This is a report on the Worldbuilding Hangout that I held two weeks ago, on November 16th. I was joined by a large (wonderful!) group including Cheryl Barnett, Dale Emery, Glenda Pfeiffer, Harry Markov, Janet Harriet, Kay Holt, and Kyle Aisteach. Our topic was Gender in Language, and boy, did we have fun with this discussion!
We started out brainstorming examples of language that stood out to us for their portrayal of gender. I mentioned the phrasing in Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness that has tickled me ever since I first read it: "my landlady, a voluble man..." What do you do when you're trying, as LeGuin did, to portray someone with no gender? Well, sometimes she alternates as above, to confound our expectations. When she wants it not to stick out, however, she picks one.
Kyle talked about using "zee" for non-gendered pronouns. One of the hazards of trying to find a new pronoun is to retain the sense of specificity while gaining a sense of neutrality. The pronoun system is notoriously resistant to change (that is, when it comes to keeping readers with you). Cheryl mentioned Melissa Scott's "Shadow Man" which uses five genders - now there's a challenge, but clearly it can be done well!
Of course, the most common solution to the problem of gender neutrality is to use the plural pronoun "they." This has become extremely common, though I wouldn't say it's become part of accepted grammar. Kay and I both remarked that language doesn't tend to create a lot of "new stuff" - it has accepted regions and methods of creating new words, but doesn't do much to change the core elements (like pronouns). Kyle and Harry mentioned how German concatenates nouns to create new vocabulary, and in fact languages do a lot of borrowing words back and forth to create new concepts. As you may know, German has masculine, feminine, and neuter articles associated with nouns of each category.
I mentioned that the lack of gendered nouns in English (English is unusual in this regard compared to most of its direct relatives). Apparently there was an early confluence between English and Old Norse, which didn't have gendered nouns, and it was at that historical point that English lost its own use of gendered nouns. Finnish uses no gendered pronouns at all, but languages that do assign gender are extremely common. We speculated that this might have originated (back in the mists of time) from the human tendency to anthropomorphize things. However, there have been salient examples of flexibility, or at least unusual usage. When women came to power in the age of the Pharaohs, they were referred to as kings, not queens.
Though we've worked very hard to start using words that are gender neutral (congresswoman -> representative, steward/stewardess -> flight attendant), gender still has enormous influence on language and thought. I once read a study where young French- and Spanish-speaking children were asked to create cartoon characters out of objects. Without fail, they chose to assign genders to the characters that corresponded to the genders of the nouns in their language. I once also linked here to a great NPR article which talked about the influence of gender on language - it turns out that people tend to associate adjectives to nouns according to their gender. For example, people speaking languages in which the word "bridge" is masculine will talk about bridges as heavy, tall or strong while people speaking languages in which "bridge" is feminine will talk about bridges as light and graceful. The gender of the noun influences the perception of the genderless object.
Kay mentioned that colonialism can force a language on people - such as Spanish in the Phillippines, and that this can change the use/perception of gender. Cheryl mentioned the French invasion of England, which brought in a lot of new words, but didn't re-gender-ize the nouns (excuse my creative grammar, Cheryl!). It is very hard to eradicate a language, unless you eradicate all the people who are using it (which can be done, sadly). Kyle mentioned that after the French invasion of England, French was used as the language of the court - and the courts! - so that it wasn't until the reign of Edward II that English was reinstated in the courts so the accused could understand what was going on. Latin was maintained as the language of the Church for hundreds of years. Other languages have gone underground, such as Gaelic, Korean during WWII under Japanese occupation, or Bulgarian during the Ottoman invasion (thanks for adding that one, Harry!).
Some languages have different dialects in which gender is assigned differently. Kyle mentioned different dialects of ancient Greek. Dialects emerge over time as language use is isolated in an area, and all kinds of changes can potentially emerge.
