M. John Harrison on Worldbuilding

[Rakov]

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.

That's a spurious logical Spockism, Ran, and gets neither of us any further!

It's impossibly 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.

It is not impossible but pretty bloody silly for Gaiman (who I admire immensely right back to his Sandman days) or any other writer to suggest totally straight-faced. He was being self-deprecating and disingenuous. You will find that 'professing an inability to critique their work after it is produced' usually stems primarily from being heartily sick of the sight of it after all the blood sweat, tears and redrafts involved in producing it. The idea that an author of Gaiman's ability produces a book then sort of holds up his hands and says he isn't quite sure what it's really about and that readers can enlighten him on the matter more than he can himself on his own penned creation is game playing. If I apply the same spurious logical Spockism this is to suggest we are happy for authors to dump stuff down on the page/screen that they really haven't a clue as to what they mean with and for the reader to make sense of it all, each to his own, at random and then tell the author what it means? Deliberate game playing at best. Monkeys at the typewriter at worst. It's silly.

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

No I didn't! The only instance I can find that might make you think so is here:

Are you a writer, Ran? If so, you will know those moments when,

That is by no means asking for a single point of data! It is providing an example in my argument among several that I instanced throughout my posts. I do not hang my opinion upon that one example either there, here or anywhere before.

This is fun Ran and we must beg to differ on certain things. Why am I so exercised by all of this? Because someone has to stand up for the authority and integrity of the author's vision, even though he knows it is often best not to do so himself.

The brain of the reader is the energy source that helps drive the engine of the novel he is reading (one of the greatest and most stimulating pure pleasures of life for most of us here, I'm sure) but it is the author who constructed that engine, assembled the component parts in just such a way, with that ghost in the machine of meaning(s) the author himself haunts through it and the author who knows exactly how that engine ticks. It isn't an equal and relative conjunction between author and reader. Credit where credit is due. That's all I want for the grafting authors out there, Ran.

[MinDonner]

On the other hand, Rakov, to take a couple of extreme examples:

1. I have a trollish acquaintance on another message board (non-fantasy, you won't know him) who will make annoying and provocative announcements phrased in slightly subtle ways, then when anyone tries to call him on it he'll accuse them of twisting his words... eg:

TK: I don't see why we should allow gay people equal rights.

Someone else: What do you have against gay people? Do you think they are inferior or evil etc?

TK: That's not what I said! Stop putting words in my mouth!

Who is right, the reader or the writer?

2. Anne Rice. She thinks her latest books are sublime works of poetry; most of her readers think they are didactic works of hackery.

Who is right, the reader or the writer?

3. Dan Simmons. He claims his Time Traveller "essay" wasn't about genocide, despite a strong subtext picked up by large numbers of his readers to that effect.

Who is right, the reader or the writer?

It's the writer's job to make their intent clear in the writing - if it's interpreted differently by the readers, that means the original intent was not clear, whether it was to push a message or just to write something good. The author has no place insisting on an interpretation that can't be gleaned from the text itself.

[Rakov]

It's the writer's job to make their intent clear in the writing - if it's interpreted differently by the readers, that means the original intent was not clear, whether it was to push a message or just to write something good.

You'll get no disagreement from me, there, Mindonner!

The enitre thrust of my objections such as they are, is to highlight the consummate skill of the author. I want to stick up for he author. And it might come as a shock, but truly consummate authors with substance to their work write not for the reader, nor publisher, but for themselves. They write it because they can't not write it. That he can produce something of substance under such circumstances if he is established (because there are plenty of fantasy authors who are established that churn out nothing of substance repeatedly) is a remarkable achievement indeed and needs to be acknowledged. And perish the thought that any inference should be made that one doth troll.

Let's think REALLY HARD about these things shall we. test each other's statements, as you do mine, that makes for good debate that is fun and stimulating and allows for heated disagreements.

