Conservative Fantasy, the son of.

Back in February, I wrote a couple of articles that were attempts, by me, to get inside the head of a fantasy fan and understand what makes the difference between good fantasy and merely bad fantasy.  This little odyssey was necessary because I really quite profoundly dislike fantasy as a genre.  Whenever magic rears its ugly head I tend to lose interest and the presence of an elf or elf-analogue is enough for me to want to throw a book across a room.  In fact, it's remarkable that I still play Dungeons and Dragons from time to time once you think about it.

Anyway, in the wake of those articles R. Scott Bakker appeared and tore a strip or two of me for my reductive analysis and I kind of came to terms with the idea that I didn't get fantasy and concluded that, even if there was something worth getting, I probably wouldn't like it anyway.  However, this morning I noticed that my articles had been commented upon by Kit Whitfield, a newish face on the fantasy scene whose name is familiar to me even if her work isn't.

Whitfield directs her attention to my claim that fantasy is an inherently conservative genre and makes a couple of interesting points that I'll address one by one.

Firstly, Kit suggests that artistic conservatism can be found both in a slavish devotion to the tropes that make up the fantasy genre and in a reaction and rejection of those tropes.  She suggests a "third way" whereby the author sets out to write fantasy without having the laws and tropes of the genre in mind at all.  This is a deceptively complex approach to an age old question as it contains a number of interesting ideas.

On one level, this observation is obvious.  As has been pointed out to me, if you look at the shortlists for a big fantasy award such as the World Fantasy Award, you'll see a noted absence of elves and hobbits and wizard kings.  Instead you see weird and wonderful ideas expressed without the philosophical limitations imposed by a devotion to the scientific method and current scientific thinking.  Indeed, it's worth remembering that whereas SF artificially amplifies the importance of the "high-brow" award-winning novels to the point where they receive far more attention than their sales might suggest, the fantasy scene is unapologetically populist with its "low-brow", best-selling books getting far more attention than the perhaps more deserving and interesting books that only get picked up by critics and award bodies.  So Whitfield is quite correct... there is a well travelled path to decent fantasy that isn't all about traditional genre staples, I tend to forget this in my haste to spit bile at the likes of Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin and their legions of passive, sheep-like fans.  So point well taken Kit.

However, on another level, the remark is really quite a challenge as genres are defined by their tropes.  So is it possible to set out to write a fantasy novel without any of the genre's tropes in mind and if it were possible, would that work still be fantasy?  Magical Realism, for example, does not sit comfortably on the same shelf as Goodkind or Lynch and many critics have been uncharacteristically quick to defend the idea that McCarthy's The Road is in a different genre to Mad Max or A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Whitfield comes to this issue from an interesting perspective given that, according to Wikipedia :

"Bareback/Benighted is a thriller with a whodunit structure set in an alternative world where most of the population are werewolves - although the word is not used in the story - and concerns the minority status of those who are, because of adverse conditions at birth, born with a disability that prevents them from 'furring up' on full moon nights. The novel's genre is a debatable question, as it is published by the science fiction imprint Del Rey in the USA and the literary imprint Jonathan Cape in Britain, while being reviewed under various genre classifications including by crime reviewers, and the author has appeared in The Guardian stating her opposition to genre stereotypes as an overly constrictive way of thinking about literature."

In fact, Kit wrote an article for the Guardian that is all about books that break through literary boundaries.  Personally, I take this with a pinch of salt as while Whitfield's book clearly borrows from a number of different literary genres, I consider a degree of postmodernism and generic flexibility to be pretty much par for the course as far as contemporary fantasy is concerned.  Indeed, given the influence of Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman, it's difficult to think of a piece of contemporary fantasy that does stay within its traditional boundaries.  So Whitfield is quite correct that there's room for a healthier and more complex set of attitudes than being pro- or anti- traditional genre tropes but I don't think that there are as few options as three.

