When discussing licensed games the following quote from an author came to light from Droog.

QuoteQuote:
The great modern fantasies were written out of religious, philosophical and psychological landscapes. They were sermons. They were metaphors. They were rhetoric. They were books, which means that the one thing they actually weren't was countries with people in them.

The commercial fantasy that has replaced them is often based on a mistaken attempt to literalise someone else's metaphor, or realise someone else's rhetorical imagery. For instance, the moment you begin to ask (or rather to answer) questions like, "Yes, but what did Sauron look like?"?; or, "Just how might an Orc regiment organise itself?"; the moment you concern yourself with the economic geography of pseudo-feudal societies, with the real way to use swords, with the politics of courts, you have diluted the poetic power of Tolkien's images. You have brought them under control. You have tamed, colonised and put your own cultural mark on them.
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"What would it be really like to live in the world of...?" is an inappropriate question, a category error. You understand this immediately you ask it of the inscape of, say, Samuel Beckett or Wyndham Lewis. I didn't want it asked (and I certainly didn't want it answered) of Viriconium, so I made that world increasingly shifting and complex. You can not learn its rules. More importantly, Viriconium is never the same place twice. That is because – like Middle-Earth – it is not a place. It is an attempt to animate the bill of goods on offer. Those goods, as in Tolkien or Moorcock, Disney or Kafka, Le Guin or Wolfe, are ideological. "Viriconium"? is a theory about the power-structures culture is designed to hide; an allegory of language, how it can only fail; the statement of a philosophical (not to say ethological) despair. At the same time it is an unashamed postmodern fiction of the heart, out of which all the values we yearn for most have been swept precisely so that we will try to put them back again (and, in that attempt, look at them afresh).  

I Disagree.  Vehemently. So much so that I have no desire ever to read a book by this author, one M. John Harrison.    To be perfectly clear I do not disagree with the idea that great books are metaphors or rhetoric, I do not disagree that what they sprang from is greater than their landscape, their geography.  When discussing the works of Kafka, one can not at all get caught up in the world of Kafka, because he is writing situations and sweeping notions.

But to dismiss all great fiction as set in nebulous neverwheres is too great leap to make. Tolkien's work succeeds in part because to him, and to the reader Middle Earth IS a place, with people and cultures and histories. Tolkien WROTE those histories, he detailed things far beyond the pages of the books themselves.  It is these constraints, these borders and rules that guide such works that make them more real to the reader. As a consequence they also can make for interesting game settings. Because they have a real geography, a real place, if only in the landscape of the mind.

Harrison suggests that he leaves his Viriconium setting in flux to prevent that sort of bounding, that landscape from taking place. That is his right as an author.  I think it smacks of ass, perhaps disguised laziness, but more ass than anything else. He doesn't want people to know his setting, he jealously hordes it from them. So be it.  His own decision has reduced its value to me, and to others.  If not for Droog I would never have heard of this setting, this author, and I suspect I never would have.  Few people like the disorientation of having the rug yanked from under their feet as they read.

I have to wonder as well. Many of the authors named have very real settings, with very real rules that govern them.  Conan wanders a world with nations that have their own histories, their own politics and borders, a world that remained more or less consistent throughtout his writing career. Details may vary, but when Conan spoke of Cimmeria, you knew what nation lay on it's border, when he spoke of Aquilonia you knew that the nation was 'civilized' in ways Cimmeria was not. Stygia was a real place with it's own culture, so much so that other authors have visited Conan's world a number of times to lay their own marks upon the maps, and only the grognards bother to complain.

The same is less true for Moorcock, but even there you have a sense of a real place, with real rules and conflicts that remain throughout the books.

So, where then does this idea that a great work should be fluid metaphor come from?  

Am I so far off the beaten track here? A lone voice in the wilderness crying out about doom and darkness in an ever shifting landscape of shadows?  Or did I just read too much into it?

Quote from: SpikeAm I so far off the beaten track here? A lone voice in the wilderness crying out about doom and darkness in an ever shifting landscape of shadows?  Or did I just read too much into it?

Nope, this guy is shitsnorting bastard(tm).

The fiction I enjoy the most is the type of fiction where the world is detailed and real feeling. The more metaphorical fiction gets the less believable theya re to me and less real. Since reading fiction , for me, is an escape to a interesting and exciting place and needs to suspend my disbelief.

I think the answer is that GOOD fantasy requires both elements.

Take out the metaphor and you have autistic obsessiveness for its own sake.

Take out the consistency and you have sweeping pretentiousness with no foundation.

All of the best fantasy novels are ones where the authors put good attention to the details of the world, they create a real fictional world with predictability of places and laws, AND they do so in order to present strong themes through metaphor.

Forget one, or the other, and you end up with b-grade junk. Either popcorn fiction or pretentious idiocy.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditI think the answer is that GOOD fantasy requires both elements.

Take out the metaphor and you have autistic obsessiveness for its own sake.

Take out the consistency and you have sweeping pretentiousness with no foundation.

All of the best fantasy novels are ones where the authors put good attention to the details of the world, they create a real fictional world with predictability of places and laws, AND they do so in order to present strong themes through metaphor.

Forget one, or the other, and you end up with b-grade junk. Either popcorn fiction or pretentious idiocy.

RPGPundit

I agree. There need to be balance.