I am wrong on many, many things. I objected to the given about the reader sharing equal rights of insight into the text as the author who penned it. It palpably is not so. On an abstract level one can argue for it to underline the writer/reader interaction (for there is no 'relationship'), which I myself did - brain of reader as energy to help drive the engine the writer created. That is there. But the reader can't build that fearsum engin in the first place. let's acknowledge the achievement of that. That's all I ask as a given for the authors out there, even if they are often too self-deprecating or arch to ask for it themselves!

[Stego]

Just for reference, here is the rant I went on, in the form of a review, with regards to Harrison a few months ago:

Viriconium by M. John Harrison

"I think it's undignified to read for the purposes of escape. After you grow up, you should start reading for other purposes" - M. John Harrison

This particular quote was brought to my attention as the signature of Jay Tomio on the Fantasy Book Spot forums. I've considered it, deliberated it, and seethed against it for months now, and decidedly feel the need to rage against it.

Insipid and blathering nonsense. I refuse to even accept his preposterous premise and allow that he is somehow the dignity police and can make such random generalizations. He's an author -- a talented, acclaimed, and commercially unsuccessful author; nothing more.

And the rampant attacks on escapism from SF pundits is crowned by this ludicrous assertion. The search for an escape from reality is deemed immature and foolish, when it was the base premise for the advent of literature in the first damn place. Perhaps Mr. Harrison and the proponents of this claptrap philosophy have never experienced any sort of life which literally begs for escape, but we are not all priviledged denizens of London. We are not all born with the inherent right to higher education and loft apartments in Manhattan. The greatest challenges that most will face have nothing to do with finding the next hand-hold on a climbing wall, Mr. Harrison, and escapism is not a four letter word.

During my short-tenured time in the war-ravaged former Yugoslavia, I would have lost my mind if not for Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. I needed that escape each day, I lived every waking moment for it. Later, In Africa and Kosovo, I discovered George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. I read these books literally dozens of times, along with paperbacks from Heinlein, Asimov, Lovecraft, Tolkien, Card, Zelazny, Hobb, King, and even Tom Clancy. (Clancy, quite kindly, gave me a stack of his books after he interviewed me for this.)

I take incredible offense at the assertion that, as a combat veteran, I was either not 'grown up,' or that wishing a release from an incredibly austere day-to-day I was leading at such a time was somehow undignified.

Furthermore, I assert that I did not have it bad at all compared to the vast majority of human beings on this planet. I was fed, clothed, and had a roof (sometimes) over my head. Perhaps Harrison's commentary works well with his overpriviledged crowd in London, but it's pure bunk in the real world. I submit that this sentence is as foolhardy as anything ever presented by the psychotic Terry Goodkind or the criminally insane Orson Scott Card.

M. John Harrison is something of a darling of the critical mass in speculative fiction, and so you'll likely not find another negative opinion regarding him or his work on the entire bloody internet. That's ok. I'm up for the challenge. (And fallout.)

Oh yeah, Viriconium.

Viriconium is a collection of all of Harrison's work that takes place in the fantasy world of the same name. His prose is wondrous, and the manner in which he weaves a tale is Pulitzer worthy. That said, it's boring. Harrison is the only author who can write a swordfight that (literally!) puts me to sleep.

The Pastel City, the first Viriconium book, is actually pretty awful. It gets far better from there, thankfully. A Storm of Wings, published nine years later, shows a significant improvement in both prose (which was never lacking) and in storytelling. A Storm of Wings is where Harrison quite obviously made his name as a master fantasist.

Viriconium Nights (The Floating Gods) is again a departure from what came before, both is style and in that actualities of the world. Names and places change, while remaining very much Viriconium. There are also a handful of short stories set in the same world which complete the collection.

So the question that remains at the completion of Viriconium; when your prose is elegant and delicious, is it acceptable to be boring?

6/10

[Nerdanel]

I took a look at functionalism and I don't particularly agree with it. I think it's overly reductionist, as one can see with the whole "questioning fun" issue in this thread. Looking at Wikipedia, I seem to be more of an emergent dualist and a compatibilist as far as the philosphy of mind goes.

