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M. John Harrison on Worldbuilding


Larry.

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Maybe I would have more sympathy with Zadie Smith's argument that the reader has to do as much work as the writer if it took less than twenty minutes for me to get in the car, drive to the bookstore, buy a book and drive home again; I could stretch it out to an hour if I walked there and back and had a coffee in between. Then it might take a few nights' reading to finish it, compared to months or years of work by the author (exceptions granted to any novel by Barbara Cartland, which can be read while drinking the coffee).

But I probably come under the heading of modern, underappreciative readers no matter what, because I do want reading fiction to not feel like work. If it stretches my brain in new and different areas, great - but that, for me, isn't the point of reading. Contrary to Smith's assertion earlier in her article, the point for me isn't to perceive the author's "way of being in the world", because I don't really care. Indeed, I do want to be entertained; and I don't see how that makes me much different from any other reader since Gutenberg and Caxton set up their presses. I want the author to tell me a story, and make it a good one.

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Bronn,

But no amount of thought, effort or skill on the reader's side will make a bad book anything but a bad book.

Note that this is true of the writer, though. Once the book is done and published, none of their efforts is any more likely to make a bad book anything but a bad book. They are in exactly the same position as the reader. They have no special "freedom" to control the reception and interpretation of the work.

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I haven't read Harrison's work and, from his posts, am not sure I'm missing anything. Is Viriconium a city [reading the post on Fantastic Metropolis]? How can you have a city which is never the same twice? Do the streets move around? The landmarks? Because that's just goofy; actually, not just goofy, it smacks of poor editing. Harrison's prose may be the bee's knees, cat's meow, etc., but when I look out my window, the cars may change but the tree is still standing on the boulevard and there's still three f&cking feet of snow outside. Sorry... a little bitter about the weather right now.

Consistency. Characters should behave in character unless driven by an overwhelming force, which, dear Author, you should at some point explain well enough for me, your reader, to buy the change. Hills and trees should stay in the same place short of earthquakes and axes [hoping Happy Ent isn't reading this!], or you'd better have a good reason why. And the famous eye colour issue should be either not brought up, or resolved appropriately.

Yes, Viriconium is a city. Harrison's various books set in it are (as far I can remember) internally self-consistent taken as separate books so the streets don't move around and character motivations are consistent. The Viriconium stories do however contradict the other stories, but I don't see that as a problem since the books are effectively stand-alones. I don't see any reason why different books set in what is superficially the same setting necessarily have to be consistent with each other, it is consistency within individual stories that is important.

ETA - While I don't agree with Harrison's original post, I think it is a bit unfair of people to accuse him of only saying what he said because he was jealous of the success of others. It is entirely possible that he's just saying what he honestly believes. If someone on here attacks the quality of Terry Goodkind's (BBHN) prose then I would consider nonsensical any Mystarrian suggestion that the critic was only saying it because he was jealous of Goodkind's success, I think much the same here. Maybe Harrison is jealous, we just don't know, but he has a right to express an opinion without his motives being called into question.

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No, but I suppose Neil Gaiman is, and he just had a post which, I think, answers this:

QUOTE

Talking about unintentional consequences, I recently spent an interested couple of hours browsing through my complementary copy of The Neil Gaiman Reader, edited by Darrell Schweitzer. Essays on things I've written, by a dozen different very smart people. I think it's probably a very good book of essays, but I am undoubtedly the last person on earth who can usefully comment on it, being, as I am, the least competent critic alive of the author in question.

Typical Gaiman arch self-deprecation. Proves nowt. Says nothing about the topic in question and everything about Neil Gaiman's fondness for the would-be anarchic as a consequence of the creative process.

And any writer, ANY writer is being disingenuous at best to make out that he or she is the worst critic of his or her own work. Every bloody line is a critique in the writing of them and Gaiman knows it as well as any other author does.

It's all terribly PC this empowering of the reader as being on a creative par with the author. Stuff and nonsense. It's the same stuff and nonsense that puts the 'celebrity' status of a Jade Goody on a par with a great actor or, indeed a great writer. Stuff and nonsense. I'm all for the reader intepreting and making quirky insights and noticing occurances etc., because that's what the whole thing is about. But let's be clear which end is the tail and which end is the dog and which bit is doing the wagging.

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Rakov,

What was the point of asking if I was a writer if you were just going to knock down any writer who indicated anything contrary to your opinion on the matter?

Moving goal posts can be great fun, I suppose, but I'd rather leave the heavy lifting to others in that case.

