SFX 2012 Reportage part 3 : Shadows of the Apt

SFX 2012 Reportage part 3

OK so: the good people from fantasy-faction.com were good enough to collar me for an interview, focusing on the challenges offered by short stories, which interview will presumably be up on their site some time soon, and on the Saturday evening there was a Gollancz (/Orbit?) party that was crammed full (literally) of Names (not literally), although by that time I was somewhat beginning to flag, and the later evening was a bit more sedate for me, sitting around and chewing the genre-related fat with the Tor team and fellow authors

But I get ahead of myself. There was another panel that I want to have a look at. This was "It's not a story, it's a map!" and was about world-building, ish. Tagline was "does fantasy place world-building over character", but it did get hung up on maps as my earlier one did on elves. Although chair Juliet McKenna did try and put a pro-map case, with some support from David Tallerman and Ian Whates, there was a lot of anti-map sentiment from Gaie Sebold, Sam Sykes and especially China Mieville. I do a lot of maps, as you know, and I'd have had some pro- stuff to put in. To be honest, maps are a bit of a side-argument, but I would propose:

- on the "show don't tell"(1) basis, maps are a useful tool for the reader, in any story that travels around or involves multiple states/nation/etc. However:

- Maps that don't have anything off the edge of them so that the whole world is contained therein are bad maps, and will work against the imagination of the reader (and the writer)

- Maps that could serve as the contents page because every conveniently distinct little country is going to get a visit are also bad maps, and indeed such a howling cliché of epic fantasy that they get a derogatory mention in Diane Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland.

Basically, maps are a tool subordinate to story etc (and indeed subordinate to world-building, see below) but a useful tool nonetheless, a reference and resource for the reader and (when you get long enough through a series and need to check your own consistency) the writer as well.

And that's most of what I wanted to say about maps. You don't have to have them. A stand-alone book doesn't need them as much as a series might because a series likely has much more legging it about the place. A book with a stationary setting such as a city doesn't need a map in the same way that one with multiple locations and/or hoofing it around might. I stand by my maps. I also confess to using an entire map in The Sea Watch as a mean-spirited piece of plot misdirection. Very meta of me.

So much for maps, and it's unfortunate that "maps" turned up in the title because much of what followed kind of got tangled up in the idea of a map as the symbol of all that is unholy. However what I really noted was something China raised about halfway through: His stance was that the "reality" of a fantasy world stops at the page — that asking "what happened next?" or "was there really a ghost?" or whatnot is a meaningless question, because what the author wrote is all that s/he wrote. His position was that it's a pointless exercise to look for the "reality" of the fantasy world beyond the author's intentions.

So, here we go. Disagreeing with Mr M is sort of entering an ass-kicking contest with a centipede (2) — and I wasn't on the panel so who knows what I might have said at the time? — but if I understood his point correctly, I disagree with it.

I think that readers are absolutely entitled to ask, "What happens next?" or "who lives over the hill." I think that putting this question in the map debate is problematic, because it leads on to "setting too much in stone" arguments. I myself, speaking solely for my personal preference, like worlds that extend beyond the story, and maps that extend beyond those locations the story visits. As China noted, M.John Harrison — a writer that he and I both greatly respect — has kicked very hard against the mere idea of world-building. I'm not sure if he uses the phrase in the same way I do. In his succinct and elegant essay (quoted here and elsewhere) he feels the practice is an offence to writers and readers. For me, story and world have unfolded in complementary tandem, and the world beyond the boundaries of the story — as shown in chance mentions, nods, remarks or the rumoured origin of a stranger passing through — has been instrumental in inspiring the story's further development. Does that mean that I let plot and character suffer as I fetishise over the world? I would say no. I would say that they are the richer and the more interesting for having a rounded world to be set in. Those fantasy series that I truly do not respect are generally those that don't take the time to build the world, but simply cobble it together from stock concepts and then just drive a similarly ill-shod plot through them. It's like the elves — too many writers use fantasy standards like elves and the like as a crutch that means they don't have to think about the world: Who lives in this nicely square country? It's elves. That's fine then. Everyone knows what elves are like. Nature, bows, interminable poetry.

Isaac dan der Grimnebulin in (of course) Perdido Street Station, trying to solve the problem of flight for his client Yag: "Well, first of all there's the problem of getting hold of insect wings big enough. The only insects big enough already aren't going to just hand'em over. And I don't know about you but I don't fancy fucking off into the mountains or wherever to ambush an assassin beetle. Get our arses kicked." To me, that is world-building. That is the essence of world-building, and those books (and all of China's books) are full of that kind of intricate, immersive detail. I'm not expecting there to be a painstakingly detailed place on the map that says "here be assassin beetles". There should always be something off the map, because that's how a world works (see how the map debate colours the wider argument?). I'm similarly not expecting whatever author to have a 4,000 word essay on the life cycle of the assassin beetle or to be able to give any more details than are on the page if they don't want to, but it is the mention of those far places, those rumoured things, that pushes back the boundaries of the world, that gives the story itself a reality that it would otherwise lack. And yes, I know I've lost the reality argument barring serious psychotic imbalance, because of course these places are not objectively real. But they have a reality beyond the page: they have a reality in the writer's mind, and the readers'. The writer must not (as Harrison says) restrict the reader by making too much concrete, but the writer also has a duty to draw the reader, to tantalise, to hint, to feed the imagination. That, as I'm sure the counterargument would run, is what character and story are there for. But world-building, as I think of the phrase, is a part of that. In providing a world that has the blush of life to it you show the reader that this is a vehicle worth exercising the imagination on. You encourage it. It is the world that the writer has not given that kind of thought to that cripples the imagination, because it has no depth.