I read fiction for fun. By that I mean (like a previous poster) that I wish to experience vivid emotions since my normal life is so dull. I do not get to experience much in the way of powerful emotions (except melancholia) on a regular basis. In fact I seem to have the ability to stay calm in a crisis, not that I've ever been in a real crisis. I love the sort of books that have Dark Lords and the fate of a world hanging in a balance, at least if the threat is plausible and the Dark Lord competent. (Donaldson's Lord Foul is such a wonderful character. He's powerful, evil, and so smart he's typically several steps ahead of the main characters. And he learns from his mistakes. For how not to handle a Dark Lord, read something by Eddings) I've always needed a very high level of emotional stimulation to bypass my inherent rational detachment. For example, I do not read contemporary thrillers because I am unable to find the "thrill" part.

Worldbuilding is for me crucial in producing emotions, since if I find a world implausible, my suspension of disbelief is shattered and I'm reminded that I'm reading a (badly-written) novel. My rational side takes over and starts analyzing the exact ways the story fails, and emotions - save for things like irritation - bow out. I suppose people who fear being swamped in powerful emotions might wish to make their reading experience as unreal as possible. However, I'm not like that at all. I NEED those emotions and reading is a safe way of getting them. I'm far too rational to try something ridiculous in the real world for my thrills, so I must get them virtually. (I think my particular mental/emotional disposition has evolved to hunt mammoths with a spear.)

(What next? An argument against people having sexual intercourse for "fun" or reasons other than procreation?)

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

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.

I read once, many years ago, an interview with Stanislaw Lem in which he mentioned that he met many people who think that impossibility of communicating with sentient ocean in Solaris stands for incurable alienation of individual from society. He said he was quite surprised by this interpretation, since it certainly wasn't what he meant, but he also added that he understands that once the book is out he as an author has no right to enforce his interpretation, so if this interpretation of Solaris became prevalent, he would just have to live with it.

[Larry.]

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.

I disagree a slight bit here - when I said it was frightening to me, I meant it exactly like that - to me. I am fully aware of others having differing opinions and so forth, but I felt like it would be best to put my own take on the table and see what would occur.

I work most every day with adolescents, either as a schoolteacher or as a weekend counseling tech at a drug/alcohol rehab center. What I see in both places is often other manifestations of this "disconnect" with the world. Maybe I am mistaken in conflating these with the other flavors seen in those who want to "lose" themselves in an imagined "world," but it just seems so strange to me. Trying to understand why all these attitudes about how crappy this actual world have come about.

I know the main purpose of speculative fiction is to ask questions, to see if in our minds at least, something can be changed from the actual. There is nothing wrong with that as a thing in and of itself. But on one of those myriad blog commentaries, someone (I forget whom) makes an interesting point. If we, as Readers, do not challenge ourselves and by extension the Text we are reading, if we do not attempt to engage that other person's imagination, then what we end up in the end is a very passive Reader, one who takes what another has written as being fundamentally true without questioning what more could be behind this and if it could be applied to some subconscious facet of life. Passive readers, those who do not want to engage in critical thinking or never have learned to be critical thinkers - they are the ones reigning supreme in all this. Not me, not you, not the people replying here (for all of us, in our own ways are trying to go beyond the written Text of Harrison's little post to create our own interpretations), but those people who stare at others reading a book, wondering how they could be so "dull" as to bother with reading, while they resume watching American Idol to see which poor fools think they can see and can't, so they can laugh at their begging and anger toward the judges.

Or to put it much, much more concretely: Yesterday, I gave a test over Mesoamerica societies from 1200 BCE-900 CE to my 6th grade class. I said this over and over again, about how the Maya played a game with a 5-pound rubber ball that was called potka-pok. I had it spelled out for them on a review sheet, which I proceeded to go over just before the test. I had to read the test aloud due to some having functional illiteracy. Here was the test question:

What was the name of the game that the Maya played with a five-pound rubber ball?

A) Pokémon

Potka-pok

C) Tamagotchi

D) Pelota

The numbers that put Pokémon and the others would make many here weep. That is what I deal with. No good listening skills, very low reading comprehension skills, absolutely no critical thinking skills. Yes, I know they are only 6th graders, but when I taught high school seniors some years before, it wasn't much better than that.