Amusingly enough, I guess I am a sort of writer now, aren't I? What with the world book, but this is -- of course -- an exercise in doing exactly the sort of thing M. John Harrison despises. ;)

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This quote of China Mieville might elucidate things somewhat:

"Some seventeen notable empires rose in the Middle Period of Earth. These were the Afternoon Cultures. All but one are unimportant to this narrative..."

These are the opening lines of M. John Harrison's stunning Viriconium sequence, in which he casually writes the most important rule about world-building that I know. Histories, laws, cultures, aesthetics -- worlds -- are colossal, and colossally complex. There is no way you can ever tell the story of a whole world. No matter how detailed your timeline or carefully illustrated your bestiary, you can't possibly explain everything. If something's not important to the narrative, then don't try -- there are only so many info-dumps a story can take, and I save mine for the stuff that the reader has to understand. The rest of the strange things, or races, or places -- they're just there. They just happen. Put them in, describe them, and leave them alone, even if that leaves the reader uncertain. That's fine. In fact, it's good -- it's culture shock. Hopefully it communicates a sense that there is a world beyond the book, in which the story occurs, rather than a story with a few fantasy props thrown in.

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Eh that's Mieville's opinion (as a reader), and one I find much more palatable then most of what Harrison writes. However, this is pretty much a red herring as far as Harrison's original post is concerned.

Originally posted by Harrison on his website,

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.
This is utter tosh.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

Part of the above is just offensive bullshit, the rest is plain bullshit. Harrison seems to have trouble understanding the concept of 'world building'. World building in secondary world stories is not just about putting in various geographical features, dropping historical references or cultural myths - they are mainly the tools which, if employed correctly, certainly help a great deal; it's about contructing a society, or a world, which is internally consistent and works as an adequate backdrop for the story you are trying to tell - a story which uses the world building tools judiciously. The more a reader is drawn into a world, the more effective and enjoyable the reading experience becomes - it's a simple matter of getting more bang for your buck. The zillions of threads in the books forums on these very boards are as good an example as one is likely to get.

In short, Mieville's views about Harrison's world-building don't elucidate anything and aren't really relevent to Harrison's own views.

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A few more quick comments while I battle a nasty head cold and exhaustion from my first teaching evaluation today:

I was asked about how I would define "escapism." Got a minute? ;)

Escapism, to me, is a misleading concept. There is no true "escape" that is ever really going to take place. Just as one cannot "escape" things such as gravity, death, or taxes, one cannot "escape" this world. One might utilize coping mechanisms to deal with certain of life's matters, but in the end, it is just a futile denial of the world around. Some people just cannot deal with relating to the world around them, so they try to deny that what is being experienced actually "exists."

Applied to fiction, "escapism" is just merely an overused catch-all sort of work of amorphous nature. It is easy to say that one reads for "escapism" - the word has come to mean practically shit. As I stated above, one cannot do any true "escaping," only using coping mechanisms such as one's imagination to create idealized forms. Nothing new about this, really.

However, not all stories are predicated on a belief that one ought to try to "take a mental vacation" from the world around. A great many stories (fables in particular) have moral beliefs embedded in them. One of but many examples of Texts being used as a transmission point of ideas from the Author to the Reader. How the Reader interprets the Author's Text is a totally different matter.

And as for the "reading for 'fun'" comment: I asked what "fun" is because are people going to use it in such a catch-all fashion as to render its meaning practically nothing in value? Is it just one of "those words" who don't brook definitions and explorations of causes, consequences, and interpretations? Is "fun" a known universal, or is it more relative in nature?

I'm a functionalist at heart. There a lot of "fun" in functionalism, as you can quite pun here... But seriously, if one doesn't question or be skeptical toward such sweeping truth claims, then why the hell bother with such nonsense words? Damn, I think I read too much Bakker in addition to a great many other authors ;)

But to bring it on home: Be more cautious of the words employed. It's almost like reading a circular argument, with ill-defined words being used to justify non-explored concepts in service of a vague world-view that needs much clarification.

Harrison said his piece. It is something he has commented on before in a great many places. But why are people taking it so personal that he said that this apparent adoration of this nebulous, ill-defined, catch-all word of "worldbuilding" isn't a good thing? Spending hours devoting one's energies to picayune tasks of dubious social standing might indeed be a sign of the "foot of nerdism," but what else is there to it? Question before attacking, I suppose.

