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

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.