I say all that because I perceive underneath a lot of what Harrison said (leaving out tone for those that want to harp on that point) a worry about readers who do not want to engage in critical thinking, who want a fiction served up to them, no need to think about what the author was trying to convey. This is leaving out those who seem to want such worlds to disassociate themselves from this one. There is a helluva lot for me to be very, very concerned about, especially since I'm one who's charged to "educate" these students. I do my best (off today due to an unavoidable commitment with my other job, something that irks me to no end), but I just can't help but to be frightened at what I perceive about general trends. This worship of "worldbuilding" by some as being the most important part of the writing/story is just a small facet of greater concerns that I have.

But that's just me - I still haven't won the Lotto yet, so I'm just one of many competing voices out there

[MinDonner]

Hmm, I can sort of see where you're coming from here, though I don't agree with a lot of it. To paraphrase (sorry if this is oversimplification), the use of maps, glossaries etc in books worries you because you think the author's making it too easy for the reader, who should instead be able to deduce what the world looks like without having it served up on a plate - is that about right?

OK, I agree that authors shouldn't spell everything out for the readers, but that's just bad writing; as far as I can see, that's not got anything to do with worldbuilding. It's not a cop-out to add a map; often we just want the map because it's an extra bit of the author's imagination for us to play with, not because we're too lazy to figure out where all the bits go.

And escapism... doesn't mean your life is unutterably crap, just means that the things in books are more exciting (as they should be - I wouldn't want to read about someone commuting to work every day then going home for tea). That's why people go on holiday. It's not a bad thing.

[Stego]

GRRM said that he reads books to be a king, a knight, a detective.....to have swordfights and naval battles....and to love and make love to thousands of different women. (During his Vericon GoH speech, and I am paraphrasing.)

I read books for much the same reason. To do things I wouldn't otherwise be able to do.

[Larry.]

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.

To question thing about themselves, other people, and the surroundings around them. To see if things can be manipulated to go X instead of Y. To record such imaginative exercises in order to share them (in most cases - Emily Dickenson wouldn't fit here) with others. To have a "safe" means of venting, of coping with things that are terrible things to have occured...

I could probably list a few more, but it should suffice to note that in each of these, I see these motivations as being engagements with our world and its situations. I don't believe "escape" is possible, but these stories having a function of consolation/helping one hope with this world is a very possible one, one that can be quite powerful at times.

[Shryke]

Whjy Fantasy and Why Now?

This is a few years old and most of you have probably already seen it. But here's an article by R. Scott Bakker on why people may read fantasy.

As for your points, I think an author can easily make a story both entertaining and engaging while still having deeper layers. It's actually BETTER that way in my mind. You suck the reader in with an interesting story and then only later do they maybe begin to see the ideas behind it. If you can't suck them in the first place, their never going to read the damn book.

But in the end this has nothing to do with "Worldbuilding", which is why his attacks seen so ... pointless. Worldbuilding is nothing more then establishing a cohesive setting for your book. It eliminates alot of plot holes and rewrites too. And it allows you more story-telling freedom.

And you've got a very strange view on the whole "reading" process that I just don't understand.

[Larry.]

MD,

The overemphasis on maps, glossaries, etc. is a very small facet of my concern. It is, in most cases, technically unnecessary, needless to say, but I'm just one of those that finds putting-the-pieces-together-type of stories to be rather dull. That's how a lot of fiction reads to me, unfortunately. I choose works that tend to be more murky (which explains why I love Borges and Wolfe) in meaning(s), but that's just personal preference.

No, I am mostly concerned about the lack of a critical reading of a text. Maybe I am, as Scott Bakker has so eloquently put it before, "institutionalized," having been through grad school in a liberal arts program (cultural/religious history), but I can't help myself from wondering why people don't want to engage with the text, but only to want an author to give more and more detail that seems (to me) to detract from the prose and the story being told.