Secondly, Whitfield spins around my claim that fantasy is full of authoritarian thinking and argues that the problem is that authoritarians are prone to being fantasists.  This is an interesting idea  but I don't think it necessarily gets fantasy off the hook as it still suggests that there's a disturbing relationship between fantasy as a literary genre and political authoritarianism.  My favourite example of this, as I mention in the Aesthetics of Fantasy articles, is the case of Stark, in the first book of A Song of Fire and Ice, carrying out his executions himself.  Martin takes this to be proof that Stark does not sentence men to death lightly and takes the job so seriously that he carries it out himself personally but within that idea are the unexamined assumptions that capital punishment is necessary and that a willingness to kill someone yourself is somehow indicative of greater character than having an underling do it.  If Gordon Brown were to insist that he be allowed to behead people for their crimes, most people would think that he was some kind of sadistic sociopath, but in the context of a fantasy novel, most people don't even blink.

My problem with Whitfield's idea is that I'm not sure that I can see a plausible causal history there.  If I say that fantasy is inherently authoritarian then I am saying that the fantasy genre ultimately finds its roots in the political attitudes of a by-gone age that have since been rejected by society at large but remain largely unquestioned by lazy writers and passive readers.  Given the influence of Tolkien and the attitudes towards race and society that were prevalent at the time of his writing it is easy to see how attitudes from the 1930's and 1940's might still be kicking around in modern fat fantasy.  After all, if you can't be bothered to move away from elves and dwarves over a fifty year period, why should you be any less forgiving of casual racism and pro-status quo politics?  Indeed, once you flip the theory and try to see authoritarians as fantasists then the causal link becomes muddied.  Is Pat Robertson a big fan of Tad Williams? I think "authoritarians are fantasists" is a great line but at the same time I'm not sure if it's very much more.  After all, I'm sure they say the same thing about us liberals with our fantastical notions that TV doesn't corrupt the young and that pre-marital sex won't rot the eyes out of your head.

In fact, the only way I think you could make any real meat out of this idea is if you applies it to something like Christianity.  After all, the Bible is perhaps the most widely read description of a fictional world full of monsters and magical powers.  Indeed, Tolkien wrote LOTR in order to create a new mythology and Lewis' Narnia books are essentially christianity described through the medium of unconvincing fantasy.  It even has casual racism and misogyny.

So I think the question should really be, is it possible to write epic fantasy that isn't conservative?  China Mieville's Iron Council can be seen as an attempt to ground fantasy in real politics but as Mieville himself seems to discover, even real politics lead to bloodshed and authoritartianism in fantasyland.  I would argue that the very tropes of fantasy itself, with its reliance upon violence and moral simplicity, make it impossible to escape the whiff of authoritarianism.
thought where evil is more about distance from God than it is about equal sides slugging it out or balancing each other.  However, I'm not convinced that this

Comments

[Neth]

I may comment more later, but my initial thought is that you should read Acacia by David Anthony Durham.

[Arilou]

I am fairly certain GRRM himself opposes the death penalty: He is a fairly liberal chap overall. For an american that is.

I think some of the issue is that fantasists often (I know I've done this in my head, even though I've never actually written any stories) write stories that are deliberately different from the real world: I have this idea for instance of writing a story about the transition from a feudal to an absolute monarchy in renaissance setting. What you have to remember is that these transitions did take place historically, and that many people were enthusiastically clapping their hands, for good reasons. Most fantasy is at least vaguely historical-based (and a lot of SF is too, Asimov I'm looking at YOUR Galactic Empire) what my rambling is getting to is that the views expressed in a work of fiction, even those by the protagonists, do not neccessarily equate to the views of the authors: If it did we would have far fewer Magnificient Bastards (TM) in fiction.

The entire point, so to speak, of fantasy is to create a world where "the rules" (social, physical, or otherwise) are different from our own: For various reasons, either to show us how good we have it, what we could do better, or simply because it sounds neat. Note that GRRM operates almost entirely from inside his characters' heads: We NEVER get an objective view of what Eddard is doing, what we get is the views from his children, his own thoughts, his wife, and his allies and enemies: All of which see his actions in different lights (and none of which sees them from our perspective) What we get is not "Eddard is a good man" but "Eddard is considered a good man by the mores of his society." (More specifically by a fraction of his society, namely the Northerners: Not everyone agrees with his methods of execution, and Daenrys thinks of him as the Usurper's Dog, "Cold Eyed Eddard Stark".