We returned to the question of gender by talking about Japanese women's language. Though women in Japan don't use "their own language," the style in which they speak is very distinct from the style in which men typically speak. My husband, who learned for years from female teachers, was once told by a friend that he had to "stop talking like a girl." Women tend to speak more formally using honorifics, verb endings, choices of more formal vocabulary, and using different emotive particles on the ends of sentences (these indicate if you're exclaiming, questioning, etc.).
There are also gendered variations of English usage, as Kyle mentioned (this isn't just for languages in faraway lands!). Generally in English the use of qualifiers and indirect approaches is considered more female, and the use of more direct approaches is considered male. There is also a female style many of you may recognize in which statements are delivered with the intonation of questions (i.e. going up at the end). There are internet metrics available now which claim to be able to tell whether a writer is male or female, but Cheryl told us those tend to pick her academic writing as 90% male, and her fiction as 90% female, so there's obviously something else going on besides gender!
Finally we attacked the question of what this all means for worldbuilding. Gender has a deep influence on any people's unconscious view of the world and on the way they speak - so it should do the same for the worlds you create. Harry suggested people could use a special Bulgarian style of insult, where someone will use the wrong gender for a person, and then when they get called on it, deflect by claiming that they were talking about a gendered object nearby. (I'd never heard of that one, and we all loved it!) If you're working with aliens, you can consider animal gender behaviors and assign language use based on them. Avian aliens might have variations in plumage and singing style based on gender. It's always fun to challenge or change gender expectations. A seahorse alien would probably assign male gender to a pregnant human (and misunderstanding and/or hijinks might ensue!).
It's important also to keep in mind that gender is not simple or exclusively bimodal, even in our own world. Some harrier hawks are born with female plumage and engage in female behaviors. Gender is all over our DNA, and resides as much in our brains as it does in our bodies, physically. It is also surrounded by elaborate patterns of cultural behavior, and the two intertwine.
I mentioned that I have a friend in the Netherlands who does speech therapy, and during one of our visits she told us she had a transgendered client who was getting her help to learn how to speak in a feminine way. That if nothing else should tell us that gender has an enormous influence on language use, and that this influence is cultural rather than physical. Cheryl recommended an interesting link about how to speak androgynously.
This is a never-ending topic, but that was where our discussion closed. Today at 11am we'll be talking about colonialism and imperialism, so I hope you'll join us!
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Back to Worldbuilding Hangouts!
Well, I'm back from my trip and I'm going to be resuming worldbuilding hangouts this week. This Wednesday we'll be talking about Imperialism and Colonialism. The hangout will take place at 11am PDT on Google Plus. I hope to see you there!
Cultural views of "attractiveness" change
I ran across a couple of cool links today I thought I'd share. One is this link, which shows old weight gain ads - I mean, after all, you wouldn't want to be too skinny or you wouldn't get any dates! Another great one is this one, from Jamie Todd Rubin, discussing the ads that appear in the 1940's Astounding magazines. Not only weight but tobacco and many other things were seen differently, and it's very evident in the advertisements he shares. Check it out!
TTYU Retro: How and where to begin a story
How and where to begin a story is always - always - a hard question. I have gone back and changed the beginning for nearly every story I've written. In some cases, I have changed the beginning multiple times over the course of revision. It's enough to make one go batty!
The fact is, while there is no absolute rule, a story generally should begin with:
I put the main conflict first because the main conflict is what drives the story forward, and sometimes the main conflict does not start in the same place that the main character does. Often in works where a murder mystery occurs and where the antagonist is mysterious, the book will start with a segment from the antagonist's point of view. This establishes the stakes, i.e. why exactly it is that a reader should care about what the main character is going to try to accomplish. Thus, when we get to the point where we're seeing the main character - likely doing something far more innocuous - we already get a sense of danger, anticipation, and most importantly, curiosity about what happens next. When, as in Janice Hardy's The Shifter, the character has a secret and her safety depends on nobody finding out about it, it makes perfect sense for the story to begin with a scene that results in this secret being discovered. That's what I would call a tributary scene, where the scene has its own natural stakes and drive, but delivers us into a place where the main conflict has clearly begun. For my current work in progress, the opening scene is one that shows the main character in a situation where it is important for him to pay attention to how he and his reputation are perceived by others, and then shows him being driven step by step off his comfortable ordinary concerns into a place of extreme danger, not because of the antagonist, but because of a contagious disease and the fear that the disease causes in people around him. The disease then becomes a driver that leads to a second major change, the death of the Eminence, that propels the story toward its conclusion.