I personally seeing the peoples of the "West" self-segregating themselves again in a fashion that has not been seen since the rise of the printing press. For two centuries afterwards, the press was used to disseminate ideas/stories, yes...but the written stories were for the upper classes, with their own mores, while the older, more traditional oral traditions remained among the mostly-illiterate workers, who developed their own conceptions of what makes for an excellent story that diverged from those "standards of a good tale" to be written for the educated people. While there was quite a bit of convergence in the late 18th-late 20th centuries, recent trends over the past 40-50 years make me wonder if the act of reading is going to become a specialized discipline, if the symbols expressed in that form will diverge from those being expression in the "multimedia" presentations of the day. Will there be, as some are already proclaiming, the rise of a "post-literate" society, in which written symbols will not be as important as recorded visuals/audio? How will the very language change to express these changes, if they do occur as some are predicting?

Will reading remain a leisure activity, or will it be a sign of something else? I have pondered this for at least 10 years now (since I earned my MA) and I have no definite conclusions. But what I do know is that it seems that it's harder and harder to find detail critical engagement with texts. Also, those that do want to engage in that are often (not always, but often, as witnessed by some of the near ad hominems uttered here and elsewhere during the course of the conversations on those "three little paragraphs") derided by some who don't like the others' conclusions as being "arrogant" or "pretentious," without ever specifying what it meant by those, other than a cursory pointing out that the accused has been questioning the value of certain activites of others. Please! One ought to be able to question everything without some people taking it so personal! It appears (and I may be wrong, of course) to me that such responses and the curt dismissal of other viewpoints is being very non-critical or even non-speculative. Now I know some might wonder if I've been dismissing out of hand other points. I haven't, or at least I hope I haven't! I just want more detail, more explanation, more exploration, more to chew on. There is very little to nothing about my world-view that is "absolute." Even my personal religious beliefs are subject to doubt and questioning on occasion and I benefit from that. I just wish that I didn't have to say that I am not "attacking" anyone here or elsewhere, but something tells me that some have taken my comments in that fashion. Sigh..."language" is such a shifting morass on occasion...

Stego,

There is nothing wrong in doing such...as long as in the end, you take those imaginative exercises and make your life and those around you a better one by the time you lay down to sleep each night. Utopia may mean "nowhere," but that vision sure has inspired billions to make their own lives and those around them a bit better. That is a valuable thing. "Escape," however, seems to be shirking that responsibility, if only for a moment.

[Patches]

No, I am mostly concerned about the lack of a critical reading of a text.

Would you mind clarifying what you mean by a critical reading of a text? I'm not sure if you're using the phrase with the meaning I normally ascribe to it.

Also, those that do want to engage in that are often (not always, but often, as witnessed by some of the near ad hominems uttered here and elsewhere during the course of the conversations on those "three little paragraphs") derided by some who don't like the others' conclusions as being "arrogant" or "pretentious," without ever specifying what it meant by those, other than a cursory pointing out that the accused has been questioning the value of certain activites of others. Please! One ought to be able to question everything without some people taking it so personal!

Harrison used the phrase "great clomping foot of nerdism" and said that the general pyschological type of worldbuilders and people who dwell on worldbuilding is frightening. Both of these statements are derogatory. And Harrison wrote them when he's built a world of his own! Harrison meant to be offensive. One should not be surprised when people are offended, especially at wotmania or westeros, websites dedicated to worldbuilding authors. Besides, society in general considers the genre to be outside literature and ultimately meaningless precisely because SpecFic is not set in the real world. Harrison is merely stating the mainstream position, against which fantasy readers constantly have to defend themselves. These readers are always living with the question. Harrison is not provoking new thought by being offensive. He's just insulting people who like a certain type of book.

[Stego]

Stego,

There is nothing wrong in doing such...as long as in the end, you take those imaginative exercises and make your life and those around you a better one by the time you lay down to sleep each night. Utopia may mean "nowhere," but that vision sure has inspired billions to make their own lives and those around them a bit better. That is a valuable thing. "Escape," however, seems to be shirking that responsibility, if only for a moment.