In some ways the entire *point* of a fantasy novel is to alienate us: (if not, why write fantasy?) usually authors focus on some aspect and leave the others familiar, or at least familiar enough, (a completely "alienating" story would by it's very nature be incomprehensible).

As a historian I spend a large amount of my time inside the heads of people whose views are alien to me: I do so *to a lesser degree* (and this is, if anything, an indiction of the quality of fantasy...) as a fantasy-reader. But the wonder of studying history (and reading fantasy) is that you can never be sure, you spend looking through page after page of people behaving in a manner that is to you completely uncivilized.... And then you encounter a passage or a memory or a note that might as well have been written today. An emperor falls in love and is too embarrassed to speak when he encounters the object of his affection, a general pens a few words inquiring about his children, a traveller mentions being caught in the rain...

That is the charm of fantasy as well, to see people who are like-and-yet-unlike us.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Neth - I started it but gave up a little while in. I wanted to read the book precisely for the reasons you're thinking but I just found it dull.

Arilou - I'm not making any claims about GRRM's politics necessarily. I don't know anything about him except that A Game of Thrones has a number of reactionary elements to it that aren't counter-balanced by the obvious attempts at being "morally ambiguous" because moral ambiguity assumes that there ARE moral rules but the character refuses to fit into either the good or bad columns. In the real world and according to grown up politics, the columns aren't obvious at all.

I think you're being hopelessly naive when it comes to the role played by the perspectives of the different characters. Stark is pretty clearly a decent guy by the standards of his world and by our standards he's the best of a bad lot. The evil characters are evil by any and every conceivable standard... there are evil incestuous relationships. From the bad guys' perspective Stark is in the way or a threat but there's no real attempt to portray him as actively evil, even from their perspective. He's just the opposition from a realpolitik point of view.

I also disagree about fantasy existing in order to alienate us. The LONG list of Tolkien knock-offs proves that what fantasy audiences want is pretty much the same stuff they bought last time maybe with a few changes here and there. In fact, the more radical and different the fantasy, the less likely it is to sell well, hence the huge popularity of massive series like GRRM's and Jordan's. The fantasy audience is passive, ill-informed, lazy and content to read the same book over and over, hence the huge power of the big fantasy brands. The same is even true of online tribes... it's no accident that the biggest online fantasy discussion sites are those linked to the biggest selling authors.

[Elio M. García, Jr.]

I am, I suppose, one of George's "passive, sheep like fans." Baaaaaa!

"Martin takes this to be proof that Stark does not sentence men to death lightly and takes the job so seriously that he carries it out himself personally but within that idea are the unexamined assumptions that capital punishment is necessary and that a willingness to kill someone yourself is somehow indicative of greater character than having an underling do it."

Within the context of the culture created within the series, being willing to carry out the killing with your own hand does seem morally superior to having some underling do it -- at least if you're not a bloodthirsty killer at heart, who enjoys that sort of thing. And perhaps applied in the modern day, we might see a significant reduction in executions if governors and presidents were forced to pull the switch themselves (or maybe not; a scary thought).

That said, this does not mean that GRRM believes capital punishment is necessary in the real world -- in fact, I very much doubt that he is anything but a staunch opponent of the death penalty (he's an outspoken liberal, though some of his [conservative] fans were not too happy to read his posts on the subject around election-time).

At the same time, he is a writer who is writing about another where and another when (in this case, a fantasy setting somewhat analogous to mid-14th century Europe), and he seems able to grasp what you don't: "the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Perhaps it's because of he minored in history, or maybe just because he's actually thought about it.

This is why I find myself so often opposed to those who think they can divine everything about a writer from a text (New Criticism, be gone!). You can be so easily gulled (although, in your case, it's willfully gulled) into thinking, 'Ah-ha, this reveals so-and-so's political views,' when in fact the writer could be consciously writing about something they don't believe but which his characters do.

