Worldcon 2019 panel notes: Sunday
Sep. 20th, 2019 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkThe lack of technological progress in fantasy
From the cotton gin to the printing press, technology doesn’t seem to advance in many fantasy worlds –despite hundreds of years of history in which an industrial revolution could happen. Why doesn’t it? Does magic replace the need for technology? What about the growth of magic-powered technology within a fantasy world? What does it take to get a little scientific progress?
Renee Sieber(M), Juliet E McKenna, J.S. Meresmaa, Ian R MacLeod
Another fun and very interesting panel.
What technology are we talking about? Is technology progress? Technology is how you achieve a certain end result, but you also need ability & skill. It helps if there is a need; humans feeling superior to their environment also spurred inventions. Technological regression or periods of technological freeze also happen.
Does progress automatically lead to industrialization? If labor is cheap, do you need technology? The level of technology is a worldbuilding choice. Societal and technological change don't necessarily go together. Periods of accelerated technological progress/change are the exception, e.g. the steam engine time, the space race, the colonization of America and Africa. You need certain conditions for that, like money and rivalries. There's not a lot of mainstream fiction focused on technological change either, usually there's some other focus. When telling a story you have to leave so much out, you have to pick your focus, there's often no space & time for intricacies. Things shouldn't be the same everywhere on your world.
Technology can also make things more difficult for writers, like crime writers who suddenly had to deal with the appearance of mobile phones. There's often no cell signal in horror fiction. The level of technology can also date a story quickly, and fantasy stories are often looking for more universality; this is especially an issue in near-SF. If you add a lot of technology to fantasy, it easily becomes science fiction. They often have similar tropes, like "what does it mean to be human," or the role of agency. Fantasy has the "Chosen One" trope, though many writers nowadays go beyond that.
Readers' expectations of specific time periods often translate to fantasy. Sometimes you can't put historical details into fantasy because no-one would believe it.
Is there a growth of technology-enabled fantasy? People are looking for new things, and there's a greater interest in social history. Technological progress is not a smooth line and there are many interesting "failures." Currently we see the world changing quickly and we want to see that reflected in our stories. Change, and new tech often inexplicable to us, are part of our lives. And sufficiently advanced technology…
How best to integrate fantastical elements into technological developments? Look at how it relates to power structures: who has it, who wants it, who can have it etc. You need to integrate it into the story.
How best to demonstrate that change is happening in epic fantasy? Maybe some tech does persist (e.g. swords) but society changes. Showcase little changes here and there. Generally people resist change. It's not unrealistic to only have few changes over centuries, but it's odd if there's nothing.
What would be fun periods to explore? Roman calculating machines, steampunk… (though that's often more used as a setting than actual technology)
(New) tech can be scary, quick change can be stressful, so unchanging worlds can be a form of escapism.
Should magic progress in similar ways to technology? Book rec for "Foundryside." Wizards are often shown as more interested in theory than practical applications.
What changes could come up more often? Sewage systems, gun powder…
What writers need to know: physics and space travel
This is the second of a two-part series of panels designed to help authors on science topics. Join our panel of experts who share the ins and outs about physics and space because, in the words of Han Solo, ...‘travelling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops.’ Our panellists will cover writing tips and resources available for ensuring that you get the science right even if you don’t have a PhD in astrophysics.
Brother Guy Consolmagno(M), Mr Joe Haldeman, Cliona Shakespeare, Marc Stiegler
Main take-away: It must be hard to read/watch science fiction as a physicist ^^
The first law: good story > meticulous science.
Still, there are some important principles to keep in mind when writing SF, like Newton's laws.
When are you thrown out of a story? For example when there is no drag in space (X-Wings did it badly, Bab5's Star Furies much better.) Space is a vacuum and insulator: you don't freeze to death immediately. It's also very odd when inventions work right the first time and there are no funding issues.
Movies make mistakes all the time, but are held to a lower standard than SF books. Some movies try, sometimes you don't want to know too much. Mentioned are "Interstellar", "The Martian", HBO's "From the Earth to the Moon". The first "Iron Man" movie did quite well especially in showing that testing etc. is necessary.
