More thoughts on the status women in fantasy

“If a fantasy world is completely invented by the author, and he can create any kind of magic and government s/he wants, why not make the women completely equal?” This is a recurring question, and a good one. Fantasy books in which the women hold important positions in society set an example for young readers, by saying, this is possible. I believe this strategy, when used on television, has been effective in combating sexism, racism, and homophobia—even when writers accidentally fold biases into the stories.

Of course the society we live in today is more egalitarian than any before it. Women fill leadership positions in everything from universities to government. Unfortunately, it’s not enough, and earlier successes in the United States are beginning to erode. In the last election, for the first time, women ended with fewer seats in state and national legislatures than they had before—and this is important, as new laws are pushed forward which attempt to limit their reproductive rights. When the future is uncertain, it helps to depict the best outcomes in our stories. Doing so both guides and inspires.

But should this be a requirement for all fantasy authors? No. Definitely not. And here is why: it has been only decades, not centuries, since women have had the right to vote. Since a number of women, and not just a lucky few, have held important positions in science departments, hospitals, and businesses. If you go back hundreds rather than tens of years, women had even fewer options.  Does that make them less interesting? No; a woman who achieves any sort of victory in a patriarchal society has a compelling story. I don’t want to abandon it.

Note that ‘few’ options does not mean ‘zero’ options. Much has been discussed today on the topic of historical authenticity, and I must admit, few things make me more nervous than discussing history on the internet. That’s because history is not a series of declarations—nor a battle of citations—but rather a study of available sources that results in an evolving story. However, all available information taken as aggregate, I would rather my daughter live today than five hundred years ago. Easy.

But why go to the past for inspiration? Because it happened. Because our past led to our present in ways we cannot see or understand just from looking. ‘The past is another country’ is something one of my professors used to say, but at the same time it is not; people are people, wherever and whenever they are, and they deserve our efforts at understanding.

But here we enter into dark territory. When you have a society in which women have fewer options, you can narrow their options to almost nothing and turn them into perpetual victims. I wrote before about how uncomfortable I was writing from the point of view of a slave in Knifesworn, and how, if I had planned it properly beforehand, I would have avoided using slaves at all. But once there were slaves there, I could not ignore their story; I had to give them one. I could not let them scrub the floors and carry silk runners, invisible and oppressed, and never explore their situation. I can only hope that I did it well, that I did not make light of the kind of abuse that results from one person having absolute power over another.

Should we avoid writing about people in difficult situations if we can’t do it perfectly? Again, no. Writing is about exploring the human condition. I trespassed when I created an old fighter with trauma; I trespassed when I created people of color; I trespassed when I created someone who had been imprisoned most of his life. I am none of these things, and yet I felt the impulse to explore them, because they are all part of the human experience. In the past I have often been afraid to do something if I cannot do it perfectly—but now I realize that I can only try, and in the trying, learn valuable lessons.

But I digress somewhat. I mean to say that by presenting a woman with less power than the men, a writer is not necessarily making the statement that this is the standard, or that this is what s/he prefers to see. While I cannot speak for all writers I will say that exploring all aspects of human life is not something we should shy away from. If we don’t do it well, we will have to take our lumps—but there is no reason not to try. By trying we say to many women from the past: your story is important. Your struggles, your suffering, and your triumphs matter. I respect them and I want to learn from them.

So in the end both approaches are valid. On the one hand, authors can present the image of what could be—the egalitarian society with female rulers, fighters, mages, and everything else.  The more people read such things, the more they will come to expect it, and that is a good thing. On the other hand we have the other stories, the ones about women who overcame great obstacles for even the smallest achievements. These stories show strength and determination and can be a source of pride.

Every socially conscious writer struggles somewhat with the balance between responsibility and tale-telling, especially where the next generation is concerned. Nothing has surprised me more about writing than the fact I’ve had to face my own basic assumptions and biases over and over—may it never stop—it is educational. But I do not think there is only one way to be fair to women in our stories, nor only one way to present engaging, realistic female characters.

