Wherein I mull over a the implications of a new term for the genre

Reproduced with kind permission from the author, www.elaineisaak.com

Elaine Isaak is the author of two books published by EOS Books, The Singer's Crown and The Eunuch's Heir, pictured right.

I've been trying to start a discussion in genre circles, or perhaps a movement, to encourage fantasy to become more rigorous, in the way that we expect SF to be, i.e,

... that the implications of the innovation (usually magic, sometimes religion or societal arrangements) should be completely thought through,

... that even a fantasy world should be grounded in real-world research and the understandings which arise therefrom (whether you combine aspects of different societies or bridge off of something recognizible like medieval Europe, or simply know how the vast observatory you describe would actually be built with period techniques),

... that care should be taken with language because a modern idiom in a fantasy world stands out just as much as it would in a far future world where it lacks reference points,

... that no aspect of modern or historical society should be taken whole-hog without some platform from which it logically develops within the fantasy realm (the way that kings or vast armies sometimes arise in fantasy without the support systems to keep them in place)

... that the innovations should be mutually consistent and supportive (like predator/prey relationships in fantasy animals, some consideration of evolution, biology, and sustainability)

... that the world as a whole and the societies in it should be allowed to progress at a reasonable rate—not to remain stagnant in absurd or uncomfortable political states for aeons until the prophesied hero comes along, nor to deny that people working hard at their tasks will likely develop technologies to assist them in their labor(wind and water mills, for instance) unless there is some specific, fully integrated reason why this state occurs

I proposed a panel about this topic and had it accepted as a discussion at Worldcon in Boston. Had to miss the first half, but the second half was spirited indeed, and the guy sitting next to me described it as the best panel he'd been to all weekend (this was the last day of the con). It also showed up on the schedule at Worldcon this past year in Anaheim, so perhaps the idea is catching on.

I'd like to begin to rally fellow fantasy writers to the cause—why should we put up with the negative characterization of our works because of the sloppy majority?  I don't think that my first two books qualify as Hard Fantasy, but it's something I've been working on in newer novels.

I think most of the guidelines I listed would be qualifications for good writing in our particular field, yes, but with a particular slant (ie there are many aspects of good writing which are not touched on at all) However, I don't see any correlation between many of these things and what is selling on the shelves. I think many potential readers who are looking for good writing so strongly associate fantasy with laxity in construction and concept that they immediately turn away from it. So part of my thinking is a campaign to point out that fantasy does not have to be this way (sloppy) and to establish some things to think about for those who would like to make their work more rigorous.

For many beginning fantasy writers, especially those who may be coming from a gaming or media background rather than a literary one, the idea of fantasy equating with good writing (rather than just an adventure with dragons) would be somewhat of a novel concept. Also, I have the sense that most people in genre, both fans and writers, hold fantasy to a lower standard. Why? Why do we let that happen? In regard to Sturgeon's Law (that 90% of everything is crap), I suppose it will continue to be true—but my perception is that fantasy as a literature tends to be discarded as a whole, rather than sifted through to find the good stuff. I think that a work could meet all of my qualifications and still be crap in terms of character development, plot, etc. But at least it would be crap for the usual literary reasons, rather than for reasons which are specific to fantasy and tend to tar the entire genre with the Sturgeon brush.

I would say that, aside from the concern about how you feed an army of 10k orcs, that Tolkien qualifies in most aspects of his world-building and structure. One of my other concerns about LOTR is that of not being able to infer where the boundaries of the magic lie—but it is used so very rarely, that I also don't have the impression that it could simply be used at any time to solve the whole problem.

There will always be works of fantasy that are not engaged with one of the other of the points. I would like to see those works (as all writing should be) being the product of a deliberate choice. In the way that a person could write Space Opera which relies on FTL drives and not feel it necessary to come up with an explanation for how the drive works. I think that the genre as a whole has room for some amount of hand-waving—especially where other aspects of the work are solidly grounded. It's when we, as fantasy writers, are percieved as waving our hands all the time that there's a problem. Well, after all, can't we just make it all up? Theoretically, we can, but that's no excuse for not making up something that remains internally consistent, beholden perhaps to new laws, but never entirely lawless.