Writing about Politics in Speculative Fiction: Made Up Places and the Things They Get Up To

[attackfish]

I have this running joke about fantasy that I’m there for the politics.  I’m not all the way kidding.  It’s my field of study, and I chose it because I am a hard core policy wonk.  I was there for the politics before I even realized I was into politics.

Speculative Fiction is the perfect genre for exploring politics.  Because Speculative Fiction authors are able to make up whole worlds, they can make up whole countries, with whole political systems.  It is the genre of “what if”, so authors are free to ask “What if aliens really did invade?  What would the world’s governments do?” or “What if I had a set of small kingdoms, each trying to get he better of the others, wedged between two empires?” or “What if we try to colonize a people (human or alien) and we fail?”  Or “How would [insert influential world event here] be different with magic/lasers?”

Hands down, Speculative Fiction has the greatest potential for this, but not everybody gets their socks knocked off by this stuff.  Fantasy especially has long been accused of being retrogressive and conservative, an I have written before about the deep ties it keeps to history.  It is a genre populated with monarchies, good kings, bad kings, evil regents (are there any good regents in fantasy?) noble princes, determined princesses, and whole courts full of aristocrats.  And you Science Fiction readers shouldn’t get too smug either.  If it isn’t a world controlling totalitarian dystopia, it’s a non-specific never seen intergalactic council.  In other words, Spec Fic authors can, but don’t have to.

The Fantasy genre tends to have a love affair with royalty, and the goal of most Epic Fantasy is to either prevent the conquest of a kingdom, or free a kingdom, or put the true heir on the throne, or otherwise put or keep a Good King (or more rarely a Good Queen) defined as anyone with royal blood who was reasonably moral and of moderate intelligence, on the throne.  Some secondary world fantasies have powerful courts where the nobility jostle for power, or diplomatic relations between multiple nations, but for some reason, this sort of power play is almost always portrayed as sinister.

Urban Fantasy has it’s share of the world’s real oldest profession too.  Odds are actually better that the author will discuss the internal politics of vampires/werewolves/fae/zombies (the internal politics of zombies would be actually kind of awesome, someone should get on that) than the odds that politicking will show up in secondary world fantasy, in Urban fantasy, it is an even dirtier, more morally repugnant game.  Heroes don’t play politics.

Well, they do sometimes, but usually the books they play it in are all about the politics.

Science fiction too has a fascination with ultimate power, but their view of it is far darker.  Dystopian totalitarian states must be overthrown in exchange for a government (or lack of government) more suited to the author’s beliefs, usually democracy.  Somehow, very few Science Fiction stories ever show anybody living in a republic actually voting, or discussing politicians, or public policy.  The nitty gritty of freedom is almost unimportant.  This is partly because both genres have strong ties to epic literature, were politics was the slow stuff between wars.

These are all of course trends, not absolute realities otherwise, I probably wouldn’t be here.

Political Speculative Fiction: (Let’s build a list!)

The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner (shut up)
The Westmark Trilogy by Lloyd Alexander
Leviathan and Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
The Abhorsen series by Garth Nix
The Pain Merchants/The Shifter by Janice Hardy

From the comments:

The Deryni series by Katherine Kurtz
The Deverry cycle by Katharine Kerr
Point of Dreams by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
The Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold
Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge
Swordpoint and Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner
Crossover by Joel Shepherd
Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn
The Elenium and Tamuli trilogies by David and Leigh Eddings


Written for bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic loosely from a panel at the 2011 Worldcon.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Have you met Bujold's Vorkosigan series? Barrayar is a lovely sf political stewpot, with an ethical regent for a good portion of the series. The political plot of A Civil Campaign is very much taken up with the vote of the Council of Counts. (It's an empire; the Emperor is a member of the Council of Counts; there are certain checks and balances like the way the counts will rise up and brutally murder a really bad Emperor.)

[attackfish]

They've been on my to-read pile forever.

By the way, most of the discussion has been taking place on my livejournal, here: http://attackfish.livejournal.com/85287.html

The Bakilites are Adamantly Anti-Magic

[mythusmage.livejournal.com]

One thing I've noticed is that game settings (Mythus: Ærth, GURPS Banestorm, or Monte Cook's Ptolus (tah-lus) to be be both broader in scope, and concerned with the sociology of a setting. Sometimes economics is handled, but more often in terms of the society than of economics per se.