And the interaction between world and story is complex. And over-planning is going to be restrictive — the world is likely to evolve like that "fog of war" you get in strategy games, so that the map (sigh) is revealed as your characters move around the world (which is why my later books have new maps).Yes, the story should not be to showcase the world. That is exactly cart-before-the-horse — or authorial masterbating, as Sam Sykes put it. However, a well-considered and consistent world showcases the story. And if you have that world, which grants your characters breadth and history and surrogate reality, then your readers will ask "what happened next?" I'm not going to go into detail about long serii like Shadows of the Apt needing more of that kind of stuff, but I think it's true just because writer and reader inhabit the same world for so much longer. Consistency and the suspension of disbelief require you to ensure that it all fits together.

And as far as suspension of disbelief goes, I feel that a fundamental part of reading a story — and most especially a fantasy story — is entering into a world that is presented as having a reality that stretches beyond what is written (3). On a literalistic interpretation, of course it need not have. The author can create that story and have no thought to anything beyond those words, or even be vehemently denying any "extended universe" — to use such a horrible phrase — with every word that gets typed. To expect the reader to somehow have that in mind as they read, though? It would be like interrupting a play half way through to show the audience backstage and see the actors smoking and going to the loo. To expect the reader to stop when you stop, at that final dot of punctuation, and never ask "what happens next" is to expect too much — and to expect something that would be actively damaging to the reader's appreciation of the story. Both China and Mr Harrison prompt that "What happens next?" question from me in all sorts of different ways. Harrison's Viriconium, in its own shifting and degrading detail, is fascinating. And yes, it changes story to story — it cannot possibly be mapped — but that change is in itself part of the fluid setting (perhaps I will be shot if I say 'world') that Harrison is presenting (see my references to it in my recent post here). That very uncertainty in the characteristics of Viriconium is an integral part and point of the story sequence (4). It is a valid reading. What do I say if Mr H tells me it is not a valid reading? I don't know, but the debate on author and authority (5) is one that all literature has fought over for a long time.

(1) Do not start twitting me with the anti-"show don't tell" thing. I know, it's not a universal rule, but similarly, sometimes it's better to show. The geographical relationship between places can be one of those times. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

(2) a buff, good-looking and incredibly erudite centipede.

(3) Yes, I'm sure there are works out there that very explicitly don't do this. My gut feeling, no doubt born of my ignorance, is that they will be reaching for a part of literature where art elbows out readability.

(4) So a follow-on point is that you can't expect every book to be a Viriconium. The fluid reality of the stories was, often explicitly, what the stories were about. If you start from a standpoint of "no reality to any story" then they actually lose much of their impact.

(5) Not one of Austen's better works. Too self-referential.

Posted by Adrian Tchaikovsky on February 7th, 2012

Posted in Blog, Home

Tags: Events, writing

8 Comments

8 comments to “SFX 2012 Reportage part 3”

David Tallerman, February 7th, 2012 at 11:26 pm:

Having had time to think it all over, I completely agree, and I rather wish I'd had the energy, volume and / or cojones to take more of a stance in defence of the map, and the internally consistent, mappable school of fantasy world-building it represents.

Funnily enough, the moment that really brought that home to me was the little thrill of excitement I got when I saw Dragonfly Falling had a new map!
Tom Lloyd, February 8th, 2012 at 11:59 am:

Worth noting that neither China nor Harrison are really epic fantasy authors in the traditional fashion, so world-building doesn't underpin their work — but the difference is why you do the background work in the first place. I find it hard to believe China didn't know more about Bas-Lag than than he put into any given story, just because you have this setting in your head and things fit together, connections are made and a tapestry appears as you add details in.

What people object to is the author a) shoving every detail in so it's not wasted thought-time, and b) trying to show how clever they are with the world-building. To write something on a scale of Shadows of the Apt, you'll either know more about the world than the reader or have to write really slowly as you metaphorically put new sections of track before the train in every chapter.

As for maps, I don't really see why they bug so many people. They're easy to ignore no? But again, the reader doesn't know the world as well as the author, so sometimes they might need a reminder of where we're off to now. Oftentimes not, but if it'll be helpful why not? Same as cast lists and glossaries — they should be useful, but they're additional and serve to reflect the fact the reader doesn't have a perfect memory, not as a big feature.
Jon Cole, February 9th, 2012 at 11:51 am:

Personally, whenever I go to London I make sure to mention that its 100 miles in a generally south easterly direction, while inserting the time taken by road, train, canal, plane, and pogo stick, just in case no one wants to look at a map – that makes conversations so much more natural.

