Today I'm delighted to welcome author Kameron Hurley to the blog, with a great post on creating the economics of a fantasy world.
Thanks for visiting, Kameron, and take it away!
But,
hey, I’m just one reader. And a writer to boot. So instead of just saying “Here
are the top fantasy economy/society issues that’ll throw me out of a story” I
asked folks on Twitter, writers and readers alike, to tell me what they found
most annoying or problematic in the fantasy economies and societies they read
about.
Here
are the top fantasy economy/society failures, crowdsourced on Twitter, with hat
tips given to those kind enough to share:
1) Women are accepted as frontline
fighters, but nothing else in the world is different. No
mention of birth control, or social mores that change the general patriarchal
bent of the rest of the world (which of course always ends up still being
there; like women get equality in war but nothing else? Eh?). No mention of how
children are minded, or what happens when women become pregnant, or if there
are social stigmas between fraternization, or if it’s encouraged, or any other
of a myriad of ways that the acceptance of women in combat would also be a
reflection of other societal changes in the world. Who does all the work off
the battlefield? Is it also accepted that men work in at-home cottage
industries?(this was my top annoyance)
2)
Everybody
speaks “Common”/every country has a monolithic language.
There’s no universal language on this
world, and it’s not likely there’s going to be one on a fantasy world, either,
unless it’s run by some mega fascist empire. And even then, it’s highly likely
there will be regional dialects and variations. Sure, many folks spoke Latin
when Rome came a’conquering, but they also spoke their native languages and
dialects. It may seem easier, as a writer, to hand wave and say there’s a
trader’s language, but doing that actually cuts a lot of potential tension and
flavor. I remember being in a restaurant near the Alhambra in in Granada,
Spain, and encountering a host who spoke four languages fluently and could have
simple conversations with patrons in three more. I found this far more interesting than, “The
host spoke Common.” And it’ll add more texture to the world, too. Lots of plot
details can depend on people understanding, or misunderstanding one another. (hat
tip @foxvertabrae, @annelyle and @teresafrohock)
3)
Assumed
literacy.
The sad fact is that outside the implementation of a massive public education
system, many people will not know how to read. The UK’s literary rate is 95% (Finland’s
is 100%, FYI) but in Afghanistan, it’s 21%. The reasons for that are many and
varied, but I invite folks to consider what the literacy rate of a country
would be in an area where larger powers were constantly fighting over the
resources within it. Unless a fantasy country has free public education for all
(and how are they paying for that?), people who read will be rich, or perhaps priests
or magic users – a class of folks with the free time and means to pursue this
pastime. In addition, lack of literacy also means an increase in the status of
people whose business it is to write and transcribe information. Administrative assistants FTW. (hat tip
@doughulick)
4)
Everyone
of X race/species is confined to a single country.Populations
migrate. They interact. They trade. One of the biggest problems with basing
fantasy worlds on an assumed medieval world is that the medieval world many of
us are served up in school was not actually a monolithic white Christian one.
Our past has been systematically cropped, erased, and rewritten so it looks
more like the one the folks in power aspire to, not how it actually was. Trade routes and hubs and big cities draw
people from all across the world. Faces, social mores, awareness of the greater
world, will be greater in large metro areas, but even smaller ones will get
travelers from elsewhere. The world has never, ever been a monoculture. Fantasy
worlds aren’t likely to be either, unless you’re trying to be super ironic.
(hat tip @RJSWriter, @metteharrison)
5)
Treasure/resource
finds that don’t significantly change theeconomy. What happens
when a dragon’s horde of gold suddenly enters the economy? The diamond trade in
ours is heavily controlled by just a few companies to keep diamonds from
flooding the market and decreasing the value of what’s already in circulation.
And we don’t simply print money willy-nilly, or we’ll end up paying for coffee
with a wheelbarrow of notes. So if there’s a major horde of gold or wealth
that’s uncovered over the course of the book one, in book two it’s probably
best that’s it’s addressed how that horde of cash has changed the balance of
the economy.In fact, it could lead to some very interesting plot complications.