Settings are concerned more with the people involved, than with individuals; unless said individuals can potentially play a role in the lives of the player characters. In this sense they serve as supporting class, antagonists, even extras. So characterization can be brusque, even not minimal. Though sometimes an NPC (non-player character0 can end up in a lead role of his own, and so become a GMC (game moderator character)

GURPS, as an example, is as much a game about settings as it is a game about characters, so it has numerous guidelines for fitting a PC into a world, and as numerous a set of setting rules. This making it a comprehensive set of rules indeed. Mythus on the other hand, assumes much about the world, and serves to illustrate by example than by guidelines. It helps if you have a working knowledge of 40s pulp fiction, for that is what author Gary Gygax grew up on in his boyhood in Chicago. His devouring of Amazing Stories had an impact as well.

All that said, a good world builder (Kate Elliot for example) can be a useful guide by example, showing how their worlds are built and demonstrating how such construction can be used.

BTW, for some of the best books on world building may I suggest the various GURPS sourcebooks? Whether you're talking GURPS Cabal or GURPS Cops or any of the dozens of books you're talking well researched tomes with copious guidelines for building a world.

Hope this was helpful.

Re: The Bakilites are Adamantly Anti-Magic

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Having burned myself out on tabletop gaming when I was in high school, I never read any of the GURPS source-books.

What gets me, is I'm a strongly character driven reader. There doesn't have to be this divide between novels that deal with sociology and politics in their worldbuilding and ones that are primarily character focused. a novel can be both, especially as fantasy so often does, you have royalty and political leaders as your main characters.

[shark-hat.livejournal.com]

Katherine Kurtz'z Deryni series is the stereotypical All Politics, All The Time fantasy, isn't it? That's nobility jostling for power. There's also some of that in Kerr's Deverry.

Oh, and I just read Scott and Barnett's Point of Dreams, where there's manoeuvring around the queen naming her successor.

There's actually quite a lot of politics in the Discworld books- the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork is the consummate politician in many ways. ("He was the Man. He had the Vote.") He's also good at diplomacy.

Zaphod Beeblebrox is President of the Galaxy, does that count? *g*

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Having never read the Deryni books, I wouldn't know, but there up on the list.

It's a shame I never managed to get into Discworld (not really my type of humor) but yes, I have heard of Vetinari and his one man, one vote policy.

As for Zaphod, it would if we ever saw him politicking instead of running off in the Heart of Gold. I see him as the presidential equivalent of the heir to the throne going questing.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Fantasies, in the general sense of the word, can sidestep the "you can't get there from here" problem.

It might be a bit of handwave-suggestion, but the politics of the real world may have become trapped in a local maximum. It's a closely-associated cluster of peaks, and some of the ideas of political structure of the last couple on centuries aren't in that cluster.

The current "Arab Spring" is in part about struggling across a valley.

For an example from RPGs, there is Traveller, which used an ordered nobility and the trappings of Empire to govern a vast territory affected by slow communications. It's a little like our world. before the electric telegraph.

The mechanical telegraph systems of Napoleon's time allowed the French State to centralise authority, and the emergence of the electric telegraph—not only using Morse code, though that was the vital development—gave central authority the tools it needed to dominate, whether that authority was a King or a Parliament.

The Internet doesn't really change that.

We have politics based on 18th Century models. A TV broadcast is a faster version of one of Ben Franklin's pamphlets. Even with blogs, an erratic and sometimes bewildering 2-way conversation, the core mechanism is the elected representative with a carte blanche until the next election.

At least there is the Recall Election, but why do the representatives have to go to some central place to meet and debate and decide? Maybe the Internet, through some sort of virtual world, allows something different to happen.

But can you get there from here?

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even known about the Napoleonic era's mechanical telegraph -- thank you for this information. I'll look up more about it.

You remark about Ben Franklin's pamphlets is on point. Another important element to throw into the political process and organization is one even older than the 18th century -- see Ceasar and Rome -- but still very much in use -- see the town halls of two summers ago now, for instance -- running the 'mobs.' The Liberty Boys of Boston were brilliant at that mob theater, and dominating the narrative as to what does this meeeeeeeeeeeean? via Franklin's media empire, as well as brilliant at organizing themselves into cells, or councils. They were far more organized and prepared for their war on the Eve of Lexingon than the Secesh were on the Eve of Fort Sumter.

Love, C.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This is the area I actually think the internet s changing something. A revolution no longer needs a media empire like Franklin's to have phenomenal organizing power.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

One of the things to remember is that a number of the countries involved in the Arab Spring previously had functioning democracies that were toppled, which strikes me less about struggling across a valley and more about climbing back up a mountain.

