[stone monkey]

tbh I don't disagree entirely. We all want engaging, well told stories, after all.

I think the crux of the issue, for me at least, is the idea that the Medieval European model is considered the default. There are so many more models out there. It seems like a failure of imagination, and therefore a little perverse, for them not to be used more often; fantasy is supposed to be all about imagination after all is said and done.

And not just that, it's also that this default model is factually incorrect, as medieval society (and Roman - which also gets commonly used as a model) was not necessarily what some authors seem to think it was. Perhaps our unconscious biases - or more probably those of the previous generations of historians who are primarily responsible for the construction of our collective ideas of the past - are to blame for this.

It could be due to writers concentrating more on telling a great story; which is, of course. fine and dandy. But it could equally be down to research, storytelling and world building laziness; which is not.

Is it maybe a matter of demographics; the traditional fantasy reader (and writer) is still primarily a white guy from the First World. Perhaps they, however unconsciously, want to read (and tell) stories set in societies that validate their cultural identity. Maybe this will change as more people from minorities start writing and selling fantasy fiction and telling stories that validate (or at least represent) their own cultural identities, in worlds that vary more from the default.

And finally perhaps we as readers need to start voting for something a bit more interesting with our pounds, dollars, euros etc.

Who knows? I certainly don't.

[Gust Hubb]

stone monkey, on 23 April 2012 - 10:50 PM, said:

tbh I don't disagree entirely. We all want engaging, well told stories, after all.

I think the crux of the issue, for me at least, is the idea that the Medieval European model is considered the default. There are so many more models out there. It seems like a failure of imagination, and therefore a little perverse, for them not to be used more often; fantasy is supposed to be all about imagination after all is said and done.

And not just that, it's also that this default model is factually incorrect, as medieval society (and Roman - which also gets commonly used as a model) was not necessarily what some authors seem to think it was. Perhaps our unconscious biases - or more probably those of the previous generations of historians who are primarily responsible for the construction of our collective ideas of the past - are to blame for this.

It could be due to writers concentrating more on telling a great story; which is, of course. fine and dandy. But it could equally be down to research, storytelling and world building laziness; which is not.

Is it maybe a matter of demographics; the traditional fantasy reader (and writer) is still primarily a white guy from the First World. Perhaps they, however unconsciously, want to read (and tell) stories set in societies that validate their cultural identity. Maybe this will change as more people from minorities start writing and selling fantasy fiction and telling stories that validate (or at least represent) their own cultural identities, in worlds that vary more from the default.

And finally perhaps we as readers need to start voting for something a bit more interesting with our pounds, dollars, euros etc.

Who knows? I certainly don't.

That aforementioned creativity is one reason I loved Tad Williams Otherworld series so much.

[worry]

@Gamet: I agree with you that Martin isn't a good example of what we're talking about -- not because his characters aren't primarily white, but because he doesn't make the white civilization "normal" and the rest "other". Readers might bring their preconceptions to the story and read it that way, because they are more familiar with Western history, but as far as I'm concerned there's nothing about the white people in his story that is exalted or glamorized. And even though I think he's *mostly* dedicated to this being a rich fantasy world, I still think there's deliberate commentary on the real-world historical notion of "civilization," who gets included and who gets excluded.

Where I disagree is that fantasy/fiction is necessarily escapism (and when it is, I ask again anyway, who is it that gets to escape?). Or that it's relevant whether an author's attempts to diversify become overly focused on (and that hasn't seemed to happen to SE -- it's just one part of the whole that people talk about, seems nifty to me). And while I agree that theoretically there is room for all types of characters and realms and what have you, that is clearly not the case in terms of what gets published en masse. And the industry isn't gonna change first, it's up to authors and customers to drag the industry along with them. It's not really even necessarily about translating real world problems and issues into the fantasy world, or burdening individual authors with the responsibility of tackling such issues, or avoiding the medieval fantasy tropes; it's more about how these real world issues have already warped and imbalanced the industry, and a kind of echo chamber has developed, and it needs to become more permeable. It's not about kicking people out so much as letting more people in.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 23 April 2012 - 11:07 PM

[Terez]

Tapper, on 20 April 2012 - 07:23 AM, said:

