ON WORLD BUILDING
CHINA MIÉVILLE
"Some seventeen notable empires rose in the Middle Period of Earth. These
were the Afternoon Cultures. All but one are unimportant to this narrative..."
These are the opening lines of M. John Harrison's stunning Viriconium
sequence, in which he casually writes the most important rule about
world-building that I know. Histories, laws, cultures, aesthetics --
worlds -- are colossal, and colossally complex. There is no way you can ever
tell the story of a whole world. No matter how detailed your timeline or
carefully illustrated your bestiary, you can't possibly explain everything.
If something's not important to the narrative, then don't try -- there are
only so many info-dumps a story can take, and I save mine for the stuff that
the reader has to understand. The rest of the strange things, or races, or
places -- they're just there. They just happen. Put them in, describe them,
and leave them alone, even if that leaves the reader uncertain. That's fine.
In fact, it's good -- it's culture shock. Hopefully it communicates a sense
that there is a world beyond the book, in which the story occurs, rather
than a story with a few fantasy props thrown in.
There are few greater pleasures in Weird Fiction than a really cool monster,
an unusual alien race. Which is why it makes no sense to me to cull your
creatures from the list of the usual suspects. Elf, dwarf, centaur -- you know
the drill.
The best of the fantastic tradition -- take Surrealism -- is all about using the
fantastic to challenge, to alienate, to create a grotesquerie that keeps the
reader surprised. Usually, identikit aliens serve the opposite function,
because they're not alien at all. They're comforting, because they're so
recognisable. That kind of fantasy isn't nearly fantastic enough.
I'm not saying that it's impossible to write a good, innovative fantasy with
elves and dwarfs in it (Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter gives
the lie to that). I'm just saying that I can't do it. And anyway, half the
fun is inventing these creatures -- why not take the opportunity to create
them from scratch, or plunder mythologies more unusual than Tolkienesque
fairyland? And once you've invented your race, remember that race, culture
and character are three very different things. Few things in fantasy annoy
me more than having a particular race act as a signifier for a particular
kind of character. Why are elves all clever and fey? Are there any dwarfs
out there who aren't gruff and good with their hands? And what happens if
you're an orc but you're not, you know, evil?
This is just racial stereotyping in fantasyland. And it makes for
explanations as unconvincing as the same activity in the real world. Of
course there'll be cultural differences between different races, but then
again, why would those races be monolithic? Is it really likely that in your
carefully constructed land, two different groups of wing-kobolds thousands
of miles apart are going to be basically the same? Surely they'll be as
varied as the Aztecs, the !Kung-San and the Victorian British. Just like us,
now.
But of course cultures aren't monolithic even within themselves. There are a
whole mass of conflicting objective interests and impulses embedded in each
one. Conflict is not usually the result of some Dread Dark Lord who is
threatening things from the outside. Usually there are quite enough tensions
cooking up internally to keep things interesting. Even the nicest 'Good
King' has to get that palace from somewhere, and more than likely it's from
where his real-life counterparts got theirs: plunder, sharp metal and the
unpaid work of the peasantry. Remember that, and your world is likely to be
a lot more compelling.
It's paradoxical, trying to depict a world that's simultaneously convincing
and utterly fantastic. But one idea unites the two impulses: the recognition
that things are not neat and tidy or monolithic, but complex and
contradictory, contingent, constantly surprising and far more interesting
for all that. That could describe the best and strangest fantasy, and the
most hard-headed depiction of reality. That's why Kafka is a realist, and
why we can have it both ways.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
- 2001
- DelRey
Internet Newsletter
Number 98, March 2001
- 2001
- Runagate
Rampant
August 2001
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