“Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the
triumph of writing over world-building.
“World-building is dull. World-building literalises the urge to invent. World-building gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). World-building numbs the reader’s ability to fulfill their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.
“Above all, world-building is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, and if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication and lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the world-builder & the world-builder’s victim, and makes us very afraid.” – M. John Harrison
“World-building is dull. World-building literalises the urge to invent. World-building gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). World-building numbs the reader’s ability to fulfill their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.
“Above all, world-building is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, and if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication and lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the world-builder & the world-builder’s victim, and makes us very afraid.” – M. John Harrison
Honestly? This makes me shake my head because of his
vehement lambasting of authors he doesn’t bother to name but who would likely
include Frank Herbert (a New Waver himself), JRR Tolkien, Allen Steele, Hal
Clement, Susanna Clarke, David Weber, Peter F. Hamilton, Lois McMaster Bujold,
Mary Robinette Kowal, Gene Wolfe, and countless others who ply their trade in
the SF/F/SpecFic field and who have obviously and sometimes explicitly built
their worlds. When you read even a simple biography on Wikipedia, it’s clear
why M. John Harrison would both say that it is “not technically necessary” and why
others would bother quoting him.
First of course is that he is British and as we all know, ALL
serious literature/authors are British and are ultimately quotable. He writes “literature”
and only sometimes slums the SF sewers. By implication, he is erudite and
quotable. He’s won AWARDS like the James
Tiptree, Jr. Award (2002), Tähtivaeltaja [Finnish SF] Award (2005), Arthur C.
Clarke Award and Phillip K. Dick Award (2007) and all Winners Of Awards are
quotable. Last of all, he was once a towering figure of the New Wave Of Science
Fiction (beginning in the ‘60s – though the History of SF article in Wikipedia
doesn’t even mention him…),
though it doesn’t mention that like all waves, it disappeared when it ran out
of angst...er energy and “By the
early 1980s, the New Wave had faded out…” and he had pretty much disappeared
from the SF scene from the early 1980s until the dawn of the 21st
Century.
Coincidence? No
idea. You be the judge.
While I’d never heard of him before he was quoted as An
Authority by a commentator on the io9 article noted below, I have requested the
first book of his Kefahuchi Tract trilogy (though I confess that I thought it
must take place in Florida among the Okeefenokee or in Minnesota at Tettegouche…)
and I’ll read at least the first book. I’m afraid though that it will be either
unreadable (the hallmark of Great Literature) or incoherent and of course,
because it is either unreadable or incoherent it will automatically be Great
because a small mind like mine can’t possibly understand Great Literature and
ipso facto, the literature a genre reader like me can’t understand MUST be
Great Literature.
Anyway, this post is supposed to be about world-building by
accident and I have strayed far afield. Though some people will find my
digression irritating, I’ve laid a foundation for this discussion on
world-building and will summarize thus: I believe that world-building is
essential to SF/F/SpecFic. At least to a large and passionate part of the
readership world-building is important.
More on this will have to be reserved for part 2 of this
article. See you in a few weeks!
References: http://io9.com/7-deadly-sins-of-worldbuilding-998817537,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._John_Harrison,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_fiction#The_New_Wave_and_its_aftermath
Image: http://blogs.kcls.org/booktalk/encyclopedia_new_wave.jpg
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