Terez, on 10 April 2012 - 04:19 AM, said:

Sure, there's a racial element between the Western World and the darker-skinned Islamic cultures

As a side-note: not all Islamic cultures were/ are dark-skinned. iirc, there are a great many 'Aryans' in the middle east: blond and blue-eyed (especially surprising since blue eyes are genetically regressive). There also seems to be at the very least circumstantial evidence that a large part of the Al-Andalusian sultanate was very light skinned, had blue eyes and had to die their hair and beard black thanks to the sheer amount of white harem wives they were having sexy time with. It is one of the reasons why I love Lions of al-Rassan so much: Ammar ibn Kharain is exactly the offspring of one such union.
So it isn't just that the ME were more diverse, it also is that there was inter-racial sex (although I am sure part of it wasn't entirely voluntarily) and thus, mixed offspring.

Yeah, I'm aware that they're not all dark-skinned, but it's relatively rare, and beside the point anyway, since we're really talking about Lewis's preconceptions, and those of his average reader. It was a bit stereotypical of him to make his Tash-worshipers dark-skinned, but I think his conscious motives were more rooted in the religious conflict.

Here's another article on the subject, by Daniel Abraham on A Dribble of Ink.
_____

So there's this argument about epic fantasy that keeps coming up, and it makes me uncomfortable every time I see it. Usually it goes something like this: a beloved novel or series set in a world with kings and knight and dragons – that is to say one set in an imaginary medieval Europe – is analyzed and found somehow wanting. Not enough strong women, too many white people, too much sexual violence. As the debate fires up, one of the defenders of book or series makes some variation of the argument that fantasy that has the set dressings of medieval Europe is better if it also has medieval social norms. Or, at a lower diction, "But the Middle Ages really were sexist/racist/filled with sexual violence." And there, my dear friends, I get my back up. With all respect, this is a bad argument. If you don't mind, I'd like to run down my objections to it in hopes of putting a stake through this argument's rhetorical heart.

First off – and I include this only because it deserves to be said – history is more complex than a fantasy novel. The Middle Ages, for all their many faults, also included Moorsh Spain where religious tolerance and civilization flourished. Women in the 14th century England could own property and accumulate wealth. The argument that "it was really like that" assumed that there's a singular "it" that can be applied. There's not. That alone should be enough to stop this rhetorical strategy, but it's not the part of the argument that actually chafes me, so put it aside and let's pretend for a while that there was only one homogenous Middle Ages. And let's say that from the fall of Rome to the Enlightenment was one long uninterrupted stream sexual subjugation, racial hatred, rape, and plague. It wasn't, but let's pretend.

What would that say about contemporary epic fantasy set in a faux medieval world? That it should be like that too? That a story is made deeper, more powerful, better by cleaving to that? Would, to give a concrete example, the Chronicles of Narnia would be improved by plagues and vicious religious schism? I think it wouldn't. And I think there are many secondary world fantasies like it – Hughart's The Bridge of Birds, Beagle's The Last Unicorn, Kushner's Swordspoint – that would obviously be poorly served by greater historical authenticity.

Which is to say the standard only applies to the projects it applies to.

So fine. We've dispensed with the authentic complexity of history. Now, let's cut out The Chronicles of Prydain and Thomas the Rhymer too. Let's pretend that the argument might make sense if we only talk about the subset of epic fantasies where the author is trying for authenticity. George RR Martin, Joe Abercrombie, R. Scott Bakker, Richard Morgan. The kinds of fantasies that pull no punches and show medieval life the way that (we're pretending for the sake of argument) it really was. In that context, argument has to hold true.

Except that it doesn't.

Here's a short list of how things really were in the real Middle Ages that, I think, match the popular understanding of them: religious, agrarian, lacking in cryptozoological discoveries.

The importance of God and the church in medieval Europe is the central cultural fact of the time, and the fear of damnation in the afterlife shaped everything from the creation of art to the customs of international banking. Surely everyone in these historically authentic fantasies must be pious, because the Middle Ages were really like that. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Western Europe had a massive ruralization that didn't start coming back to focus on large urban centers until the 1400s. Surely the majority of action in these realistic fantasies happens outside cities. And since there weren't any, dragons have to count as a huge minus.

