Created Worlds

[champagne1982]

I created a new society with different values, combined with interstellar travel capability for the human race, to answer a Throw Down Glove Slap Challenge (started by the Earl a few years back). Cheek to Cheek, it's a gay male short short as a heads up to the squeamish but the sex doesn't happen until after the backstory and setting are established.

 

[Corylea]

I read Tolkien, but my god, four PAGES on the rolling shire hillside? Dude! Enough already! Tell me what Frodo is DOING, wouldja??

I love SF AND fantasy, and I felt the same way about Tolkein -- give us some characters and plot, already!

Theodore Sturgeon writes SF short stories that are less strange in setting and that are so frequently about emotion that I think his short fiction is more accessible than most SF. Of course, somebody decided that he was important enough to publish a multi-volume collection of every short story he ever wrote, and most of the ones that were obscure were obscure for a reason -- he was still learning how to write. It's useful to a writer who despairs of ever being as good as they'd like to be, but it doesn't have much other use. But the stories of his that are famous, god, those are some of the best things I've ever read; I think my favorite short story ever is his "Slow Sculpture," and it's SF only in that it posits an invention that doesn't exist yet; otherwise, it's just any old short story. I can send it to you, if you like.


Cory, bonsai who makes bonsai*

*(understandable only to those who've read and remember the story)

 

[Equinoxe]

Ah, but Selena, all science fiction/fantasy is about people, and not just any people, but about those who were alive when the book was written.

I don't think that's necessarily true, at least not for High Fantasy. The world and worldview of an author certainly can play a role in that author's work, and the author's culture can usually be seen, but fantasy fiction is often not about people at all. Certainly, both fantasy and science fiction often provide an alternative perspective about the world that we actually live in by exposing the reader to wholly alien world—though this is arguably the role of any literary work from an alternative perspective to the reader's. In fact, High Fantasy is often about exactly what this thread is about: created worlds. As Tolkien put it in On Fairy Stories, the central element is that they take place in Faërie. The main 'character' of The Lord of the Rings is not Frodo, it's Middle Earth—the book, the whole series of books, the entire world he created was to provide a background for his languages.

Of course, as with all writing, it is about the world we live in in that it causes the reader to think about the world we live and it is about people in that it causes the reader to think about people, but it is not explicitly about people.

 

[Corylea]

IIn fact, High Fantasy is often about exactly what this thread is about: created worlds.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then. I think that the world an author creates is always about the author and his or her times -- maybe it's about what they wish would be, maybe it's about what they hate, maybe it's about trying to take a break from the humdrum, but no matter what it's about, it ultimately comes back to the writer and his or her worldview and culture.

As for Tolkein, he may have thought he was writing a setting for languages, but I don't believe that a setting for languages would have been as wildly popular as his books have been. Tolkein tapped into some important archetypes when writing his book, whether he planned to or not, and readers care about Frodo and Sam and Aragorn, not about Middle High Elvish.

There's a psych study of memory where they tell an Inuit story to a bunch of American college students, then bring them back a week later and get them to tell the story back to the researchers. The Inuit story is so wildly different from the American frame of reference that the college students simply can't hear or remember the parts that don't make sense to them. All of the stories that are told back to the researchers are adjusted so as to have a plot and to fit into the American cultural worldview. I'm not talking about simple things, like what cars people drive or what hairstyles they wear; I'm talking about things like assuming that effects have causes or that living people have more effect on the world than dead people. Tell people a story where effects have no causes, and you've lost 99% of your readers, because our very brains are shaped by the culture in which we grow up.

 

[Liar]

One made-up world that I enjoyed immensely was Roger Zelazny's Amber universe (or multiverse).

It has such a delightfully perverse internal logic, that I can't possibly give it a fair description. I mean, how does a sliding and infinitely multi-threaded dimensional axis of endless parrallell worlds, with heaven and hell (or as they're called by those in the know, Amber and Chaos) at each pole, sound to you? And feuds and wars between different places, times and possibilities.

After a while you just had to swallow it whole and take it for what it was, totally mad.

 

[Corylea]

One made-up world that I enjoyed immensely was Roger Zelazny's Amber universe (or multiverse).

It has such a delightfully perverse internal logic, that I can't possibly give it a fair description. I mean, how does a sliding and infinitely multi-threaded dimensional axis of endless parrallell worlds, with heaven and hell (or as they're called by those in the know, Amber and Chaos) at each pole, sound to you? And feuds and wars between different places, times and possibilities.

After a while you just had to swallow it whole and take it for what it was, totally mad.

I loved the first Amber series! You're right, it was terribly cool. I'm old enough that I was reading it as it came out, and my then-boyfriend and I spent a lot of time speculating about such things as who's really dead and who's just missing, and who is the story being told TO? I loved the way Corwin got out of prison, probably the most original method of breaking out of jail given in fiction. The second Amber series, though, didn't live up to the first one, not even a little bit; reading it made me sad, that Zelazny had sunk to this.

 

[rgraham666]

On the other hand his last book, A Night In The Lonesome October was absolutely wonderful.

How can you not enjoy a book told from the point of view of Jack The Ripper's watchdog as they set out to save the world?

 

[rgraham666]

Another bit of delightful world building was David Brin's Uplift Saga.

With a 3 billion year history and humans widely reviled because they had the unmitigated nerve to discover sentience and star travel on their own, I just loved it.

I liked Startide Rising the best. The dolphins made for wonderful characters.

