is ... wait for it ... greeted by the natives as their white-skinned savior god. And then proceeds not to kill half of them, enslave the other half, and take their land in the name of his king, but rather helps them defeat their hereditary enemies and fulfills his expected role with grace, good humor, and a fair amount of self-reflective humility. Um ... yeah, because that's exactly how these things tend to work out, right?

Bit I'll say again, if you're writing quasi-historical as opposed to straight historical fantasy, I think the world should indeed be different from ours. I don't think, for example, that there need to be quasi-Jews in quasi-Europe unless that quasi-Europe also has a history involving a quasi-Middle-East, a quasi-Roman-Empire, quasi-Christianity, and analogues of all the other things in real history that led to the Jews being a wandering and largely persecuted people. On the other hand, if your world doesn't have that history, you probably shouldn't have a bunch of people running around with titles like "duke" and "baron" either, unless you're prepared to do some pretty fancy linguistic footwork ...

Self-consistency, like I said before. I can enjoy a fantasy with almost any setting, as long as it makes sense. What's most bothersome to me about a lot of fantasy worlds is how thrown-together they feel, without any attempt on the author's part to make them feel like part of a consistent whole. Cultural insensitivity is, I suspect, one of many undesirable results of this kind of sloppiness. Authors who think hard about a fictional world are more likely to be thoughtful and sensitive to the people in it.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I'm fine with there being differences. In fact, I tend to prefer worlds that are very very different from history. Which is why I mentioned that the closer to history it is, the more things like lacking a Jewish analogue bug me. For example, in one fantasy series, there's a fully fledged Rome analogue, a Byzantine analogue, a medieval Catholic Church analogue, mystical heresies, and a Middle East. They're even probably on the cusp of a Reformation. Still no Jews. The closer to real history you get, the more jarring the absence of oppressed people, especially ones who played a big part in that history. Then of course you get to the whole sets of history we happily ignore.

There are sometimes I like a world with no constancy, for example, Alice in Wonderland and The Phantom Tollbooth (yeah, I like shiny shiny kitchen sink novels) but I just get annoyed when authors happily copy bits and pieces from other novels and from history and cobble them together with no consideration for whether or not the whole works.

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in that case, it's hard to forgive. Some of it may be simple ignorance, of course; until very recently, Christianity did its best to edit Judaism out of its history, and the effects linger. It's easy to do a cursory reading of medieval history and just kind of entirely miss the fact that there was anyone in pre-Reformation Europe except Catholics, at all! But it sounds like the author put a fair amount of research into the world in other ways, so I'm not sure how much of an excuse that is in this case.

Though I've a lot more Ashkenazim than Aztec in my veins myself, the example I cited bothered me even more, probably because there is no possible way that anyone can fail to know, after more than an hour's reading on the subject, what actually happened when Cortes was identified with Quetzalcoatl.

The throwing-bits-together approach can be lots of fun, of course, but the reader has to be sure the author is doing it on purpose instead of just out of laziness.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Then there's Patricia Wrede's notorious writing American Indians out of North America entirely. Aw man, no!

That's why Phantom Tollbooth and Alice work so well. There's no pretense at trying to make it make sense. And that sort of world building's difficult in its own way when done well.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

"Then there's Patricia Wrede's notorious writing American Indians out of North America entirely. Aw man, no!"

Who? What? Sounds interesting, can I ask for more information?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I'm functioning on the belief that you are not a troll, however, interesting is not the word I would choose. I would advise you check out racefail 2009 and otherwise educate yourself about privilege and race and gender in media, especially in fantasy and sci-fi. It's erm... eye-opening.

Patricia C. Wrede wrote a series called Frontier Magic (http://www.pcwrede.com/FrontierMagic.html) which touched off "Mammothgate" (because she replaced First Nations peoples with ice age megafauna) an online discussion of the damaging nature of writing oppressed people out of existence in fantasy.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

Thanks and I like to believe that I'm not an internet-troll, just rather uninformed.

Lots of Educational Links!

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I figured, but I wanted you to know that because of the sprawling conversations that took place about race in sci-fi and fantasy, what you're saying comes off rather erm... not good.

MammothFail Linkspam: http://linkspam.dreamwidth.org/880.html

there are multiple racefail linkspams, mostly because it was so unbelievably huge, but http://deepad.dreamwidth.org/29371.html is the starting post and http://linkspam.dreamwidth.org has some very good link collections.

Re: Lots of Educational Links!

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I will look thru them.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

What was wrong with the explorer acting like a good man and not plunder the pseudo-indians?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Part of it is that the "explorer from Medieval-Europe-Land arrives in Pre-Columbian-Central-America-Land and is ... wait for it ... greeted by the natives as their white-skinned savior god." and then "helps them defeat their hereditary enemies and fulfills his expected role with grace, good humor, and a fair amount of self-reflective humility." This spanks of "what these people need is a honky!" They can't fix their problems on their own. They need this white man to come in and fix all their troubles. These sorts of stories are written by white people to assuage. They don't reflect reality and deny agency to the people represented in the non-European fantasy counterpart cultures.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

I hope that this dose not come out offensive and I have really no right to comment since I have not read the book but I believe that if the explorer have more or just different technological and/or tactical knowledge than it is a bit justified that he can help the indigenous people but I still see your point

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

It's just that it's done over and over and over again, and as I said, it denies the agency of the nonwhite characters. It's like the damsel in distress motif. One girl get's rescued, fine. Girls are the ones designated for being rescued and boys for doing the rescuing, bad. It's a pattern that makes it bad.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

I understand your point but I guess I don't read as much of that kind of literature as you seams to be doing and I'm right now studding history so from my perspective it is nice to have pseudo-european characters not acting like the all to often did in our history.
Also a question - would the above scenario be more acceptable, from your perspective, if the character was from a pseudo-asian or pseudo-african culture?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I'd have to read the treatment of it, because there are plenty of ways to make that go way wrong too, mostly because it can be read as an argument that "Well, if Asians or Africans discovered America, the world would be all puppies and kittens, and they're so much better and more moral than white people" which isn't any better.

Mostly, I like seeing my rebellions come from within and my fictional race relations to be a lot more complicated.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

Good answer.
Who ever believes that asians or africans are more moral than europeans has not studied history.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

So very true. We humans are a screwed up bunch.