The Trouble with Relationships in SFF

I have noticed in daily conversation the habit many people have of comparing real relationships to those in print or film. They might compare their own platonic relationship to that of Hermione and Harry Potter, or speak of tragic love by referencing Buffy and the vampire Angel. Not only does this create a clear picture in the listener’s mind, but it also reveals the end. We know neither Harry and Hermione nor Buffy and Angel ended up together, so we know the people being spoken about won’t get together either—forgetting this is real life, and not a book, movie, or TV show. But we like to know where things belong in the emotional spectrum, how to explain them, and what to expect. 

                I begin to think the same goes for many of our beloved SFF readers. When faced with two characters in a room, they may want to map it. Are they going to be lovers? Enemies? Friends? The intrigue is not in the relationship, but in what will aid or inhibit its progression—for lovers and friends, obstacles, betrayals, and misunderstandings; for enemies, the need to work together. And if they are lovers, then the reader might sense one of two ends by the third book—they will end up together, or one of them will die. If they are enemies, the protagonist will eventually be victorious. If they are friends, they will help one another towards victory and one of them may die. What entertains is less the mystery of what will happen and more the path the characters negotiate to a largely predetermined end.

                Here I am not calling out SFF novels for being predictable (though some are); I am pointing out what readers seem to desire, whether or not the novels provide it: a way to identify and predict, to feel comfortable knowing what story they’re reading. I do it too. I love knowing the friends will stick together through setbacks and misunderstandings. I love not wondering IF the guy and girl (or guy and guy, etc.) will finally get together, but rather when, and how.

                But here is my problem. Relationships are not easily categorized, and life doesn’t move along a storybook path. The guy doesn’t always get the girl (and vice versa). Friends disappear.

With decades of adult life now under my belt, I feel that I can comfortably portray those who are in love, or aren’t; who wish they were in love, or wish they weren’t; who feel attracted to those they do not love, or are briefly unattracted to those they do. I am confident that sex and attraction are not love, that you can have sex with a friend you’re not marrying, and that just because you’re straight doesn’t mean you’ll never look at a same-sex person and think ‘hmm.’ And your friends will not always like you or support you, and sometimes you don’t want them to. Life is complicated and messy and tragically confusing.

            

           I love the movie The Crying Game for this reason. Fergus is not attracted to men, but he cares for Dil, and Dil for him. By the end their relationship has great meaning to both of them. Is it love? Friendship? Something in between, or something else entirely? The movie does not answer this question for us and leaves us in awe of the complexity of our emotions and ability to care for one another. (By the way, I have never heard anyone say, ‘Oh, it’s just like Fergus and Dil . . .’)

                In The Emperor’s Knife, relationships took a more realistic turn. No two people were destined, and while there was love, it didn’t map to any well-worn path. Reactions to this have been stratified—some readers being put off by the ‘abrupt romances’ that weren’t and the lack of a clear prototype for interactions, while others have loved it.

To some extent this post follows on my covers-as-categorization post. The need to define, categorize, and sort things can outweigh our spirit of exploration. Is real life frightening? Indeed, it is. That might explain why we try to order our emotions among known paths (Bromance! Frenemies! HoYay! True love!) While that’s fun and I can dish like any other pop culture fanatic, I (like many other SFF authors) have trouble writing that way. Humans are complex and hard to define and our relationships even more so.That's what I would rather explore.

Why Dickens?

My aspiring-author son approached me on the run-up to dinner last night. “Remember when you told me not to describe a bunch of stuff unless it was important to the mood or the plot?” he asked. 

“Yeah . . .” I had a funny feeling about this.

“And you said  to use interesting verbs and not so many adverbs.”

“Right . . .” And I knew all that was about to be thrown up into my face, in a way I couldn’t yet predict.

“Well,” he said, “My teacher is making me read GREAT EXPECTATIONS by CHARLES DICKENS!”