One can question why epic fantasies tend to be set in distant pasts, or in settings analogous to distant pasts. It's a worthwhile and interesting subject. But trying to draw out the idea that a specific author is an authoritarian when any passing familiarity with the man and his biography would show you how utterly silly that is...

"I kind of came to terms with the idea that I didn't get fantasy..."

Commendably self-aware. I wish I could understand why that self-awareness disappeared shortly thereafter.

[Arilou]

The irony about the "evil incestous relationship" is that, if you keep reading, at least one of the participants starts to come off as rather less than evil, and the other still has reasonably good reasons for doing what said character does.

Not to mention the commentary that Eddard is seen as honourable and good, but precisely becuase of those qualities he ends up having a disastrous term: While the ostensible Bad Guy Tywin Lannister gave the realm decades of peace and prosperity (and all that while contending with a mad king)

Quite simply (and this comes across *very* clearly if you read up on history) if you are a medieval nobleman you either play or you die: Either you out-smart, out-fight and out-manuever your enemies or they do it to you. No matter what you do, if you want it done you'll have to contend with people who don't want you to do it and have large people with swords willing to kill to prevent that from happening. In our modern society war and violence are the exceptions: Not too long ago it was the rule. (The reasons for *why* this happened are interesting and historians disagree a lot about it, it's not precisely industrialization, but something made people a lot less likely to kill each other in the 17th and 18th centuries, some assign that to various institutions for the first time becoming truly penetrative and working on a grass-roots level, but that's a discussion for another time)

Goethe put the athmosphere very well:
"Mann muss herrschen und gewinnnen
oder dienen und verloren
lieden oder triumfieren
Amboss oder Hammer sein."

I'm genuinly curious how you consider GRRM's stories to be like Tolkien's incidentally. They have virtually nothing in common.

[Adam Whitehead]

"In fact, the more radical and different the fantasy, the less likely it is to sell well, hence the huge popularity of massive series like GRRM's and Jordan's. "

Is it worth pointing out here that the biggest-selling fantasy series in the world (bar Rowling and argue-about-the-genre King) is Discworld, which does have a more liberal (and arguably occasionally radical) agenda that is at odds with the staidness of such authors as Jordan, Eddings etc? The success of Pratchett, in particular his recent increase in sales in the USA, would seem to be at odds with the notion that all that fantasy readers want is 'safe' fantasy. Bakker's Prince of Nothing Trilogy, which is far more challenging, also seems to be doing very well.

As for Martin, I note you have drawn your conclusions about the author solely from one work. If, as you seem to be attempting, you are trying to analyse his literary motivations or objectives, then a wider reading experience of the writer would seem to be in order. For example, I can see those who have read The Armageddon Rag and nothing else concluding that GRRM is a 1960s hippy nostalgist, which would equally be an unfair and limited portrayal.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

The thing is that you're making my point for me. My point is that fantasy is inherently authoritarian. You agree that GRRM's books contain authoritarian characteristics. Therefore I'm right... he's writing in a genre full of authoritarian politics, the same as Tolkien did.

I'm not willing to draw any meaningful conclusions about GRRM from this except that he's refusing to question, let alone attack, the authoritarian roots of the genre.

I don't particularly care if GRRM shoves cats up his arse or eats 600 ibs of raw fish a day. That's his private life and good luck to him. But his writings do contribute to the authoritarian tradition of fantasy writing. Which is pretty interesting considering how liberal the guy apparently is.

My whole point is that Fantasy is authoritarian and fantasy authors have refused to question this. GRRM is just another in a long list of authors who doesn't ask himself too many questions about what he's writing. By stressing the extent to which his politics are completely separate from anything in his books, you're making my point for me.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Discworld is an interesting case. Pratchett's one of the few authors out there that actively picks a fight with the casual racism and pro-status quo politics of fantasy.

He's one of the few popular fantasy authors who works from the position that change is good and many of his more recent books are vicious attacks on the reactionary nature of many fantasy tropes.

I've called Pratchett "the most dangerous man in fantasy" before and I think it's still true now.

