China Mieville on Tolkien and Epic/High Fantasy

[Tratyn Runewind]

Hello,

Posted by Pielorinho:
Tratyn, I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you suggesting that because many of the ideas in PSS have appeared in disparate works, PSS is itself a kluged-together mess?

I do think there's a lot of stuff in there that distracts from the story rather than advances it, I think it's in there just for the purpose of being both "cool", and different from standard fantasy ideas, and I think the "coolness" is lessened by the fact that a lot of this stuff really isn't all that original.

The cactus men are one example. They could have been any of dozens of more typical fantasy races, werewolves or ogres or what-have-you; their real purpose in the book is to be tough, tough enough to enforce the isolation of their habitat in a harsh city, and yet still easy prey for the main villains. Since darn near everyone but insane Phase Spiders is easy prey for the main villains, there's no in-story reason they have to be something as odd as cacti, which suggests that the only purpose in making them cactus men is to make them different, original, cool; yet cactus men are deeply associated in my mind, and likely the minds of many others, with Final Fantasy. The closest thing I've seen anywhere else is the needlemen (or, in 3e, needlefolk) of D&D. They get more detail in the book than in the CRPG, where they just pop up in desert regions, are very difficult to kill, and can dish out lots of damage. Mieville's versions live in a city, use weapons, and so on. But they're still cactus men; and while I strongly doubt he took them from the games, they still come off as an attempt at originality that misfired. The fact that he's thrown in airships and railroads, unusual in "standard" fantasy but very prominent in the Final Fantasy series, doesn't help him there, either.

Posted by Pielorinho:
The history of fantasy fiction is one of stealing liberally from other sources, whether from classic mythology or from other authors. PSS is firmly in this tradition, and indeed steals a lot less from other sources than do many works.

It's not the re-use of ideas that bothers me on its own; as you say, that happens all the time. But when the ideas seem to be put in for no story-related reason, for no apparent reason at all other than to seem original and different, to defy typical fantasy expectations, and yet they still resemble other ideas that have been knocked around in fantasy gaming, animation, or whatever for years, it just doesn't look good for the author.

Posted by Pielorinho:
Instead of feeling that it was disorganized, I got the feeling that it was a developed world in which many other stories were happening at the same time.

Perhaps, but too much of the time they were dropped in and then dwelt on to no real point. I could have done without most of kephra-lady's reminiscing on her and her peoples' history, for example. Arguably worse is when you start to consider that some little loose-end background detail is cool enough that it might be spun into a better story than the main storyline - there were a few of those moments for me with the book, as well, most notably the excellent potential of the mercenary "adventurers" the main characters hire at one point. I've compared the magic-and-tech mix to Final Fantasy, but that group also had a strong Shadowrun vibe to me.

Posted by Pielorinho:
The last novel I read by him, the one that won the World Fantasy Award, was downright disappointing: I found none of the characters interesting, and the overall theme of the book was unpleasantly creepy.

Do you mean Declare? I thought Declare was brilliant, but then I have always been a fan of the "secret history"-type stuff and "wilderness of mirrors" espionage yarns. Your description of Last Call does sound inspiring, though; I'll have to look into finding a copy of it.

Hope this leaves my thoughts a bit clearer to you...

 

[Desdichado]

I do not believe Tolkien sat down with the intent of sending a message. Tolkien seemed to enjoy writing tales. It was a break from the world for him. He had been doing it for years privately without really thinking that he was going to publish the work. I'm sure you read how The Hobbit came to be when Tolkien wrote down one sentence that came to mind while he was correcting papers. He had a wandering imagination.

I think I understand what you're saying, and at this point I'm at about 95% agreement with you.

Where I'd still disagree with you, I guess, is that I believe many of the elements of Middle-earth society, particularly amongst the hobbits, are more than just story-telling conventions, I believe that that was Tolkien's idealized society. But, all in all, that's a relatively minor issue.

 

[Desdichado]

Tratyn: I think a lot of this could have been avoided had Mieville not been a very vocal (and quite possibly somewhat arrogant) self-styled literary revolutionary.

It's quite possible that he's not familiar with Final Fantasy -- I am not, for instance, although many of the elements of the setting sound interesting to me, little else about the game series does. To say he "stole" cactus men, airships and railroads from a genre like anime is unsupportable.

Of course, if you are familiar with genres that include elements like that, and you feel that their presence is distracting (which is what you claim) then I can see where you're coming from. But, like I said, it's Mieville's own loud trumpetting of his originality that makes that particularly grating, I think, rather than the fact that he did in fact include such elements.

 

[Pielorinho]

I do think there's a lot of stuff in there that distracts from the story rather than advances it, I think it's in there just for the purpose of being both "cool", and different from standard fantasy ideas, and I think the "coolness" is lessened by the fact that a lot of this stuff really isn't all that original.

I'm not sure I can argue with this; I just didn't think it detracted from the story, but rather fleshed out the world more fully. But this seems to be a matter of personal preference. As I said before, the book completely blew me away when I read it, and is one of the few fantasy novels that I'll proselytize about. Maybe it helps that I've never played Final Fantasy .

Daniel

 

[Pielorinho]

Oh, and Joshua, if you've not read PSS because of Mieville's grating personality, I encourage you to hold your nose and check him out anyway. He shoulda let someone else trumpet his originality instead of doing it himself, but his originality is definitely trumpetable.

