Bittercon: Revolutions in SF, Fantasy, and the Real World

[attackfish]

Revolutions vary from the disparate traditional tropes of the French and American revolutions to non-violent revolution (Gandhi’s India), The entrenched power may be colonial, class-based, or simply authoritarian. How well does SF & F represent the ideals and ambiguities of revolution, the need to rebuild, and the cultural stresses that result.

I almost titled this post Politics in Fantasy part 2.  Revolutions are politics.  They are one of it’s most visible forms, like earthquakes are for plate tectonics.  (International wars are volcanoes in this analogy, in case you’re interested.  No?  Well alright.)

Revolutions in Speculative Fiction tend to be he big flashy kind with epic battles and heroic deeds.  They also tend to be fought by the Good Guys(tm).  We love underdogs, and rebellions are the underdogs in a big way.  Furthermore, a Good King or a democracy never seems to have a revolution raised against them.  History however is full of stories of revolutions that brought brought cruel dictators like the Ayatollah to power, or revolutions fought against democracies, like the American Civil War.

In Speculative Fiction the kind of revolution that shows up is also different.  Most fictional revolutions, as I said before are the kind that involve a war.  Peaceful revolutions happen on occasion, while ideological social, and technological revolutions are rarer still, except as backstories.  These are revolutions where the outcome is inevitable, and the combat verbal.  The shakeups change the fabric of society fundamentally.  Part of this is a sense of stasis in especially fantasy.  Series that take place over a thousand years may have a society and material culture that is almost identical.  Revolutions run counter to this.

Most Speculative Fiction ends when the revolution ends, but there are exceptions.  Firefly has the browncoats, a class of failed revolutionaries, meant according to the show creator, Joss Whedon, to be analogous to the former Confederate soldiers after the American Civil War, only with more of a moral leg to stand on.  The first book of Carol Berg’s Rai-Kirah trilogy ends with the main character’s nation being given its freedom, and he next two books deal with the resulting shakeups.  The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge ends with Moon taking power, and The Summer Queen is about her reign.  The Star Wars Expanded Universe deals with the transition from the Rebel Alliance to the government of the New Republic, what it means to become a centralized government, and the Imperial Remnants, themselves attempting a counter-revolution.  At the end of a revolution, no matter who wins, suddenly, the story becomes more complex, and less black and white, yet one of the great attractions of epic fantasy and space opera, huge segments of the reading public for Speculative Fiction is that it deals in black and white.  As with cop shows, the muddy grays of the world can be forgotten, and good can unequivocally triumph over evil until the end of the story.

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 2011 Worldcon.

Comments

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

We Americans in particular love to romanticize revolution; I can only assume that this is because we had one of the very, very few in history that turned out reasonably well. I don't think most Americans have any idea how easily ours could have turned out to be one in the long, sad series of wars of colonial liberation that cast off the shackles of foreign oppression (however heavy, or light, those shackles may in fact have been) only to inflict something far worse on ourselves. We came really close, several times in our early history as a nation; however messed up our current political situation may be, we dodged a lot of bullets.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Had we lost the revolution, or been recaptured in the war of 1812, we would have been another Ireland.

And yes, this is another reason fiction romanticizes revolutions, but I just can't seem to figure out why British authors do it too...

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of things we almost did to ourselves without any British interference at all: proposals to give Washington a crown right after the Revolution, the Alien and Sedition Acts less than a decade after the ink was dry on the Bill of Rights, etc. -- again, much like what many newly "liberated" colonies have done to themselves as the era of colonization collapsed. But yeah, the consequences of losing the Revolution would have been pretty grotesque too. 1812, I'm not sure -- by any reasonable measure, we did lose that war, but by that point the British were willing to deal with us as they would have a defeated European power.

The British have their own history of revolutions -- real ones, directed at the government in situ, not far away across an ocean -- celebrated in song and story, of course. Add that to pervasive American cultural influence, and you've probably got your answer.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This is true. We had one of the few revolutions where after it was over the revolutionary military leaders didn't immediately assume control. Actually, giving him the crown was suggested by very few people. Most were pretty horrified by the idea, and mos wanted basically for all thirteen colonies to be very loosely affiliated if at all. We could have been the Balkans, lots of little countries with lots of infighting and backbiting.

1812, it was more like nobody won, nobody lost, but because it was fought here, we had the most damage done to us. Like the revolution, we just made it miserable enough that the British said screw it.

But then they have things like the English Civil War which put Cromwell into power, the signing of the Magna Carta, which was more like a bunch of nobles kidnapping the king saying "You will give us more power and let us oppress the peasants more!" and the Glorious Revolution where not a shot was fired, the peasant revolt under Richard II which went home when the king gave them a stern telling off... I mean how did these things become glorified as great revolutions striving for human freedom against the forces of tyranny? Why is that myth so pervasive that the Brits would reshape the way they told history around it?

[mythusmage.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the Glorious Revolution, in which a bad British monarch was replaced by Two good British Monarch. (The dual monarchy of William and Mary that is.) Though that could be considered more as a coup de main than a full fledged revolution

As for the War of 1812 (the bicentennial is next year), the take these days was that Britain won, but had no desire to retake the US because they figured it would be too much trouble, and the fact Britain was all worn out after the Napoleonic wars and just wanted to rest and recuperate.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I mentioned that, that's the one where no shots were fired. No great victory songs to be had. Of course it led to the failed Jacobite rebellion, and that got songs, so...

Most of the American takes on it I have seen say British were distracted, we were a side show, but nobody won, nobody lost, and if we had lost, the British would have demanded concessions. The treaty was one long exercise in pretending the whole thing never happened on both sides. Basically we did the same thing as we did with the revolution. It's not that we won any major battles, we just made ourselves too unpleasant to bother with while they were at war with the French. Of course during the revolution, we also convinced France to go to war with Britain, but the same principle applied.

[marycatelli]

The Irish had no convenient place to run away. The Americans had the frontier.

It might not have been pleasant, but Ireland it would not have been.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Very true, though the English were doing everything they could to keep us from spreading beyond the Appalachians, which was why so many American Indians sided with the British... Not that the English ever did a good job at it. We would have lost most of our trade and much of our immigration, and I have a feeling we would have gotten a nobility. Joy. Probably not mass starvation, though.