haikujaguar: Fantasies

M. C. A. Hogarth (

haikujaguar) wrote,
@ 2008-04-17 16:16:00

Entry tags:

poll, writing

Fantasies
I ran into this quote from Lois McMaster Bujold:

I have come to believe that if romances are fantasies of love, and mysteries are fantasies of justice, F&SF are fantasies of political agency. (Of which the stereotypical “male teen power fantasy” is again merely an especially gaudy and visible subset.)

Do you agree?

Stardancer Home.

(Post a new comment)

archangelbeth
2008-04-17 08:22 pm UTC (link)

With the definitions of "agency" being...
the state of being in action or of exerting power; operation
a means of exerting power or influence; instrumentality

...I can see this, to a large extent. The "politics" can be low-level, though, as well as space pulp stuff. I mean, "the boy slays the dragon and marries the princess" -- how much more political can one get? O:>

Some SF&F may be more accurately "fantasies of adventure in exotic places," though. Man Against Alien Nature isn't much different from Man Against Nature, after all.

(Reply to this)

kemono_art
2008-04-17 08:31 pm UTC (link)

I would agree with that, now that I think about it in that context. Even when I consider the most space-opera'ish of the series I've read, that quote still applies. Considering that technology and magic (or mutation or what-have-you) are sources of power, that immediately invokes political mechanisms to control that power, whether it be the vampire heirarchy or the evil empire striking back with pewpew or slings and arrows (or bitey fangs). Everything else is just people interacting within that given apparatus.

(Reply to this)

	feste_sylvain 2008-04-17 08:38 pm UTC (link)
	I'm having a hard time categorizing Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity" as a fantasy of political agency. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	haikujaguar 2008-04-17 08:46 pm UTC (link)
	My gut feeling is also that this is a very narrow interpretation of SF/F, but I couldn't think of any examples off-hand. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	typographer 2008-04-17 09:16 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, come now! Barlennan is hoping to gain knowledge of new technologies from the humans, therefore giving him something infinitely more powerful to trade than he has ever possessed before! If that isn't "the power to assert control over social relationships (especially relationships with authority or power" I can't imagine what is! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	haddayr 2008-04-17 09:13 pm UTC (link)
	I think I'd need to know what was meant by "political agency." I write fantasy and I can't say I know what he means. I do like him calling other stuff (especially mystery, which has so much more caché than my chosen genre) fantasies. Because all fiction is fantastical. And no one will acknowledge this. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	archangelbeth 2008-04-17 09:17 pm UTC (link)
	(Lois is female, BTW -- despite having "Louis Bujold" show up on Amazon and, sadly, even on a hardback published by Baen, recently! He must be her evil alterverse twin. >_> ) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	arielstarshadow 2008-04-17 09:25 pm UTC (link)
	My thought is that it's not that simple - because the genres are not that clear-cut, especially these days. (Reply to this)

	dragontdc 2008-04-17 10:00 pm UTC (link)
	I'll agree with that in general, but it breaks down in some specifics. (Reply to this)

	janni 2008-04-17 10:39 pm UTC (link)
	Sometimes I think it's true. But for me as a writer, f&sf is more often about the personal than the political. (Reply to this)

miintikwa
2008-04-17 11:08 pm UTC (link)

For me, politics play a large role in my stories-- but I am such a political creature, I think that would be a factor no matter what genre I was writing in. (And even the "politics" of human interaction are something that I manipulate often in my stories.)

I noticed that about my worlds and characters just the other day, actually, and was amused by it-- but I never extrapolated it to the genre, just to the writers that I enjoy greatly (Rawn, Roberson, and Elliot were the three that came to mind first, though having just finished A Companion to Wolves and a few other books by

matociquala, I think I'll have to add her (Elizabeth Bear) to the list).

(Reply to this)

	jennythe_reader 2008-04-17 11:20 pm UTC (link)
	I've heard worse one sentence summaries of the genre, but this one doesn't quite work for me. (Reply to this)

	sartorias 2008-04-18 12:36 am UTC (link)
	If one can interpret political agency to include societal, cultural, familial, and personal (and judging from her stories, yes that flies) then I can buy it. (Reply to this)

ellyssian
2008-04-18 12:40 am UTC (link)

I think Lois can be free to believe anything she wants. I think coming up with any kind of definition for things like that is a temporary effort of one party to order things as of their perceptions and capture what they feel at that instant in time - it's an assignment of a label, it might be useful (or harmful) in marketing, it is relative, and it is an attempt to simplify. Like most such efforts to define artistic material, it is probably almost as accurate as it is inaccurate.

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	Hmm... ysabetwordsmith 2008-04-18 01:17 am UTC (link)
	No, F&SF is too broad for that to work. It might apply to, say, espionage novels. But F&SF spans fantasies of ... untouched wilderness space exploration lost languages first contact revenge ... and so many other things. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: Hmm... thisdaydreamer 2008-04-18 02:03 am UTC (link)
	But it ultimately comes down to the people involved, and how they run their worlds and lives. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Hmm... stryck 2008-04-19 01:41 am UTC (link)
	Doesn't everything? (Reply to this)(Parent)

sappersgt
2008-04-18 01:57 am UTC (link)

I'm roughly 2200 pages into Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.

