Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

  • Tolkien’s Racial Theories

    In response to the recent stoush over Tolkien, race and conservatism, I did a little more  research on Tolkien’s racial theories and their similarities to other eugenic and racial theories floating about in the interwar period. I don’t have my primary or secondary sources with me, because my Tolkien Bestiary is in a box in Australia, I returned the MERP books to my mate, and I don’t have copies of the original books, but there are two online resources – the Tolkien Gateway and the Encyclopaedia of Arda – which I am going to use to provide some context and better research to my theories. In this post I am going to give more detail about the human races in Middle Earth, describe Tolkien’s racial mixing theories in more detail, compare them to the Aryan Invasion Theory of history, which was still popular when he wrote, and draw a few conclusions, some of which aren’t so pretty.

    It’s my thesis that, independent of Tolkien’s actual political views, his books are a model of interwar racial theory, which holds that whites are superior to blacks, that when whites interbreed with blacks they civilise them but dilute the “good qualities” of whites, and that in general race determines psychological as well as physical traits, and racial mixing is bad. This doesn’t change the significance of Tolkien’s work, but it has ramifications for the political position of the genre it spawned.

    Tolkien’s races

    Noisms at Monsters and Manuals suggested in comments that a “formalist” reading of Tolkien is necessary to properly understand how the races in Middle Earth might reflect real racial differences. Others online have suggested that Tolkien didn’t give any formal characteristics to his races – that he never said elves are white and Haradrim are black – and that subsequent racially-specified images of them reflect the readers’ prejudices.  But reading Tolkien doesn’t support the view that his races weren’t racialised. For example, here is the first Haradrim we meet:

    “…a man fell, crashing through the slender trees, nearly on top of them. He came to rest in the fern a few feet away, face downward, green arrow-feathers sticking from his neck below a golden collar. His scarlet robes were tattered, his corslet of overlapping brazen plates was rent and hewn, his black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood. His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword…“

    We’re talking here about a race with brown skin and black braided hair, which lives in the Jungles and deserts of a hot Southern land, and which rides elephants. I don’t think the racial symbolism of this accidental. They were in the thrall of Sauron and fought for him, so also therefore presumably evil.

    There is very little about the physical nature of Easterlings in the descriptions in the novels, because they don’t play a big part; but their most famous contingent are the Wainriders, who pretty clearly represent the mongol hordes. The Easterlings are clearly also allied with Sauron, and are evil. As we will see in the next section, Easterlings were of a different racial stock to the Men of the West. Whether they were physically distinguishable, they were clearly racially distinct.

    Tolkien himself described the Orcs as

    …squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types

    and some Orcs are black-skinned. They are clearly racially distinct from humans and elves, and by definition evil. He also clearly associated the Dwarves with Jews in one of his letters. Details of this controversy over race in LoTR are given a very balanced exposition at the Tolkien Gateway.

    Tolkien’s racial theories

    Tolkien obviously construed the Elves as superior to Men and Dwarves. He also clearly constructed a racially deterministic world, where some races (Orcs, Haradrim and Easterlings) were evil and some (Mixed and High Men, Elves and Dwarves) were good but flawed. While his good races were capable of doing evil, his evil races were incapable of doing good, or at the very least were so vulnerable to the thrall of evil that they were for all intents and purposes racially evil. But of particular interest here is his division of humans into two racial kinds – Wild Men and Middle or High Men. Wild Men are explicitly under the thrall of evil – they were corrupted from their genesis. On the other hand, the Edain escaped from Morkoth and were contacted by the elves, who gave them special gifts (of long life and magic) which ennobled them. They then returned to Beleriand, and settled in the western half where they slowly intermingled with the Middle Men, and diluted their special gifts. Some of these Middle Men (such as the Dunlendings) are described as swarthy, and were oppressed by the Edain.

    The strongest and most obvious example of this racial theory in action in the books is Aragorn. Racially pure, he has retained the gifts of High Men and so has special rights to command his undead ancestors, to use the special magical devices of his old people, and to use magic no-one else knows. Some of these properties are drawn from his noble lineage, but some are a consequence of his racial purity. Noble lineage in the third age is, of course, associated with racial purity, and with nobler traits.

    Aryan Racial Theory

    The Aryan Invasion Theory is a theory of classical history, used to describe the civilisations of the Indus valley particularly, which posits that a bunch of horse-riding nomads destroyed or captured the peaceful civilisations of the Indus Valley and subsequently learnt the culture of the Indus valley, before writing the greatest religious texts of India. The original theory is mildly neutral or pro-Indian, suggesting that the Aryans were barbarians who were civilised through contact with the Indus valley; but subsequent incarnations of this theory in the interwar period held the Aryans to be a superior Norse race who civilised the Indians. There is no evidence that any of this history ever really happened, and the theory is roundly hated by Indians for its obvious racist overtones.