I'll return in a second to the issue of "being driven step by step off his comfortable ordinary concerns," but before I do that I want to address the question of backstory.
I often feel like choosing an opening scene for a story is like trying to create a see-saw. You have a big piece of story (it might even be your protagonist's whole life!) and you have to balance it on that opening scene. The part that chronologically precedes the opening scene is the backstory; the part that follows is the story. My rule of thumb is this:
Any piece of backstory that contributes directly to the identity of the protagonist, his/her culture, his/her self-awareness, and his/her basis for decision making can be portrayed indirectly through the protagonist's actions, and thus need not be included in the main story.
You may have noticed that I've arrived at "the main character" here.
Point of view is my ultimate ally in this. I think about it in the following terms: we judge our experiences and choose our actions on the basis of our personality and experience; thus, aspects of personality and experience can be included at points where our protagonist judges events, and chooses to act.
Here's an example from For Love, For Power of me doing the backstory thing with character judgment. Tagret (my main character) is going to a concert in the ballroom and one of his friends tells him that a new Cabinet member will be announced at the event, and that it might be Tagret's father. Here's how Tagret responds:
"It wouldn't matter," Tagret said. "My father wouldn't risk coming all the way back across the continent just for a Cabinet seat. He's too happy ruling Selimna where nobody can reach him." No Father meant none of Father's nasty surprises, and it would be preferable to keep him there, except that his last and worst surprise had been taking Mother with him.
The fact that Tagret's parents have been gone in a place so far that they can't come back to visit, that he hates his father and loves his mother, and that his father is important enough to consider a Cabinet seat not worth his while - all of these are important pieces of information for understanding the story as it continues. They are relevant here not because Tagret stops out of his ordinary concerns to muse on them, but because he's using them as a basis for his evaluation of the ongoing talk, and his response.
The fact is that an opening scene is strongest when it's a point of convergence. It shows conflict, it shows character, and it shows world (you didn't think I'd forget world, did you?) all at once in an active and engaged way. At the beginning of the story, a reader needs to be grounded in all three.
Grounding is absolutely critical in an opening scene. This is the word I give to basic reader orientation. The reader needs to be oriented - in some way - to the who, what, and where of the story. These elements can be presented in different sorts of balance, as when our protagonist is feeling disoriented and not knowing where he/she is, but they are very important. Imagine the main character as a runner, and you're about to be tied to that runner with a rope so you can follow along at (possibly breakneck) speed for the entire story. If you are going to be able to do this, you have to have your feet on the ground. Otherwise the runner will end up dragging you, spinning and yelling, until you manage to untie yourself and get away.
This is why starting in the middle of extreme action is not a good idea. Everett Maroon had a good post on this issue, here. In your opening scene, your main character should be doing something that requires him/her to indicate to readers who he/she is and what his/her normal concerns are. Until "normal" is established, the abnormal will have no meaning. Even if your character is disoriented, he/she can still try to make sense of what is going on around him/her in terms of what would be normal under ordinary circumstances.
Similarly, starting with simple introspection or gazing out at views is not a good idea either. It's not just that you've omitted the conflict. It's also that you've shackled yourself in terms of backstory and world. It's not only that people don't sit down and contemplate the basic normal conditions of their lives for no reason. It's that backstory and world belong in the background, and if there is nothing going on, they will necessarily take the front seat. By starting with your main character in a situation of conflict that leads directly to the main conflict of the story, you do several things:
Dive in and go for it. These are just a few things for you to think about as you prepare to do so.
