Spring Bass Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 Bakker threads would seem to indicate otherwise.I don't buy it either. There are tons of fantasy books out there with strong female characters that sell well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 I’ve only read one book and a prequel, but isn’t the magical empowerment of women the main conceit in Jordan’s incredibly popular A Wheel of Time? That’s exactly what some people are soliciting in this thread.I don’t see the “fantasy readers like their women subjugated” either. Quite the contrary. It seems to me that one of the main gimmicks of fantasy is exactly the ability to portray non-sexist pre-modern societies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Errant Bard Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 The "readers like their women subjugated" was a reaction to the opening post that did actually claim that the status of women in fantasy was exactly that, and it should not be since there were other influence in Fantasy that should be empowering to women.Of course, it changes, but on the whole if find Fantasy to be very conservative and always keep women's status lower than it could be, which can be sharply contrasted with science fiction, for example, despite the fact that differences between Fantasy and SF are often merely cosmetic.You're confusing correlation with causation; there's absolutely no reason to believe it's a preference among fantasy readers.No I'm not, there is a causation link between what's written and what's bought.Editors pick stuff that sells, readers favour stuff they prefer, authors and editors adjust what they do depending on readership. Fantasy, and popular genre fiction, is shaped by this probably more than any other genre. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lummel Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 I'm not sure it would be a poorer one, unless the magic and its by-products are only available to the rich and elite.It magic and its by products are only avaliable to the elite it won't make much difference to the society in terms of wealth or technology - it would be like pepper - only enjoyed by the upper crust.If your magic replaces basic technologies then those technologies won't exist.In the same way if you have fire breathing dragons, levitation or teleportation - why have city walls or castles - they won't save anybody from invasion or being eaten. You'd have to invent some magical anti-magic device or anti-dragon magic to restore the status quo.Introducing magic or magical creatures isn't something you can tack on to a base line historicalish society, realistically its going to have all kinds of impacts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MatthewF Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 No I'm not, there is a causation link between what's written and what's bought.Editors pick stuff that sells, readers favour stuff they prefer, authors and editors adjust what they do depending on readership. Fantasy, and popular genre fiction, is shaped by this probably more than any other genre.Again, you're making a claim that it's the treatment of women that sells fantasy. Not the 100 other things fantasy novels have in common, but this thing. It's like saying that people buy fantasy novels because they don't include the word "jetpack" or because they don't have hippopotamuses in them: you have no idea whether those are causes or not, just that they're things that are true of fantasy novels. You can only demonstrate causation here if you can show that fantasy buyers won't buy books if they include strong women or have women of greater or equal social standing with men, something you can't demonstrate.You're merely showing correlation, just like "jetpack" and hippopotamuses, all three of which demonstrate nothing about cause. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tammy Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 Well it's partly true...I refuse to read a book with hippopotamuses... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 It's like saying that people buy fantasy novels because they don't include the word "jetpack" or because they don't have hippopotamuses in them:Note to self: write a fantasy novel featuring at least one hippopotamus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 At the danger of blowing your mind: a fantasy novel with a jetpack-wearing, subjugated male hippopotamus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 At the danger of blowing your mind: a fantasy novel with a jetpack-wearing, subjugated male hippopotamus.Is the hippopotamus subjugated by jetpack-wearing dominant female hippopotami, or merely by wider society? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Ent Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 Is the hippopotamus subjugated by jetpack-wearing dominant female hippopotami, or merely by wider society?The fact that you have to ask shows that you’re not grasping the first principles of my world.Wider society consists of jetpack-wearing dominant female hippopotami. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmail Posted October 22, 2011 Author Share Posted October 22, 2011 The "readers like their women subjugated" was a reaction to the opening post that did actually claim that the status of women in fantasy was exactly that, and it should not be since there were other influence in Fantasy that should be empowering to women.Of course, it changes, but on the whole if find Fantasy to be very conservative and always keep women's status lower than it could be, which can be sharply contrasted with science fiction, for example, despite the fact that differences between Fantasy and SF are often merely cosmetic.No I'm not, there is a causation link between what's written and what's bought.Editors pick stuff that sells, readers favour stuff they prefer, authors and editors adjust what they do depending on readership. Fantasy, and popular genre fiction, is shaped by this probably more than any other genre.I wrote the opening post, read it again instead of blaming me for your badly worded statement. I referred to the Bakker threads, and the notion of using our history as a model for a fantasy books history. I brought it up because it is sometimes specific institutions and or groups of people that are the cause for the rise of certain paths of history that we take for