 Fantasy: May 08, 2013 Issue [#5657] |
  Fantasy
This week: Marriage Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing - and then marry him.
-Cher
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary |
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Marriage
I've been a Fantasy newsletter editor for just over five short years now. That's 12 editorials a year for five years and a few months, which comes to over 60 editorials for the math-challenged.
Unsurprisingly, some months it's not so easy to come up with a topic that I haven't already covered.
So in looking back over the years to try to see what I haven't covered, I noticed that my newsletter of approximately five years ago was on the topic of marriage. Here it is, if you're interested: "Fantasy Newsletter (May 14, 2008)"
It occurred to me that in five years, a good deal has changed: some states in the US, and several other countries, have finally recognized gay unions, for instance, and on a personal note, my own marriage went the way of the passenger pigeon. Also I was just at a wedding over the weekend. So why not revisit the topic? After all, some of you readers weren't even here five years ago.
In the aforementioned newsletter, I wrote: As authors of fantasy and science fiction, we have the opportunity to explore different types of marriage than those we see around us in the real world. When writing about other worlds or times, it would be exceedingly naive to expect a society to adhere to the "woman and man meet, fall in love, get married and have babies" mythology of the contemporary Western world. There are myriad environmental, social, and psychological forces that force different paradigms than monogamy-by-choice.
Okay, so maybe I was as need of editorial content editing then as I am now, but the point remains that "one man, one woman" certainly isn't set in stone (not even the mythological stone of Mount Sinai) - especially when gender itself isn't set in stone. (Note: I'm not talking about real-world issues, here; only about how marriage might work in other cultures and on other worlds.)
Now, the definition of "marriage" that I'm using may be different from yours, so I'll attempt to define what I'm talking about, in the context of fantasy and science fiction, in as few words as possible: Marriage is the deliberate union of two or more sentient beings, with the purpose of legitimizing their union in the larger context of their culture(s). Marriage, as I'm using the term here, isn't about sex or reproduction (which are themselves two separate things), but about people (for expanded definitions of "people") committing to other people, sometimes for the purpose of providing a stable home environment for offspring, but sometimes not. It's also not about one person making an oath (of celibacy or anything else).
So you're writing a story, and it involves aliens or elves or some such. They have some elements in common with humans, because they need to be relatable, but they also have different cultures with different customs for various reasons. The following, then, does not provide enough information: "X'ar'kis and D'nab'lis are married."
In our world in our time, that implies a few things that are left unsaid. Generally, for instance, you think X and D are bonded for life - but that does not have to be the case; there might be term arrangements in their culture, especially if, like many fantasy elves, they live for hundreds or thousands of years. You'd often expect them to have offspring - but that is not necessarily the case. Most of us, even without seeing gender clues in the names, figure they're of different sexes - but that certainly doesn't have to be true. We might think they're committed to each other sexually, but even in our own world in our own time that often doesn't hold. We might assume that they're married to each other exclusively, but maybe in their culture it's normal or at least acceptable to have group marriages - or maybe there are even more than two genders, and there are other sentients in the mix. Perhaps we'd think that it was X and D's mutual decision to be married - but arranged marriages were the norm even throughout much of human history, so perhaps their union is the result of cultural forces.
I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea.
Now, I'm not saying it's a good idea to throw these different ideas in there at random. As I said, there are often cultural reasons for making different kinds of marriage "legitimate" in context. What kinds of marriage are considered normal or acceptable depends on many factors. A people with a small population may only consider marriage acceptable if it results in reproduction, for example, even going so far as to annul the thing if they don't produce offspring in a certain time frame. On the flip side, if overpopulation is a problem, the expectations of marriage may be completely different. I mentioned lifespan above - while it's possible to conceive (pun intended) of individuals who can stay bonded for hundreds or thousands of years, I wouldn't consider it very realistic, because life is about change, and people (or aliens or whatever) change over time. And, it should go without saying, there may be cultures where marriage is unnecessary, obsolete, or simply not practiced.
Consequently, what "marriage" means to members of a race or culture can imply quite a bit about that race or culture, so don't feel constrained by contemporary definitions of the institution. |
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Last time, in "Fantasy Newsletter (April 10, 2013)" , I talked about how fantasy (and science fiction) can actually be considered more of a frame than a genre.
Quick-Quill  : You hit the nail on the head! The word Genre in the past led people to a certain shelf in the library or bookstore. The shelves have dumped out on the floor and some ignorant (lovingly) has put the genres back on the shelf all mixed up. We are not tied to the shelf anymore, but it makes it harder to buttonhole our books when asked. "What do you write?" I find I pimp the present offering rather than try to tell them "some fantasy, with mystery and a little sci-fi thrown in." Great Newsletter.
"What do you write?" "Stories."
Cynaemon  : Very interesting discussion. I write both science fiction and fantasy, and I think in some respects you are right. I also write slash fanfiction, which is probably more of a setting than a genre also.
Thanks for including one of my favorite poems, "On Zolar 14", in your Editor's picks section. Best Wishes, Cynaemon
Fanfiction, too, can be any genre.
D. J. Richter  : I've often struggled to attach my writing to a particular genre. On the other hand, it's obviously fantasy, but I feel like when I tell people I write fantasy they get this idea in their heads of what I write that is completely incorrect. What do you think?
In cases like that, sometimes the best thing to do is offer sample chapters... oh, you did that! But I'll have to defer your question to the other readers:
black_kat_026: I have a question that has nothing to do with the news article. My daughter was playing with her Ariel doll in the tub the other night and pretended that the doll had to go potty. This got me to wondering, How and where do mermaids go potty? As far as I can tell they are swimming around in a giant toilet. Any thoughts?
You know, there aren't any toilets on the Starship Enterprise, either. Which makes you wonder where the Captain puts his Log.
Kate - Writing & Reading  : Fantasy and sci fi as setting, not genre - intriguing premise. A search on Amazon for fantasy books offers descriptions such as 'an epic fantasy adventure'. And sci fi; were 'Hal' not engaged in nefarious sentient activity, would '2001 a Space Odyssey' have been an epic adventure, or mere scientific treatise on the potential of computer technology? But, on the flip side, if fantasy and sci fi 'scenery', how do we then explain sub-genres of fantasy, i.e., 'urban fantasy', 'high fantasy'? are they not genres - marketing images?
I mentioned that genre was a marketing tool, but to expand on that: Marketing is the art and science of delivering a product to an audience that will consume it. A lot of times that means reducing a convoluted, complex plot revolving around well-developed characters into a catchphrase. To be more direct, "urban fantasy" specifies the setting of the fantasy story (a world not unlike the reader's own), but within that you can still have mystery, horror, the supernatural, romance, etc. Similarly, with "high fantasy," one expects the story to be set in something resembling a pre-technological society and involve heroes and epic quests, but in this case, the subgenre "adventure" is usually expected - though again, there can be elements of other genres as well.
And that's it for me for this month. See you in June - until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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