On Worldbuilding

As ever in these kinds of matters,Gabe Chouinard is my cultural weathervane.

Gabe has picked up on a growing debate regarding a post on the blog of veteran SF writer M. John Harrison (author of Light and Nova Swing in recent years).

In essence, Harrison proclaims that Worldbuilding is dull, self-defeating and "the great clomping foot of nerdism". Gabe makes the standard apologies for Tolkien and then broadly agrees, pointing out that Worldbuilding subtracts from the point of the fantastic, which is to take your imagination out for a run.

I have never really cared all that much for The Lord of the Rings. I made my entry into fantasy through largely shitty D&D tie-in novels and when I eventually got round to reading LotR. I was amazed at how dull it was. As a literary exercise, the book is a triumph of linguistic and mythological train-spotting that features a meeting with a horrendous poetry-spouting Mary Sue for no apparent reason that seriously needs some ruthless editing (in fact, the middle book can just go frankly). A while ago, I came across Poul Anderson's fantasy novel The Broken Sword. Anderson's book came out around the same time as LotR but its influence was nowhere near as great. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Broken Sword was out of print until the Fantasy Masterworks line resurrected it.

Much like the work of Moorcock, Leiber and Howard (who, of course, produced the Elric, Lankhmar and Conan books), Broken Sword is a book driven by ideas and by characters. The world of the book with its Norse kingdom and Alfheim is vague and patchy but there's enough to support the characters and the ideas that Anderson wants to engage with. Clearly, in the mid-50's, there were two ways that the fantasy genre could have gone. Firstly, down the characters and ideas route favoured by the pulp writers of the time and secondly down the path tread by Tolkien; the path of Worldbuilding.

Let me make this clear: there is nothing in SFF that I loathe more than Worldbuilding. I think that the desire to emulate Tolkien has had an absolutely disastrous effect on the fantasy genre. In the mid-90's the problem got so bad that I think I'm being charitable if I say that 90% of fantasy novels published at that time were fit only for the bonfire. The desire to build a coherent world leads to attention being lavished on set dressing rather than characterisation and plot and this, in turn, leads not only to poor writing and narratives but to the kind of bloat that has made the trilogy the basic building block of fantastical expression. Even when people react against the bloat and the Worldbuilding, they seem to wind up writing bloated stories full of Worldbuilding. The best example of this being George R. R. Martin whose A Game of Fire and Ice series is currently projected to run to nine 1000 page novels. That's two and a half times the length of Gibbon's full Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!

However, as much as I loathe Worldbuilding, I think that both Harrison and Chouinard are missing the point.

Fantasy, as a genre, is not interested in The Other. It is not interested in exploring new worlds, in challenging our perceptions on our own world or expanding our minds through complex and intricate new concepts. Fantasy, as a genre, is all about escapism. When a fantasy fan picks up a novel, he doesn't want his world-view or his opinions on things challenged, he wants a broadly familiar setting with a few minor changes and innovations wrapped around a rather dull thriller or quest-type plot. This is why all fantasy novels feature elves and dwarves and the market for new and exciting fantasy worlds full of weird and wonderful creatures is so tiny.

Fantasy fans want the familiar and the familiar is what they get. This is because the fantasy novel fills a different function to the kind of SF novel that Harrison produces. Fantasy novels are essentially romance novels for geeks... they're chewing gum for the eyes that allow you to escape from your dull little world while you're trying to fall asleep or riding the bus to work. They're a means through which a certain segment of society can express their identity and their membership of a certain sub-culture.

Worldbuilding is the basic means of fantastical expression. In order to get your fantasy novel out there and read your room for manoeuvre creatively speaking is incredibly small and the one area in which you can innovate is by adapting aspects of real world myth, politics and history to the basic fantasy template. This is a fact that was clearly grasped by Martin as his characters and world sways towards the morally neutral real world when he inspires himself from our history but then back into the Manichean fantasy realms when the genre demands reassert themselves.

As a result, I'd argue that to complain about Worldbuilding is really to complain about the fantasy audience and it is to miss the point because the fantasy genre demands Worldbuilding in the same way that the horror genre demands that a story be frightening.

So what I think Chouinard and Harrison really should be saying is that fantasy is shit and is for nerds.

I'd agree but let's be honest with ourselves eh?

The only good fantasy novels are those that set out to pick a fight with the very foundations of the genre.

Comments

[gabe chouinard]

"As ever in these kinds of matters,Gabe Chouinard is my cultural weathervane."

Jonathan. You have a sickness, it seems. I recommend having it checked as soon as possible.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

You are though... you always pick up on these critical memes.

[A.R.Yngve]

"The only good fantasy novels are those that set out to pick a fight with the very foundations of the genre."

*Pow!!*

Now, this is the kind of article that makes blogging exciting. Let the flamewar begin!
;)

[Fantasy Fan]

`It is not interested in exploring new worlds, in challenging our perceptions on our own world or expanding our minds through complex and intricate new concepts. Fantasy, as a genre, is all about escapism.`

Though I DO agree with you, you`ve got to realize that the big, bloated 1000-page tomes about guys with swords who go walking around through forests for days on end is exactly what fantasy geeks are buying.

Otherwise, dispensers of literal diarrhea, like Robert Jordan, wouldn`t be millionaires.

[Jacob Martin]

Why not Fantasy books about Fantasy worlds that trade with Earth, yet the inhabitants of this new world struggle to understand Seinfeld, and are offended by the Lord of the Rings films due to their racist depiction of Elves by Orlando Bloom, who makes their kin look like sissies?

Or the story of an Elf, a Dwarf, and a Human that go on a small quest together, but they find more in friendship than in treasure that they seek? This would be a single volume work of character development, instead of a long series of fishing trip novels.

Or how about the story of how sustainable magic sources must be sought, as the pollution of reckless magic use is killing a world's biosphere?

All of these ideas have their roots in genre, but they deal with more than just stories about men with swords in a forest. The first idea needs work, it's the one my first novel is about, but I won't be miffed if you think it's crap.

[SerScot]

In my opinion there is nothing intrisicly wrong with "worldbuilding." I think a well crafted "world" can add to a story giving it depth and a sense of history. It is when "worldbuilding" supplants character and story that it becomes a problem.

GRRM has written interesting and morally complex characters in his series "A Song of Ice and Fire." [not "A Game of Ice and Fire." it's also projected to run to seven books not nine] The world is complex with a sense of history. In my opinion GRRM has not allowed "worldbuilding" to get in the way of telling the story.

If you don't like "worldbuilding" so be it. It is a matter of taste.