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

[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.