Except that of course they don't. And what's more, they shouldn't.

The idea that the race, gender, or sexual roles of a given work of secondary world, quasi-medieval fantasy were dictated by history doesn't work on any level. First, history has an almost unimaginably rich set of examples to pull from. Second, there are a wide variety of secondary world faux-medieval fantasies that don't reach for historical accuracy and which would be served poorly by the attempt. And third, even in the works where the standard is applied, it's only applied to specific, cherry-picked facets of the fantasy culture and the real world.

At its heart, the argument that the Middle Ages were "really like that" misunderstands what epic fantasy is by treating it as though it was in conversation with actual history. It isn't. It's in conversation with the epic fantasy that came before it. George RR Martin (who, in the interest of full disclosure, is a friend and sometimes-collaborator of mine) has drawn a great deal from the incidents of real history, but he hasn't written a work of historical fiction. What gives his work its power isn't historical accuracy, but the subversion of genre expectations and a deeply-felt sorrow that infuses almost every scene. JRR Tolkien drew his inspiration not from medieval history but from medieval romances, and the Lord of the Rings isn't remembered for what it said about an imaginary 1300s, but what it said about (and to) a real 1950s. And 2010s. The roots of epic fantasy aren't with King William II. They're with King Arthur, and so they're timeless. Historical accuracy isn't what we come here for.

So why are people making the claim? Here's what it looks like to me:

There are legitimate reasons for racism, sexism, and sexual violence to be part of a fantasy project, and expressing how problematic elements serve a novel is tricky work. It invites conflict,, and the issues about what fiction is and should be aren't straightforward.

It's hard to have a piece of fiction that spoke to you – and by you I mean me – criticized, and this argument seems to come up almost exclusively in the context of defending a beloved work against criticism. When a critic points out something problematic in a book that we enjoyed (or, God forbid, wrote), it feels like a personal attack. Also this is the Internet, and the level of rhetorical violence with which the analysis is presented can sometimes leave welts. It's natural to reach come to the defense of the work, because that also feels like coming to the defense of the writer and the fans. We don't do our best thinking when we're defensive. Sometimes we make dumb arguments. This is one of those.

We'll have to do better.
___

[Gust Hubb]

I get the impression that part of this debate stems from the dissonance between the creation of a fictional world that accurately represents a real historical time-period with all it's social structure and worldviews.

Speaking for myself, I actually often feel disappointed in both books and film depiction of people and their motivations. As a rule, every motivation is explained and everything that a person says is true. Neither books nor film are adequate in representing the ambiguity of life and the complexities of simple concepts such as liking or disliking someone. Face it, people are complex and I doubt anyone here completely understands half of what they feel/do let alone the motivations behind their emotions and actions.

So to attack the foundations of the argument above, what is historical accuracy? Everything we know about the past is the result of perusing documents and putting together the broken structures and possessions of the past. We do not have a time machine. We do not have anyone alive who can speak to the world even 150 years ago, let alone half a millennium. And even if we did, when have you known anyone that can describe something with complete objectiveness and accuracy, esp. when it pertains to human emotion, attitude, and behavior.

Needless to say, I think the whole argument that one side represents history more accurately than the other is a moot debate. We have authorities that tell us about the past, but these are based largely on documents from individuals with enough education and affluence to write things down and official documentation (trading numbers, censuses, etc) that is accurate as our modern attempts to classify "legitimate" business activity despite the unrecorded transactions going on in the background.

Why is there the argument then people? A tolerant multicultural Moorish Spain? Where is there a prime example of multicultural harmony anywhere in the world (getting back to people's inclination to stick with those like them, etc.)? Women with property? Indeed, but do we really know what attitudes and societal parameters those women suffered/enjoyed?

In the end, history is fascinating but fictional. Fantasy is a fiction representing a fictional account of the way things were. To argue over how accurate a fantastical representation of "real" history seems a little irrelevant. I still have yet to see a novel, fact or fiction, even begin to touch upon the complexity of one person objectively outside of the biases of worldview and sensory perception.

As much as I hate to say it, the world is what you accept it to be. What the world and past really are may never be known (and for those gearing up to rip apart this last statement do you ever doubt yourself and if so why? Who knows you better than you? And if you can't explain yourself, who can?).

