his father. Usually he gets laid along the way and receives a woman as reward although she is not as important as his final triumph in the hierarchy of menfolk.
By what standard can this story (and others like it) be claimed as universal? Of itself it is particularist, limited, and superficial when applied to the wide-ranging experience of human beings across time and place.
The trappings and tropes we are told are “realistic” are in fact selective realism.
Many hold to the idea of science fiction and fantasy as a progressive genre, one that can continually open up new spaces, new paths, new visions that have to do with humanity. But if new spaces and new paths are only inhabited by the same people as were valorized in the stories before, then they aren’t new and they aren’t progressive, if progress means anything.
Now and again people bewail how fantasy is an inherently conservative genre but in fact most fantasy has little to do with the actual past. The myths layered on top of the past get more rigid the more they are needed to reinforce the status quo. Modern fantasy has less to do with nostalgia for monarchy and more to do with protecting the status quo of today, the desire to protect the privilege of those who have held on to it for so long. The male main character who through genius or magical skill succeeds at his quest or takes or regains a throne is less about catering to notions of aristocracy and more about essentialism and perhaps even social Darwinism. Both notions are part and parcel of the same way of organizing the universe: rationalizing that some people deserve better than others regardless of how it came about that they got it. Modern science fiction rarely fares much better than fantasy even if its trappings may seem more democratic or industrial (I won’t say technological because periods of technological innovation exist throughout human history, a fact much ignored by people who love to excoriate “fantasy” for its “pastoral traditionalism”).
In the end I chose to write the epic fantasy and science fiction I wanted to see, not the epic SFF I had been sold as the only authentic brand. I chose to write women at the center of my narratives. I chose to create space for myself by which I meant all of the people I did not see in these stories. Instead of landscapes of received wisdom, of ossified expectation, and of unchallenged assumptions, I chose to build landscapes of possibility and expansion. What had been labeled trivial and unworthy could be exposed as important and necessary. Those who had been invisible through omission and prejudice would become visible and inevitable at the heart of the narrative.
This is my landscape, the heart of everything I have written.
I do belong here. This can be my narrative, and yours too. The landscapes of the fantasy and science fiction genre are not owned by a few, nor can they any longer be defined by a few. The river has many channels, some running strong, some hidden and hard to see, some yet to be carved. We can explore them all.
Thanks to Katharine Beutner, Liz Bourke, Daniel José Older, and N. K. Jemisin for reading and comments.
R IDING THE S HORE
OF THE
R IVER OF D EATH
A C ROWN OF S TARS S TORY
THIS WOODED WESTERN WOODED country far from their tribal lands in the east smelled raw and unpalatable to Kereka, but the hawk that circled overhead had the same look as hawks in the grasslands. Some things were the same no matter where you went, even if you had to ride into the lands where foreigners made their homes to get what you wanted. Even if you had to journey far from your father’s authority and your mother’s tent to seize the glory of your first kill.
The reverberant thunk of an axe striking wood surprised her; she’d thought it was too early to hunt because they had yet to see any sign of habitation. Ahead, barely visible within the stretch of pine and beech through which they rode, her brother Belek unslipped his
By what standard can this story (and others like it) be claimed as universal? Of itself it is particularist, limited, and superficial when applied to the wide-ranging experience of human beings across time and place.
The trappings and tropes we are told are “realistic” are in fact selective realism.
Many hold to the idea of science fiction and fantasy as a progressive genre, one that can continually open up new spaces, new paths, new visions that have to do with humanity. But if new spaces and new paths are only inhabited by the same people as were valorized in the stories before, then they aren’t new and they aren’t progressive, if progress means anything.
Now and again people bewail how fantasy is an inherently conservative genre but in fact most fantasy has little to do with the actual past. The myths layered on top of the past get more rigid the more they are needed to reinforce the status quo. Modern fantasy has less to do with nostalgia for monarchy and more to do with protecting the status quo of today, the desire to protect the privilege of those who have held on to it for so long. The male main character who through genius or magical skill succeeds at his quest or takes or regains a throne is less about catering to notions of aristocracy and more about essentialism and perhaps even social Darwinism. Both notions are part and parcel of the same way of organizing the universe: rationalizing that some people deserve better than others regardless of how it came about that they got it. Modern science fiction rarely fares much better than fantasy even if its trappings may seem more democratic or industrial (I won’t say technological because periods of technological innovation exist throughout human history, a fact much ignored by people who love to excoriate “fantasy” for its “pastoral traditionalism”).
In the end I chose to write the epic fantasy and science fiction I wanted to see, not the epic SFF I had been sold as the only authentic brand. I chose to write women at the center of my narratives. I chose to create space for myself by which I meant all of the people I did not see in these stories. Instead of landscapes of received wisdom, of ossified expectation, and of unchallenged assumptions, I chose to build landscapes of possibility and expansion. What had been labeled trivial and unworthy could be exposed as important and necessary. Those who had been invisible through omission and prejudice would become visible and inevitable at the heart of the narrative.
This is my landscape, the heart of everything I have written.
I do belong here. This can be my narrative, and yours too. The landscapes of the fantasy and science fiction genre are not owned by a few, nor can they any longer be defined by a few. The river has many channels, some running strong, some hidden and hard to see, some yet to be carved. We can explore them all.
Thanks to Katharine Beutner, Liz Bourke, Daniel José Older, and N. K. Jemisin for reading and comments.
R IDING THE S HORE
OF THE
R IVER OF D EATH
A C ROWN OF S TARS S TORY
THIS WOODED WESTERN WOODED country far from their tribal lands in the east smelled raw and unpalatable to Kereka, but the hawk that circled overhead had the same look as hawks in the grasslands. Some things were the same no matter where you went, even if you had to ride into the lands where foreigners made their homes to get what you wanted. Even if you had to journey far from your father’s authority and your mother’s tent to seize the glory of your first kill.
The reverberant thunk of an axe striking wood surprised her; she’d thought it was too early to hunt because they had yet to see any sign of habitation. Ahead, barely visible within the stretch of pine and beech through which they rode, her brother Belek unslipped his
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