Long post is long! And full of intellectuobabble. But hey, this is for Readercon; it’s appropriate.
I mentioned this in my previous post about Readercon, but I’m going to be running the following workshop there (description as submitted to Readercon; I think it’s been trimmed down for the program book):
Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetorics of Fantasy notes that the immersive fantasy should function on all levels as a complete world. However, many immersive fantasies fail to incorporate one of the most basic elements of any human society: our tendency to divide ourselves into socially-constructed subgroups such as race, gender, class, etc. Where such divisions are shown, they are often sorely lacking in completeness — for example, a planet split between magic-users and the magicless, but whose entire population resembles white northern Europeans.
In this workshop, participants will be invited to build a human-populated secondary world with realistic social construction. The results may be treated as a shared universe in which all participants are welcome to later write immersive fiction. Texts referenced may include fantasy literature and popular sociological non-fiction, such as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Charles C. Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
Or, as I like to call it, this is the Secondary Soft Science (S3) worldbuilding workshop!
I get asked a lot about how I came up with some of the worldbuilding ideas I broached in the Inheritance Trilogy, and I’m always kind of puzzled by that question — mostly because I don’t think I did anything extraordinary in developing that world. I simply designed a world that made sense to me, utilizing the stuff I’ve picked up from my own experiences; years of reading sociological, historical, and anthropological texts; and my education. But it occurs to me that science fiction and fantasy based on the kind of stuff that appeals to me — the so-called “soft sciences” — is kind of rare in the field. I suspect there are a number of reasons for this, centering on the genre’s historical disdain for anything not easily quantifiable or indisputable… except that doesn’t account for the scads of SFF based on unquantifiable, frequently unobservable, “best guess” or purely theoretical material like whole swaths of quantum physics, dark matter, etc. But, ya know, those fields aren’t infested with girl cooties. And those fields don’t often, or at least not as frequently, challenge our thinking about the status quo of our society.
For example. I specifically suggested Mann’s book because it presents such a challenge to most USians’ understanding of our country’s history. I got the standard historical song and dance about the European settlement of the Americas, growing up: Columbus stumbled onto Hispaniola, then a while later came the Pilgrims, and then there was a mad scramble by all the European powers to take ownership of this vast, untamed landscape sparsely populated by naive natives who didn’t even know the value of what they held before the Europeans took it from them. (“They sold Manhattan for $24!” and so on.) Mann not only points out the parts of this narrative that were horribly wrong — the landscape wasn’t untamed, the natives weren’t naive, and it wasn’t sparsely populated when Columbus landed — he points out why those history books got things so wrong. Some of it was simply lack of knowledge; there have been a number of recent discoveries in anthropology, genetics, etc., which have revealed that the population of the Americas before Columbus was much, much larger than originally assumed. Columbus’ arrival touched off a wave of catastrophic pestilence that may have killed 95% of that population by the time of the Pilgrims’ arrival, so what the Pilgrims found was essentially a postapocalyptic landscape. But one of the reasons the stuff I learned in school was so wrong — despite ample evidence to the contrary that has existed for decades — is that the false narrative served any number of political agendas: doctrines like Manifest Destiny which were rooted in white supremacy; the social drive to construct an “American identity” which could bind together the disparate peoples of Europe, Africa, etc. and give them a sense of ownership over a place that really wasn’t theirs; prominent scientists’ and schools’ reputations, which in some cases were ruined by newer discoveries which shredded their theories (so in some cases they actively and successfully waged “popularity campaigns” against the new discoveries and tried to trash-talk the newer theories), and so on.
In other words, scientific fact was ignored or distorted so that those in positions of power could maintain said power. This happens in all the sciences — hello Galileo, how’s that Catholic Inquisition treating you? — but these days the truly threatening ideas aren’t coming from space or chemistry; they’re coming from our understanding of ourselves and each other.
So, back to my point. I think the historical tendency of SFF is to build worlds around the undisputed, non-controversial facts available. There’s always some allowance for “sensawunda” or sheer creative license, a la faster-than-light travel or the prospect that our myths might be rooted in reality. But typically, immersive fantasy worlds have been built in a fairly superficial way, and grounded in fundamentally non-threatening, often overly simplified ideas. For example, Orson Scott Card’s books on writing (How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy and Character and Viewpoint) suggest using the “MICE quotient”, a formula of his devising which urges writers to consider the milieu in which the story takes place, the central idea which is meant to grab the reader’s attention, the characters who will be carrying the tale, and the events that occur over the story’s course. But I think MICE is insufficient because it doesn’t explore the context in which all of this should be taking place. No milieu exists in a vacuum. Every kingdom has neighbors; every culture has trading partners and enemies; no planet is a monoculture. So I think writers should consider a few factors first, then consider MICE.