[HiddenOne]

And GH takes the philosophical "history is a lie" angle. Use to bolster your position the idea that history is written largely by the winners. Not to reduce the gravity of the issue, this reminds me of arguments between roleplayers regarding the mechanics of magic systems within games.

[Fist Gamet]

Yes, I would agree that it is well past time to change the 'default', as we see it, but for me the story itself, the fantasy and the imagination and the well told tale must remain the primary concern for Fantasy Fiction. In essence, I don't subscribe to the idea of exploring more exotic and racially balanced and diverse characters just for the sake of it. For the writer, every element must serve the story they wish to tell, it is a basic premise of writing that should be ignored at your peril. I also think that if you take the imagination too far and try to make your characters and world too unusual, then you are in danger of removing them too far from the reader and it becomes harder to identify and I, for one, would feel the writer is trying to be outlandish and different to make up for a poor story (rightly or wrongly).
Our other problem is that publishers are in it to make money, that's their job, and if the Euro-Medieval model sells better than any other type, then that's what they want. Be a long road convincing them otherwise.

Oh, and Worrywort, of course Fantasy and Fiction are escapism, they're escapism for us, the readers. In this sense it is no different from movies, art or plays which we enjoy because they take us away from our everyday lives, if only for a while.

[amphibian]

Fist Gamet, on 24 April 2012 - 01:42 PM, said:

Oh, and Worrywort, of course Fantasy and Fiction are escapism, they're escapism for us, the readers. In this sense it is no different from movies, art or plays which we enjoy because they take us away from our everyday lives, if only for a while.

Worrywort's point is more of the "for those readers who are non-white and perhaps not from the Western nations, just what kind of a world are they escaping to?" kind.

Daniel Abraham's piece (as relayed by Terez) reminds us that we are reading created works of fiction that are generally based in romantic views or mythological views of things. However, he seems to have completely bungled the fact that the romantic views or mythological views may be themselves racist or problematic in how they deal with life. Not everything has to hew to historical accuracy or real life, but if the work purposefully or inadvertently supports social problems like racism or misogyny/misandry and so on, that's a problem that can be addressed by the author writing the work.

Quote

And third, even in the works where the standard is applied, it's only applied to specific, cherry-picked facets of the fantasy culture and the real world.

What does it mean if the examples that are cherry-picked are again and again of white people in a pseudo-version of the Middle Ages?

Also, what does it say if we readers and authors keep escaping to places that could be either lazily based in inaccurate history, possibly racist or some combination of the two and more?

Gust Hubb, I am disappointed in you for writing that "history is inaccurate" post. A great deal of work from thousands of professionals across hundreds of years has gone into sussing out the differences between what made it onto the page (or clay tablet) and what actually occurred. The works are based on far more than documents - they include first or second-hand historical accounts from those who lived in those times, physical evidence, scientific studies of geology, tectonics, climatology, agrarian science, water systems and more - and the end result isn't perfect, but it is a far sight better than what you make it out to be.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 24 April 2012 - 03:18 PM, said:

Gust Hubb, I am disappointed in you for writing that "history is inaccurate" post. A great deal of work from thousands of professionals across hundreds of years has gone into sussing out the differences between what made it onto the page (or clay tablet) and what actually occurred. The works are based on far more than documents - they include first or second-hand historical accounts from those who lived in those times, physical evidence, scientific studies of geology, tectonics, climatology, agrarian science, water systems and more - and the end result isn't perfect, but it is a far sight better than what you make it out to be.

Amph, I like history as much as the next guy, but to be quite honest all one has to do is look at evidence presented by those in the know for the last century to see how misinterpreted history can truly be.

Example:

Stonehenge.

From about the 16th Century onwards a lot of people apparently truly thought that Stonehenge had something to do with King Arthur. That Merlin had brought the stones from Ireland.

From about the 17th century up till the early 20th century it was assumed to be Druidic in origin and date about 2000 years old and was thought to be a place of ritual

In the 1960's more work was done and while it was still assumed to be Druidic and 2000 years old, but now it was shown to not be a place of rituals, but a timepiece or sundial instead

In the 1980's archeologists did more work including carbon dating and geological survey's and learned that it MIGHT be older, dating back to the very early Druid days, though they were unsure of what exactly it was sued for, but were convinced that it did line up with the sun in strange ways.