 

[Equinoxe]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then. I think that the world an author creates is always about the author and his or her times -- maybe it's about what they wish would be, maybe it's about what they hate, maybe it's about trying to take a break from the humdrum, but no matter what it's about, it ultimately comes back to the writer and his or her worldview and culture.

I can't disagree with that, but I think it's tautological. The way you've defined being about the author and his or her times makes it impossible for it not to be about the author. I absolutely agree, however, that authors can only step outside of themselves to a limited extent and that everything, no matter how consciously foreign, is nevertheless filtered through the author and the author's world. That doesn't make fantasy or science fiction necessarily about people, though, except, again, to the (also tautological) extent that everything humans do is about humans.

As for Tolkein, he may have thought he was writing a setting for languages, but I don't believe that a setting for languages would have been as wildly popular as his books have been. Tolkein tapped into some important archetypes when writing his book, whether he planned to or not, and readers care about Frodo and Sam and Aragorn, not about Middle High Elvish.

Well, he very much was writing a setting for languages and why anyone else enjoys them has no effect upon that, but I do agree that does not explain the popularity of the books. I don't think the popularity of the books has much to do with the characters though—Tolkien's strength never was characterisation. Rather, I think that the popularity of the books is because readers perceive Middle Earth to be 'real', albeit alien, and hence find it compelling on that account. They don't care necessarily care about Quenya or Sindarin, but they do care about the Shire, and Lorien, and Gondor. That isn't to say that the characters and events aren't important, they certainly are, but they exist within a world that is the story.

There's a psych study of memory where they tell an Inuit story to a bunch of American college students, then bring them back a week later and get them to tell the story back to the researchers. The Inuit story is so wildly different from the American frame of reference that the college students simply can't hear or remember the parts that don't make sense to them. All of the stories that are told back to the researchers are adjusted so as to have a plot and to fit into the American cultural worldview. I'm not talking about simple things, like what cars people drive or what hairstyles they wear; I'm talking about things like assuming that effects have causes or that living people have more effect on the world than dead people. Tell people a story where effects have no causes, and you've lost 99% of your readers, because our very brains are shaped by the culture in which we grow up.

Now there's a serious topic of discussion, but I don't intend to get into a nature-nurture debate. The culture of individuals, authors and readers, certainly affects the way they perceive a story. I disagree with your specific examples though: you could very easily write a fantasy story wherein the dead had more effect upon the world than the living—and Americans and Europeans and East Asians, etc. etc. etc. could easily understand, relate to, and enjoy the story. This, again, brings up an element common to fantasy stories and probably requisite their popularity: they have an anchor, an element which ties the real to the unreal. A consistent logic to a world, as in most High Fantasy worlds, is one element of that, as is its relationship to existing mythology and folklore (which provides a real world referent). In The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (especially The Hobbit), the hobbits act as such an anchor and frame. In The Chronicles of Narnia and in Harry Potter, the real world that we all know and exist within provides such a bridge between the real and the unreal.

I think that the central element of fantasy is fantasy and not its elements of verisimilitude and humanity. People read fantasy fiction for the magick, the exotic places, the mythical creatures—not for the characters and not for the perspective on our world (although it may provide compelling examples of both).

 

[starrkers]

How about Alfred Bester's Tiger Tiger (also called The Star's My Destination depending on where you live)? It's a future world very similar to our own except in two ways - 1. space travel is blase; and 2. everyone can teleport, as long as they can visualise where they're going.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

I also liked writing my "Great Pulse/Valentin's Day" stories.

In this scenario, the point of departure is yet to come (though getting closer for sure): February 14, 2010. That is the day on which a faction of European anarchists led by a Russian named Valentin Kazarov unleashes a secret EMP weapon against all significant capital cities, toppling every important national government on Earth. They also strike Manhattan, wiping out Wall Street once and for all.

The world is plunged into chaos, but not permanently. The global economy is wrecked, but soon begins its long recovery. The USA, Russia, and every other major power is brought as low as the smaller nations. States and some major cities become de facto republics in their own right. Factions begin openly fighting for control of the various fragments of these countries.

In the USA, a private army starts taking over the East, under the command of a former Marine colonel named Simon Lomax. It's called the Republican Front and soon sets up a political wing to help govern the country. DC, now stuck at pre-modern technology, is a penal colony for those considered lawless or unreliable. The prisoners are put to work as salvagers and forced to live in the vacated houses which now lack electricity, running water, etc. The new regime largely respects civil liberties, even better than the current one in many ways.

However, it's not all goodness and light. Col. Lomax doesn't balk at winning the war any way he can. That includes the use of nerve gas and other such weapons of mass destruction. Also, personal freedom isn't accompanied by political liberty. Lomax is a warlord and dictator, ruthlessly determined to reunite the country by force.

And many parts of the country are under far more brutal regimes, like the Maoists in Pennsylvania and the religious right party controlling southern Ohio. Meanwhile, Nevada is rapidly becoming the new economic powerhouse of the balkanized America, driven by its ultra-libertarian state government and extremely isolationistic foreign policy. Arizona is torn between the Mormon Fundamentalist insurgents in the North, the Mexican nationalists in the South, and the fledgling state government which is desperate to put down both uprisings.

Just some cases of the very dangerous, but (at least to me) fascinating world of "The Great Pulse". And yes, the choice of Valentine's Day as the day of the strike was deliberate. It's the cynical side of me, wanting to tarnish this rather dubious holiday.

Oh, and there is indentured servitude.

 

[Guest]

nathan brazil

jack l chalker's well world