(To be fair, Card himself acknowledges that MICE is just a handy shorthand/mnemonic; good worldbuilding requires a much deeper delving into what it is that makes any society tick.)
For example. Jared Diamond’s Collapse examines the life-cycle of cultures by focusing on those that have died: Easter Island, the Maya, the Vikings in Greenland. He posits some reasons why these failures occur: if a society fails to anticipate a coming problem; if it fails to perceive a problem as it begins or progresses; if it fails to try and solve this problem, whether through rationalized stupidity, stubborn adherence to problematic values, or other wholly irrational reactions; or if it tries to solve the problem but just plain fails to succeed. All societies face these issues, constantly; societies we deem successful are simply those that haven’t a) passed a crisis point in the effort to resolve their problems — yet — or b) are in the “failure to perceive” mode. So it seems to me that writers trying to develop a story milieu would be wise to consider which of the above failures their created culture is currently dealing with, or at what point in its life-cycle their culture is positioned. Is it a newly-created society, a la the United States? Is it an ancient society on its last legs, a la ancient Egypt at the time of Alexander’s invasion? Is it a middle-aged society that hasn’t yet noticed the potentially fatal heart condition growing at its core? (e.g., Underclass about to revolt, a dangerous dependance on some resource that’s running out, customs interfering with growth)
And what about the geopolitics? I can’t tell you how many fantasies set in pseudo medieval Europes I’ve read. And most of these pseudoEuropes have been curiously monocultural and insular — everybody looks the same, there’s no evidence of trade or even contact with distant lands, only local/internal politics matter. The real medieval Europe was just one player on a global stage; this was reflected in its markets (supplied by the Silk Road), its military (which fought the Crusades, and was eventually improved by the Moorish conquest), its laws and customs (much of which was borrowed from older societies, like the Code of Hammurabi), its cuisine (which rapidly incorporated staples and spices from distant lands), and more. Even the most small-scale politics were heavily impacted by problems and issues taking place continents away.
Then there’s the idea of societal systems analysis. What are the axes along which its hierarchies of power are arranged? (e.g., In the US, it’s race, class, gender, and so on; in the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms it’s ownership of magic, degree of godly involvement/intervention, and religion.) What are the core values that the society is — intentionally or inadvertently — designed to support and encourage? How does this created society protect its status quo, and to what degree — the society’s death? — will it do so?
…So to make a long story short (too late!) this is what I want to introduce, via the workshop. Of course the workshop is only an hour, so there won’t be nearly enough time to cover all this material — but I do think there’s sufficient time for a good entry-level discussion, and maybe a bit of fun with the exercise itself. I’d initially intended to have handouts and a resource list… but honestly, this has turned out to be an incredibly busy week and I’m on six program items at Readercon, so I think maybe I’m not going to spend much more time than I have on preparation. I’m going to ad lib a bit, and we’ll just have to see how that goes.
I don’t want to do all this purely as an intellectual exercise, note. I do think that SFF’s aversion to “soft science” leads to poor worldbuilding, but more specifically I think it leads to exclusionary worldbuilding — SFF that inadvertently supports our own society’s power structure by centering white heterosexual (etc) men and marginalizing everyone else. Remember that “inclusive” part of the workshop title.
So I’m going to walk a group of total strangers through the process that I normally use to come up with a secondary society. I’m going to ask people to first consider the following, re the story world:
-Planet (we’ll assume Earthlike, but how many continents? How much ocean? What can its people see in the sky, from the ground?)
-Environment in the specific story location on this planet (access to resources, physical challenges, the environment’s influence on morphology)
-Sociology (power structure and reasons forwith, internal and external challenges, adaptations, economic considerations, point on the cultural life cycle, supportive and harmful systems)
-Psychology (how they think and why, how they react to stress, what they consider neurotypical and atypical — yes, this is often culture-dependant)
-Linguistics (language[s] and method of communication — spoken? written? hand-signs? knotted cords? — the impact of culture on language and vice versa)
And also an important bit:
-Reality check: Consider the impact of our society on the worldbuilding. (Do the women have agency? Are the PoC stereotypes? Are the richest and most powerful people in this world really the best PoV from which to tell the tale? How many of our cliches are actually evidence of unexamined assumptions?)
