Genre-hopping
Mar. 21st, 2005 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel27 Feb 2005
The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold - Voyager 2003
* * * * *
Zerothin's Law of Genre-Hopping states that "a writer who changes genres will not be as successful in their second genre", with a corollary that "any writer who is seen as successful in more than one genre has been mis-classified". So before I started this book, I expected to give it three or four stars - an enjoyable and entertaining read, perhaps, but not a patch on the Miles Vorkosigan series. But Bujold has a) written an immensely enjoyable fantasy novel and b) managed to say something profound in the process. So it has to be five. Darn it.
There are good reasons and good evidence for my law. Writers tend to bring the same techniques and assumptions that they have honed for their primary genre to their secondary one, with generally less than successful results. There are many examples of this. The only C.J. Cherryh fantasy that I have read was one of her characteristic tense little psychodramas and would have worked a lot better on a claustrophobic spaceship than it did in an expansive fantasy world. Likewise Stephen Donaldson's Gap series isn't as good as Thomas Covenant, Michael Moorcock's mainstream novels such as Mother London are deeply dull and Barbara Hambly's historical detective fiction fails to engage as much as her fantasy does (see previous review). Of course there are the occasional exceptions, such as Ursula K. le Guin and Gene Wolfe, but here the corollary comes in - I think that their supposed SF works are actually fantasies with SF furnishings.
The differences between fantasy and SF reflects the differences between science and religion. Good SF takes possible developments in science and technology and tries to imagine their impact on individuals and societies. Good fantasy does much the same, but uses different theologies, philosophies or political systems as its starting point. A mistake that many SF writers make when coming to fantasy is to treat magic merely as another form of technology without considering what the presence of demons, fairies or miracles would do to individuals' beliefs and views of the world, and to the social institutions that they would subsequently construct. Fantasists coming to SF, on the other hand, tend to use the props of SF to distance their social thought experiments without considering sufficiently what impact those technological props and their developmental history would have had on the societies they are describing.
So how has Bujold made the transfer? Well, certain techniques used in the Vorkosigan saga also operate here, most noticeably in the character and history of Cazaril, the protagonist, which have noticeable parallels with Miles Vorkosigan. Bujold forces sympathy by giving him a really miserable backstory - he is first introduced as a beggar seeking a menial job in the kitchens of the palace where he grew up as a page boy, having commanded the defence of a besieged town, been captured and made a galley slave, whipped until nearly dead for trying to protect a fellow slave and finally escaping. So - noble (like Miles), disabled (like Miles) due to permanent damage inflicted by the whipping, somewhat impetuous (like Miles) and distinctly prone to self-pity (like Miles, but with a bit more reason). He differs in that he is older (mid-thirties - a middle-aged protagonist in a big commercial fantasy, hurrah!), less brilliant, more reflective and more obedient.
The obedience comes from his religious faith, which unusually for a fantasy novel, is heavily foregrounded. Bujold's religion is based on a "family" of five deities called the Father, Mother, Son, Daughter and Bastard. This would suggest a Graeco-Roman influence, but in fact they are closer to the Judaic-Christian-Islamic notion of deity - each is remote and unknowable (unless you have been "gifted" with sainthood) and has their own area of influence. There are no creation myths and no stories of conflict between the gods. Structurally, the priestly castes and the military orders are similar to those of mediaeval Christianity.
The magic is essentially priestly and requires prayers and rituals to a particular deity. It is rules-bound but the rules are arbitrary and are mainly there to make the plot work. As usual Bujold has used the trick of imagining the worst thing that could happen to her protagonist, and has then set the magical rules to ensure that the said thing could happen. Fortunately the plot is sufficiently interesting and the characters are sufficiently engaging that such contrivances are just about acceptable.
Politically, the set-up is standard mock-mediaeval, though Bujold has thankfully eschewed the historically loaded terms "king", "princess", "duchess" etc., replacing them with the somewhat awkward "roya", "royesse" and "provincara". In practical terms there is little difference, but at least the effort has been made.