In the 1990's archeologists decided to look into the fact that it might not be druidic in origin at all, and that was when some genius sorted out that Woodhenge (a structure a few miles away) might be related to it and that IT dated from the Bronze age, nearly double that of the assumed age of Stonehenge at closer to 5000-6000 years old.

In the late 1990's. More work, this time by a new set of archeologists set on investigating the land AROUND the henge and not on the henge...where they discovered bones and pots and bronze age tools and weapons. A trench in the fields surrounding Stonehenge actually LINKED it to Woodhenge by a path/road. both of these finds oficially sealed the monument's time to be bronze age. They were also finally brilliant enough to sort out where the stone came from to make it and how Bronze age people might be able to find it, cut it and move it.

In the 2000's it was established that Woodhenge and Stonehenge acted as gathering places for the Summer and Winter Solstices respectively and that the people's belonged to a specific tribe of Bronze Age peoples, whose homes were not far away at all.

So this is roughly 75-ish years of history and we went from Druidic sacrifices 2000-2500 years ago to Bronze Age (5000-6000 years ago) society celebrating the coming and going of the seasons. Though if you had suggested the Bronze age info to someone in 1925, I wager you'd have been laughed out of Oxford. Above that, you have to realize that druids worshiped at forest temples and never used stone in anything else, nor are they are ever recorded having done so...and in the face of that, the notion that Stonehenge was their work is totally ridiculous.

History and the study of it isn't perfect. Never has been. To assume it is, would be hubris methinks. We can only guess at anything older than a few thousand years ago. For instance, can we know if Ancient Egyptians were as dark skinned as some North African's are? Or should we think that they were lighter more olive skinned folk, having come down from the cradle of civilization in the fertile crescent? We don't know, and never will....and what we are left with is speculation.

[worry]

I think amph's point there isn't that history is perfect, but only that it should (and increasingly does) hold to its own version of a scientific method. Plus of course the further back you go, the more "history" does dovetail with actual science (whether it's physical science, organic/bio, or archae/anthropology). You don't throw History under the bus for its past crimes and mistakes any more than you do Science for its own past sins, even as you constantly question its conclusions in order to improve accuracy and gain perspective. There's no other way.

[QuickTidal]

worrywort, on 24 April 2012 - 08:43 PM, said:

I think amph's point there isn't that history is perfect, but only that it should (and increasingly does) hold to its own version of a scientific method. Plus of course the further back you go, the more "history" does dovetail with actual science (whether it's physical science, organic/bio, or archae/anthropology). You don't throw History under the bus for its past crimes and mistakes any more than you do Science for its own past sins, even as you constantly question its conclusions in order to improve accuracy and gain perspective. There's no other way.

Agreed. But neither should we not question it. It takes great minds questioning what history has told them, and challenging that to come up with new theories.

There is a middle ground, but both Amph and GH have good points. Finding that middle ground is muddy though, and it likely always will be.

[worry]

Well that makes sense, but above you said "we can only guess" -- and that simply isn't true, we can do more than guess, and we can reach some conclusions about antiquity with near certainty, even as other things remain mysterious, and as we're challenging old conclusions, POVs, and assumptions. I would of course never in a million years -- not that you could prove back that far, I admit -- suggest that historians don't filter a lot of what they do through personal biases of all kinds...but I would suggest that whitewashing fictional accounts that are sourced to any significant degree in actual history does the very same disservice that bad history does (though I'm by no means placing them at the same degree of importance or purpose).

[Gust Hubb]

I guess the "history is fiction" line was a little misleading. I am not trying to minimize the thousands of years of work done by historians. I am more pointing out the fallacy of saying fantasy is historical inaccurate when really all we can do with history is put together pieces and get a mechanical picture of the past. The more subjective ideas of popular opinions, biases and norms of the day, etc are based on people's written accounts and our speculations about implied meanings behind the ways things were done.