I imagine that asking a few of these questions is bound to trigger lots more. In fact, once it gets going, I think (hope) my role will simply be to record what everybody’s tossing out, as fast as I can. It should be interesting to see what we come up with. It should be even more interesting to see whether anyone in the workshop runs with the world we create, and produces any work as a result.
Now. Having put all this forward for your consideration, let’s start the exercise here! I’ll get the ball rolling with an example. Using the categories I listed above…
-Planet: A world with one long, narrow continent spanning from polar region to polar region, though with a number of inland seas and rivers. There are some largish (say, the size of Madagascar) islands along the edges of this continent, broken off from it due to plate tectonics, etc. In the sky, the people of this world can see a very distinct band of stars (the galactic plane — i.e., the Milky Way, on our world) and two small moons. One moon is higher in the sky and larger, the other is smaller and seems lower.
-Environment: The story will take place on one of the islands edging this continent, near the equator. Its people are distantly related to the folk of the mainland; they are the descendants of people living there at the time the island split away from the continent. But they’ve been there for many thousands of years — long enough to physically differentiate from the people of the mainland. The island is mountainous, with little arable land but a sprawling rainforest. The people are generally dark-skinned; those who live in the mountains have adapted to high altitudes; and they’re short, since fish and very small mammals constitute the only protein available on the island. Uplanders tend to be deeper-chested and darker-skinned than lowlanders.
-Sociology: Divided into uplanders (the people in the mountains) and lowlanders (where the forests are located). The two subgroups trade extensively — the lowlanders produce food from fishing and rainforest orchardry, the uplanders mine metals and stone. Although uplanders can tolerate the lowlands, lowlanders get altitude sickness in the uplands — so uplanders regard lowlanders as weak. The goods the uplanders produce are more valued in their society, being rarer, so uplanders dominate the lowlanders. Also, the genes for high altitude tolerance are more readily passed on maternally than paternally (picking this out of a hat — don’t know if it’s true for Tibetans, if you’re wondering), so upland women are revered, and a religion has developed around a powerful mother-goddess who is said to live on the island’s highest mountain. This mother-goddess is symbolized by the larger, higher moon. However, the society is predominantly patriarchial (a holdover from the mainland). The uplanders constantly innovate new ways to use metals and stone, so the society is now at about a steam-using level of technology. Steam is easier to use at high altitudes (lower boiling point of water), so the uplands have more fantastic technology than the lowlands. The island has recently made contact with the mainland again — which has a very different culture — and the warning signs of future conflict have spurred the uplanders to concentrate more on military applications of steam tech.
-Psychology: Both groups think it’s madness to try and live outside one’s “place”. Aside from this, atypical psychology is widely accepted as a manifestation of the religion — sociopaths are steered toward the priesthood, schizophrenics’ delusions are treated as prophecy, autistics are “gifted by the goddess” and steered toward some particular focus, etc. Altitude sickness is the only thing regarded as a mental illness — something the lowlanders are more susceptible to because of their assumed inferiority.
-Linguistics: They speak a common language, very distantly related to that of the nearest mainland culture — though mainlanders can’t understand this language. (Think French and Italian, both Romance languages.) They write. They also use a very complex semaphore-like flag code for communicating across great distances, developed by the uplanders for disseminating information to their subjects in the lowlands. Lowlanders also use a kind of aural Morse code, evolved from the days when they would thump on tree-trunks to communicate through the thick forests. It’s built into their music as drumbeats, and is frequently used to hide information from uplanders; most uplanders aren’t even aware that this code exists.
-Reality check: Why am I making these people dark-skinned? Granted, equatorial people in our world tend to be, but most of them (except in Africa) didn’t evolve in those environments; it’s just that dark-skinned people happened to migrate there. Maybe the idea that equatorial islanders = dark-skinned is just a racial cliche. Also, why am I making these people patriarchial? Granted, most societies in our world are. But is there any reason why these people would retain their patriarchial customs given the obvious value that women possess here? Maybe I’m just being lazy. Also, why do the lowlanders put up with the uplanders? Because the lowlanders would have trouble doing the mining, etc., themselves due to the altitude sickness. But really, all the lowlanders would have to do is cut off the uplanders’ food, and they can control them. Why are the uplanders in charge? That doesn’t make sense; I need to reconsider it.
…Okay, I’ve talked enough. Anybody else want to try? (Also, post-workshop, any participants may feel free to post their thoughts here.)