Bittercon: Historical Eras and Genre

[sartorias]

This is off Readercon's Saturday panel list. I don't know how much interest this one will raise--but.

Their title and info is: Why Don't We Do It in the Reformation? Underutilized Historical Eras in Spec Fic. Oooh! A conflated version of their descriptor: There have been many alternate histories of WW II and the Civil War, but almost none of

Comments

[avengangle]

I think another problem is the educational system in America, at least. When we study World History, we study Egyptians, Greeks but not so much Romans except the fall of the empire, early Christianity maybe a LITTLE (although not much in public school), and then we skip to a generic Middle Ages (usually the late middle ages), and then bop on to the Renaissance in Italy (but nowhere else), the Reformation in England (oh, good, Shakespeare) and then Germany but nowhere else. Next we talk about America: the discovery thereof, the first English colonies, and then we skip ahead to the American revolution (unless it's an American History class, in which case we read that play first). Then the French revolution. Then Napoleon. Then the American Civil War. Then we get a little on the Victorian Era in England and industrialism (Henry Ford), but we mostly skip WWI to get to WWII (although we all know that someone shot the archduke and then Russia had to drop out because of the Communists).

Once we hit WWII, it's the end of the school year and we have no time to study Korea, Vietnam, or anything after 1945 -- UNLESS there's a detour about McCarthyism.

Although I can think of a fantasy set during/in Vietnam: The Healer's War, by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. Two, if you count Summer of Love by Lisa Goldstein (which is set in America).

Anyway, my main point was that it's rather difficult to find a good place to write a fantasy about WWI (Vietnam, the Reformation on the continent after the Diet of Worms) when we barely study it.

Also, um, it's still a LOT politically charged to even MENTION Vietnam, let alone set something during that time.

Of course there are spec fic writers with degrees or serious interest in history, but that's too much work for the rest of us, right?

[swan_tower]

And then take that and stack it on top of the difficulty of researching more obscure periods. But I had been focusing more on the latter problem, and you're right; lack of a basic education in whole swaths of history poses a problem, too. I have a series of short stories I want to set either in imperial China or something a lot like it, and the first hurdle to overcome is that "imperial China" is a HUGE span of time I know nothing about. Which dynasty am I talking about, here? And which part of China? It's like saying I want to set something in pre-industrial Europe. But the only time I studied Chinese history it was the very early part, in an archaeology class, so I don't even know where to begin.

[avengangle]

What! You only have several thousand years and millions of miles to choose from! Why are you complaining? ;)

[sartorias]

Yeah...this reminds me of something I realized when reading an otherwise admirable fantasy set in Aztec times. The characters were stiff, the research, though careful and earnest, read as careful and earnest. It felt like a mechanical puppet show, the author did not seem to live in the time/space, or if they did, it didn't show in the prose.

I've read a couple of fantasies set in China that seemed really awkward, again, with lumps of undigested research standing out...and then characteristic western tropes in the people (one really, really gets hit with the differences when reading Cao Xueqin's novel).

Taking on a totally new time and place presents a whole lot of challenges.

[swan_tower]

Which Aztec fantasy was that? I'm always on the hunt for more.

Cao Xuequin -- is this the Story of the Stone series? That's what Amazon is pulling up, and I want to know what I should be adding to my wish list. ^_^

[alecaustin]

Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber.

I'm not particularly fond of it, but I think that's more a question of what I want from fiction than anything else.

Other good reference points for classical Chinese fiction are The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margins, and The Journey to the West. I'd start handing out authorial attributions, but those get kind of fuzzy when you're looking at compilations of history and folk tales like those works. Journey is an episodic plot that predates most explicitly episodic works in Western literature by several centuries.

[khiemtran]

The other funny thing is that even some of those stories, the Water Margin in particular, are full of inaccuracies. Mixed up geography, anachronisms, that sort of thing. So you do have a certain amount of leeway to play with.

[sartorias]

Story of the stone, five volumes. Fascinating.

[swan_tower]

And the Aztec one?

[sartorias]

I'm trying to remember the title--so far, all I can call up is the image of the book, but I can't get the title into focus. (Since I didn't like it, I gave it away.)

[swan_tower]

Describe the plot? It may be one I've read already.

[sartorias]

All I remember is standard sacrifice imagery, pretty much straight out of National Geographic speculations. I didn't even finish it.

[randwolf]

Those were the Gary Jennings books? I seem to recall some loud bitching about them. It's hard to write convincingly about Nahautl people--that's a very alien culture. (Nahuatl was their language; I'm not sure what they called themselves in that period, except no-one called themselves Aztec.)

[sartorias]

No, both were written by female authors, as it happens.

[swan_tower]

Nahua is the term used now, at least, for the ethnic group that was the core of the Aztec empire.

[randwolf]

Yes, but it's not what they called themselves; it's an obscure (to non-speakers) declension of the name of their language, which is Nahuatl. The Mexican empire was run by the Mexica (meh.SHEE.ka, more-or-less), the most successful of a warlike group of tribes who spoke Nauhuatl. Now I feel I owe it to you to find out what they called themselves. Or maybe I owe it to my honor, or my scholarly reputation, or something.