  Fantasy
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The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas,
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
-Andrew Marvell
It's more fun to think that there are other worlds.
-Katherine Heigl
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
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Exotica
Yes, that's "exotica" with an X. I may cover erotica in fantasy at some point, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
By "exotica" what I mean is: Details of your fantasy (or science fiction) world, society, characters, etc. that are materially different from the usual features of our world, society, characters, etc. I'd say that exotica are the reason to write fantasy; without something different from what we're used to, we might as well be writing romantic comedy. Okay, for some of us, that'd be different from what we're used to, also, but you know what I mean.
The thing to remember is that different worlds are... different. How many fantasy stories have you read that are conveniently set on a world with a day/night cycle just like ours, a lunar cycle just like ours, and so on? Granted, it's tough sometimes to come up with a whole new calendar, and I'm not saying you have to - but an exotic calendar is one way to hammer home the point that this world is not yours.
One of my favorite authors is Steven Brust, and in his main sequence of novels, there's no known moon (one cannot see the sky, anyway), and the days are divided into 34 hour periods - though it is not clear how long an "hour" is; it may not be the same as our own. Weeks are five days. It's never explained why these are - though the 34 hour day has some basis in the numerology in the books - because it's told from the point of view of a character who's immersed in that world.
This is realistic - if you're dictating a story about your life here on this Earth, you don't take the time every so often to explain, "We have a calendar divided into 24 - hour days; there are seven days in the week, mostly named after ancient gods; there's anywhere from 28 to 31 days in a month; and twelve months make up a year, which is the time it takes for the planet to complete one revolution around the sun." No, all of that is background, like "We breathe an atmosphere consisting of about 78% nitrogen, but it's the oxygen content that keeps us alive."
And that's just the mundane, everyday stuff. What else do we take for granted that you can change to fit your setting? Well, for example, all life on Earth is either asexual or disexual (meaning male/female). How about a species that has three, or more, sexes? This has been explored to some extent in science fiction, but mostly as a plot point or philosophical foil - not so much, in my experience, as mere background, unremarkable to the characters in the world. Or, what if - and this is going out on an unscientific limb for a moment - what if water doesn't have the same properties in your setting as the ones we're familiar with? Maybe it doesn't boil, or maybe it's a deep purple color. Or, hey, here's one for both camps: what if the gravity's significantly different, but again, the characters are used to it, so they don't go around saying, "I was able to jump fifty krecks because of the low gravity of my planet?"
You don't explain these things up front, or spend too much time on it in the story, because it's boring and unrealistic to do so (unless your main character is an import, which is another issue entirely). What you do is have it worked out, at least in general, beforehand, expanding on the exotica as you go.
Handling exotica right can make the difference between having a good fantasy world and a great one, one that feels real to the reader even while some details are different from what they're used to. Because sometimes it's enough to just know that it's not the world we're born on. |
Some imaginations from around the site:
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Last time, I talked about accuracy in scientific details.
Shadow of a Man  : It's true that diamond would break if it were made into some kind of window pane. But I think the point behind most of the science fiction instances of "diamond" is the fact that it's made to be monomolecular, which would be hard enough. Natural diamond isn't one molecule, but that particular allotrope of carbon is so hard because the molecular structures are large. It nevertheless has too many impurities because of its creation and weathering.
Still, impurities aren't what make diamond brittle; it will fracture along molecular planes like any crystal. In any case, if that's the intention, and it's something different from current technology or knowledge - it needs to be explained, to some extent, in the story.
Colin Back on the Ghost Roads : Very nice editorial, Robert. It doesn't just apply to Science fiction and Fantasy. Sometimes an author just has to do some research to get things right or they will make mistakes that could ruin some readers' suspension of disbelief. Excellent reminder to all of us.
Thank you, and yes, it's certainly applicable to all writing; if something works in an unrealistic way in a mystery, for example, you've ruined the clues. But this being the Fantasy NL, I focused on that aspect 
Lorien : Another great newsletter! As a science fiction reader with a fairly extensive scientific background, I am perpetually irked by science fiction writers who disregard the scientific laws of the universe. When science fiction writers know their science and weave facts into the story - that's what I love.
Geek.
Lauriemariepea : hey, robert--
thanks for highlighting my computers-run-amok story! 
Thanks for writing it
sarahreed: Loved the quotes! Especially: "Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible." I was just talking to a friend about this a few days ago, trying to explain the difference between them. Wish I had had this quote to back me up.
As for diamonds, Sci-fi has always been a tougher genre for me because it is based on reality and has to make sense. In fantasy, you just say it's magic and it works. Most of the time. 
One can always fall back on the Orson Scott Card explanation of the difference between science fiction and fantasy: Look at the cover. Fantasy has trees. Science fiction has rivets. But I disagree that you can "just say it's magic and it works." While anyone can get away with a little bit of that, the best fantasy stories have a well-defined magic system with strengths, weaknesses, limitations, and a rooting in some sort of physical reality. I've been getting into the works of Brandon Sanderson lately, and while he may spend a bit too much time explaining the details of his books' magic systems, they're self-consistent and cohesive - I highly recommend anyone who hasn't read his stuff to pick one up. There's some on the internet if you look.
And that's it for this time! Keep reading and writing and...
DREAM ON! |
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Fantasy: September 30, 2009 Issue [#3302]
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