The reason of course that feudalism was so popular was that it made territory more easy to govern if you couldn't get people and information quickly from place to place and therefore had a difficult time extending your control, you could give most of that control over to a local landlord in exchange for protection, i.e. being able to send other nobles to your defense, so that monarchy in feudal Europe functioned more as a mutual defense treaty with the king as arbiter, which is why as government is more and more centralized, it improves communication more and more, for example Roman roads and Kublai Khan's mail system. Which is why the military is so good at developing communications devices that we civilians then co-opt. What drives me nuts is that some fantasy authors ignore communications. The story never mentions something like a sorceress can use a magic mirror to send messages, supposedly horse messengers do it, but the never seem to have a problem with lost of garbled ones.

Of course some authors make use of screwed up message systems...

Actually, I'm pretty sure the internet already is changing things. It makes it much harder for governments to control the flow of information, and has probably contributed to the increasing scorn for experts. If anybody can be heard, than anybody can be heard, in other words.

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

Don't forget Speculative Fiction's redheaded stepchild genre, Alternate History. The best examples of the field really dive into the alternate politics and societies that arise from differing circumstances. Here's three online ones I'd recommend that I think would catch your eye:

* A World of Laughter, A World of Tears (http://alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=113866) -- When Eisenhower suffers a heart attack in 1952, a divided Republican Party decides to nominate a compromise candidate... Walt Disney. When the worse trials of the 1950s hit, including the Korean War, Civil Rights movement and Middle East issues, the kind-hearted but flawed businessman succeeds at first but is soon out of his element.

* Superpower Empire: China 1912 (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=86560) -- When Yuan Shikai dies four years prematurely, the leadership change ushers in a government that manages to prevent the rise of warlordism and civil war. Incredibly detailed. Has a spin-off series of short stories (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=68510) set inside the universe; try Sodom and Gomorrah Send Their Regards (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=55310) as an example of how differently things can turn out.

* All Along the Watchtower (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=172453) -- Richard Nixon beats JFK in the 1960 Presidential Election, ushering in the "Shrieking Sixties" and ripples that affect the entire world. Makes for lively reading, but I'd recommend keeping two tabs open to read the footnotes without scrolling.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Alternate history! My poor creative writing teacher had to put up with alternate history after alternate history from me until she let me write magic.

The first one - Wonderfully apocalyptic and well researched, but I keep thinking someone would have bought up the fact that he had been sympathetic to the Nazis in the 1930s and even into the beginnings of the war. And it was never mentioned.

The China resurgence one is brilliant! It's a shame that I can't get to the short stories!

The third - the writing style was too choppy. Every quote was so short. I gave up on the third page.

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[amyraine.livejournal.com]

It's become so trite to quote Monty Python anymore, but I couldn't help this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xd_zkMEgkI (Didn't want to embed in case anyone reading has a slow connection)

"I thought we were an autonomous collective."

I would love to see this played serious in a novel.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Best. Movie. Ever! Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

[vynessia361.livejournal.com]

I think part of it is the level of technology we tend to see in fantasy novels. Depending on how common magic-use is and if it substitutes at all for technological development, it can either equalize or exacerbate existing class structures. (In the historical periods most fantasy uses as a template, there already tends to be a significant divide between those with power and those without.)

For example, in The Wheel of Time, we see magic users going off and becoming powerful people in their own right, but that ability is so rare that it just adds another group of people to the "those who have power" group, rather than significantly altering the dynamic of "royals and peasants."

Um, books for the list:

Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge has some interesting political bits. (I think, anyway. I'm not sure if we're using the same definition of politics.)

There used to be a king but that ends before the book begins. ("He meant very well, and ruled very badly, and in the end they cut off his head, and melted down his crown to make coins.") Instead there's a Parliament ("The Parliament's leader ruled very like a king, but no one called him a 'king,' because names are important.") And the Realm has various Royalist factions and ruling guilds, and people discuss politics and radicalism. It's fun!

Ellen Kushner has a couple books (The titles are Swordspoint and Privilege of the Sword) that take place in a city (well, country, but we almost only see the city) ruled by nobles after they deposed the rule of kings. There's a faint undercurrent of "if the kings' divine right to rule is bullshit, what gives the nobles that power?" that I thought was rather interesting. More noticably, there's lots of maneuvering for power that is (for the most part) not portrayed as sinister. (There's also an interesting aspect of legalized assassination.)