And speaking of questioning, I am wondering why I am not gazing at the stars at night, marveling over what is rather than trying to thing of things which cannot be. Speculative fiction has its important place in the transmission of ideas and material culture, but it is best served to be as but merely a source of dreams that can be explored and made "true." Nasty, pernicious functionalism again. Guess I better spend 30 pages pondering how best to flay an elf (wood elf, not dark, if you must know) and to roast it over an open flame. That is what makes the field so unique, no? :P

*ducks glares of those who took the last sentence too literally*

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However, not all stories are predicated on a belief that one ought to try to "take a mental vacation" from the world around...And speaking of questioning, I am wondering why I am not gazing at the stars at night, marveling over what is rather than trying to thing of things which cannot be.

I think people read fiction in order to live vicariously. Or, rather, to experience emotions vicariously. Most of our lives are so dull and devoid of any emotion other than melancholy that we crave just some sort of feeling.

Yea, melancholy, devoid of emotion...I'm probably speaking for just myself, there. But anyway, that is the purpose of fiction, to me, rather than the enlargement of the mind. That is what nonfiction is for, which is what I think people should spend most of their reading time with. A different way of being pretentious, I guess.

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Rakov,

What was the point of asking if I was a writer if you were just going to knock down any writer who indicated anything contrary to your opinion on the matter?

Moving goal posts can be great fun, I suppose, but I'd rather leave the heavy lifting to others in that case.

Because you do not prove your point with a single utterance from among a million, Ran. A general truth cannot be argued or proved by a single example alone, when the thing in question is so contentious and as nebulous as the thing being contested here. More data. More data. More concurrence. Because one writer among many says it is so does not make it so. Gaiman knows not to bite the hand that feeds him. And he is very much of the post (and maybe even post-post) modern fashion of that writer/reader constructionism, deconstructionism reconstructionism touchy feelydom. It's all about the fans when there is cult status to burden you.

And the key word in Gaiman's utterance is 'I', used several times. He is being singular here. That is what he is like, it is not offered as a general rule of thumb that he either directly or indirectly infers is particular to writers all and sundry. 'Being as I am..'

One thing I will allow is that the creative process is far from transparent. The level at which a writer brings forth ideas, merges them, meshes them, dovetails them, juxtaposes them with others is still much of a mystery, thank goodness. But that's between the writer and his work. He will have in his mind the most know-all everyman reader there is in order to caulk the seams of his ship soundly each time so that it is hard to sink. But such a reader remains an imaginary critical reader that exists within the world of the writer and that which he is writing. it is dependent upon no real reader out there (i.e. one outside of his head) whatsoever to exist. He has his vision when he is in the process of composition. It is definitive. Now if real readers out there want to mess about and guess what he meant and put their own interpretation upon it and that novel takes on another life as a result, good luck to them. But it does not carry the same weight nor the same credibility of the writer's own. They are not on the same level. It isn't all relative.

I have moved no goalposts at all. Somebody thought they had scored a goal without realising that they were offside.

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I think people read fiction in order to live vicariously. Or, rather, to experience emotions vicariously. Most of our lives are so dull and devoid of any emotion other than melancholy that we crave just some sort of feeling.

Yea, melancholy, devoid of emotion...I'm probably speaking for just myself, there. But anyway, that is the purpose of fiction, to me, rather than the enlargement of the mind. That is what nonfiction is for, which is what I think people should spend most of their reading time with. A different way of being pretentious, I guess.

And that first part of what you said...I think that sums up quite well of what worries me about many peoples' reasons for reading: the notion that this world is somehow lacking. A frightening thing for me to contemplate, actually. I'll just say that I don't experience this disconnect. If anything, I experience things in my life almost too vividly for my own good from time to time. Can't stand strong emotions around me - makes me physically ill, even if I have no close relations to those involved.

Hrmm...more food for thought, I think.

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the notion that this world is somehow lacking. A frightening thing for me to contemplate, actually.

Couldn't you say this with regards to all speculative fiction? Isn't there a fundamental assertion that this world is lacking? Why write fantasy? Guy Gavriel Kay once said:

the journeys and motifs of classic fantasy can come closer to mirroring the inner journey of the human spirit than almost anything else.

This quote does state that there is something lacking in the real world, that fantasy can better explore certain themes. I remember reading a book by Rudolfo Anaya and getting a better understanding of what spirituality can mean, especially to a young boy trying to reconcile conflicting cultures.

Moreover, couldn't you say the same of all fiction? This seems close to saying if it's not a modern-day, real-world, and experienced by the author, it's worthless. Ser Garlan said that he read to live vicariously, and I think a lot of people do that. Fiction is ultimately escapist. For that matter, all entertainment is. Why disconnect from the world at all? Why not stick to reality? Personally, I feel that can be pretty empty. We live in an uncaring universe heading towards entropy. People should be able to make what meaning they can without being looked down on.