(hat tip @jonmhanse)
6)
Static
languages, cultures, and technology.This is a big
issue of mine. Change happens. Technology changes. No society is static. One of
the things I liked to explore in my last series, which takes place over the
course of twenty years, is how technology in the world – and the state of the
ongoing war in the background – changes during that time period. It adds an
incredible amount of richness, and believability, to an alternate or secondary
world.Remember that a piece of technology like, say, a smart phone, isn’t going
to change one aspect of society – it’s not just that people can make calls
anywhere. It’s access to GPS systems, information on how to fix a car, a
camera, a video recorder, and oh-so-much more. Think about how smart phones
have transformed the world and how we interact in just a few years. Now what
would happen if there was a new spell that could plant farmers’ crops for them?
(hat tip @nethspace, @alecaustin and @scottlynch78)
7)
Money systems that make perfect modern-day
sense. I’m not a money nerd, so had no idea this was
such an issue for some folks, but it was mentioned by @annelyle, @originalnot,
@doughulick and @scottlynch78 as a pet peeve. The history of money is varied and
complicated; base metals as currency isn’t as standard as you think. And if
you’re using base metals and they aren’t being weighed to see how much has been
skimmed off the sides of each coin, well… People do all sorts of things to both
verify and counterfeit money. A few minutes figuring out how that happens could
provide some useful flavor and interesting plot complications.
8)
Lack
of bureaucracy. When I research empires throughout history, from
Rome to the Aztecs, what I find interesting is the high level of bureaucracy
required to manage such sprawling empires – something which is often lacking in
much fantasy fiction. What kind of official stamps or paperwork or additional
hoops do folks need to go through to travel, or benefit from government
services (are there government services. And if not, what happens to the poor?)
How are taxes collected and measured? Folks who sail across borders without
question, or sprawling empires that lack solid communication systems, may be a
red flag for a lot of readers, and knock them right out. (hat tip
@jdiddyesquire and @johnhorner)
9)
“World-shattering magic, strange elder gods,
twenty different sapient species, but patriarchy is a given.” (quote via @wallrike) I often suspect that we
as fantasy writers and readers have particular blindspots when it comes to
worldbuilding, and not paying enough attention to changing social mores/roles
is a big one. We’ll spend agonizing amounts of time figuring out religions and
different species, but most of humanity still ends up white, and organizes
itself into a general patriarchal, hetero-hierarchy. This is a massive blindness,
because to be honest, this is not actually how we’ve spent most of our
existence organizing ourselves. Humans have been around for over 100,000 years;
the hazy history we quote from is only about 10,000 years, and as we uncover
and sift through the past, we tend to make it look a lot more like the present
than it actually was. Even just a quick look at the Minoans, the Hopi and
Iroquois, and the Musuo, will go a long way toward expanding one’s conception
of what’s possible. Especially when you’re writing… fantasy. Fantasy! Live a
little.
10) Monarchy
as unquestioned (and celebrated) default.
Monarchy is actually pretty boring. And let’s
be real, once again: this is fantasy fiction, and we can do anything we want.
So it’s astonishing that when we have this huge fantastic canvas to work with,
we default to monarchy. In truth, people throughout history have organized
themselves into all sorts of ways, from oligarchies to full and representative
democracies, collectives, and anarchies. Think outside the norm. Readers will
sit up and take notice. (hat tip @mygoditsraining)
11) Ignoring the consequences of war. War
has massive consequences. It disrupts lives. Relationships. Often, it can
eliminate or transform entire social systems. At the very least, war leads to
famine and disease. Raising a mighty army composed mostly of people who worked
the land the year before means that the year after the war, food production is
going to suffer. Whole towns and villages will be displaced. Trade routes
obliterated. War has consequences – it’s not just a vehicle to get the
protagonist to the throne. Also consider birth and infant mortality rates on
successive generations, as families are split up and access to proper medical
care is greatly reduced. We should see the repercussions of violence, not only
throughout an area or country, but throughout the world as disruptions in that space
ripple across those it touches through trade and diplomacy. (hat tip
@tammacneil)
There’s
a whole host of stumbling blocks on the way to crafting fantastic worlds. The
amazing thing about fantasy is that we have an opportunity to push the
boundaries of our imagination. If a fantasy world is less compelling or complex
than the real world, take a step back and rethink it. I want my fantasy as
least as interesting as my history.
We
have the opportunity to imagine something really different. Why not go for it?
Kameron Hurley is an award-winning writer and freelance
copywriter who grew up in Washington State. She is the author of the book God’s War, Infidel, and
Rapture, and her short fiction has
appeared in magazines such Lightspeed, EscapePod, and Strange Horizons, and anthologies such as The Lowest Heaven and Year’s Best SF.
