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Post by fluke on Jun 23, 2012 22:43:21 GMT -5
This is something I found myself thinking about the other day. How much of what you don't believe is possible can you present with a clear conscience in your work? On one hand, I don't believe that Sachalin are possible, but they play a major role in my fantasy world ("The Strong Survive," "The Stronger Rule," and "Pursuit"). I don't believe reanimating corpses through lightning works, yet necromancers in Azuran do it (forthcoming "New Life" and "This Body of Death"). The same for dwarves and elves. A friend of mine said he was cautious about Christian fantasy because of these very things: there is truth in there, but you have to unravel it from the lies (I chose not to enter that part of the conversation).
The reason I ask this is I am working on a story right now that is a sequel to a work most of you haven't seen or heard about, and it sets up part three of the story. In part 3, the 2 main characters are searching for a unique spell book with the intention of destroying it. The Big Bad (TM) has the book and intends to use it soon. I was thinking about scenarios of why he is trying to use it. The first thing that came to my head was "the book can open a portal to Hell, releasing demons upon the world." Then I thought, "No. I don't believe such a thing would be possible." My next thought, "Excuse me, what genre do you write most of your stories in and you complain about 'possible'?"
I'm not asking if I should use the "portal to Hell" plot. I'm asking how have you addressed this issue of how much you don't believe can you present in a positive manner (positive meaning showing it a possible thing, not showing it as a good thing, and possible really not meaning you think you could make it work in the real world)?
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Post by Kessie on Jun 24, 2012 0:19:42 GMT -5
This is an interesting question. I run into this a lot with Christian fiction (I'm reading one awful story right now where there's a fantasy world with Nephilim and somehow they're also mermaids.)
It's like people can't separate the fiction from the reality. Hell exists. Satan exists. God, Jesus and angels all exist. Writing about them and keeping them strictly realistic is like trying to write about interstellar travel but sticking only to technology we have available to us right now. What if I want to imagine a hyperdrive? Oh, nope, can't do that. It's not realistic.
(Also, if you want to get technical, there are no demons in Hell. They won't go there until after the Last Judgement. They're all running around on Earth at the moment.)
In the stories I'm writing right now, my husband and I got a kick out of designing World Guardians. Uber-powerful angels who epitomize their world via personality and looks, yet are personable and enjoy interacting with people on their worlds, if you know how to communicate with them.
Do I think such beings exist? No. But they're fun to make up.
We also have mortal angels called Angeli. They're hot chicks who happen to live for a couple thousand years, and get assignments to be a bodyguard to certain important mages. This subjects the angelus to all kinds of heartache, because she outlives her charge. They also have wings and all kinds of awesome magical powers.
Do I believe they exist? Nope.
My WIP involves a guy running from his fetch, a sort of customized Grim Reaper that looks just like him, and who exists only to kill him.
Do I think fetches exist as I've written them? Nope.
I'm trying to take a cue from the Dresden books. God exists in the Dresdenverse. But so do the Seelie and Unseelie fey, every flavor of vampire, werewolves, necromancers, archangels, and so on. It makes for a very flexible, fascinating fantasy world. Lots of freedom.
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Post by isabeau on Jun 24, 2012 0:29:44 GMT -5
How much of what you don't believe is possible can you present with a clear conscience in your work?
In your first and second paragraphs, your use of "possible" is in reference to the real world, but in your final paragraph, you state that you don't mean "possible" to be in reference to the real world.
Could you please clarify?
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Post by Bainespal on Jun 24, 2012 16:40:00 GMT -5
I think I understand the confliction. A small competition was organized on the other forum I visit from time to time, an interactive fiction forum. The author of a particular IF work involved invited other people to write interactive fiction stories in his fictional sci-fi timeline. I decided to participate, and I'm almost done with my entry.
The problem is that it's a very very far-future, post-apocalyptic setting, and it seems highly unlikely that Christianity exists in this imaginary future. Our religion would have been forgotten along with everything else from our current world. Having them retain Christianity would mean they would have to have retained a tremendous amount of our history, especially if you see the Bible as integral to true Christianity. It would be impossible to write a story in this science fiction universe and allow the inhabitants of that far-future to remember so much history.
So, I don't put Christianity in there, explicitly. But the most explicit message of my IF story, to the characters of that imaginary future that I believe is impossible, is that they must remember the past, remember that they cannot forge their own destiny, believe in the purposes of their mysterious Ancestors.
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Post by fluke on Jun 24, 2012 17:19:37 GMT -5
Isabeau,
That will teach me to post at 10:43 at night. Please ignore the qualifier on possible in the final paragraph.
Kessie,
The world angels sound like the Oyarsa of Lewis' Space Trilogy.
