{"id":4622,"date":"2011-05-28T22:14:11","date_gmt":"2011-05-29T03:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=4622"},"modified":"2015-05-13T10:39:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T14:39:47","slug":"a-plague-on-both-your-houses-reprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=4622","title":{"rendered":"A Plague on Both Your Houses – Reprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note:<\/strong> This article originally appeared in the Apex blog, with different images. The site got hacked since then and its owner did not feel up to reconstituting the past database.\u00a0 I reprint it as a companion piece to Sam Kelly’s Privilege and Fantasy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Don\u2019t you know<\/em>
\n They\u2019re talkin\u2019 ’bout a revolution<\/em>
\n\u2013 Tracy Chapman<\/p>\n

In James Tiptree\u2019s “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?”<\/a> three male astronauts are thrown forward in time and return to an earth in which an epidemic has led to the extinction of men. They perceive a society that needs firm (male) guidance to restore correct order and linear progress. In fact, the society is a benevolent non-coercive non-hierarchical anarchy with adequate and stable resources; genetic engineering and cloning are advanced, spaceships are a given, there\u2019s an inhabited Lunar base and multiple successful expeditions to Venus and Mars. One of the men plans to bring the women back under god\u2019s command (with him as proxy) by applying Pauline precepts. Another plans to rut endlessly in a different kind of paradise. The women, after giving them a long rope, decide they won\u2019t resurrect the XY genotype.<\/p>\n

The skirmish in the ongoing war about contemporary fantasy between Leo Grin<\/a> and Joe Abercrombie<\/a> reminds me of Tiptree\u2019s story. Grin and Abercrombie argued over fantasy as art, social construct and moral fable totally oblivious to the relevant achievements of half of humanity \u2013 closer to ninety percent, actually, when you take into account the settings of the works they discussed. No non-male non-white non-Anglosaxon fantasy writers were mentioned in their exchanges and in almost all of the reactions to their posts (I found only two partial exceptions).<\/p>\n

I expected this from Grin. After all, he wrote his essay under the auspices of Teabagger falsehood-as-fact generator Andrew Breitbart. His \u201cargument\u201d can be distilled to \u201cThe debasement of heroic fantasy is a plot of college-educated liberals!\u201d On the other hand, Abercrombie\u2019s \u201cliberalism\u201d reminds me of the sixties free-love dictum that said \u201cWomen can assume all positions as long as they\u2019re prone.\u201d The Grin camp (henceforth Fathers) conflates morality with religiosity and hearkens nostalgically back to Tolkien who essentially retold Christian and Norse myths, even if he did it well. The Abercrombie camp (henceforth Sons) equates grittiness with grottiness and channels Howard \u2013 incidentally, a basic error by Grin who put Tolkien and Howard in the same category in his haste to shoehorn all of today\u2019s fantasy into the \u201cdecadent\u201d slot. In fact, Abercrombie et al.<\/em> are Howard\u2019s direct intellectual descendants, although Grin\u2019s two idols were equally reactionary in class-specific ways. Fathers and Sons are nevertheless united in celebrating \u201cmanly\u201d men along the lines demarcated by Tiptree.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said elsewhere<\/a>, I enjoy playing RPGs in many guises. But even for games \u2013 let alone for reading \u2013 I prefer constructs that are nuanced and, equally importantly, worlds in which I can see myself living and working. Both camps write stories set in medieval worlds whose protagonists are essentially Anglosaxon white men with a soup\u00e7on of Norse or Celt to spice the bland gruel. To name just a few examples, this is true of Tolkien\u2019s Middle Earth, Howard\u2019s Conan stories, Moorcock\u2019s Elric saga, Leiber\u2019s Fafhrd series, Jordan\u2019s Wheel of Time<\/em> toe-bruisers, Martin\u2019s fast-diminishing-returns Fire and Ice<\/em> cycle. The sole difference is approach, which gets mistaken for outlook. If I may use po-mo terms, the Fathers represent constipation, the Sons diarrhea; Fathers the sacred, Sons the profane \u2013 in strictly masculinist terms. In either universe, women are deemed polluting (that is, distracting from bromances) or furniture items. The fact that even male directors of crowd-pleasers have managed to create powerful female heroes, from Jackson\u2019s \u00c9owyn to Xena (let alone the women in wuxia<\/em> films), highlight the tame and regressive nature of \u201cdaring\u201d male-written fantasy.<\/p>\n