It is a fantasy of political agency, I suppose, but it does such an incredible job defying genre categorization that it has caused me to lose faith in such categories.

But addressing the quote directly rather than at an angle, I have to call "Bullshit".

Reason: Romances, as a genre, are defined by their addressing themes of love, attraction, infatuation, romance, etc.

Mysteries are, defintionally, stories about crime and the attempt to 'solve' the crime.

"F&SF" as a genre is not defined by theme, but by elements of setting.

For instance, let us take Harry Turtledove's Krispos of Videssos series.
These is a ripping good yarn, rife with adventure and politics and wars and even some romance. Had it been marketed at a novelization of the life of Basil I, Emperor of the Romans, founder of the Macedonian Dynasty, it would have sold some copies. However, Dr. Turtledove found that by changing the names around, setting it in a 'fantastic' world, and having a few minor characters work some trivial divination magic, he could market them as fantasy novels and sell an order of magnitude more copies. What makes it Fantasy? Not any thematic element that wouldn't have been there as historical fiction, but the window dressing, almost irrelevant to the story.

What defines F&SF is not the ability to address political agency but the window dressing--it is a marketing category, not a genre in the sense that "romance" or "mystery" is.

Take Issac Asimov's Caves of Steel: A largely conventional detective story, a mystery. Is it a fantasy of political agency? What makes it so rather than a fantasy of justice?

The Cold Equations, possibly one of the best SF short stories ever. No political agency, it is at the heart of it, a story about calculus (though it does not use the word once).

I could write more but am limited by comment length.

(Reply to this)

hafoc
2008-04-18 02:02 am UTC (link)

"Political agency" is a round hole into which you can hammer any square peg if you hit it hard enough.

The soul of any story is conflict. How the conflict is resolved, who wins and has power, who loses and doesn't, is politics. Or at least you can interpret it as politics, if you want to give that square peg an extra whack or two.

Couldn't you stretch a point to say that romance, for example, is a fantasy of political agency as it applies to sex roles?

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	thisdaydreamer 2008-04-18 02:07 am UTC (link)
	Hmmm. Very interesting. Building a government is certainly a huge part of world building. It seems to me that it is one of three basic parts of the story - the others being the characters and the plot. Characters and plot are always there for fiction, so maybe the political agency is what sets F&SF apart from the other genres. ponders (Reply to this)

	thisdaydreamer 2008-04-18 07:00 am UTC (link)
	Oh, my. I just found the images of Shame and "Sunny Days." Wow. Just, wow. My oh my, don't mind my drooling. And my past makes it hard to see people in a sexual/aesthetic way. (Reply to this)

	thisdaydreamer 2008-04-18 07:05 am UTC (link)
	I also love how you can paint yourself with a baby-scar. I love my scars, but yours is more important. (Reply to this)

dsgood
2008-04-18 10:38 pm UTC (link)

I would say that science fiction is usually fantasies of change. And so is some fantasy.

Hypothetical story premise: In a hidden cave in the mountains of Florida (which most people don't know about), the protagonist and other major characters find living Neanderthalers. They have technology advanced beyond ours.

In a thriller: At the end, the cave entrance is blocked and they have no proof of their discovery. Nothing changes.

Romance: The heroine lives happily ever after with a Neanderthal man. Nothing changes in the outside world.

New Age: The Neanderthal technology is magical. The Neanderthalers are good, and kind, and insufferably wise. They may or may not agree to help us all learn wisdom.

Science Fiction: The Neanderthalers come out of their cave and take out patents. Their technology changes the world.

(Reply to this)

It's completely correct, except for the times that it isn't.

jorrocks_j
2008-04-19 08:16 pm UTC (link)

You can read a political agenda into anything, but sometimes the author makes it easier than at others.

You can read a great deal of politics into anything by Dick or Vonnergut. They meant you to. I don't know that that's true of Ringworld. But doubtless some desperate grad student could find in it reactionary arguments for colonialism, or some such, if put to the task.

But here's another one for you.

Tolkien says that, in fantsy, magic is a metaphor for the author's concept of morality.

I say that in fantasy written by American authors after Tolkien, fantasy is a metaphor for the author's attitudes towards technology.

But that these two rules do not contradict. Rather the latter follows from the former. Because to Americans, technology is morality.

Think I'm exaggerating? Consider the following terms for various technologies and devices:

Atomic
Automobile
Hybrid Car
Internet
Handgun
Cell Phone
SUV
Birth Control Pill

I'll bet you had an immediate emotional reaction to each. And that reaction was based on how moral or immoral you find each to be.

Think about it.

--Skarl the Drummer

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: It's completely correct, except for the times that it isn't. haikujaguar 2008-04-21 05:21 pm UTC (link)
	Wow. I'm going to have to think about that... thank you, Skarl! (Reply to this)(Parent)

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