The fact is, while there is no absolute rule, a story generally should begin with:
- the main conflict, or some event that is a direct tributary of the main conflict
- the main character
I put the main conflict first because the main conflict is what drives the story forward, and sometimes the main conflict does not start in the same place that the main character does. Often in works where a murder mystery occurs and where the antagonist is mysterious, the book will start with a segment from the antagonist's point of view. This establishes the stakes, i.e. why exactly it is that a reader should care about what the main character is going to try to accomplish. Thus, when we get to the point where we're seeing the main character - likely doing something far more innocuous - we already get a sense of danger, anticipation, and most importantly, curiosity about what happens next. When, as in Janice Hardy's The Shifter, the character has a secret and her safety depends on nobody finding out about it, it makes perfect sense for the story to begin with a scene that results in this secret being discovered. That's what I would call a tributary scene, where the scene has its own natural stakes and drive, but delivers us into a place where the main conflict has clearly begun. For my current work in progress, the opening scene is one that shows the main character in a situation where it is important for him to pay attention to how he and his reputation are perceived by others, and then shows him being driven step by step off his comfortable ordinary concerns into a place of extreme danger, not because of the antagonist, but because of a contagious disease and the fear that the disease causes in people around him. The disease then becomes a driver that leads to a second major change, the death of the Eminence, that propels the story toward its conclusion.
I'll return in a second to the issue of "being driven step by step off his comfortable ordinary concerns," but before I do that I want to address the question of backstory.
I often feel like choosing an opening scene for a story is like trying to create a see-saw. You have a big piece of story (it might even be your protagonist's whole life!) and you have to balance it on that opening scene. The part that chronologically precedes the opening scene is the backstory; the part that follows is the story. My rule of thumb is this:
Any piece of backstory that contributes directly to the identity of the protagonist, his/her culture, his/her self-awareness, and his/her basis for decision making can be portrayed indirectly through the protagonist's actions, and thus need not be included in the main story.
You may have noticed that I've arrived at "the main character" here.
Point of view is my ultimate ally in this. I think about it in the following terms: we judge our experiences and choose our actions on the basis of our personality and experience; thus, aspects of personality and experience can be included at points where our protagonist judges events, and chooses to act.
Here's an example from For Love, For Power of me doing the backstory thing with character judgment. Tagret (my main character) is going to a concert in the ballroom and one of his friends tells him that a new Cabinet member will be announced at the event, and that it might be Tagret's father. Here's how Tagret responds:
"It wouldn't matter," Tagret said. "My father wouldn't risk coming all the way back across the continent just for a Cabinet seat. He's too happy ruling Selimna where nobody can reach him." No Father meant none of Father's nasty surprises, and it would be preferable to keep him there, except that his last and worst surprise had been taking Mother with him.
The fact that Tagret's parents have been gone in a place so far that they can't come back to visit, that he hates his father and loves his mother, and that his father is important enough to consider a Cabinet seat not worth his while - all of these are important pieces of information for understanding the story as it continues. They are relevant here not because Tagret stops out of his ordinary concerns to muse on them, but because he's using them as a basis for his evaluation of the ongoing talk, and his response.
The fact is that an opening scene is strongest when it's a point of convergence. It shows conflict, it shows character, and it shows world (you didn't think I'd forget world, did you?) all at once in an active and engaged way. At the beginning of the story, a reader needs to be grounded in all three.
Grounding is absolutely critical in an opening scene. This is the word I give to basic reader orientation. The reader needs to be oriented - in some way - to the who, what, and where of the story. These elements can be presented in different sorts of balance, as when our protagonist is feeling disoriented and not knowing where he/she is, but they are very important. Imagine the main character as a runner, and you're about to be tied to that runner with a rope so you can follow along at (possibly breakneck) speed for the entire story. If you are going to be able to do this, you have to have your feet on the ground. Otherwise the runner will end up dragging you, spinning and yelling, until you manage to untie yourself and get away.
