Where Do Babies Come From? . . . Or, Sexism And Women In Fantasy

A lot of electrons have been spilled recently about the presence (or lack thereof) and roles of women in fantasy stories.  Both The Mary Sue and Tansy Roberts have weighed in on the supposed historical justification of sexism in the fantasy genre, and each author makes compelling arguments.  Basically, it goes that women throughout history have played vital roles and pursued all sorts of careers so it makes little sense to indulge historically inaccurate portrayals of women in fantasy stories.

Roberts's critique of The Mary Sue is spot on:

"History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.

History is actually a long series of centuries of men writing down what they thought was important and interesting, and FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN. It’s also a long series of centuries of women’s work and women’s writing being actively denigrated by men. Writings were destroyed, contributions were downplayed, and women were actively oppressed against, absolutely."

Her point is absolutely right, but then she moves to identify the two main tropes in fantasy as military/warfare and politics.  Magic is identified as a strong third, and links these to male dominance in historical reporting.  Ignoring the role that women played in war and politics, however, is a willful ignorance on the part of ancient reporters, and continues to be so in the fantasy genre.

"When it comes to politics, I’m sorry, but there are no excuses. Sure, women have been excluded from the public political process for large swathes of history and culture (except, you know, when they weren’t—even the supreme patriarchy that was Rome didn’t have complete control over the provinces, where female politicians and civil servants sprung up like weeds) but public is only one piece of politics. The Mary Sue article refers substantially to Game of Thrones, and that’s a very good example, but again you can look to history—as soon as there is any form of dynastic element to your politics, then women are IMPORTANT. Even when the political careers are solely male, those men have wives and families who have a stake in the proceedings and the outcomes, they have risks to take and campaigns to wage every bit as much as the men. And if the women’s politics are happening in salons rather than assembly halls… maybe you should be peeking into those salons. I can guarantee political DYNAMITE is going on in there. With finger sandwiches and mint tea? Why not?"

Okay, that makes a bit of sense.  But here's where I digress.  Historically inspired stories, like the fantastically successful Game of Thrones mentioned above, replicate stereotypes and inadequately populate fantastical worlds with shallow or fulsome representations of human activity.

I don't really want to engage the staggering sexism in fantasy except to make a more general point: historically inspired fantasy is boring.  Don't get me wrong, history is chock full of great stories, and they're perfect jumping off points for a couple dozen novels.  But historically flavored novels that simply replace the Lancasters with the Lannisters and England for Westeros (but what if St. George really did kill a dragon?) is about as interesting as sitting in traffic.

I suspect that my distaste for George Martin's novels stems from its conscious departure from fantasy tropes; instead of dealing with heroes and magic, his world is ours, though dimly glimpsed.  Essentially, it's bad fantasy and boring history, yet readers mistake it for verisimilitude the way a man dying of thirst will mistake a mirage for an oasis in the desert.

So thinking about fantasy as somehow a historical representation misses the point entirely.  Literature in all its guises is about human behavior.  Science fiction and fantasy offer wonder, but they also allow us to examine our present and speculate about our future.  Political worries, cultural values, dominant hierarchies are all reflected in fantasy and reveal a glimpse of the zeitgeist.  That is their power.

Science fiction excels by extrapolating human achievements to their logical end.  Fantasy can do the same by extrapolating human activity in settings beyond the mundane.  J.R.R. Tolkien reproduced the Earthly milieu consciously.  Writers following in that vein from Robert Jordan to Terry Brooks continued that trend with greater or lesser success.  Where G.R.R. Martin succeeds is creating a world disengaged from the environment of evolutionary adaptation -- though by failing to follow his worldbuilding to a logical end it quickly reveals its shaky foundations.  Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings successfully disengages from a historical model by creating whole-cloth both a world and its inhabitants.

Marie Antoinette

None of these authors engage the elephant in the fantastical room, however.  Why there are human beings more or less indistinguishable from the reader is never addressed.  Indeed, it remains such a persistent trope that it is rarely considered.  C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy successfully tackles the trope by wrapping it science fiction -- the human beings in her story are the descendants of human colonists on an alien world (where physics is kind of wonky -- a concession to the genre which corresponds well enough with what we know of science).