The question is, given that Pratchett can shift millions of copies of liberal fantasy novels, why can't Jordan and GRRM and their ilk?

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Arilou,

If these things weren't internally consistent then there'd be no point in reading them. I'm not questioning whether the world is internally consistent, I'm questioning the reasons why the world is created in accordance with a reactionary understanding of the way the world and everything in it operates. So in-world justifications don't carry any weight here... the question isn't why people in his world act the way they do, it's why his world operate the way it does.

Pratchett does realpolitik too, but one can embed realpolitik in a liberal understanding of politics. In fact, modern liberal International Relations theory does exactly that.

The whole point is that when sitting down to write a book, GRRM didn't question the politics of the genre.

[A.R.Yngve]

Pratchett's Discworld books certainly aren't reactionary... and another important strength is that they are genuinely funny.

Is there any Tolkien-imitating "Generic Fantasy" writer who manages to write comedy? (And I don't mean being unintentionally funny.)

[Arilou]

Why should they? I'm not dissing Pratchett (I love him) but why should that be the only way to write a book?

(Pratchet, due to the nature of his work, doesen't have to "make sense" in the way GRRM does. Partially becuase of the comedic nature of his work, and partially because of how meta he is)

GRRM is writing mostly historical fiction set in a fantasy environment. His advantage is that he doesen't have to worry about what actually happened (not that it bothers many other so-called authors of so-called historical fiction) He clearly set-out to write in a medieval world. (Something Pratchett explicitly does not: He writes in a stereotypical fantasy-medieval world that is getting an industrial Revolution going)

Don't get me wrong, I love Pratchett: Precisely becuase he pokes fun at the genré (although that's far from all he does) he and GRRM are essentially working in opposite directions from a Tolkienarian (or rather-post Tolkienarian) starting-point: Pratchett looks at all the clichés, laughs at them, and starts thinking "What if these clichés were true, how would it be then?" he takes all those unspoken assumptions about fantasy worlds and figures out how to make it work.

GRRM does the opposite, he cuts away the dead flesh, so to speak, to bring it closer to the medieval society. Tolkien was a writer of myths, Pratchett took the "myth" and started tinkering at it with saw and pick, GRRM took the society that produced the myth and decided to tell a story in it.

Why should GRRM's characters question the authoritarian nature of their society? Very few people did so during the middle-ages (and those who did tended to end up dead) even those who did question the social order tended to espouse either a theocracy or a strengthened monarchy. GRRM actually does question Westerosi society in quite a few instances ("The war of the Ninepenny kings they called it, but we didn't see any kings, or pennies for that matter.") but he does so in a way that character in a medieval-ish society would likely be questioning it in, which makes perfect sense.

[Arilou]

"the question isn't why people in his world act the way they do, it's why his world operate the way it does."

Because what GRRM set out to deconstruct was the idea of knighthood (more or less) this of course is a part of the social underpinnings of a feudal system (the "ideology" so to speak, is chivalry) and when GRRM demolishes the idea that underpins knighthood he implicitly rejects the assumptions that society is based on. And he does it without making all knights brutal barbarians, which many most certainly were, he point sout the systematic faults precisely by having knights of all different stripes and colour.... but in the end the wield power becuase they can kill anyone who disagrees.

"Pratchett does realpolitik too, but one can embed realpolitik in a liberal understanding of politics. In fact, modern liberal International Relations theory does exactly that."

Which makes about as much sense in a medieval world (Pratchett's world, as mentioned, is not medieval either socially or technologically) as a Count Palatinate in our modern political system.

"The whole point is that when sitting down to write a book, GRRM didn't question the politics of the genre."

I think he does, but his focus is a bit more narrow.