Daniel

 

[mmu1]

Tratyn: I think a lot of this could have been avoided had Mieville not been a very vocal (and quite possibly somewhat arrogant) self-styled literary revolutionary.

It's quite possible that he's not familiar with Final Fantasy -- I am not, for instance, although many of the elements of the setting sound interesting to me, little else about the game series does. To say he "stole" cactus men, airships and railroads from a genre like anime is unsupportable.

Of course, if you are familiar with genres that include elements like that, and you feel that their presence is distracting (which is what you claim) then I can see where you're coming from. But, like I said, it's Mieville's own loud trumpetting of his originality that makes that particularly grating, I think, rather than the fact that he did in fact include such elements.

Like it's been said, Mieville's claim to originality is largely based on making things "weird" for the sake of being weird. As a result, he's a failure (IMO) at creating a belieavable world with a sense of structure and history.

For example, why do the characters of PSS use flintlocks? Why do constructs powered by steam and electricity exist at the same time? Why does he change the spelling of every scientifc discipline by inserting y's in place of e's. (chymistry, etc.) Why are computers gear-driven and programmed with punch-cards in a world that uses electricity and understands the possibility of nuclear fission?

Most of these things are there for no reason other than he's got a fetish for baroque and decaying machinery, and none of it is particularly creative, because it's all style and no substance.

 

[Pielorinho]

Heresy, mmu1!

Actually, I'd answer all your questions with, why not? His world has a different physics than ours; there's no reason to expect that scientific principles which hold true in our world would hold true in his. I didn't find the book remotely implausible; judging from the many great reviews it's gotten, I'm not alone.

De gustibus, don'tcha know

Daniel

 

[Umbran]

This is what I'm saying when I make statements like "learning biographical information can be interesting." That probably sounds like a dismissal, but it isn't.

No, actually the statement, "I am not interested in Tolkien's intentions -- his intentions have nothing to do with the interpretation of his book," sounds like dismissal.

My point is that we cannot evaluate interpretations according to how well they correspond to any particular statements attributed to the writer. We can only evaluate them according to a) how well-supported they are by the text, and b) how interesting they are.

And this is a point I don't agree with. We can evaluate interpretations according to how well they correspond to author's statements, we just have to keep our brains in gear while doing so.

We must keep in mind how much we trust the author. By description, I wouldn't trust what China says about his own work, as he seems to be trying very hard to hype himself. I'd trust Tolkien more, but only to a point. From what I've read, Tolkien was a very private man, uncomfortable with the spotlight his work focused upon him. I'd expect some of his statements to be colored by his modesty and wish to remain off center stage.

The other thing we must remember is that the artist does not see and know everything there is to be seen and known about a work. The author knows quite a few things, but is also very close tot he work, and has ego wrapped up in the mess. That can tend to put blinders on. In addition, the author is not the only participant in the reading. Art is about both the artist and the audience.

So, the author is not paramount, but neither are they irrelevant. Heck, I'd say that among the hallmarks of a good author is the ability to engage the reader fully, and still get the intended messages across. And you cannot tell if that's happening if you ignore whatthe author intended.

Wrangling, that's what it's all about....

Yea and verily, it is so

 

[Dimwhit]

Heresy, mmu1!

Actually, I'd answer all your questions with, why not? His world has a different physics than ours; there's no reason to expect that scientific principles which hold true in our world would hold true in his. I didn't find the book remotely implausible; judging from the many great reviews it's gotten, I'm not alone.

De gustibus, don'tcha know

Daniel

Actually, I think mmu1 has a point. If an author is going to create technologies and base them on our perceived physics, then odd discrepancies like that need to be explained using the new physics of that world. If there's a legitimate reason for such an odd mixture of technologies to exist in a world, it needs to be explained. Otherwise, some readers are going to use the laws and physics of their own physical world and conclude that it's just not plausible.

But then, I suppose that's where you get two different kinds of readers. I think all readers will look at a story, even fantasy and scifi, through their own reality. One type of reader, however, will accept a new or skewed reality (common in fantasy/scifi) without question as to the mechanics behind that reality. The second type of reader would like to know why the physical world of a story operates differently than our own. Failure to do so would be considered a serious flaw.

I tend to lean toward the second type of reader. I don't like vastly different realities without an explanation. For example, I'm always bugged by stories that contain a world with a green sky. How did that happen? The only way I can think of to have a green sky is to have a completely different color spectrum than we have in our world. Doesn't seem possible, even for fantasy.

Dang, I'm rambling, and I don't think I even made sense. Is it Friday yet?

 

[mmu1]

Heresy, mmu1!

Actually, I'd answer all your questions with, why not? His world has a different physics than ours; there's no reason to expect that scientific principles which hold true in our world would hold true in his. I didn't find the book remotely implausible; judging from the many great reviews it's gotten, I'm not alone.

De gustibus, don'tcha know

Daniel

I'm not saying it's a realism issue, or that I have a problem with fantasy worlds that work by different rules than our own.

I don't like Mieville's writing because his world doesn't really convey the sense of having any rules, other than "what could I think of to make this feel more like The City of Lost Children" leavened with a healthy does of politics I won't comment on.

It's the difference between being a pretentious ass of an "artist" and a true fantasy writer who creates a living, breathing world with a sense of history like Tolkien, Brust or Martin. (Or even Mieville's hero Pullman, as much as I despise him for peddling something as obviuosly ideological and manipulative as the Amber Spyglass series as children's literature.)