Regardless, instead of confronting sexism in the genre, commentators like Tansy Roberts should instead engage sexism in our own culture (and in our authors), and recast the mirror which reflects it.  And calling your empire

The Bastards of Westeros . . . Or, A Game of Thrones Read

Illegitimacy is a major theme of George Martin's Game of Thrones.  From the outset, Martin has exaggerated the division between Eddard Stark's legitimate children and his bastard son; the dwarf Tyrion Lannister comments that "all dwarfs are bastards in their fathers' eyes."

Male issue has historically been a big deal, and the time period that Martin is aping emphasized primogeniture--that the first-born son inherited everything, including wealth and title.  In an era before birth-control and women's sexual liberation, men produced a lot of illegitimate heirs.  Ensuring legitimacy was a full time job.  I'm curious, at times, why Martin chose to emphasize it so heavily, though.

Certainly, verisimilitude necessitates the continual rehashing, but to modern readers it seems hollow and somewhat dull.  Primogeniture has finally been absolved in the English monarchy, and if you haven't encountered fifty bastards today then you haven't left your house.  Children born out of wedlock used to be a bigger deal; now it's commonplace.  Finding the energy to care about Westeros's bastards is both dull and tiresome.

With that out of the way, let's recap what's been going on.

***Beware, there be SPOILERS ahead***

Let's see, I left off with Jon and Tyrion on the wall.  Since then, Arya has gotten a swordmaster, Caetlyn and Eddard have contemplated war, Bran gets a new saddle, Robb is rude to Tyrion, Arya defies gender norms, Jon gets his own Samwise (I mean Samwell), Dany stands up for herself, and Eddard begins to suspect that the crown prince may be a bastard (or at least not the king's own son).  I guess that's about it.

I think that summary actually does more justice to the book than it deserves.  That makes it sound like things are happening, but in reality it feels like more plodding along waiting for something to happen.  I have the sense that Martin is organizing his pieces, setting up a board on which he will eventually play; and some of my friends have intimated that something will eventually happen.  I hope so, because despite my resolution, I've already begun reading other books and Game of Thrones has fallen to the wayside.

The Frakking Others . . . Or, Game of Thrones Reading Update

I've been reading through George R.R. Martin's fantasy epic Game of Thrones.  It's not the first time and once more I'm reaching the part where I just want to put it down.  You know that part, where nothing happens and people whine about how much they'd rather being doing something else, another kid starts crying, or the dwarf dispenses pithy words of wisdom?  Oh, wait.  That's all of it.

**MINOR SPOILERS**

I'm about 250 pages in and so far I have discovered that despite being reared in the far north by a father as cold as ice and hard as iron, the Stark children sure do cry a lot.  In fact, I counted.  In nearly every perspective in which they appear, they try (unsuccessfully) to stifle tears.  They've been teased, bullied and frightened.  One has been shoved from a tower, another has had her wolf executed (by her father, no less), and another had her friend ridden down and hacked apart.  So maybe they have a reason to cry.  But I'm beginning to suspect this is a book less about magic and intrigue and more about how many tears these children can spill.

So, running recap.  Eddard Stark doesn't want to go south, the king does; Caetlyn hates Jon; Jon wants to prove himself; the Others are this series' version of "frak" (the Other frakking take you); and Daenerys got diddled by a horselord.  Did I miss anything?  Oh yeah, assassins are inept, conspiracies are obvious and the Cersei Lannister is a conniving, incestuous bitch. 

Also, in two hundred pages not a lot actually happens.  Each chapter is a major jump in either time or space, with quick stretches of exposition to let the reader know where he is.  World-building on the cheap, as I've come to think of it, lends itself well to the style of jump-cutting we see in movies or television shows (a reason I think it has done so well on HBO). 

I've discovered, as well, that in these first two hundred pages there isn't really a protagonist.  I can see the underpinnings of a conflict, and there are a couple characters I suspect will become protagonists (Eddard Stark was just eliminated as protagonist-worthy, in my mind); but in the tens of thousands of words I've already read, no one stands out.  That lack of conflict is dangerous, because it leads me to suspect that not much is going to happen for another two hundred pages. 

Ultimately, I think this is why I put the book down so often.  It's just interminably boring.  And there are the random POV shifts throughout the book; I'd call them errors but it seems to be used purposefully.  If so, I can't imagine to what end.  Shifting from 3rd to 2nd person mid-narrative is just jarring.  And also unnecessary.  Whenever I note them I wonder if it could have been written differently, and I discover that easy solutions exist.  I suspect either his editor didn't notice, or both were too lazy to care.  Either way, it rips me out of the narrative.  It's distracting; and in a book already teeming with not-much-of-anything-going-on, these distractions make me want to put the book aside.