    There is evidence in Tolkien’s letters that he at least knew of Aryan racial theory, and subscribed to it, because he had the singular misfortune of having to argue with Nazi publishers over his books, which would not be published in German unless he could prove he was Aryan. He appeared to subscribe to elements of this theory:

    I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware noone (sic) of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects.

    though his letters make it pretty clear he doesn’t like Nazi racial theory, at least as it pertains to Jews. Like most scholars of his time, he probably believed the then-mainstream theories about racial history which pervaded the academy, but whether he extended this to his perceptions of the relative superiority of whites over blacks or asians at the time is not known, nor to be assumed.

    Tolkien’s novels seem to contain a kernel of this racial theory, in that the most superior race ennobles the Edain, who then ennoble the mixed men they encounter, but are in turn brought low by interbreeding with them. It’s clear that the most noble races are white and the least noble (Orcs and Haradrim) are swarthy or black – there is a colour spectrum here. This pattern follows the pattern of the more racist incarnations of Aryan theory extant when he wrote – particularly those of Abbe Dubois, which were translated in 1897, and the archaeologists who uncovered “evidence” of western influence in the Indus in the early 20th century. It also follows some other theories floating about then about the influence of Nordic culture on the “inferior” slavic and Eastern races, the development of which can be read about in any good (or bad!) text about the antecedents of Nazi racial theory. While these theories are discredited today, they were not at all unpopular or disputed at the time that Tolkien wrote.

    Aryan Racial Theory and Fascism

    Hitler loved Aryan Racial Theory, which became the cornerstone of Nazi demography, social science, biology and history. Some of the theories on racial mixing – particularly about Jews – propounded by the Nazis can be read online at the Calvin University Nazi Propaganda archive, which is a fascinating way to pass an afternoon. Hitler also took up the Aryan Invasion Theory and ran with it, as part of his two-pronged mission of retaking Europe and founding Nazi colonies overseas. The Nazis believed that Western culture owed all its best properties to the Nordic races, and all its worst properties to the “untermenschen” of the East and South. Any model of racial history which supported this belief was imported and adapted, particularly if it supported any claim to lost homelands in the East or overseas.

    Aryan Racial Theory is also very popular with modern Nazis. David Duke (to whom I will not put a link) has a very telling essay on his webpage about the Aryan invasion of India and the effects of inter-breeding with the locals on the morality of the paler Aryan overlords. Modern and WW2-era Nazis both believe strongly that races shouldn’t mix – the Nazis presented the Japanese as racially superior because their island nation had prevented “mixing” with degenerated mongols, for example, while the whites of the US were degenerate through association with Jews and blacks.

    Tolkien’s politics

    Tolkien clearly objected to the Nazis’ anti-semitism, and plainly thought their race laws silly. He opposed apartheid and didn’t believe language and literature should be held apart. He didn’t like the treatment of colour in South Africa, though it’s possible he did think that blacks were degenerate, or at least that white South Africans were persuasive:

    The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain, & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately], not many retain that generous sentiment for long.”[1]

    Tolkien was willing for his books not to be published in Germany rather than be subjected to silly German laws about racial purity, but he also strongly and openly believed that Nordic society had done much good for the world, but had been ruined by the Nazis:

    Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.

    This quote again suggests an Aryan racial theory for Europe, which has been ennobled by the “supreme contribution” of the Nordic races.

    Tolkien is also known to have supported Franco, on the basis of some rumours about Republican atrocities in Spanish churches[2]. His letters and stated opinions suggest a man with politics very similar to most upper class white members of the Commonwealth at the time – racial isolationism, tinged with a strong hatred of Nazism drawn from a class bias against National Socialism (“that ruddy ignoramus”, Hitler) and a conservative distrust of radical politics. But like most members of that class at the time, he didn’t necessarily strongly oppose or even disagree with the racial and political theories at the heart of apartheid or Nazism. In the 30s, particularly, Hitler’s theories were much admired in the West, and their philosophical basis had not yet been discredited. Though we don’t have clear evidence either way in the case of Tolkien, it’s difficult to read his letters and get a clear indication of a man swimming against the current of his time.

    Tolkien and British Nationalism

    Tolkien ended up required reading for the Youth Wing of the BNP, on the basis of its raical theory and lauding of western ideals over eastern savagery. His inclusion may have been subsequent to the movies, which are rather popular amongst people who like watching dark-skinned people getting butchered; but it is no coincidence that the far right associates his work with their message on racial identity. Fascism and racialist nationalism hasn’t moved its racial theories on from the 30s when Tolkien wrote, and there is a lot of concordance between the racial essentialism of his world and the kind of racially segregated world that the modern BNP would like to see.