Incidentally, Steven Eriksson writes power-fantasy of the most expansive kind, but one thing about him is that the "Ancient Races of Ancientness" are usually beaten down by the new guys. (Which kind of makes sense, they've had thousands of years to get better at whatever they're doing) it's not exactly a *political* deconstruction, but it is certainly a deconstruction of one of the genrés tropes ("The ancient race of power")

[Adam Whitehead]

Ah, I think I see more clearly now the question: why is GRRM writing an authoritarian epic fantasy rather than, for example, not? In an odd way it's more authoritarian than Wheel of Time (where democracies exist and the entire world used to exist in a true democratic state). However, I fail to see why GRRM shouldn't set a fantasy in an authoritarian world, especially as characters do question its validity at different points in the novels (along the lines of after all the blood is shed and the battles fought and the intrigue has burned itself out, there'll still be someone on that throne issuing orders to the masses), enough to make the reader ponder how the situation will unfold in the remaining books (one of the dangers in analysing a series only half-complete). Many of his other books, however, - Fevre Dream, The Armageddon Rag etc - are explicitly not set in such a world.

I think the answer is perhaps very simple: GRRM is a big fan and student of medieval history. He wanted to write a story set in a medieval world of his own devising. Medieval societies are by their nature authoritarian, hence his medieval world would also be authoritarian.

[danro]

"The evil characters are evil by any and every conceivable standard... there are evil incestuous relationships"

I think you really should read the next book or two in A Song Of Ice And Fire.
Some of these "obviously evil" characters don't look quite the same once we get to see them through other points of view later in the series.
GRRM doesn't use an objective narrator. A lot depends on who is telling the story at the moment as we see the story filtered through the eyes of different characters. Many of whom have vastly different takes on a situation, and several of them doesn't get their say in the first book.
Preumably it was intended that our view of the characters would change as the series progresses.

As for the author not making his characters take a stand for liberal democracy and human rights for all. (Up to, but not including apparently, concensual incestous relationships between adults, as they are inherently evil.)

Well, the only thing it really tells me is that the author is not writing didactic fiction about your personal utopia. Not that he or all his fans are necessarily closet facists. Though some may be.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Arilou - Politics isn't just what you want to happen, it's also a way of seeing the world and how it operates. As a result, you can have liberal historians writing about periods of terrible brutality but their liberal nature suffuses how they think the world works and what aspects of historical goings on they focus on. Fantasy fully embraces a deeply reactionary understanding of how the world operates.

GRRM is happy to accept that worldview. I wouldn't expect his characters to question it and, frankly, I wouldn't expect him to question it as a writer either given the standard he works to but the fact remains that he is writing in an authoritarian genre without questioning the authoritarian tropes that make up that genre. Something that cannot be said of Pratchett.

Adam - There's no reason why he shouldn't swallow the authoritarian assumptions of the genre. But the fact is that he has and as such he's perpetuating authoritarianism's hold over a genre that need not be authoritarian. As a man who is, according to many, liberal, that's not a particularly nice position to be in.

Clearly, he is not a particularly clever student of history as there are numerous different ways of looking at the medievel period and a lot of them don't swallow the assumptions that GRRM does.

Danro - It's possible that the later books are completely different. Frankly I don't care, I'm not talking about those books and I've limited my comments to the one and a bit book that I have read. In that book and a bit I saw authoritarianism and attempts to create morally ambiguous characters hamstrung by their reliance on authoritarian conceptions of how morality works and how medievel societies operate.

My criticism isn't that I disagree with him. It's that he had the chance to move the genre forward but instead was content rehashing safe genre assumptions about morality.

I disagree with China Mieville's politics quite profoundly but I applaud what he attempted with Iron Council even if I don't think he pulled it off successfully.

I'd rather someone try and say something different and fail than have someone repeat the same old tired shit we've been hearing since the 1940's.

[danro]

Just to clarify.
What I disagree with in the post above is the specific example cited. It goes for the character and author in question not the epic fantasy in general.

Even though I disagree with your conclusion about the genre, you make a few very good point.

[Adam Whitehead]

On further reflection it also occurs to me that in the third novel GRRM explicitly has a group of people - the Brotherhood Without Banners - reject the authoritarian strictures of their society through several of Arya's chapters. So whilst the correlation of epic fantasy and authoritarianism is certainly a worthwhile one to pursue, it seems somewhat odd to bash ASoIaF over it when it does pursue storylines that reject that notion. Feist, Goodkind (especially), Brooks or Eddings would suit the argument far better than Martin or indeed Jordan.