granted. A common argument i have seen over the last couple of years on these threads is that historically women did not possess agency, a term that is awfully popular on these boards sometimes. The main thrust of my piece is that taking what we want from history without looking at the causes for it does not really work.And as for those of you that do not like Cantor, though i have only looked a short while, i could find no criticisms of the book that i am reading. Please provide some proof that i can look at so i can judge the case for myself. Historians are always pissing all over each other, because most of them spent 30% of the time or more guessing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinDonner Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 Well, the most obvious example (not from your book but from In The Wake of the Plague), he starts the book off with the old canard that "Ring-a-ring-a-roses" was a song about the plague, which I would love to be true but most authorities agree is a much older song than that with no direct connection; he also repeats the "Edward II was killed with a red-hot poker up his arse" thing as a hilarious fact, when again this is largely agreed to be a myth. Now, of course none of this is certain, because long ago history!, but the fact that he doesn't even give a passing mention to the dubious accuracy of these things he treats as "facts", is not a good sign that his scholarship is trustworthy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowbinding shoe Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 I think in general the alternative-history genre does a better job of building the societal background of the story.Part of the reason Fantasy books tend to fail in this department is the sheer magnitude of all the possible impacts a change in the world's physical laws (Teleportation is possible!) have. If you'll try to do a decent job of world building your story around these changes your story will get lost detailing all the changes (which you'll need to spend substantial portion of the book explaining), you'll never manage to deal with all the inevitable paradoxes you just created and you'll lose in the end the sense of familiarity that is essential for readers to immerse themselves in a story.That's why SF stories almost always concentrate on one big difference their world has compared to ours while keeping everything else familiar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 John H Mundy's 'The High Middle Ages' is a far better researched and put together book than Cantor's more popular, and most likely more widely read, 'Civilization of the Middle-Ages'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spring Bass Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 It magic and its by products are only avaliable to the elite it won't make much difference to the society in terms of wealth or technology - it would be like pepper - only enjoyed by the upper crust. I wouldn't go that far. Strong magic available only to an elite could be a powerful means for maintaining a status quo with that elite on top.If your magic replaces basic technologies then those technologies won't exist.In the same way if you have fire breathing dragons, levitation or teleportation - why have city walls or castles - they won't save anybody from invasion or being eaten. You'd have to invent some magical anti-magic device or anti-dragon magic to restore the status quo.Introducing magic or magical creatures isn't something you can tack on to a base line historicalish society, realistically its going to have all kinds of impacts.I agree with all this, and I actually made that point up-thread. Reliable, cheap teleportation means that other means of long-range travel are going to go undeveloped (unless there is also a reliable way to block teleportation, at which point some of it will be developed for military purposes). They might not even develop most means of short-range transportation. Why own a car if you can simply teleport from your home to your workplace? Why ship goods by car, train, or boat, when you could literally teleport them from one factory, to another factory, to the store where it's being sold (or even into the home of the person purchasing the goods)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bronn Stone Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 This independence faded with the continued growth of the catholic church, which wanted women chaste and virginial and useless. The church also worked to encourage wealthy women, such as the sisters of kings, to start nunnery's with their wealth, thereby increasing the wealth of the church.In ancient times, did not the term 'nunnery' mean brothel (ie Hamlet, get thee to a nunnery... - an accusation of unchasteness). I'm pretty sure you mean convent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sologdin Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 i get annoyed when characters in fantasy (i.e., that is based on alleged medieval history) have all of their teeth and no carbuncles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galactus Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 In ancient times, did not the term 'nunnery' mean brothel (ie Hamlet, get thee to a nunnery... - an accusation of unchasteness). I'm pretty sure you mean convent.In post-reformation England? Yes.In the middle-ages? No. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukelavee Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 Sean McMullen writes some fantasy that actually DOES what you people discuss - he's created a world where magic is fairly common, powerful, and reliable.He treats it like any other "technology" a good scifi writer would create: what are the effects on this world and cultures going to be.So, on the one hand, you have all sorts of remote spy and messenger autons, ways magic replaces our technologies, plus, him pushing the mundane technologies his cultures have to insanely cool extremes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkynJay Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 Well it's partly true...I refuse to read a book with hippopotamuses...The books were hit and miss, but interesting. But the sequel to Dies the Fire had a great scene with some hippos.Don't dis it =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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