In my worldbook, I've got all kinds of things that I don't believe really exist, and a ton of others that do exist but differently. Elves, dwarves, vampires, griffons, wyvern (actually pterosaurs), Frankens, Sachalin, and others. Just by writing fantasy, I'm entering the realm of the not-in-this-world, and most of it doesn't give me a second's pause. So why did the portal to Hell bring me up short?
I think it has to do with being called to teach theology and Bible. As such, I have mental limits on the theology I portray. For example, I would not (and I bet no one else on this board would either) have a competing religion that truly was the way, the truth, and the life. I might have practitioners who believed their false religion was such, but there couldn't be two ways leading to the abode of the Father. Likewise, I couldn't present the open view of God (even in fiction) as being accurate. Or soul sleep. Or present the documentary hypothesis as accurate.
When I was trying scifi, I wrote with hyperdrives, knowing the science says it isn't possible. However, after I had been working on a quantum universe setting for a while, I felt I needed to stop because I was wandering into bad theology.
This isn't to say that I think you shouldn't write your angelus, fetch, and world guardian stories. I would probably enjoy reading them. I can already see some of the issues that the angelus might face. Loyal to one mage, doomed to outlive him, then assigned to another, falling for him, feeling guilty for that, lather, rinse, repeat. Do they turn cold-hearted after several assignments? Do they want to turn cold but find themselves drawn to the one they guard? (Don't answer. I'm just thinking aloud.) I think we should all write as God leads us.
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Post by Kessie on Jun 24, 2012 17:53:32 GMT -5
Fluke: Ahh, you see the conflicts that arise in an mortal angel. Yes, they do get jaded after a few generations. They eventually leave the mortal realm to be with the Lord. Prior to that, they have to maintain close fellowship with him or their white wings turn gray and eventually black. A blackwing angelus is one that has completely rebelled and is actively using their power for evil. A blackwing is actually the villainess of my entire series. Maybe you had a problem with a gate to Hell because it didn't fit the fantasy motif? If you have all kinds of fantasy creatures, sticking demons from Hell in there is like having the bad guy build an aircraft carrier with F-18s on the deck to fight the good guys with. It just wouldn't work. (Admittedly, the image is kind of cool, like this picture. Dragon + jet. fav.me/d42fkvo ) What if you took a cue from the various Final Fantasy games, and let the spellbook split the world into chunks? Or swap out entire continents with land from other dimensions, bringing with it alien monsters and ferocious civilizations? Or just splinter it all, a la Bastion (and the only surviving point is, you guessed it, the Bastion). |
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Post by fluke on Jun 24, 2012 19:54:11 GMT -5
Kessie,
Demons do fit in with my fantasy world. It's very middle ages when people saw demons behind every corner. There's a scene I've written where a mage who specializes in summoning demons is drug live into Hell by one of the demons he thought he controlled (the demons had been staying inside the pentagrams to make him think he was in control). I actually hadn't thought about that scene in a long time as the story has been sitting in the files for a couple of years. In that case, the portal would be completely in place. However, maybe the pause was from the Lord-that He doesn't want the story to go that way. Very possible.
(I also have a scene where the dwarves arm their ballista with something akin to anti-aircraft fire to combat the griffons dropping rocks on the castle. The F18 statement reminded me of that scene. The armament is lit, loosed, and explodes in front of the griffons, peppering them with small, flaming pieces of shrapnel. The griffons are being flown by the bad guys, btw.)
I will definitely consider the world splitting. That has definite potential. The spell to stop does need to be a big one. And FF3/6 was one of my favorite games in college. My roommates and I would come up with all kinds of challenges for the final battle. Okay, no magic this time through (one roommate did the whole game without using magic at all.). No weapons, no magic, fist fight Kefka! Imps only. Imps only, fist fight.
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Post by fluke on Jun 25, 2012 12:52:37 GMT -5
Bainsepal,
Sorry. Missed yours in a cross post. Started my reply before your was up, but had to check on my sons and didn't post it. That is the thing I am thinking about here.
Another example has to do with a new author I was looking at the other day. His sample was interesting, so I checked the about page. One of the reader reviews said the author was "considered a heretic but no big deal." I read on, thinking that there are groups that would consider me a heretic. It depends on who and why. I found out the why. In one of his briefly summarized on the page stories, he presents God not as creator from nothing but as a tamer of a prior existing chaos. This was said to be a recurrent theme in his stories.
Read that and said, nope. Don't care if it is fantasy and I can separate fact from fiction. Not going to support this with my money.
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Post by Kessie on Jun 25, 2012 14:11:56 GMT -5
Fluke: In the case of God taming chaos instead of creating, what makes that god any different from Zeus?
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Post by fluke on Jun 25, 2012 16:41:13 GMT -5
Kessie, that was exactly my thought, though I used Marduk (a Babylonian god) in my thought. And, hence, the reason I said no.