Fuck that noise.

Reading a book certainly does not oblige me to do anything whatsoever.

[Larry.]

Oblige? I dunno. But something happens, or else the act of reading would be as mindless as taking a shit

[Larry.]

Would you mind clarifying what you mean by a critical reading of a text? I'm not sure if you're using the phrase with the meaning I normally ascribe to it.

By "critical reading," I mean the process by which a reader is reading not just the surface contents of the text, but also questioning assumptions drawn from the text, authorial intent, possible applications, and a whole host of other possibilities that can be contained in those coded markings we call "words." While I am unsure of some of his ideas in regards to applicability, I did find many of Derida's ideas to be illuminating, although I do doubt the degree to which he placed emphasis on the transmitiability of ideas via the written language path. Does this give you a better idea of where I'm coming from in all this?

Harrison used the phrase "great clomping foot of nerdism" and said that the general pyschological type of worldbuilders and people who dwell on worldbuilding is frightening. Both of these statements are derogatory. And Harrison wrote them when he's built a world of his own! Harrison meant to be offensive. One should not be surprised when people are offended, especially at wotmania or westeros, websites dedicated to worldbuilding authors. Besides, society in general considers the genre to be outside literature and ultimately meaningless precisely because SpecFic is not set in the real world. Harrison is merely stating the mainstream position, against which fantasy readers constantly have to defend themselves. These readers are always living with the question. Harrison is not provoking new thought by being offensive. He's just insulting people who like a certain type of book.

First off, he said worldbuilding was that. That ponderous, time-consuming, meticulous construction of something that cannot exist and trying to pass it off as something like a history, or a language, or a geography. Beyond the writer's words, those things are dead. There is nothing living about them. Some want to cite Tolkien in such cases. Fine. All Tolkien did over 50+ years was to create simulacrums of each of the above. There is no anima in them, they are dead, merely mimicries of those evolving fields. There cannot be such a "world" - it is only an exercise in imagination, it is just a setting that is on steroids, devoid of any meaning outside of those assigned by a few that care. To place an extreme importance on such a thing is what? A noble and uplifting matter that most people in this world give two shits about? A sad possible reality is that most people in this world couldn't give a damn about how detailed someone's imagination was in a fictional tale - they would rather care about if they get enough resources such as various foods and water in order to live. It is a luxury, I guess, to be able to spend countless hours trying to create these simulacrums of the world...simulacrums that miss out on countless examples of the good and bad in our world that make it a fascinating/horrifying place in which to live. Never heard of any starving or maltreated peoples being called "nerds" before. Guess it should be a sign of a prosperous leisure society, huh?

But that is a tangential thought here, one derived from having spent too much time among those that have little to no leisure time. What is untrue about the charge that indulging in such acts is "nerdish?" I have an uncle who used to weigh 400+ lbs. He was often called "fat" or "lardass," among other things. Doubtless these were disparaging terms, but did that mean that it was not true that he was obese? So what is untrue about Harrison's statement there?

And as for the psychological bit, did you read what he said elsewhere in related comments? He talked about people who had taken his words, or those of another, and had constructed mythodologies out of them. Excessive focusing on an imaginary world and the demands that it be "realistic" are puzzling to me and apparently to Harrison and many others. A literary "world" should be nothing more concrete in appearance than whatever ought to drive the writing forward, to make the prose shine better, to make the story sing with vitality and importance, even if that importance might just be to make a child laugh in the face of a life full of suffering or a battered and abused person to hope for the sunshine to appear after the rains of those blows falling down upon her or him It's just a matter of understanding one's priorities, I suppose...

So in the end, what is untrue about Harrison's statements?

[kcf]

Oblige? I dunno. But something happens, or else the act of reading would be as mindless as taking a shit

I don't know about you, but I get some my best thinking done while taking a shit.

[Larry.]

Point taken...but I'm not going to be taking any shit off of you!

[Bellis]

I've been trying to follow this thread, but I've been a little intimidated about jumping in after 5 pages.