Link to the original essay:
http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/show.html?ey,viriconium,1

And a related comment by Ursula Le Guin:
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/PlausibilityinFantasy.html

QuoteNow, with Tolkien, that history and geography already existed in his writings before The Lord of the Rings. But in my fantasies, I have often mentioned events or places which I didn't yet know anything about — for example, some of the later exploits of Ged mentioned early in A Wizard of Earthsea. These were, when I wrote them, merely words — "empty" nouns. I knew that if my story took me to them, I would find out who and what they were. And this indeed happened. . .

In the same way, I drew the map of Earthsea at the very beginning, but I didn't know anything about each island till I "went to" it.

Quote from: droogLink to the original essay:
http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/show.html?ey,viriconium,1

And a related comment by Ursula Le Guin:
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/PlausibilityinFantasy.html

Thanks, Droog

That article by Ursula Le Guin is great. No wonder why I like her stuff.

To be sure, I have absolutely no troubles at all with the esteemed Le Guin, or her perspective.   Is there anything in the original essay of Harrison that would make me change my mind about the portion posted?  I doubt it, but I'll look.

The key difference is not that everything is prewritten necessarily, but that what she has written does not deliberately contradict what she has written later (because future past tense doesn't get nearly the use it should... )

I think the Pundit does have it right, or at least clear.  Is there a spectrum between literalism and metaphorical writing?

I strongly agree with the article.

I like world building, but you don't have to do it all the time, and sometimes you shouldn't.

Its so easy for people to tie themselves in knots trying to make Star Trek or Star Wars or Warhammer 40K make internal sense, when the truth is that someone just made some random shit up that they thought was cool. Its never gonna make any damn sense out side of story land, and I don't care if you think the mechanical horses don't fit in to the political-economic landscape of 17th century germany, it'll look figgin badass.

I know its fun, but sometime it gets in the way. Especially when the consistency of an original is a style or a look, like, say,

http://www.jaspermorello.com/

or even star wars, which works as a fairy tale with princesses and fighter pilots but sounds really naff if you start mentioning the newly elected queen of naboo or midichlorians.

These things do have a kind of internal consitency, but it is based more around genre conventions than physics. 'Unless television has lied to me...' or 'Because all communist systems fall to corruption...' are both kinda phrases you can hang a setting on.

My own default stance is something like Zany Afternoons by bruce McCall - more or less pastiches of things I think are cool without having any real requirement of depth beyond being a direct rip off of

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighter-Combat-Manoeuvring-Robert-Shaw/dp/0870210599

(Fantastic book by the by - its like a martial arts manual for flying air combat - has quotes from guys like Johnnie Johnson (highest scoring british ace of the second world war) on the back saying My Life Would Have Been Much Less Stressful If I Could Have Read This Book Before The Battle Of Britain, which is quite a recomendation really)

with Aeroplane cut and Starfighter pasted in to the text, with no further thought about the realistic nature of space combat.

I have to disagree with the idea that both moralizing and internal consistency must be present in a fictional world.

Moralizing should be a function of the plot, and not the setting.

Quote from: beejazzI have to disagree with the idea that both moralizing and internal consistency must be present in a fictional world.

Moralizing should be a function of the plot, and not the setting.

I don't think you can stop it.  Anything you create is a product of your world-view.  The trick is to a) figure out what you believe in and b) figure out how conceal it and stop it damaging what you are creating.  Everyone hates a proselytizer

I love M John Harrison's Viriconium novels, I snort with derision at any thesis that writing has to be one particular way or another.

Me, I read his fiction, his essays don't particularly interest me and I don't much care what they say.  He is, however, a tremendous writer of fantasy fiction and this theory works for him, the fact it may not work for others isn't really important as it's just his view on how it works.

To be fair though, I'm not sure he is saying that all great fantasy fiction need be nebulous, I think rather he is saying that much modern commercial fantasy fiction is crap because they miss out the mythic and replace it with the prosaic because they don't really understand the genre.

Tolkien was more than just the landscape, good as that was, it was also full quite intentionally of mythic resonance.  His pale imitators get the worldbuilding bit from him, but not the sense of myth or relevance.

That's what M John is saying, getting the numbers of orcs in a regiment right is a worldbuilding task, but great fantasy fiction is about more than just a dry worldbuilding exercise.  Most modern commercial fantasy lacks fantasy, it's economics in action.  Tolkien had the economics, but he had the fantasy too and M John is correct that his imitators have missed that particular point.

I always gravitated towards the more nebulous stuff - Wolfe's Books of the New Sun, are a particular favourite - so, I kinda off get where Harrison is coming from, esp since his Viriconium stuff is obviously how he thinks the genre should be approached - I don't subscribe to this view (not entirely), but truth be told, I've always been more interested in reading fantasy novels which is written in the way how he (Harrison) thinks it should be written. :shrug: Not that I think all fantasy should be written this way, only that I'm more interested in this kind of style.

Regards,
David R

I don't think that even Harrison is saying that all fantasy needs be as trippy as Viriconium; rather, that people misunderstand the nature of fictional worlds.

Quote from: droogI don't think that even Harrison is saying that all fantasy needs be as trippy as Viriconium; rather, that people misunderstand the nature of fictional worlds.

I didn't mean to imply that he thinks all fantasy needs to be trippy like Viriconium.

Quote"What would it be really like to live in the world of...?" is an inappropriate question, a category error. You understand this immediately you ask it of the inscape of, say, Samuel Beckett or Wyndham Lewis. I didn't want it asked (and I certainly didn't want it answered) of Viriconium, so I made that world increasingly shifting and complex. You can not learn its rules. More importantly, Viriconium is never the same place twice.

Just that he values certain qualities and more often than not, most modern fantasy novels don't have these qualities.

Regards,
David R