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I'm in the middle of writing a book in which the rulers of a certain country have always been magi-users, but changing technology makes the magic steadily less important. It's interesting, certain types of technology are an equalizing force, but others, like modern military technology are the opposite. He who controls that technology control the world. I have a fun time trying to explain to second amendment people that no matter how many guns you have, you're not overthrowing a government with nukes, guided missiles, and carpet bombs.

I mean the actual process in practice by which powerful people control others, policy making, treaty formatting, etc.

Fly by Night sounds like a fantasy version of the English Civil War and the Reign of Oliver Cromwell. I looked it up on Amazon, and I think I'll have to check it out.

I've been meaning to read Privilege of the Sword for a while, but I'm always worried about books that have degenerate bisexual characters in them. I never feel good afterwards. *Raises rather staid bi girl's flag high*

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

I've heard Spec Fic described as "fantasy of political agency", in that it lets us imagine a world where a hero is capable of single-handedly fixing a country's problems (either by chopping off someone's head or personally rewriting the legal code). See also the Appeal of the Lawless Elite (http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/304273.html).

OTOH, democracy is really hard, both to do and to show. And when done right, it's boring; that's arguably one of its main goals after diluting political agency.

A couple recommendations: Joel Shepherd's Crossover and Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Goes to Washington. In both of these a democracy is shown (not just claimed) to be a good thing, even when the majority believes the heroine is a monster.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

It's a seductive idea, and part of the reason I think that both Totalitarianism and Libertarianism have been so popular now and formerly. Totalitarianism tends to come from this idea that if we just give this one person the power to fix all these problems... and Libertatianism says the best person will rise to the top, and most libertarians somewhere think that person's going to be them, and they really could just fix everything if they had the money.

The thing is, if you have one person or a small group of people with all the political agency, no one else has any at all, and I can always see myself as one of the powerless before I can see myself as one of the powerful.

Pfft. It's only boring to people with no vision. a well crafted democracy is like making jewelry. The fact that it works is part of its beauty (sorry, jeweler here and it's not too interesting, but not at all boring).

In my own novel, I've been having difficulty showing democracy as a good thing from the point of view of a good monarch who is watching her power slip away. It's so manifestly against the interests of my main character. It's strange going.

[gamiel.livejournal.com]

Have you read any of the Sparhawk book series (the Elenium and the Tamuli) by David and Leigh Eddings? National politics are important parts of the series

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

A long, long time ago. I had forgotten about them.

[theironchocho.livejournal.com]

Wicked by Gregory Maguire was the first fantasy book I read, in which I fully understood it was about politics while I read it. It was also the book that made me realize I love reading political stories. It surprised me again and again when I'd recommend the book to customers when I worked at Borders because they said they loved the musical, to which they'd reply, "No thanks, I heard it's very political" or "I tried to read it, but it's too political." Both of these phrases now translate to "I tried to read it, but it was just to interesting" for me, though that's me being mean. I'm a specfic reader not for escapist fun, but for escapist getting-something-done.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Every time I had it recommended t me, it was by someone telling me "Oh, it's noting like that fanfiction trash you read, really." That's the only reason I haven't read it yet.

[abricot-vert.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is kind of amazing! I wish I could put together such thought out, analytical, meaningful essays about fantasy.

This is completely what I love about SF and fantasy too, and I think that Abhorsen is what really got be into it. Seeing the politics of that world, even just vaguely drawn out, intertwinned with the magic and the power of the story just gave it so much more meaning to me. I wish more books were about the intricate power plays of politics between this clan of werewolves and that coven of vampires, rather than which of them is getting off, really (although, yeah, let's get rid of them all together and go with zombies - I think they must have a bit of a hive mind and swarm attack motive).

Basically, this makes me sad I gave up Philosophy, Economics and Politics to do English.
Sorry for the random rambly comment, I just think this is awesome . Is it alright if I add you as a friend?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This is what I love about bittercon. There are so many fantastic essays about SpecFic that come down the pipeline there.

I's a shame you left Philosophy, Economics and Politics. I'm a Polisci and Sociology student, and it would be nice to have some company in the SpecFic geekery department.

Do all zombies share the same hivemind, are there different groups? does the hivemind have a "queen bee"? Is it that zombies are absorbed into a hivemind when they congregate and then leave it when they disperse? If the hivemind isn't constant, how do non-hiveminded zombies feel about being sucked in? See awesome stuff here.

Sure you can add me! I never say no. Beware though, I write more fanfiction than essays, so...