To me, world-building means creating a believable setting. In that respect, every single piece of fiction has to do some world-building. I need to be convinced that the story needs that setting to be told, and vice versa. If you set your story in modern New York, I want to be convinced why that story needs to be set in New York, versus London, and I want to get a good sense of the setting and how it impacts the story. Recently, I enjoyed Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red to a large part because of the excellent world-building, in this case, a historical fiction setting of 16th century Turkey.

In terms of SF, the details of the setting need to be adequate so that it is obvious why the story is in Fantasy World X versus Fantasy World Y. And it needs to have an adequate level of world-building to be a believable setting. To use an example that recently bothered me, if you set your story in a fantasy world, with all new religions, you better not give your protagonists English (not to mention Biblical) names unless you have a damn good reason for doing so (I'm looking at you, Alan Campbell, author of Scar Night).

However, any additional world-building beyond what is necessary to create a believable setting and characters, beyond which is necessary to drive the plot, bores me to tears. I don't need to see a map if it's not important to the plot. I don't need to know how to say "pig" in your made-up language if it's not important to the plot. If you make up words to use as names or titles, I don't need to know the etymology, unless it's important to the plot. I don't need a geneology for 20 pages, or a detailed appendix of the world and its races and the political history for the last 1000 fictional years, if it's not important to the plot. In fact, it is almost never that I will consult these materials. As long as the basic writing and the plot convey an adequate, believable sense of place, I simply don't care.

So, anyway, I think I agree with Harrison and Dylan.

[Marcelo Rebelo Firqoralas]

Reading, like listening to music, is an inherently amoral activity. The value of a text is purely based on the effect it has on the reader. Any effect (direct or indirect) is has on society at large is purely coincidental and can under no circumstances ever be weighed in as a contributor and detractor the the quality of the text. In other words: a shit book is always a shit book, even if it creates paradise on earth.

I heard Harrison speak on the subject of escapism at Swecon in Stockholm 2004. There he spoke about how he used rock climbing as a form of escape from leading a responsible life. From that perspective it is very understandable that he is suspicious of escapist activities, but he is still wrong to so completely generalize from his own experience and condemn everyone else who engages in a more moderate way in a very normal, very human and in my opinion psychologically completely necessary activity.

Worldbuilding is THE most central aspect and fantasy and science fiction literature; without it the genres do not exist.

SF&F communicates with worlds. It argues by varying the nature of these world in certain ways. You can have non-realist fiction without worldbuilding, but then it's not fantasy or science fiction, it's surrealism or absurdism or magical realism or something similar. There's nothing wrong with this of course. I personally find much more of interest in this end of the literary spectrum these days than I do in, say, epic fantasy, but one has to realize that they are two very distinct literary methods.

Worldbuilding as an activity is no different from any other literary persuit. Harrison is probably just as obsessive about his prose or characters as other writers are about the skirt colour among female dwarfs in Outer Gybdonia. It's completely hypocritical to denounce worldbuilding as somehow morally inferior just based on one's personal taste.

To say that worldbuilding in SF&F is of value simply because it entertains is trivially true, but it could still be interesting to further look into the reasons for its appeal.

I think Bakker definitely has a point when he says that humans has a special affinity to worlds that have an anthropomorphic structure. And in a reality that increasingly denies us the possibility to find such structures we must turn to fantasy literature to fill our need for them.

There are other reasons as well. The way SF&F authors play with alternative worlds and hypotethical situations is close to both how children learn to understand our world and how scientist work. From this perspective the genres can both help us understand or world better, not primarily by telling us how things are, but rather by training our brains to make a unified whole out of a bunch of loose facts. This is a very different kind of escape; it's an escape to a situation where one self has a better ability to deal with the world in all its contradiciveness.

In conclusion: Harrison makes the classical mistake of dismissing that which he doesn't understand. Worldbuilding is a craft among many. It is entirely possible to enjoy good worldbuilding the same way one enjoys good prose. If you don't enjoy worldbuilding then you problably shouldn't read fantasy and science fiction. But remember, this is in all likelihood your fault, not the texts,