Oh, Walter Kaiser Jr has an excellent section on taming chaos in his book "The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant?" There, he traces the term T-H-M (deep water) that some say shows that Genesis is a polemic against Enuma Elish, where Marduk subdues T-H-M-T (chaos). He disagrees, first rarely does the shorter word (thm) come from the longer word (thmt). Secondly, a tablet older than Enuma Elish has been unearthed that uses t-h-m as ocean. Enuma Elish and this older tablet are both in Akkadian, but that language is similar to Hebrew. The difference is about like going from Italian to Portuguese (Hebrew and Akkadian share an ancestor). Learn one language well, learn a few things to watch for in spelling differences and letter shifts, and you're more than 50% of the way there.
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Post by Kessie on Jun 25, 2012 18:29:39 GMT -5
Really? A whole case built on one word? Ah well, I guess there's a whole thread down there for that.
I'm currently researching alchemy. It's another thing I don't believe in (well, I believe it was the ancestor of chemistry and pharmacy), but I'm going to write about it. More like just a homunculus, an alchemy Frankenstein thingy. But it makes a great monster.
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Post by fluke on Jun 25, 2012 21:23:56 GMT -5
Yes, they do make great monsters. Frankenstein was the inspiration for the Frankens in my stories.
The Genesis as polemic debate is an interesting one. They say t-h-m shows the connection and then Genesis goes out of its way to be different. The only connections after that are a few things that you have to have in a creation story. Oh look, there's the earth. There's the stars, and moon. Look, animals! Twist the brain of one of its supporters by asking, "If the author was so careful to go against Enuma Elish in all the other parts, why did he leave t-h-m as a clue?"
One of my hobbies used to be making atheists' head implode. Ah, good times.
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Post by metalikhan on Jun 26, 2012 1:49:20 GMT -5
Some of your question sounds akin to the argument that, for a Christian, all fiction is lies and vain imaginings.
IMO, the main difference is that in SFF, there's an extra set of possible characters, creatures, and scenarios available with which to explore thematic questions. That those things have no actual reality isn't relevant. It's the foundational questions and explorations at the core of the stories which validates them.
To date, I've included elves, trolls, gryphons, unicorns, shapeshifters, basilisks, dragons, fox people, intelligent spiders, and even vampire violets. But some of the core explorations delve into such issues as racism, the impact of extrapolated technology, forgiveness, effects of isolation, courage...
The thematic explorations are not so much about whatever aspect/name/camouflage of God or religion is presented in the story world but about the characters' responses (whether toward deity or toward family, friends, enemies—other characters) in the light/ level of their understanding. The explorations are about application (or not) of scriptural principles as each character responds (or not) within the framework of the principles rather than about the construction of religions comparable to Christianity (or any other).
The Sachalin do not exist, but you created a race and culture with specific traits that have parallels in reality. The arc of Granish's character (The Strong Survive) involved his changing understanding of what strength means as well the value of every life, not just the strong (as defined by his culture). Even had there been no references to God or religion, the thematic core solidly shows a belief system aligned with scriptural precepts.
A HUGE part of writing SFF is making the completely unbelievable believable enough to get the character from point A to point B. The character's arc is what makes the story a story.
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brianc
Junior Member
Posts: 78
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Post by brianc on Jun 28, 2012 14:03:21 GMT -5
This is something I found myself thinking about the other day. How much of what you don't believe is possible can you present with a clear conscience in your work? On one hand, I don't believe that Sachalin are possible, but they play a major role in my fantasy world ("The Strong Survive," "The Stronger Rule," and "Pursuit"). I don't believe reanimating corpses through lightning works, yet necromancers in Azuran do it (forthcoming "New Life" and "This Body of Death"). The same for dwarves and elves. A friend of mine said he was cautious about Christian fantasy because of these very things: there is truth in there, but you have to unravel it from the lies (I chose not to enter that part of the conversation). It's a story! Gotta' have fun with it! People know it's not true. They're not looking for truth in the fantastical stuff. They're looking for truth in the morals and the God of the story (in Christian fiction). This should never be a concern for a Christian writer. And it's understood by the Christian reader. Therefore, no one really has a problem with this (or rarely, I should say). If I presented something about Christianity in one of my books that I don't believe just for the sake of the story, then I would simply state at the end of the book that I don't believe that's true. You put that type of thing in the Author's Notes. Problem solved!  - Brian |
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brianc
Junior Member
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Post by brianc on Jun 28, 2012 14:06:33 GMT -5
(Also, if you want to get technical, there are no demons in Hell. They won't go there until after the Last Judgement. They're all running around on Earth at the moment.) Where are you getting this idea from? If there are no demons in hell, why do the demons in the possessed man ask Jesus not to send them to the Abyss? - Brian |
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