This is why starting in the middle of extreme action is not a good idea. Everett Maroon had a good post on this issue, here. In your opening scene, your main character should be doing something that requires him/her to indicate to readers who he/she is and what his/her normal concerns are. Until "normal" is established, the abnormal will have no meaning. Even if your character is disoriented, he/she can still try to make sense of what is going on around him/her in terms of what would be normal under ordinary circumstances.
Similarly, starting with simple introspection or gazing out at views is not a good idea either. It's not just that you've omitted the conflict. It's also that you've shackled yourself in terms of backstory and world. It's not only that people don't sit down and contemplate the basic normal conditions of their lives for no reason. It's that backstory and world belong in the background, and if there is nothing going on, they will necessarily take the front seat. By starting with your main character in a situation of conflict that leads directly to the main conflict of the story, you do several things:
- You give your main character an opportunity to introduce him/herself through action and judgment
- You give your main character the opportunity to introduce his/her world through action and judgment
- You orient readers and establish where the story will be going next
- You place the drive (the hook!) of the story front and center so readers can catch hold
- in what context could the main character best demonstrate his/her core motivations, possibly through indirect reference to backstory?
- in what location the main character could best portray the conditions of his/her world that have the greatest bearing on the story as it goes forward?
- in what situation would the significance of the main conflict to this character become most evident?
Dive in and go for it. These are just a few things for you to think about as you prepare to do so.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Secondary characters can add dimension and tension
Sometimes I come into a scene that I've really been looking forward to, and then I discover that it's not really popping the way I want it to. This happened to me the other day with a scene where my protagonist, Tagret, is reunited with his best friend Reyn after they've both been deathly ill. Honestly, I really had been looking forward to the scene - in part because I wondered what would come out of it, whether they would be closer as a result of their ordeal, or further apart. But when I got there and started writing it, it started feeling like some generic scene of reunion.
Generic is not allowed in my book.
It was at that point that I realized I hadn't been thinking through the surrounding context enough. By that I mean that it's always valuable to consider not only the situation at hand (in this case the reunion), but what surrounds it. It can sometimes be easy to think only about our point-of-view protagonist, and not so much of the others he or she interacts with. In my case, I hadn't really thought through how Reyn would be feeling, and what role would be played by the fact that a mutual friend of theirs contracted the same illness and died of it.
So I came up with two ideas that completely change the feel of the conversation:
1. Reyn lives without either of his parents (he's held back by law from accompanying them where they are working now), and has realized that he doesn't want to die without seeing them again. He has decided that as soon as the law allows, he will move to their city to live with them. This changes the conversation significantly, because instead of "wow, we're together again and we're both alive" all of a sudden it was "wow, we're both alive but you should know I'm going to skip town as soon as I can." The tension level is going to go way up as a result of this, and tension is generally good for story drive.
2. Reyn isn't just going to be thinking he needs to leave town, but he's going to be telling Tagret (as opposed to thinking it but not telling him) in part because he's feeling survivor guilt. He feels terrible that their mutual friend has died and isn't sure that he deserves to be alive and part of this friendship when their friend cannot be. This gives him an added layer of motivation, and gives the conversation somewhere far more interesting to go when Tagret gets upset about Reyn's declarations that he wants to leave.
Lucky for me, this also fits beautifully with the next piece of the chapter where they'll be interacting with the one friend of theirs who was untouched by the disease - I now have a lot of great ideas about both Reyn and Tagret, their psychological states and how they'll feel about seeing their friend who got lucky and didn't have to suffer.
What does this mean for you?
Well, it means that if you find yourself entering a piece of interaction between characters, and it doesn't seem to have as much punch as it could, try reversing your point of view for a while. See if the non-POV character doesn't have something really interesting on his or her mind that could take the whole interaction in a different, more fruitful direction. Not only will it help to raise tension locally, but if you take it seriously (i.e. don't just stick it in for one scene and then forget about it later), it can make your secondary character much more three-dimensional and interesting. It will also combat that feeling that readers sometimes get, that they are listening to a conversation that is "getting stuff done" for the author but not really progressing with natural realism.