Magic Zombies . . . Or, First Impressions of Game of Thrones

As some of you are aware, I've tried to read G.R.R Martin's Game of Thrones more than a couple times.  This attempt marks my fifth go at it.  I've already resolved that I will finish the first book.  I've read Twilight to try to figure out just why it was so popular.  I read Fifty Shades of Grey.  I want to know why people enjoy some of these pieces of fiction.  With Game of Thrones, at least, the storytelling is compelling, the writing is top-notch (-ish, which I'll get to) and everything about it should lead me to love it.  All of my friends essentially swear by it.  They love it.  But something about it has never really grabbed hold of me.

I've read through the first hundred or so pages a couple times.  More often, I stop about the end of the first Daenerys perspective.  I suspect that what most people find innovative about Martin's work is exactly what puts me off.  The quick perspective changes and lack of concrete physical detail feels not only choppy, but fails to embed me in the world in a compelling way.  Sometimes, we talk about the learning curve of a book; how difficult the world, or magic-system, is learn.  In Martin's book, I suspect, the world is not that different from our own.  Based on the War of the Roses, Martin has lifted English history whole-cloth and dropped fantasy elements into it.  As such, I don't need a lot of time to learn this world.  Yes, some of the names are different, but not so different that I can't figure out what's going on.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

More to the point, though, I think this book is too much like real life.  I want my fantasy to be escapist.  I don't want children to fall from roofs; I don't want to see a child sold by her brother as a sex slave in his machinations to reclaim power; I don't want to see a brother and sister get it on.  All these things are facets of the "real" world.  They aren't necessarily what I want to read in my fiction.

That being said, a lot of people really do love these books, so lets get into my impressions of the first couple chapters.

Prologue:  Kind of an interesting premise.  Wandering through the snow, jawing about how ominous it all feels.  Then zombies show up.  Yeah, I know that zombies weren't a big deal in 1996, when this was originally written and perhaps it isn't fair to judge Martin on current fads.  But I can't help wonder why we need zombies in the first go-round.  There are also a couple point-of-view slips where he slips from third to second person.  They're minor but telling.  Also, when one character withdraws his black gloved hand from his wound, we're told that it gleams red.  I'm not sure about anyone else's blood, but mine usually isn't so obvious against a black background.  Another minor thing, but it irritates me already. 

Bran: The first chapter of the narrative actually ties into the prologue, in which the man whose death we did not see in the prologue is executed.  We're left to assume that it's the same man, and maybe Martin will fill this in for me later, but with only minor physical details to draw that assumption, I'm left uncertain.  That uncertainty left me feeling ambivalent about the whole thing.  Oh, and look, wolf puppies, one (conveniently) for each of the children.  Except this isn't any wolf, it's a direwolf, which is bigger and badder and somehow direr than regular wolves.  Also, it's a bad omen.  Okay.  Interesting dynamic between the bastard kid and the "trueborn" children of Ned Stark (who I'm to assume is going to be our protagonist). 

Catelyn: The best writing so far.  The dichotomy between the (pardon the pun) starkness of the north and the vibrancy of the south is telling.  Moreover, it begins an interesting discussion about the moral certainty of the north (black and white) between the shifting morality of the south (rainbow hued) demonstrates a sectional clash that I hope will be explored later.  Regardless, it presents a picture of a world already rife with division.  It's also a monotone world; so far, everything has been either, black, white (or some variant of "icy") or red.  We know Martin can paint a picture--later he describes ivy in which "[moonlight] painted the leaves in shades of bone and silver . . . "--so his reliance upon primary colors is either intentional or just lazy. 

Daenerys: The (very) young sister of the last Prince of Westeros, whose sexuality is to be sold to secure money and a foreign army.  This isn't the first time in history that a woman has been used against her will: "A man should be able to do as he likes with his own chattel."  Martin isn't out to make a historical argument.  But I wonder why it's important that Daenerys be portrayed as a girl barely into adolescence.  Is this the gritty reality we have to confront in this fantasy epic? 

Musings of feminist theory aside, Martin lapses into primary color descriptions, using instance of red, yellow and green without hue.  Except for the color of the two young noble's eyes (and Daenerys's dress) everything is flat and without gradation.  

