Recent Reading

[drcpunk]

I've read Tanya Huff's Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light. It's interesting to compare it to Last Defender of Everness. The Huff characters are more like people I'd expect to actually meet. Well, most of them. And even the embodiments of Light and Dark are hip to the modern world. But Everness has a bite to it that I like better, and I like its plotting better. It's got more depth to it, and I think I know why.

Then, I decided to go on a bit of a rereading binge. At WorldCon, Ellen Kushner read bits of her novel Thomas the Rhymer, and sang some of the ballads mentioned in it, though not necessarily the same versions that the novel has. This may be a book less popular than it should be, but it certainly received recognition when it came out, taking World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Awards. It's been reissued with a great cover, and with excerpts from Swordspoint, Fall of the Kings, and the upcoming novel about Katherine. It's a rich, rich book, and it looks so simple. One of the many things that makes it work for me is how the ordinary characters in the book are always working -- sewing, knitting, weaving (this is guy weaving), getting sheep out of the mud, washing clothing, whittling, cooking, all of it.

I'm currently rereading Swordspoint, and thinking about the WorldCon panels on Fantasy of Manners, Dark Fantasy and Noir, and the dialogue between Jo Walton and Michael Swanwick. I've finally seen the Keller piece on FoM. agrumer noted that Keller didn't mention something else many of the authors he discussed probably have in common -- many of them have almost certainly played rpgs.

I think there's some article to be written, though I'm not sure if I'm the one to write it, about authors who have clearly played rpgs and who have written good fantasy novels. mnemex and I were discussing Steven Brust's Jhereg and what made it work. While it is true that an important reason the series as a whole is good is the moral dimension, this was probably not why Jhereg itself made such a splash. No, that was because it was cool. It had cool characters, cool dialogue, a cool villain, and cool rules of magic and assassination.

This last, cool rules, struck mnemex as a place to start in examining FoM and rpgs. As a gamer and a reader, I like it when characters in a book are at least as smart as characters I play in an rpg. Part of what made Galaxyquest work and part of what frustrates me when I watch Classic Trek and late Buffy is a combination of character stupidity and scriptwriter inconsistency. The characters don't do things that they should know to do based on previous episodes, things any of the gamers I play with would do. Fr'ex, in 7th season Buffy, it is established that the First Evil is intangible. Most of my gamer friends asked, "So, why haven't the characters instituted a handshake policy?"

This may be a less promising avenue to explore than it seems. I gather that Heinlein's Puppet Masters has something a bit more risque, just as intelligent, and very cool. One of the appeals of a lot of classical sf is the logical of the rules of the universe and how the heroes work with them to triumph.

Part of FoM may well involve heroes doing the same with the rules of society. I need to think about that. As for the rules of magic, here we have a bit of a paradox. I prefer the magic to feel magical, not like classic sf in a fantasy dress. But there is an area where the magic feels magical, but one can do cool things with rules. Tanith Lee's Cyrion stories operate this way.

An interesting intersection of all of this is in the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The rules of high class high school society and how vampires work come together beautifully when the vampires attack at the high school dance. The Popular Girl wails, "But I had to invite them! They're seniors!"

Comments

[mneme]

It's important about FoM (unlike other XoM genres, to an extent) that FoM characters generally -push- and manipulate the rules of society. Which is a common thread, as said, and fits in with RPGs, which are all about the characters obeying the rules the players think are important, and manipulating or subverting the rules they don't think are that important. Part of the -fun- of a roleplaying game set in an established world is that the characters will do, or try to do, things that the characters in the world never do, but that the readers think they should.

The Puppet Masters did, in fact, have Operation Bareback. But then, FoM, if it's a valid category at all, is about subverting -society's- rules, not simply any rules; treating an alien society with alien manners almost as SF.

Even (especially) the best fantasy masters -- McKillip, Gaiman, Lee, Zelazny, de Lint, Beagle, etc. -- establish rules for their fantasy worlds as -well- as making them feel magical and mysterious.

Without the rules, there's no sense; no feeling of causiality, since one thing could follow anything.
Without the mystique, there's no point; it might as well not be fantasy at all. (or rather, it's a different kind of fantasy entirely).