This change that I am making is not going to change any major plot points, but it will change the whole feel of the story going forward, and make Tagret's motivations far more interesting and subtle as he heads into the rest of the "stuff he has to do." So as you work, don't just make the conversation go the way it has to to get the plot from point A to point B. Think of the hidden context, and do more.
It's something to think about.
Generic is not allowed in my book.
It was at that point that I realized I hadn't been thinking through the surrounding context enough. By that I mean that it's always valuable to consider not only the situation at hand (in this case the reunion), but what surrounds it. It can sometimes be easy to think only about our point-of-view protagonist, and not so much of the others he or she interacts with. In my case, I hadn't really thought through how Reyn would be feeling, and what role would be played by the fact that a mutual friend of theirs contracted the same illness and died of it.
So I came up with two ideas that completely change the feel of the conversation:
1. Reyn lives without either of his parents (he's held back by law from accompanying them where they are working now), and has realized that he doesn't want to die without seeing them again. He has decided that as soon as the law allows, he will move to their city to live with them. This changes the conversation significantly, because instead of "wow, we're together again and we're both alive" all of a sudden it was "wow, we're both alive but you should know I'm going to skip town as soon as I can." The tension level is going to go way up as a result of this, and tension is generally good for story drive.
2. Reyn isn't just going to be thinking he needs to leave town, but he's going to be telling Tagret (as opposed to thinking it but not telling him) in part because he's feeling survivor guilt. He feels terrible that their mutual friend has died and isn't sure that he deserves to be alive and part of this friendship when their friend cannot be. This gives him an added layer of motivation, and gives the conversation somewhere far more interesting to go when Tagret gets upset about Reyn's declarations that he wants to leave.
Lucky for me, this also fits beautifully with the next piece of the chapter where they'll be interacting with the one friend of theirs who was untouched by the disease - I now have a lot of great ideas about both Reyn and Tagret, their psychological states and how they'll feel about seeing their friend who got lucky and didn't have to suffer.
What does this mean for you?
Well, it means that if you find yourself entering a piece of interaction between characters, and it doesn't seem to have as much punch as it could, try reversing your point of view for a while. See if the non-POV character doesn't have something really interesting on his or her mind that could take the whole interaction in a different, more fruitful direction. Not only will it help to raise tension locally, but if you take it seriously (i.e. don't just stick it in for one scene and then forget about it later), it can make your secondary character much more three-dimensional and interesting. It will also combat that feeling that readers sometimes get, that they are listening to a conversation that is "getting stuff done" for the author but not really progressing with natural realism.
This change that I am making is not going to change any major plot points, but it will change the whole feel of the story going forward, and make Tagret's motivations far more interesting and subtle as he heads into the rest of the "stuff he has to do." So as you work, don't just make the conversation go the way it has to to get the plot from point A to point B. Think of the hidden context, and do more.
It's something to think about.
A blind man sees
This is an amazing link. A man who was always blind describes what it is like to see for the first time.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
On Anne McCaffrey and Genre Borderlines
I was deeply saddened today to hear of the passing of Anne McCaffrey. I first discovered her work because, as a child, I had a propensity to pick up from the library or bookstore any book I found featuring the keyword "dragon" in the title. ("Magic" was also a strong indicator that I would like a book.) The first one I ever read was actually Dragonsinger, and I think it was the combination of the word "dragon" and the enticing illustration of a girl surrounded by miniature dragons that first drew me in.
Perhaps because I had dragons and fantasy on my mind, for many years I figured that McCaffrey's world was one of fantasy. It bore some key similarities - low technology living and societal structure being two examples - to prototypical fantasy worlds. However, because I loved the books so much, I continued to read on and on, and as those of you who have done the same will know, I eventually discovered that Pern was not a fantasy world after all. It was a science fictional world. In fact, it wasn't until this year that I realized Dragonflight had first been published in Analog!