[Brahm]

A lot of these criticisms strike me as silly. Why does George RR Martin write about an authoritarian society? Because he wanted to write about a western european medieval society, which historically were authoritarian. Just because Ned Stark supports capitol punishment does not necessarily entail that the author does- he's writing about characters of a medieval society, some of whom do occasionally criticize the system, but in a medieval fashion. To have characters enter into long didactic speeches about the greatness of democracy and liberalism would be out of place and would exist solely for the purpose of political correctness. I really can't understand what you're complaining about. Would you criticize Homer because Achilles doesn't ponder over whether his society's infrastructure is flawed and whether they should imitate Egypt's? Do you censure Alfred the Great because he didn't create a representative parliamentary system for England?

You admit at the beginning that you don't understand fantasy, or what certain authors are trying to achieve. Thats nice, but then common sense dictates that you either try to understand it or that you let it be.

[Adam Whitehead]

"It's possible that the later books are completely different. Frankly I don't care, I'm not talking about those books and I've limited my comments to the one and a bit book that I have read."

Ah, the true explanation of the matter. A Song of Ice and Fire is a story that expands across multiple volumes. Having characters reject the authoritarian nature of their society at a time when that society 'appears' to be working (Book 1) would have been implausible based on the world around them. After the failure and partial collapse of the system, some characters do reject the notion of authoritarianism quite explicitly. Or, to put it another way, perhaps reading the full work, or what has been published of it so far, would be a better basis for any kind of analysis of that work? Otherwise your argument seems to be that "A Game of Thrones doesn't overtly challenge authoritarianism", which I would agree with. The sequels, however, do challenge it, using events in that first novel to build upon.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Danro - We'll have to agree to disagree about the specific example. I've even re-read the passage since the original articles were written and I still can't aerd it as anything other than "Here are the standards the world operates by, Stark is better than others by these standards".

I don't buy the relativism of "but that's the way the world works" because Martin could have written any kind of book on any kind of topic and as author he is entirely responsible for the vision of history that informs his books. For example, if you look at the links on the right to the books I'm "currently reading" you'll see a historical text about Early Modern France. That's a very liberal look at an incredibly brutal period. The same is true of Stephen Baxter's books about the Dark Ages and early Renaissance. They all accept the liberal rather than authoritarian views of how the world works. GRRM simply does not. That is my criticism of him as an artist.

Adam - Having not read any of that I can't possibly comment. You could have a load of pro-democracy types turn up and have the whole thing be incredibly reactionary much as the Bush government can use words like "democracy" and "freedom" and even fight for these ideas and STILL be incredibly right-wing. It would depend upon the context they were deployed in.

I wasn't necessarily singling out ASoIaF, as I've said, I think GRRM is another in a long line of fantasists that uncritically accepts the genre's authoritarian tropes, it's just that the episode with the beheading sticks in my mind as an example of someone making it clear that his fictional society functions in the way that authoritarians tend to think society operates.

In many ways, this could be a generational thing. If your history education is all about kings and battles then you're likely to look at society through the lens of conflict. Meanwhile, if you look more at social and economic history you're more likely to see society in terms of progress and the freedom of individuals and capital.

Speaking of which, Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle is an excellent example of the liberal historical viewpoint at work. You simply don't get that level of engagement in most fantasy novels, with the possible exception of Charlie Stross' fantasy Merchant Princes novels but they're very different beasts to epic fantasy.

The whole point I'm trying to make is that I doubt whether one can write liberal epic fantasy. Once you start accepting a liberal view of society you are drawn not only away from kings but towards normal people, you're also drawn to levels of political complexity that are unworkable in the context of epic fantasy.

[Brahm]

So essentially your argument is that fantasy, like literature set in today's world, should be used to express modern political views that you agree with. Books, perhaps, should all be as didactic as Atlas Shrugged, as long as they conform to a modern western moral perspective. Thats nice, but there are other things to look for in books besides a reassurance that your way of thinking is the right one. I find it much more interesting to examine other societies and their peoples then I do my own- hence why I enjoy epic fantasy and history. You don't, clearly. Can we leave it at that?