Some book recs: "Tau Zero", "Revelation Space" (and its space ships, "lighthuggers"), …
BGC: Every author is allowed one impossible choice if you have an interesting idea and are consistent and can maintain it. (This includes FTL travel. Brother Guy Consolmagno is head of the Vatican Observatory btw and he told a story of how, after one panel, Lois McMaster Bujold asked him if he was offended that she'd written books with a pantheon of gods; he told her that that's less offensive than that she's written books with FTL travel.)
Programming is also often depicted in very unrealistic ways (never forget the scene in iirc NCIS? where two people type on the same keyboard to hack faster.) Programming has changed, hard to keep up with for Hollywood. Can novels really capture the horror of debugging? Science doesn't favor moments of high drama, but plugging away at things, and that's harder to show.
How long do you spend researching? MS has been researching graphine recently and there's so much cool stuff that could be done with it that he doesn't dare put all of it in one novel because it would seem unrealistic.
Good science can inspire authors, and vice versa; BGC tells a story of how "Iceworld" gave him an idea about how to interpret data from the Jupiter moons.
What to use for resources? the Oxford university press has a series "A Very Short Introduction" to different topics. Or one can start on Wikipedia and then follow links from there. Or just find someone and ask for help – much easier nowadays than it used to be, e.g. via Twitter, or Stack Overflow. JH likes the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. As an inspiration for inventing new planets, BGC recommends reading old astronomy books with theories about what e.g. the planets in our solar system might be like.
(I left early to get to another panel and missed most of the questions.)
Wands at the ready! Magical worldbuilding in SFF
When worldbuilding with magic, is it enough to add magic to our existing social structures, or does some magic alter the way the world works? There are soft magic systems with few rules and hard magic systems with lots of rules; does this affect the ways magic shapes the narrative? Arthur C. Clarke said: ‘Magic is just science we don’t understand yet.’ At what point does magic become science?
Christopher Husberg(M), Zen Cho, Diane Duane, Justin Call
I didn't learn anything precisely new but it was still fun and interesting to see it presented like this.
What role does magic play in your worldbuilding process? JC has the magic system first, while DD has the idea first and then thinks about what it means for how the magic would need to work. ZC is especially interested in beliefs and mythology, where there are rules but they don't need to make complete sense. By "deploying mythology" one can reach deep into the psyche.
How best to integrate magic into the world? Keep in mind that you're telling a story. The world should make the story stronger. Think about how the magic will impact your characters. Don't get carried away with details. Magic is a tool for characters to approach/solve problems, but there need to be costs/consequences, which create new opportunities. There should always be weaknesses in a magic system.
Hard magic system: the rules of magic are understood. Soft magic system: they're not. But it's a spectrum, not a clear line. Readers need to understand enough that the story works.
When building the world first: keep adding more details until you stumble over the story, then narrow your focus. You don't have to show all your work, especially not overtly, but having it and showing bits of it helps it feel less artificial. You can start with a soft idea, and then later build the hard rules on top of it if you want.
Have they ever written themselves into corners with their own magic systems? DD talks about how statements from earlier "Young Wizard" books were later amended to add more nuance and that was shown as part of the growing process for students.
Is it an extra challenge to add magic to SF? In DD's Young Wizard books magic is just another kind of science. In our world we don't always understand how medicine works either. Technology is basically hard magic; in SF there's a tendency to use hard magic, but not necessarily, see e.g. Star Wars.
Who has access to magic and who doesn't? Historically, those forbidden from accessing power always find some way. It depends on where magic comes from: usually either training, devotion, or genetics. There are different kinds of magic education systems: manuals, apprenticeships, schools etc.
Invented mythologies in SF
Whether it’s creation myths for sentient AIs or a pantheon of alien gods, invented mythologies can add depth and weight to SF storytelling. How have myths from our own past informed the creation of fictitious mythologies in SF? Where do you start when inventing mythology? What makes a mythos convincing, and how do you subtly weave your mythology into the narrative?
Fonda Lee(M), Marina J. Lostetter, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Marie Brennan
This panel was fascinating, and also a good panel composition and well-moderated leading to a good conversation.
What do we mean by "mythology"? What's the difference to religion? It can mean different things, but roughly, mythology is a sacred narrative believed to be true about how the world came to be. Religion is concerned with practices, and cosmology is about how the world works. "Myth" is not pejorative.