Under the cover of high-mindedness, the Fathers posit that worthy fantasy must obey the principles of abrahamic religions: a rigid, stratified society where everyone knows their place, the color of one\u2019s skin determines degree of goodness, governments are autocratic and there is a Manichean division between good and evil: the way of the dog, a pyramidal construct where only alpha males fare well and are considered fully human. The Sons, under the cover of subversive (if only!) deconstruction, posit worlds that embody the principles of a specific subset of pagan religions: a society permanently riven by discord and random cruelty but whose value determinants still come from hierarchical thinking of the feudal variety: the way of the baboon, another (repeat after me) pyramidal construct where only alpha males fare well and are considered fully human. Both follow Campbell\u2019s impoverished, pseudo-erudite concepts of the hero\u2019s quest: the former group accepts them, the latter rejects them but only as the younger son who wants the perks of the first-born. Both think squarely within a very narrow box.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Other participants in this debate already pointed out that Tolkien is a pessimist and Howard a nihilist, that outstanding earlier writers wrote amoral works (Dunsany was mentioned; I\u2019d add Peake and Donaldson) and that the myths which form the base of most fantasy are riddled with grisly violence. In other words, it looks like Grin at least hasn\u2019t read many primary sources and both his knowledge and his logic are terminally fuzzy, as are those of his supporters.<\/p>\n

A prominent example was the accusation from one of Grin\u2019s acolytes that contemporary fantasy is obsessed with balance which is \u201cforeign to the Western temperament\u201d (instead of, you know, ever thrusting forward). He explicitly conflated Western civilization with European Christendom, which should automatically disqualify him from serious consideration. Nevertheless, I will point out that pagan Hellenism is as much a cornerstone of Western civilization as Christianity, and Hellenes prized balance. The concept of \u201cMidh\u00e9n \u00e1ghan\u201d (nothing in excess) was crucial in Hellenes\u2019 self-definition: they watered their wine, ate abstemiously, deemed body and mind equally important and considered unbridled appetites and passions detriments to living the examined life. At the same time, they did not consider themselves sinful and imperfect in the Christian sense, although Hellenic myths carry strong strains of defiance (Prometheus) and melancholy (their afterworld, for one).<\/p>\n

Frankly, the Grin-Abercrombie fracas reminds me of a scene in Willow<\/em>. At the climax of the film, while the men are hacking at each other down at the courtyard, the women are up at the tower hurling thunderbolts. By the time the men come into the castle, the battle has been waged and won by women\u2019s magic.<\/p>\n

So enough already about Fathers and Sons in their temples and potties. Let\u2019s spend our time more usefully and pleasantly discussing the third member of the trinity. Before she got neutered, her name was Sophia (Wisdom) or Shekinah (Presence). Let\u2019s celebrate some people who truly changed fantasy \u2013 to its everlasting gain, as is the case with SF.<\/p>\n

My list will be very partial and restricted to authors writing in English and whose works I\u2019ve read, which shows we are dealing with an embarrassment of riches. I can think of countless women who have written paradigm-shifting heroic fantasy, starting with Emily Bront\u00eb who wrote about a world of women heroes in those tiny hand-sewn diaries. Then came trailblazers Catherine Moore, Mary Stewart and Andr\u00e9 Norton. Ursula Le Guin\u2019s Earthsea<\/em> is another gamechanger (although her gender-specific magic is problematic, as I discussed<\/a> in Crossed Genres<\/em>) and so is her ongoing Western Shores<\/em> series. Katherine Kurtz\u2019s Deryni cycle is as fine a medieval magic saga as any. We have weavers of new myths: Jane Yolen, Patricia McKillip, Meredith Ann Pierce, Alma Alexander; and tellers of old myths from fresh perspectives: Tanith Lee, Diana Paxson, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Terri Windling, Emma Bull, C. J. Cherryh, Christine Lucas.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Elizabeth Lynn, with her Chronicles of Tornor<\/em> and riveting Ryoka stories. Marie Jakober, whose Even the Stones<\/em> have haunted me ever since I read it. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, whose heroic prehistoric fantasies have never been bested. Jacqueline Carey, who re-imagined the Renaissance from Eire to Nubia and made a courtesan into a swashbuckler in the first Kushiel trilogy, showing a truly pagan universe in the bargain. This without getting into genre-cracking mythmakers like Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) and Louise Erdrich.<\/p>\n

These authors share several attributes: they have formidable writing skills and honor their sources even as they transmute them. Most importantly, they break the tired old tropes and conventional boundaries of heroic fantasy and unveil truly new vistas. They venture past medieval settings, hierarchical societies, monotheistic religions, rigid moralities, \u201cedgy\u201d gore, Tin John chest beatings, and show us how rich and exciting fantasy can become when it stops being timid and recycling stale recipes. As one of the women in Tiptree\u2019s “Houston, Houston” says: \u201cWe sing a lot. Adventure songs, work songs, mothering songs, mood songs, trouble songs, joke songs, love songs \u2013 everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everything.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Images:<\/strong> \u00c9owyn, shieldmaiden of Rohan (Miranda Otto) in The Two Towers;<\/em> Sonja, vampire paladin (Rhona Mitra) in Rise of the Lycans;<\/em> Yu Shu Lien, Wudan warrior (Michelle Yeoh) in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: This article originally appeared in the Apex blog, with different images. The site got hacked since then and its owner did not feel up to reconstituting the past database.\u00a0 I reprint it as a companion piece to Sam Kelly’s Privilege and Fantasy. Don\u2019t you know They\u2019re talkin\u2019 ’bout a revolution \u2013 Tracy Chapman In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-science-fiction","category-writing-and-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}