There are also more ways, and in my opinion, better ways, to be original than to simply change a setting to one more conforming to modern views (and there are, by the way, fantasy works set in modern times). I'd say its more important what you do with the setting you write in than what the setting in itself is.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Adam -- Assuming that the story-lines you mention do what you suggest they do, how far does the critique go? For example, do they go so far as to suggest that the likes of Stark are morally corrupt?

I ask because of the conflicting messages I'm getting from GRRM fans. On the one hand people seem to be saying that "Yeah he embraces authoritarianism... that's how the medieval world works!" but from you I'm getting "actually he doesn't embrace it, all that embracing is just lining up an attack".

So who isn't getting it? does Martin's world operate on authoritarian principles or doesn't it? because if it doesn't then it follows that the rug is pulled quite sharply from underneath a lot of the early protagonists.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Brahms -- I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying in the least. I even directly addressed your point about wanting books that I agree with when I mentioned Iron Council. I profoundly disagree with Mieville's politics but I respect his attempt to do thinks a little differently.

[Arilou]

"Politics isn't just what you want to happen, it's also a way of seeing the world and how it operates. As a result, you can have liberal historians writing about periods of terrible brutality but their liberal nature suffuses how they think the world works and what aspects of historical goings on they focus on. Fantasy fully embraces a deeply reactionary understanding of how the world operates."

And this is precisely what GRRM does: But you might have to wait until the later volumes to find it.

(Just as you won't find much of Pratchett's social critique in the first chapter of Sourcery... That comes in the OTHER chapters)

"GRRM is happy to accept that worldview. I wouldn't expect his characters to question it and, frankly, I wouldn't expect him to question it as a writer either given the standard he works to but the fact remains that he is writing in an authoritarian genre without questioning the authoritarian tropes that make up that genre. Something that cannot be said of Pratchett."

In what way does he accept that worldview? (and I question whether or not fantasy is an authoritarian genré: Pratchett writes it, and is hardly authoritarian, the same can be said for some of LeGuin's stuff)

If you would read the books you would notice that GRRM is not uncritical of the feudal system, or even authority in general: But it is (as) important to highlight the fact that, in the time-period, *most people were*. Pratchett sidesteps the issue entirely, (which works, in a work of comedy, or at least light-heartedness (which is not to say there is not a message in Pratchett!) GRRM I think has to address it: How come that humanity for the vast majority of history (Note the use of history) has been ruled by various forms of monarchies?
What made these "tick"? How did the ideologies work that upheld them? It is something that he is addressing in the series I think.

And GRRM is as different from Tolkien as Pratchett is, he just works in the other direction and draws from different sources.

In fact, GRRM explicitly addresses the fact that despite all the stuff and murder and bloodshed and coups and intrigue... Things simply don't change very much for the ordinary people. This is itself a critique I think: Of the fact that he made the feuding of the nobles the centre of his story, so it is not as if he is not aware of the issues.

And about the generational thing: If you are reading history *now* you are not likely to encounter terms like "progress" :p These sound decidedly outdated. (the big things right now are mental and social history)

What I disagree with, essentially, is your seeming insistence that there is a "right way" or a "right perspective" to treat fantasy. GRRM and China Mieville are doing very different things, but they both have written great works of art. LeGuin and Asimov are different, yet both are important and enjoyable masters of their craft.

GRRM tells a story of a feudal system as it might have been experienced by those who were at the top of that system: Yes, and that perspective is as valid as any other: He is certainly aware (and routinely points out) that he leaves entire sections of society, or even the nobility, out of the narrative (his use of character POV's rather than omniscient narrator underscores how limited our perspective really is)

[Arilou]

His world operates on authoritarian principles, but he is aware (and it is pointed out) that this might not be the best way to operate a world. Does that make sense? This does not neccessarily mean that the world will end up fundamentally changed, but the awareness is there.

And yes, medieval (and pre-modern, and even most modern) socities *did* operate on an authoritarian basis.