So far, this book probably sounds like a standard by-the-numbers fantasy, with nothing particularly original about it. Two things make out it stand out, however. Firstly the plotting is more than usually engaging, with unexpected twists at regular intervals (including a breakage of one of the fundamental rules of fantasy plotting about two hundred pages in). Despite the arbitrary nature of the magical rules, Bujold manages to lay the framework before she uses them, so none of the plot twists feel totally whimsical and at least semi-plausible explanations can be given (though there is one somewhat irritating example of idiot plotting in the second half of the book, where Cazaril acts on an uncharacteristically stupid set of assumptions).
The second thing that makes this book stand out is a series of transcendent and moving passages towards the end which, I suspect, reflect Bujold's own beliefs. They do not describe any religious doctrine that I recognise, but are instead about the miracle that underlies all religion and all science, a miracle that neither can adequately explain. And the miracle is this: that there is something, rather than nothing. That the physical universe exists rathers than doesn't exist. That, as Bujold puts it, "matter invented so many forms and then went on to generate beauty beyond itself, minds and souls rising out of it like melody from an instrument... matter is an amazement to the gods".
This is profound and thought-provoking stuff and certainly not your common-or-garden fantasy fare. Bujold has managed to write a big commercial fantasy that, almost uniquely in the genre, has something significant to say. So, somewhat to my irritation, it seems that Zerothin's Law of Genre-Hopping needs a second corollary - "except if you are Lois McMaster Bujold".
The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold - Voyager 2003
* * * * *
Zerothin's Law of Genre-Hopping states that "a writer who changes genres will not be as successful in their second genre", with a corollary that "any writer who is seen as successful in more than one genre has been mis-classified". So before I started this book, I expected to give it three or four stars - an enjoyable and entertaining read, perhaps, but not a patch on the Miles Vorkosigan series. But Bujold has a) written an immensely enjoyable fantasy novel and b) managed to say something profound in the process. So it has to be five. Darn it.
There are good reasons and good evidence for my law. Writers tend to bring the same techniques and assumptions that they have honed for their primary genre to their secondary one, with generally less than successful results. There are many examples of this. The only C.J. Cherryh fantasy that I have read was one of her characteristic tense little psychodramas and would have worked a lot better on a claustrophobic spaceship than it did in an expansive fantasy world. Likewise Stephen Donaldson's Gap series isn't as good as Thomas Covenant, Michael Moorcock's mainstream novels such as Mother London are deeply dull and Barbara Hambly's historical detective fiction fails to engage as much as her fantasy does (see previous review). Of course there are the occasional exceptions, such as Ursula K. le Guin and Gene Wolfe, but here the corollary comes in - I think that their supposed SF works are actually fantasies with SF furnishings.
The differences between fantasy and SF reflects the differences between science and religion. Good SF takes possible developments in science and technology and tries to imagine their impact on individuals and societies. Good fantasy does much the same, but uses different theologies, philosophies or political systems as its starting point. A mistake that many SF writers make when coming to fantasy is to treat magic merely as another form of technology without considering what the presence of demons, fairies or miracles would do to individuals' beliefs and views of the world, and to the social institutions that they would subsequently construct. Fantasists coming to SF, on the other hand, tend to use the props of SF to distance their social thought experiments without considering sufficiently what impact those technological props and their developmental history would have had on the societies they are describing.
So how has Bujold made the transfer? Well, certain techniques used in the Vorkosigan saga also operate here, most noticeably in the character and history of Cazaril, the protagonist, which have noticeable parallels with Miles Vorkosigan. Bujold forces sympathy by giving him a really miserable backstory - he is first introduced as a beggar seeking a menial job in the kitchens of the palace where he grew up as a page boy, having commanded the defence of a besieged town, been captured and made a galley slave, whipped until nearly dead for trying to protect a fellow slave and finally escaping. So - noble (like Miles), disabled (like Miles) due to permanent damage inflicted by the whipping, somewhat impetuous (like Miles) and distinctly prone to self-pity (like Miles, but with a bit more reason). He differs in that he is older (mid-thirties - a middle-aged protagonist in a big commercial fantasy, hurrah!), less brilliant, more reflective and more obedient.
