End of Romance

It has been a long time coming, but I believe I’ve lost my affection for fantastic literature. Beaten within an inch of its life by mediocrity, it lies bleeding in the ditch, and no medicine nor healing potion can save it.

William Gibson once lamented that he (and Bruce Sterling) were the only men still writing science fiction. (This was before the arrival of Stephenson, I think.) Everyone else was just writing fantasy. Sometimes, I feel that nobody is writing fantasy anymore; they’re just writing junk juvenalia.

This may come from the fact that my bookshelf contains less fantasy and more non-fiction these days. The book currently grabbing my attention is Christopher Hitchens’ Letters to a Young Contrarian. Having just finished god is not Great (capitlization intentional), I feel something in Hitchens’ writing that I’ve missed in fantasy for many years. A sense of kinship.

Alan Moore said the purpose of Art is to remind ourselves that we are not alone. Not alone in our fears, not alone in our hopes, not alone in our desires. Someone else out there feels as we do. Thinks as we do. Hopes as we do. In Moore’s work, I feel this. Feel him reach through the page with his fingers–heavily adorned with symbol and metaphor–and touch my cheek. “I know,” he says. “I know.”

I feel that in Hitchens’ wriitng. I feel it in Chuck Palahniuk’s writing, in Alice Hoffman’s writing, in Richard Dawkins’ wiritng. I don’t feel that in fantasy anymore.

I felt it when I read Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books. I felt it when I read Sandman. I felt it when I read Tanith Lee’s Silver Metal Lover… which brings me to a tangent.

When I was younger, I was infatuated with the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I was enchanted. Lovecraft represented everything I loved about fantasy. I read fantasy because I loved the idea of building a world. An authentic history, authentic culture, authentic world. Making people believe in something that didn’t exist. Maybe it wasn’t even that. Maybe it was just showing off how clever I was that I could come up with ideas that nobody else had come up with. A kind of intellectual masturbation. It wasn’t until noltain introduced me to that book I began to move beyond my juvenile infatuation with Lovecraft. That’s something I’ve never said “Thank you,” for.

Thank you, Elizabeth.

It was when we started working on Legend of the Five Rings that Matt Wilson and I started talking about a storyline that would mean something. A story that would reach through the cards and touch the players. Something that would say, “You are not alone.”

That was my goal. To tell a story that wasn’t just about katana and ninjas and “gamer kewl.” A story that said something about courage, about honor, and about sacrifice. About human beings who were thrown into a circumstance they didn’t fully understand. About the fall of pride and the healing power of compassion. I fought for ideas and events others didn’t want because the choices compromised the character’s kewl. (Sorry for using that twice in one paragraph.)

Many people involved were swept up in the notion that their favorite character must always make the right decision. Mary Sue popping her pretty little head into the equation. My favorite character can’t stumble, can’t stutter, can’t make any mistakes. And this is what I find in fantasy literature. A whole genre dedicated to Mary Sue.

There’s a few hundred words about this in Houses of the Blooded: words on tragedy. That your character is doomed to fail. You have a weakness as a mechanic. And every Aspect has a tag and a compel. Every ven hero is a deeply flawed character. It is impossible to make a Mary Sue in HotB. You just have too much working against you. As much as Shara looks like she’s got it all together, nothing could be further from the truth: as readers will discover soon enough when The Great and Tragic Life of Shara Yvarai is finally translated and published.

It isn’t a story of accomplishment or heroics or “the perfect woman.” It’s a story about pride and arrogance and the kind of blindness those things bring. And about the fall. It’s about desire and hope and how fragile we really are. About Revenge and the price it demands. A price we think we are willing to pay.

I like the line from Amadeus: “Characters so noble, they crap marble.” That’s what reading fantasy is like for me these days. Characters so two dimensional, they can slide through the plot without ever touching it. Like watching the Star Wars sequels: pretty, flashing lights to distract me from the fact that nothing’s really happening.

Give me a fantasy novel that isn’t about how cool the characters are. Give me a story about pain. About decisions. About consequences. Something that isn’t in love with its own language. Something that doesn’t feel compelled to convince me how well-mapped the world is every other paragraph. 

Something that bleeds. Something that suffers. Something about people.

Something that reaches through the page and touches my cheek, softly whispering, “You are not alone.”