Frankly, the deeper I go into science the less I trust it. There are potential (and proven) holes in many of the principles we hold infallible. Modern science is expected to include rechecking other people's data and rerunning their experiments. This does happen, but not as much as one is lead to believe. The are examples of multiple published research articles all based off of an original paper that is later shown to make patently wrong conclusions. Politics play a major role in which papers get in which journals, and trying to prove major papers wrong is frowned upon, especially if the skeptic is a newly started lab group.

So back to history, do not get me wrong: I love history, I tend to believe what I read without deeply questioning it, and I do admire all those who put together the pieces to form a picture for the rest of us who don't take the time to really get into the nitty gritty. That being said, Amph you can not tell me that any written document anywhere can be explicitly trusted (hell, if I take the time to mull over the concept, I don't even trust accounts of people alive and in the present, as is explicitly shown in crime victims' attempts to remember what happened). Nor can you say that geological science, archeology, etc are able to figure out exactly how the past was. We hypothesize, we build evidence, we confirm our theories with new discoveries, but this is more concrete in the realm of rebuilding the architecture of a city or the cost of bread in a certain era. It does not tell us what the people of that time were like. It does not give us a clear picture of the intricacies of society.

Think about it this way: If the present world population was wiped off the map and alien archeologists tried to put together our history based on newspapers and video tapes of FOX news, do you think they would have an accurate picture of what the people of our world were like? Moreover, news is biased towards reporting the sensational. Thus, the accounts usually describe the uglier side of our world.

I don't think people in the past were any more trustworthy in their accounts. And that is what I am getting at. We say fantasy's representation of Medieval Times is inaccurate, that the biases and social dynamics of fantasy do a gross injustice to what we know really happened in that era. I am saying it is presumptuous to assume we know how well Moorish Spain got along with its multiculturism. We barely can describe the reasons and motivations behind the social context of our own time period. Seems like we should have gotten over racial prejudice ages ago, but such ugliness is very alive and well to this day.

To sum up, fantasy does not always accurately represent what we think the past really was like. Fantasy misrepresents multicultural and societal intricacies of the history it uses as a foundation for its stories. Granted. Fantasy does not capture what the past was really like. Wrong. We don't know what the past was really like; we can speculate, we can hypothesize, but to say that fantasy does an injustice to the societies it portrays seems silly when history itself is a story, based on our best guesses and most solid hypotheses. If fantasy laid claim to saying what Medieval times really was like, that may be worth angst, but fantasy rarely, if ever, claims such authority (fantasy is not about the real world).

[Gust Hubb]

And to double post, I believe this is coming down to semantics. Historians, a worthy profession with many respectable individuals. Reality vs perception, up for debate, even in terms of history.

[amphibian]

Gust Hubb, on 25 April 2012 - 01:28 AM, said:

Frankly, the deeper I go into science the less I trust it. There are potential (and proven) holes in many of the principles we hold infallible. Modern science is expected to include rechecking other people's data and rerunning their experiments. This does happen, but not as much as one is lead to believe. The are examples of multiple published research articles all based off of an original paper that is later shown to make patently wrong conclusions. Politics play a major role in which papers get in which journals, and trying to prove major papers wrong is frowned upon, especially if the skeptic is a newly started lab group.

So back to history, do not get me wrong: I love history, I tend to believe what I read without deeply questioning it, and I do admire all those who put together the pieces to form a picture for the rest of us who don't take the time to really get into the nitty gritty. That being said, Amph you can not tell me that any written document anywhere can be explicitly trusted (hell, if I take the time to mull over the concept, I don't even trust accounts of people alive and in the present, as is explicitly shown in crime victims' attempts to remember what happened). Nor can you say that geological science, archeology, etc are able to figure out exactly how the past was. We hypothesize, we build evidence, we confirm our theories with new discoveries, but this is more concrete in the realm of rebuilding the architecture of a city or the cost of bread in a certain era. It does not tell us what the people of that time were like. It does not give us a clear picture of the intricacies of society.

It is kind of flippin' bananas that a supposed medical student is making this argument about science.

Yes, modern science is supposed to be about rechecking data and re-running experiments. Does that happen every time? No. Is that a valid reason to condemn modern science or view it with great suspicion? No. The same thing can be said about contraceptives and those are durn useful too. Science invented most of 'em too.

Holding anything infallible is probably a good recipe for a blistering comeuppance. However, an incremental approach to the truth is nice and that's exactly what science is aimed at and is providing us.