How important is mythology to your worldbuilding? ML considers it a necessary background to create more depth. AT says creating a world and creating its myths is very different. Also, "how to defeat the Dark Lord" is not a myth but a manual. Myths need to be fuzzy, and living stories that change; they're essentially giant games of telephone over many many years.
Mythology should serve the story & narrative. How to best navigate the relationship between mythology and magic? There can be different ideas of how magic came to be. It wouldn't make sense if magic & mythology were totally separate. If all myths are strictly true, mythology loses a certain numinous quality. (That annoys MB about D&D in particular, there's nothing numinous about the gods, you put a coin of worship in and spells pop out.) In our world, one way in which myths are special is that they often feature magic – in fantasy worlds where magic is ordinary, what would have that kind of magic for them?
Myths and legends are not static, how do you make them feel lived in? Always consider who's telling this story now, and why. What effect do they want to achieve? What are the unintended consequences? Who benefits, who's invested? There can be festivals, superstitious practices, things that appear in the lived daily lives and actions of the characters. What happens to myths when the culture is under stress? There can be "underground" versions of myths. People mobilize myths for political ends. FL would sum it up as three aspects to make myths feel real: a) that they are used for ulterior/political motives, b) there's disagreement, messiness, gaps in the myths etc., c) pop culture: how current society interprets it.
How do you communicate myths effectively? You need to tell a story where it's relevant. Think for example about somebody with a cultural narrative that's strongly at odds with the world's "mainstream", or slowly showing that what the characters believe is not actually true. The easiest way is to link the narrative to the myth, or that the myths are used as political tools. You can also use myths to echo what's happening in the narrative. You can also reflect them in the language, e.g. cursing.
How does mythology interact with SF? Just look at what's happening in our world… There's a lot of mythological qualities in how the Founding Fathers are regarded, for example. Mythology is not necessarily based on something that happened, but on trying to understand, and possibly control. SF is kind of a natural breeding ground for myths because it often deals with large time periods. We see that things can become mythological very quickly.
What are some examples of canons with particularly compelling mythology? The Kushiel books have competing stories that are woven into daily life. The Mistborn series has several reveals tied to myths, and sequels that take place many years later when the events of the first books have become myths. Mary Gentle's Book of Ash series has myths that attempt to explain. The Bene Gesserit in Dune have a combination of myths and SF, and the myths are used for political gain.
Any advice for writers? Read many real myths, from different cultures. Pay attention to "little myths", things that are romanticized. Myths arise organically and change. Keep your notes of the early versions of the mythology you develop, you can likely use it later.
How do you signify that something is a myth and not necessarily truth? Maybe someone calls it out, or people disagree about it. It depends on how it's presented in the story. The reader may know more than the characters do and piece things together. But it also might not even matter for the story.
Do stories need to be long to have space to develop mythology well? No, not necessarily. Non-loadbearing things can only be referenced. Having one reference that opens so much in the mind of the reader is one of the finer points of the art. You may not need a lot of references to myths but sometimes/some readers want it.
When using inspiration from our world's myths, how much can/should you change? The folk process changes myths constantly. When writing about existing myths, be careful – you don't want to exoticize another culture for your story, or add stuff that doesn't fit.
Many fantasy worlds feature gods that openly manifest, but it doesn't reflect in characters' worldview or inner lives much. How best to deal with deities like this? It depends on what you want your gods and characters to be like. "Alien but relatable"? Something too modern can throw you out, for example atheist/non-superstitious peasants; if you have "atheists", there's a fine line so you don't have "the people actually believe in these myths and are therefore obviously stupid," myths should have some use for the characters. Star Trek's Q is basically a god, but not really treated as divine: divinity depends on tone and the author's attitude.
What if you deliberately want manual-style myths? Game of Thrones for example had a period with magic, but magic later disappeared and became myth; there's a nice balance between belief and lots of skepticism, and having myths that are not true adds verisimilitude. A step-by-step manual makes things too easy.
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Date: 2019-09-22 04:57 pm (UTC)Of the panelists: Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Echoes of the Fall" books have some interesting mythology, and I liked them a lot. Fonda Lee mentioned that there was some mythology as pop culture in her "Green Bone Saga," which I don't remember but it's been over a year since I read "Jade City." I don't know the other two authors' books or remember what they said about them.
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