Twisting in my socks, I launched my arguments. I explained it was an older style of writing. I tried to point out Dickens’ genius in describing characters, illustrate the historical benefits of reading his work, but it was all for naught. Like so many other people I know, my son is staunchly anti-Dickens. At last, the adults in the room had to fall back on the old, “Everyone should read it!” and, “If you don’t read it, you won’t know what other people are talking about!” Cultural literacy used as a last, desperate assault against the forces of modernity.

There is a good argument to be had for, “Why do I have to read something I don’t like?” These days we have over 500 television channels. If a show comes on we don’t like, there are several more that we might. Music is accessible and varied. There are things to read everywhere—in magazines, on the internet, free, not free, electronic and printed. An endless array of choices. 

So why read Dickens if you don’t have to (of course, in my son's case, he has to)?

I don’t have an answer for that. I can only present this:

                Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond that was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

To me, that’s a great, distinctive style of writing; to my son, it’s a sentence that goes on too long.

Your mileage may vary.

On Covers and Fantasy Books

Recently it was brought to my attention, by Mr. Bryce Dayton and others, that the cover for Daniel Polansky’s new book,  Tomorrow the Killing, is very similar to the cover of my book, The Emperor’s Knife.

I have seen a lot of blue-tinged books in the stores, especially this luminescent, greenish blue, featured below on (the newest edition of?) The Name of the Wind, which also shows a hooded man and a landscape, though in each of these three books the landscape is different:

Though all these covers are beautiful, I notice they seem to be made up of photographs that can be recycled (I think I have seen the man on my cover gracing other books, and you can see a similar device on both The Emperor’s Knife and Tomorrow the Killing). They also use the identical font. Contrast this with the unique cover of Prince of Thorns, drawn by Jason Chan:

Here you see more variation in color, the dramatic cut-out of the cloak from the white background, and the specially created font. I don’t think many would deny this is a special cover.

In the SFF world much is made of covers. Good covers, bad covers, covers that misrepresent the contents. There is no end for discussion here. Since I use a kindle I often don’t see the covers, or see them only in passing as I order the book, and so it is sometimes difficult for me to know how much they might influence the buying habits of others. Still, there are things I have come to understand. First, a cover with a naked male torso, or a romantic-looking male looking off into the distance, are a big turnoff for some men:

While hooded men are code for lots of action and assassin-type stuff:

Swords and men in historical getup mean “fantasy” of one type or another. A girl with her back to the camera, twisting around to look at the reader, means paranormal romance and/or urban fantasy (yikes! This one is holding onto a blade!). A more abstract cover on an SFF book signals that the contents are more adult or literary. A beautiful, ornate cover means you’re going to get some old-school magic and wonder.

 

Marketing minds at publishing companies must think about who is going to enjoy a book, and then tailor the cover accordingly. (Perhaps Daniel Polansky and I appeal to the same type of reader.) But marketing is more than covers; marketing is price, promotion, placement, distribution, timing, and so much more. The cover is the last thing at the end that causes the shopper to pick your book up from the shelf – but getting that book to the shelf, hopefully at eye level, is a series of other hidden tasks. Count into that the continuing loss of standard bookstores, and you begin to wonder how many sales are still made through covers. 

I’m thinking that besides selling books, covers serve to code a book and help you decide what not to buy as much as they help you decide the opposite. When readers buy such coded books and they don’t match to expectation, the disappointment is greater than if they had known they were trying something new.

In some ways publishers might be more in the dark than amazon. Amazon can reliably tell you, ‘people who clicked on this book also clicked on that book.’ But publishers can only hope that the same people who liked one book will like another, and design the cover accordingly. They know what they want to put out there, and thank goodness for that – but as to who will buy it, perhaps they don’t know the answer any more than you or I. So they use the cover as an opportunity to advertise, to catch the eye, to place the book in the buyer’s mind.

So to answer those who asked whether I planned to protest in some way the similarity between my book’s cover art and Mr. Polansky’s – no (I don’t even know if there is such a mechanism to complain about someone else’s cover art). I don’t care. Maybe we’ll sell one another’s books. Maybe not. But we are both communicating the same thing – an old city, some (perhaps regretful) killing, and some nice prose. At least I hope that’s what we’re communicating. And good luck to all of us!