Of course, some of it depends on if the reader is a map-geek or not — Adrian and I play a LRP game where some people just love the maps (in fact its precursor game surprised the refs so much with its map-geeks that they put a more logical mechanism* into this one) — that’s why there are more explorers than spies (although everyone in a lrp game is a spy I guess.) On the other hand some people just "don't get them"

As to whether maps are important — well they cut down on exposition, but I think I prefer seeing both the definitive/real map as a reader/GM and the inaccurate IC map as a player/participant.

I guess that the real objection to maps is that the empty page is just waiting to have someone scrawl "The Desert of Hotitude" of "The Craggy Mountains of Sharpness" on it which is probably a bad thing™, then again on the plus side a map is a page or so of a book that makes it easier to understand (I've had more frustrations at books without the reference frame of a map far more times than the horror of the badly drawn map)

The only problem with maps is if they become a constraint rather than an aid – need to get from A to B by boat, add a Canal. Who built the Canal? well there are 3 options but no one will ever go there so it doesn’t matter that finally you settled on a failed dwarven colony – but at least you know what the architecture of the canal looks like (Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales has a short story on why a river has a particular name.)

* The “mechanism” of the earlier game was thus: a) someone explores an area, b) Ref prints out an enlarged area of the map, and crossing things off it then, c) gives it to another ref who used little stamps to vaguely replicate the picture on a blank sheet at a random orientation. This was hysterical to watch, possibly not so great to be a recipient of.
Juliet E McKenna, February 9th, 2012 at 12:05 pm:

See my previous comment on the lack of time for in depth debate, which is why we got stuck on maps.

Also, there were horrendous acoustic issues for that particular panel. At my end of the table, we were getting echo from the speakers to our right, so getting our own words back at about a tenth of a second delay — while being almost entirely unable to hear what was being said at the other end of the table.

In retrospect, I made a major error in sitting at the end of the table as moderator. Normally that works well because I can see everyone's face and manage the discussion as it develops. With six of us in a straight line — and the acoustic issues — I simply couldn't engage with eg Ian Whates or Dave Tallerman in anything like the way I wanted to.

Next time, eh, chaps? We'll put the world (and world-building) to rights.
David Tallerman, February 10th, 2012 at 9:34 pm:

It was equally bad at our end … which is why I'm sitting at such an uncomfortable-looking angle in the photos, by the way 🙂 Absolutely, let's call that one "It's not a story, it's a map" round one.
Erin Hoffman, February 10th, 2012 at 11:10 pm:

Enjoyed this post, Adrian. I think I'm going to be contrary in agreeing with both you and Harrison, and thinking that the two arguments are not actually in opposition. I agree totally that both Harrison and Mieville, while not being epic fantasy authors strictly speaking, are engaging in worldbuilding, which you can't avoid when writing fiction of any kind. I think Hemingway and Faulkner both engaged in very different kinds of worldbuilding, which can be as much about image and word choice as anything else. Spec fic in general thus sits in this often uncomfortable horizon place suspended between the cognitive and the intuitive.

Worldbuilding is the cognitive, but writing is the dream (re Gardner and the "vivid and continuous dream"). A dream without anchors is vague and unmemorable, but a dream that becomes too concrete breaks itself. So a work of speculative fiction lands on that spectrum between meticulous and instinctive, and tastes will vary in between. Harrison and Mieville are definitely far on the 'intuitive/instinctive' side, and I think a world like Dragonlance is far opposite. My own taste is toward the thematic, and nothing bugs me more than a world or series that becomes entirely unmoored because the author hasn't figured out their theme.
Tom Pollock, February 12th, 2012 at 8:35 pm:

I whole heartedly agree with most of this, and I think Harrison's definition of World Building: 'An attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn't there' is very much at odds with my understanding of the term.

But I want to go further. Say there are some books out there where the worldbuilding is paramount. The plots meander, the character's have an essential *cardboardness* about their complexions that no amount of fantasy make-up can conceal. The world though, is rich and extensive, and feels old, and establish and points through the cunning deployment of it's descriptors to an existence beyond the page.

In these books, WB *has* triumphed over the 'story' as traditionally conceived, but is there anything wrong with that? If the world is rich enough, doesn't that justify the existence of the text? Isn't the fantasy tent big enough to cover such histories and codices of the unreal? And if not why not? I mean, I like plot and character as much as the next person, but I like interesting worlds too, and there are *lots* of books worth reading that excel in one of these fields, but only one.
Adrian Tchaikovsky, February 12th, 2012 at 8:41 pm:

It's an interesting point, Tom. World building as an art for its own sake — it would be a hard sell, to those people already on the other side of the fence on this argument, and to be honest I can't think of many examples — except the *obvious* example. Most books where I've found the world overly constrained or overly vague tend to fail on most of the other bases as well.

Shadows of the Apt