I did not tell you that the written document can be explicitly trusted as the whole and entire truth. You can might even be able to discover more from a lie than you can from the truth - once you learn the truth. You'd learn how the lie differed from the truth and perhaps even what the person was trying to hide or emphasize in their altered version.

I bolded the above portions because that is an assertion I believe to be wrong. You can learn quite a bit about what people of the time were like by the homes they lived in, alterations made to the home or property, the records and papers they have in the system, water lines, power lines, cable lines, the debris they left behind and so on. You can tell quite a bit about the intricacies of societies by what the people within leave behind purposely, accidentally or some combination of the above.

What's more is that even if your views of science or history are taken as is, what does it mean if SF authors consistently choose predominantly white people in ancientish, medievalish, modernish or futurish times as their main subjects and do you not view that as possibly a little racist and/or wrong?

[Gust Hubb]

No, that is not my view. Dude, it's fantasy not history.

[amphibian]

Gust Hubb, on 25 April 2012 - 08:50 AM, said:

No, that is not my view. Dude, it's fantasy not history.

I honestly look at you differently now. I know this is a discussion and not meant to wander into personal examinations, but if you flat out do not see anything wrong here in the realm of fantasy literature - and literature as a whole - then I don't trust you anymore.

I'm not saying that all authors are thus, but I am saying that there is a legitimate problem here with a sort of chicken/egg causation problem that can be addressed. I say chicken/egg because we can say with some certainty that the egg came first and that same principle applies here: we can point to authorial laziness or advertent/inadvertent racism in either individuals or cultures as a cause of the situation we're in regarding SF literature.

Richard Morgan did it by having his ethnic cultures so thoroughly mixed and skewed by mass immigration to other planets and subsequent settlement, resleeving in bodies of intentionally mixed ethnicities and organic/technological mixes and the data storage of personalities. Race doesn't matter much in the world of Takeshi Kovacs or the world of Ringil Eskiath.

Erikson did it by having an extraordinarily large cast of characters spanning all ethnicities, species and various states of aliveness/existence and by making almost all of the individual ethnicities have their own heroes and villains. He has specific tribes and location-specific ethnicities, but none of them are racist and almost all of his peoples undergo "switchbacks" in the reader's eye from "good" to "bad" to "real people getting their things done and screwing up fairly often".

Martin deals with this by making the violence, senselessness and tragedy common across all cultures in the world of GoT.

Neal Stephenson did the Baroque Trilogy and gave us a very Stephensonian in-depth cultural plumbing of nearly every culture the main characters come across. He's almost too nerdy in his hewing to fact and historically inspired guesses to ever be racist.

There are dozens of others who set their books in ways that anticipate the issue and are dealing with it head-on or sidestepping it entirely. These are the people we want to encourage and to reward with our money. Furthermore, they are usually the far more inventive writers pushing the SF genre in other ways too.

Plus they tend to write kick-ass stories in the first place, and that's what we hunt as readers, eh?

[Gust Hubb]

amphibian, on 25 April 2012 - 02:58 PM, said:

Gust Hubb, on 25 April 2012 - 08:50 AM, said:

No, that is not my view. Dude, it's fantasy not history.

I honestly look at you differently now. I know this is a discussion and not meant to wander into personal examinations, but if you flat out do not see anything wrong here in the realm of fantasy literature - and literature as a whole - then I don't trust you anymore.

Hehe. so now because I disagree with you I am untrustworthy. Interesting.

Fantasy authors like SE are indeed "kick ass." So is Tad Williams (who, iirc has a couple of series that use the traditional whiteboy characters). Good fantansy is not inherently a political platform nor is good fantasy required to meet the standards of multiracial societies with complex interplay between characters. If you want a sermon, go to church. If you want politics, I suggest running for office (or working in an office ). If you want books that portray multicultural complexities free from the stereotypes and prejudices of bigotted society, well, you seem to know where to look. But your standards and requirements are not reality friend, nor are you morally superior for demanding them.

[QuickTidal]

Everyone seems to be talking about phantom books and no one is naming names.

Who can name books that are seemingly guilty of being racist in their execution of fantasy worlds.