So far, I'm enjoying the book a little more than I have previously.  I think the dichotomy between the monotones of the world itself and the subtle shades of moral gray already present is a fascinating take on a fantasy epic.  I'll let you know how it's going as I read more.

Want to let me know what you think about Westeros and the Game of Thrones?  Put them in the comments.  But, please, no spoilers; this is my first go-round.
  

Hugo Update . . . And What's In An Award?

Right now, I'm about halfway through this year's Hugo nominees.  Among Others, and Leviathan Wakes are pretty good.  Since I still have yet to read more than the first hundred pages of Games of Thrones, I'm not really qualified to comment on A Dance with Dragons.  That really just leaves Embassytown with the third installment of Mira Grant's Deadline series.

First of all, the Hugos are not like a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize.  The first recognizes great American works of literature, and the second rewards an author's life work--the Noble Prize, in other words, rewards the entire oeuvre.  

When I was a kid, and played little league, we'd end the season with a pizza party and golden trophies.  Everybody got one and it symbolized your participation much more than your particular contribution.  Now, I'm not saying that the legitimate efforts of highly talents people shouldn't be rewarded

The Hugo Award was set up to reflect popular trends in genre fiction.  As such, it reflects what people like, as opposed to what is good.  Now, don't get me wrong, many of the Hugo awards have been granted to exceptional works of fantasy or science-fiction.  But what makes good genre fiction is not necessarily what makes good literature.  At the heart of it, good literature challenges both the reader and the author.  First the author must transcend the limitations of the medium to explore the bounds of human nature.  The reader, on the other hand, must equally endure.

Michael Cunningham, one of the triad of jury members picking this year's Pulitzer Prize in fiction, explains at the New Yorker some of what went into choosing three titles from more than 300.  What was so remarkable about his article, however, was not the behind-the-scenes work of jury members, but really he philosophy of what a particular award signifies.

He says that "[fiction] involves trace elements of magic; it works for reasons we can explain and also for reasons we can’t. If novels or short-story collections could be weighed strictly in terms of their components (fully developed characters, check; original voice, check; solidly crafted structure, check; serious theme, check) they might satisfy, but they would fail to enchant. A great work of fiction involves a certain frisson that occurs when its various components cohere and then ignite. The cause of the fire should, to some extent, elude the experts sent to investigate."

What this tells me, however, is that the utterly ineffable parts that Cunningham and his co-jurors suspected of greatness did not ignite a fire in the souls of the board members.  So I'm curious how other awards will fare.

Will, for instance, A Dance With Dragons beat out China Mieville and Jo Walton?  Each of these books has brilliance lurking between their lines, but G.R.R. Martin is the old favorite, and his series has recently received a boost in popularity with the made-for-premium-cable television series based on his books.  Certainly, a spike like this can't be bad for Martin, but is it necessarily good for the Hugos?

Extending this line of thinking a little, Leviathan Wakes is the first book in an expected trilogy.  Should we even consider something admittedly unfinished?

Perhaps it doesn't matter, though.  Maybe this is an opportunity for the community to express its collective happiness with a particular author or work.  Maybe its a moment for sci-fi and fantasy geeks to acknowledge their favorites and just celebrate with one another their own, personal pleasure at being part of the process.  Because ultimately, awards are as much for the audience as they are for the recipient.  That little trophy (be it a golden man, a rocket, or a golden bucket of popcorn) symbolizes that we enjoyed something.  And we want you to know it.

So maybe the Pulitzer board already has life figured out and they don't need the challenge a good work of fiction symbolizes.  Or maybe they're so far removed from the American experience that they no longer recognize it when it's staring up at them from the pages of very fine works.  Either way, we'll still smile, and clap and cheer ourselves on and reward the fiction that we love.  

2012 World Fantasy Award Nominees

Check it out!  The World Fantasy Award Nominees were just announced.   

A Dance with Dragons by G.R.R. Martin made the cut, as did Among Others by Jo Walton.  If you'll recall, both were nominated for the Hugo award this year.

Stephen King makes an appearance, which shouldn't surprise too many people (well, maybe it will because he's not particularly well-known for his fantasy works).

The real surprises are the books that haven't made much of a splash in the genre world.  Osama, by Lavie Tidhar seems like something to keep an eye out for, as well as Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman.  

I'll let you know what I think but until then, post your thoughts in the comments.