Over the years I've spent getting to know the science fiction and fantasy-writing community as an author, I've realized that the borderlines between genres are both highly contested and relatively fluid. They follow the pattern of most categories that we identify: that is, there are some works that are considered prototypically one or the other, but in fact each genre is characterized by a number of features. The number of features possessed by any given work can vary, but only a very few are strong "genre-breakers," and even these - like dragons - can be fit into a different scheme if we pay close attention to the features that surround them.
When we read, we draw conclusions based on either the presence of a thing, or its absence (like, say, electricity). The easiest world models to grasp are the ones that fit with our existing expectations of the world, where the presence of one aspect of our technological life, or our social life, will automatically imply the rest. Those world models are the prototypes, that fall smack in the center of what we imagine fantasy or science fiction to be. The ones I've always admired most, however, are the ones where our expectations are defeated in one way or another. Books where every aspect of the world fits seamlessly with the rest, but in a configuration that does not conform to our expectations.
This was the kind of world I imagined when I first set out to create Varin. And while I take Ursula LeGuin's worlds as models I want to emulate, I think that the stamp of Anne McCaffrey on my fundamental concepts is unmistakable. Both Pern and Varin are worlds where technology has gone into decline (though Varin's technology level hasn't fallen nearly as far as Pern's). Both are worlds where certain phenomena appear to be magical, since though they are central to the people's lives, they aren't deeply understood. Both are worlds where societal structure has taken on an archaic feel for locally important reasons. And both, as a result, have one foot in fantasy and the other in science fiction.
I am grateful to Anne McCaffrey for what her books have taught me - personally as well as in my writing. I can only hope that what I create will live up to the example she has shown. And I hope also that all of us will take inspiration from her vision, which crossed over genre borderlines and created an enduring world that felt alive, and at the same time was constantly surprising.
Perhaps because I had dragons and fantasy on my mind, for many years I figured that McCaffrey's world was one of fantasy. It bore some key similarities - low technology living and societal structure being two examples - to prototypical fantasy worlds. However, because I loved the books so much, I continued to read on and on, and as those of you who have done the same will know, I eventually discovered that Pern was not a fantasy world after all. It was a science fictional world. In fact, it wasn't until this year that I realized Dragonflight had first been published in Analog!
Over the years I've spent getting to know the science fiction and fantasy-writing community as an author, I've realized that the borderlines between genres are both highly contested and relatively fluid. They follow the pattern of most categories that we identify: that is, there are some works that are considered prototypically one or the other, but in fact each genre is characterized by a number of features. The number of features possessed by any given work can vary, but only a very few are strong "genre-breakers," and even these - like dragons - can be fit into a different scheme if we pay close attention to the features that surround them.
When we read, we draw conclusions based on either the presence of a thing, or its absence (like, say, electricity). The easiest world models to grasp are the ones that fit with our existing expectations of the world, where the presence of one aspect of our technological life, or our social life, will automatically imply the rest. Those world models are the prototypes, that fall smack in the center of what we imagine fantasy or science fiction to be. The ones I've always admired most, however, are the ones where our expectations are defeated in one way or another. Books where every aspect of the world fits seamlessly with the rest, but in a configuration that does not conform to our expectations.
This was the kind of world I imagined when I first set out to create Varin. And while I take Ursula LeGuin's worlds as models I want to emulate, I think that the stamp of Anne McCaffrey on my fundamental concepts is unmistakable. Both Pern and Varin are worlds where technology has gone into decline (though Varin's technology level hasn't fallen nearly as far as Pern's). Both are worlds where certain phenomena appear to be magical, since though they are central to the people's lives, they aren't deeply understood. Both are worlds where societal structure has taken on an archaic feel for locally important reasons. And both, as a result, have one foot in fantasy and the other in science fiction.
I am grateful to Anne McCaffrey for what her books have taught me - personally as well as in my writing. I can only hope that what I create will live up to the example she has shown. And I hope also that all of us will take inspiration from her vision, which crossed over genre borderlines and created an enduring world that felt alive, and at the same time was constantly surprising.
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