Also take into account location on the planet (melatonin levels in the skin) and ease of travel/migration at the time.

NOTE: I am not taking sides, but I am not seeing examples of the thing being argued...(other than GRRM, which I think we all summarily dismissed as a poor example)

Anyone?

Just reading through this thread is like one big ghost argument with no one naming names or examples.

I'll give you an example of a series it doesn't appear to happen in. WOT. In WOT, there are MANY cultures (even among the various cities of white people), but Jordan also took into account people from the equatorial Summer Isles, where skin tone is very dark and the culture is quite different from that of Andor, and people from the north are more Asian in features and skin tone.

But who are the offenders?

Let's see. Terry Brooks? The Shannara books are mostly white. Which is odd because in his Word & Void series the "Eve" character of many Shannara people is a young black girl...perhaps that's modern Terry Brooks trying to fix the world?

Feist? I dunno about this one since the entire other dimension of people invading are an Asian-allegory...so I don't think he can be accused that either.

Eddings? I haven't read him, so I don't know.

Hobb? Aren't people from the Rain Wilds quite olive skin toned and very Caribbean in culture? And even those at Buck Keep are nut brown skin, with the mountain folk being much more pale. Can she be accused of this?

Sanderson's Mistborn? I think you could definitely say that this one is predominantly white couldn't you? Hmmm....hard to say as I always pictured Vin as having Asian background myself...but definitely the rest of the crew are seemingly white.

That is in contrast to Sanderon's Warbreaker book where there is a definite multicultural flavour to the all characters. Or at least that's how I took it.

Weeks? Nope, can't accuse him. His main character is a young black man in his recent series, and the world is populated by many races ans religions and cultures. Even the Night Angel books have varied peoples.

Others? Modesitt? Farland? Lackey? Elliot? (I haven't read any of these so I don't know)

*Scott attempts to turn the conversation away from anger and into discussion*

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 25 April 2012 - 05:27 PM

[D'rek]

QuickTidal, on 25 April 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

Everyone seems to be talking about phantom books and no one is naming names.

Who can name books that are seemingly guilty of being racist in their execution of fantasy worlds.

Also take into account location on the planet (melatonin levels in the skin) and ease of travel/migration at the time.

NOTE: I am not taking sides, but I am not seeing examples of the thing being argued...(other than GRRM, which I think we all summarily dismissed as a poor example)

Anyone?

Just reading through this thread is like one big ghost argument with no one naming names or examples.

I'll give you an example of a series it doesn't appear to happen in. WOT. In WOT, there are MANY cultures (even among the various cities of white people), but Jordan also took into account people from the equatorial Summer Isles, where skin tone is very dark and the culture is quite different from that of Andor, and people from the north are more Asian in features and skin tone.

But who are the offenders?

Let's see. Terry Brooks? The Shannara books are mostly white. Which is odd because in his Word & Void series the "Eve" character of many Shannara people is a young black girl...perhaps that's modern Terry Brooks trying to fix the world?

Feist? I dunno about this one since the entire other dimension of people invading are an Asian-allegory...so I don't think he can be accused that either.

Eddings? I haven't read him, so I don't know.

Hobb? Aren't people from the Rain Wilds quite olive skin toned and very Caribbean in culture? And even those at Buck Keep are nut brown skin, with the mountain folk being much more pale. Can she be accused of this?

Sanderson's Mistborn? I think you could definitely say that this one is predominantly white couldn't you? Hmmm....hard to say as I always pictured Vin as having Asian background myself...but definitely the rest of the crew are seemingly white.

That is in contrast to Sanderon's Warbreaker book where there is a definite multicultural flavour to the all characters. Or at least that's how I took it.

Weeks? Nope, can't accuse him. His main character is a young black man in his recent series, and the world is populated by many races ans religions and cultures. Even the Night Angel books have varied peoples.

Others? Modesitt? Farland? Lackey? Elliot? (I haven't read any of these so I don't know)

*Scott attempts to turn the conversation away from anger and into discussion*

Tolkien?

Weis/Hickman I don't recall as having any "evil black people" but that's because I don't recall there being any non-white ethnicities in it at all, despite it covering an entire large continent with numerous races.

This post has been edited by D'rek: 25 April 2012 - 06:01 PM