Fantasy Debate

VoodooDali · Post by **VoodooDali** » Sat Oct 12, 2002 12:57 pm

This is from China Mieville's website at China Mieville. He's a great fantasy writer - I just read Perdido Street Station by him. Anyway, I loved this essay by him and wondered what you all would think.

China says:

"Two untrue things are commonly claimed about fantasy. The first is that fantasy and science fiction are fundamentally different genres. The second is that fantasy is crap.

It's usually those who claim the first who also claim the second. The idea is that where SF is radical, exploratory and intellectually adventurous, fantasy is badly written, clichéd and obsessed with backwards-looking dreams of the past - feudal daydreams of Good Kings and Fair Maidens.

It's easy enough to distinguish the writers at the far edges of the spectrum - Asimov versus Eddings, for example. But the problem with the 'sharp divide' argument is the number of writers - often very brilliant ones - who fall in the middle, who blur the lines. David Lindsay, William Hope Hodgson, Jane Gaskell, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Gene Wolfe: the list could go on. These are writers for whom the 'fantastic' is not ethereal and wispy but tough and real, where 'magic' operates like science or science magic, and where the sense of subversion, of alienation, of sheer strangeness that saturates their work defies easy categorisation as SF or fantasy.

That's the tradition that I'm interested in - I see myself as writing Weird Fiction. And as soon as you see that as your foundations, then the idea that fantasy is crap disappears.

When people dis fantasy - mainstream readers and SF readers alike - they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate.

Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious - you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike - his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés - elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings - have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader.

That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps - via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabinski and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moor**** and M. John Harrison and I could go on - the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations.

Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine - that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it - Michael Swanwick's superb Iron Dragon's Daughter gives the lie to that. But given that the pleasure of fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity, why not try to come up with some different themes, as well as unconventional monsters? Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies?

Thankfully, the alternative tradition of fantasy has never died. And it's getting stronger. Chris Wooding, Michael Swanwick, Mary Gentle, Paul di Filippo, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others, are all producing works based on fantasy's radicalism. Where traditional fantasy has been rural and bucolic, this is often urban, and frequently brutal. Characters are more than cardboard cutouts, and they're not defined by race or sex. Things are gritty and tricky, just as in real life. This is fantasy not as comfort-food, but as challenge.

The critic Gabe Chouinard has said that we're entering a new period, a renaissance in the creative radicalism of fantasy that hasn't been seen since the New Wave of the sixties and seventies, and in echo of which he has christened the Next Wave. I don't know if he's right, but I'm excited. This is a radical literature. It's the literature we most deserve"

Gwalchmai · Post by **Gwalchmai** » Sat Oct 12, 2002 1:25 pm

A very nice article! *Gwally notes that he must try to read more of this stuff* It seems to be a perfect answer and affirmation of many of the issues discussed in this thread.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Oct 12, 2002 3:00 pm

It's usually those who claim the first who also claim the second. The idea is that where SF is radical, exploratory and intellectually adventurous, fantasy is badly written, clichéd and obsessed with backwards-looking dreams of the past - feudal daydreams of Good Kings and Fair Maidens.

He's writing about a very specific and small subset of readers: the sci-fi group. I suggest that when the majority of sci-fi and fantasy literature is examined side by side, it becomes apparent that they're both about "feudal daydreams." Fighting with swords or lasers; destroying Evil Guys to put a sympathetically modern and anachronistically democratic hero in charge; finding ways to solve all problems at the wave of a wand, be it technologically or magically powered: this is what the average sci-fi or fantasy novel is about.

I personally think Vonnegut is much more on target with his satirical "sci-fi writer," Gilgore Trout. There's really no difference between the garbage that's been the commonfare of both genres for roughly seventy years. It's just that those who prefer one genre or the other tend to look up to the best that rise above the muck, while conveniently ignoring the rest.

VoodooDali · Post by **VoodooDali** » Sat Oct 12, 2002 4:40 pm

@Gwally - I remember that thread. I'm still thinking about this stuff, and Mieville's article really seemed to sum up a lot of my thoughts. I've recently started reading his sequel to Perdido Street Station, The Scar.

@Fable - one of the things I like about this writer is that he could be classified either way - for Perdido Street Station, he won both the British Fantasy Award and the Arthur C. Clarke award in 2001.

He's sometimes been labeled "Steampunk" or "grunge fantasy" - one thing he's definitely not is nostalgic. However, having read him, I would have to classify him as fantasy - not scifi.

I also love this quote by him:
‘‘The idea of consolatory fantasy makes me want to puke. It's not that you can't have comfort, or even a happy ending of sorts, but to me the idea that the purpose of a book should be to console intrinsically means the purpose is therefore not to challenge or to subvert or to question; it is absolutely status quo oriented – completely, rigidly, aesthetically – and I hate that idea. I think the best fantasy is about the rejection of consolation, and the high point of fantasy is the Surrealists – which is a tradition I've read obsessively, and am a huge fan of, and see myself as a product of the 'pulp wing' of the Surrealists – that is, using the fantastic aesthetic to do the opposite of consolation.’’

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Sat Oct 12, 2002 4:44 pm

Originally posted by fable
Gilgore Trout

I've been waiting to do this for months.... It's Kilgore Trout....

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Oct 12, 2002 4:47 pm

Originally posted by VoodooDali
I also love this quote by him:
‘‘The idea of consolatory fantasy makes me want to puke. It's not that you can't have comfort, or even a happy ending of sorts, but to me the idea that the purpose of a book should be to console intrinsically means the purpose is therefore not to challenge or to subvert or to question; it is absolutely status quo oriented – completely, rigidly, aesthetically – and I hate that idea. I think the best fantasy is about the rejection of consolation...

Oh, I agree completely. There you have one of the three or so main reasons I've never seen any of the Star Wars films. I have a strong personal dislike of art that perpetuates lies, and the lie of the Little Guy Who Can Defeat Anything And Stand For Freedom really deserves a stake through its unnatural heart, IMO.

It's also why I like the more vital fantasy works of Cabell: glittering, sophisticated, absolutely unsentimental, filled with both bright and harsh laughter, and unwilling to settle for conventional truths.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Oct 12, 2002 4:48 pm

Originally posted by Aegis
I've been waiting to do this for months.... It's Kilgore Trout....

I'm glad I satisfied one of your primal reasons for existence.