As for the neologism of worldbuilding, I maintain that it is setting. As another poster said, the word came about because it's an imagined world, built from the ground up. So it's a more detailed setting in an imagined world. But it's ultimately still setting. That said, I agree with Mieville's statement; good writers should leave out meaningless expository narrative. And if that were all Harrison were saying, I wouldn't have a problem with it. If he was even just saying some fans dwell too much on relatively meaningless parts of the books, I wouldn't have much of a problem with that. God knows there are some obsessive people out there. But he made a blanket statement condemning worldbuilders and the people who enjoy reading about created worlds, which in my opinion is both insulting and hypocritical.

Rakov, with respect to Neil Gaiman, it's always about fans. At least if you're a professional writer. As for relativism, the writer writes what he wants. The reader reads it and takes something away. The writer can't control what the reader takes away. If he's done his job well, the reader won't stray far from the writer's intention. However, that doesn't mean the reader won't take away something the writer didn't intend. The writer can say the reader is wrong, and the reader can smile and walk away. And if the writer doesn't stew in his frustration but nobly decides to be satisfied that he knows the Truth, in a hundred years when he's dead and buried, people will still take things away from his work (assuming it survives) that he may not have intended. His intention can be forgotten completely. Another reader, one who did not know the Truth, could have an interpretation which would define the work for thousands, even millions, of people. And the dead writer won't care.

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Dylanfanatic,

A mistake you seem to be making, and one that is certainly made by Harrison and Chouinard and all of the others who think their outlook is the only valid one, is that what art means to you is only that.

What that piece of art means to you.

There are a lot more important things to be concerned, nay frightened about in this existence than someone else's connection to this existence and how it is perceived relative to your own perceptions. In fact, for a guy whose opinion I respect very much, you're sounding a bit daft on this particular point.

But then, I suppose you're in good company.

I've ranted on Harrison before. I don't think he's worthy of another. He's simply an over-privileged old man with more connection to rocks than reality.

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And that first part of what you said...I think that sums up quite well of what worries me about many peoples' reasons for reading: the notion that this world is somehow lacking. A frightening thing for me to contemplate, actually. I'll just say that I don't experience this disconnect. If anything, I experience things in my life almost too vividly for my own good from time to time. Can't stand strong emotions around me - makes me physically ill, even if I have no close relations to those involved.

Hrmm...more food for thought, I think.

The world can be lacking when it comes to story telling. As GGK quote above points out, fantasy and Sci-fi can be incredibly powerful BECAUSE of the new world they are set it. It allows the author complete creative control over the story. You can mold the setting to fit the story/idea/whatever your trying to convey. The world is quite lacking and limiting in many ways. It's alot easier to write about though, because all the world-building is pre-done for you. Everyone knows what a car looks like and what the romans were and roughly how far it is from LA to NY (ie - a long way).

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I was going to say something after reading this post by Dylan a couple hours ago, but Stego pretty much said it better than me. Life can be pretty harsh and cruel, and as someone currently going through depression, I find reading to be something that gets my mind off negative things, if only for a while. You're looking at this from your functionalist viewpoint, but for some people they really do need the break from reality that reading and other forms of entertainment give. It is an illusion sure, but then again the brain works more on perception than anything. For some people and jobs it is needed. Reminds me of watching/reading Band of Brothers. These guys are in a horrible war, but even at the front lines they'd do something like watch a movie or read a book because they needed to get their mind off the fact they could die at any time. Now most people aren't in anything like that, but my current situation with being depressed about not finding work or getting responses from applications is something I need to get my mind to not constantly dwell on.

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I think I was saying that I read fiction not to escape something, but in search of something--namely, emotion, which one would normally experience through interaction with fellow human beings--which in itself reveals how pathetic my current existence really is.

Edit: So I guess it comes around full circle, and is indeed an escape?

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Because you do not prove your point with a single utterance from among a million, Ran.

Then it was pretty pointless to ask me if I was a writer, wasn't it? I too would be a single point of reference.

It's impossible to suppose that Gaiman is the only author who professes an inability to critique their work after it is produced, or the only author who considers the reader's view on things equally valid to his own. I can say I've seen other authors refer to views similar to Gaiman's -- Guy Kay and Sarah Monette spring to mind most recently, but I suppose Monette's PhD. in literature makes her opinion anathema.

A general truth cannot be argued or proved by a single example alone, when the thing in question is so contentious and as nebulous as the thing being contested here.

Which is absolutely true. You were the one who asked for a single point of data, not I.

DF,

If you could explain why you believe people write fiction -- any fiction, not just genre fiction -- it might give me (and perhaps others) a means of explaining in similar terms why we enjoy it and what our enjoyment is about.

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