The obedience comes from his religious faith, which unusually for a fantasy novel, is heavily foregrounded. Bujold's religion is based on a "family" of five deities called the Father, Mother, Son, Daughter and Bastard. This would suggest a Graeco-Roman influence, but in fact they are closer to the Judaic-Christian-Islamic notion of deity - each is remote and unknowable (unless you have been "gifted" with sainthood) and has their own area of influence. There are no creation myths and no stories of conflict between the gods. Structurally, the priestly castes and the military orders are similar to those of mediaeval Christianity.
The magic is essentially priestly and requires prayers and rituals to a particular deity. It is rules-bound but the rules are arbitrary and are mainly there to make the plot work. As usual Bujold has used the trick of imagining the worst thing that could happen to her protagonist, and has then set the magical rules to ensure that the said thing could happen. Fortunately the plot is sufficiently interesting and the characters are sufficiently engaging that such contrivances are just about acceptable.
Politically, the set-up is standard mock-mediaeval, though Bujold has thankfully eschewed the historically loaded terms "king", "princess", "duchess" etc., replacing them with the somewhat awkward "roya", "royesse" and "provincara". In practical terms there is little difference, but at least the effort has been made.
So far, this book probably sounds like a standard by-the-numbers fantasy, with nothing particularly original about it. Two things make out it stand out, however. Firstly the plotting is more than usually engaging, with unexpected twists at regular intervals (including a breakage of one of the fundamental rules of fantasy plotting about two hundred pages in). Despite the arbitrary nature of the magical rules, Bujold manages to lay the framework before she uses them, so none of the plot twists feel totally whimsical and at least semi-plausible explanations can be given (though there is one somewhat irritating example of idiot plotting in the second half of the book, where Cazaril acts on an uncharacteristically stupid set of assumptions).
The second thing that makes this book stand out is a series of transcendent and moving passages towards the end which, I suspect, reflect Bujold's own beliefs. They do not describe any religious doctrine that I recognise, but are instead about the miracle that underlies all religion and all science, a miracle that neither can adequately explain. And the miracle is this: that there is something, rather than nothing. That the physical universe exists rathers than doesn't exist. That, as Bujold puts it, "matter invented so many forms and then went on to generate beauty beyond itself, minds and souls rising out of it like melody from an instrument... matter is an amazement to the gods".
This is profound and thought-provoking stuff and certainly not your common-or-garden fantasy fare. Bujold has managed to write a big commercial fantasy that, almost uniquely in the genre, has something significant to say. So, somewhat to my irritation, it seems that Zerothin's Law of Genre-Hopping needs a second corollary - "except if you are Lois McMaster Bujold".
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ha! Well, you knew this would fetch a comment out of me...
Date: 2005-03-22 05:05 pm (UTC)Among her more recent books, I'd name "the Birthday of the World" which is a collection of short stories in classic science-fiction style. Each takes a possible twist to technology or biology and gives you a snapshot of the possible consequences to society, through an individual's story. Her ideas include a planet of humans which have been manipulated so that men are few and far between, the effects of STL travel on cultures, an underpopulated world with a taboo against "normal" social interaction and so on. Yes, she's more interested in the effects of the technology on the people, but to my mind that makes the books just better science fiction, not fantasy!
I can't see Ms Le Guin fitting your description of a fantasist coming to SF - her main interest is the effect of the technological props on the society and individuals - or an SF writer coming to fantasy - her magic is truly mysterious and strange, and does not resemble technology by another name.
Re: ha! Well, you knew this would fetch a comment out of me...
Date: 2005-04-04 08:31 pm (UTC)Re: ha! Well, you knew this would fetch a comment out of me...
Date: 2005-04-04 10:19 pm (UTC)I agree that I wouldn't call her books "hard" SF, but there's a long journey through SF before you get from Larry Niven to Anne McCaffery, and I'd put Le Guin well into the SF section. Just because her stories are well written and contain human drama, doesn't make them not SF - or at least, I think it'd be belittling the SF genre to claim so.
My favourite hard SF writer is still of course Vernor Vinge (ideas driven, but with great stories and characters too): bets are still being taken as to whether he has peaked and written his last great book, or whether there is more to come...