    What this does and doesn’t mean

    It’s unsurprising that an upper class academic from South Africa, writing in the 30s and 40s, should subscribe to a racial model for the creation of his imaginary world. It’s also not surprising that his racial theories would be consistent with Nazi-era racial theories or modern nationalist writing, since all three are drawn from the same source and people at that time were generally supportive of some portion of racial theories of history.

    This has obvious consequences for that stream of “High Fantasy” which is highly derivative of Tolkien’s work. Tolkien’s worlds aren’t necessarily popular because of this racial essentialism, but much of the derivative work carries these ideas with it. Some of these notions are comforting for modern writers, some are just easy, and some are fun to play with. But copied whole, they project into the modern literary world a view of race relations which is anachronistic and highly consistent with mainstream conservative views of 60 years ago. They are also congruent with modern fascist politics, which of course holds racial essentialism at its core.

    This doesn’t mean that Tolkien’s work is more or less admirable. The timeless appeal of Tolkien’s work as a whole is not due to its political-racial content, but the powerful story elements, the myth-making and the characters. For these elements to maintain Tolkien’s popularity even as the politics underlying the stories becomes anachronistic, they must indeed be very well crafted. This is the miracle of literature – a story whose fundamental social and political basis is no longer valid can still appeal to us, as Shakespeare does, through the power of its non-political elements.

    It also doesn’t mean that Tolkien was a fascist or a racist, at least no more than any other upper class man of his time. But most people alive today would  consider the politics of an upper class man writing in the 40s to be quite repulsive, and its no surprise that some of Tolkien’s racial theories fit this category. But being a racial isolationist or believing that mongols were inherently inferior doesn’t make Tolkien a fascist, nor does it invalidate his work or even make him a bad person. However, it also doesn’t liberate his work from the obvious criticisms : it promotes a divisive vision of racial separatism and essentialism; and as an influential work in the genre, it has been essential in the reproduction of conservatism in High Fantasy. Critical reinterpretation of this work can liberate modern High Fantasy from the racialist and fascist origins of the genre, without necessarily leading to its political debasement or politically correct caricatures. Just as Tolkien can write an inspiring and great novel with odious racial politics, modern genre writers should be able to liberate the genre from this type of conservatism and still write inspiring and great novels.

    —

    fn1: A lot of people quote the first half of this sentence approvingly as evidence that Tolkien was opposed to apartheid. The second part makes me think that, while he opposed apartheid, he didn’t necessarily oppose the racial stereotypes underlying it.

    fn2: which were certainly known to have occurred, but also exaggerated in a viciously anti-Republican western press. See, for example, Antony Beevor’s work on the Spanish Civil War.

  • Current Viewing: Terminator Salvation

    Obviously I had to watch this Terminator movie, because it stars Christian Bale and, well, it’s a Terminator movie. It was fun, but it definitely didn’t have the intensity of purpose or the cleanliness of plot of the first two. The plot is messy, and has holes you can drive a truck through. But it was fun watching the world of the future, particularly to see Terminators in their element and to see the resistance in action. I have waited a long time to see the post-apocalyptic world of Terminator (though not so long that I watched T3), and it was fun. Stuff blew up. Big machines didn’t blow up. People ran very fast away from them and then died.

    Also, the directors did that classic derivative Terminator movie thing where scenes from the previous movies were repeated almost verbatim but with different actors and context. In this case scenes from T1 and T2 were included. This was fun, and I was waiting for this. Some were quite subtle, too, and some were flipped so that the machine did it to the people. I really like this aspect of the Terminator movies.

    However, I had two major presentation gripes about this movie that didn’t quite spoil it for me:

    • I didn’t like the militarisation of the resistance. They had jets and helicopters and submarines. I remember vividly the scenes from T1 in the future – guys with small rifles hiding in the ruins, sharing a single jeep with a machine gun on, while massive machines crunched their way over a landscape of skulls. Where did those guys get their jets and subs? Kyle Rees was not a product of a military machine, but a desperate man on a one-way mission from hell.
    • Kyle Rees said that the Terminator “absolutely will not stop” and “doesn’t feel remorse”. But the terminator in this movie had John Connor by the throat, and it paused long enough for him to get away. Twice. This really gives me the shits. If you can’t choreograph a fight scene so that your guy doesn’t have to be saved by his remorseless enemy’s remorsefulness, get a different job.

    Things got a bit weird halfway through the movie – there is a “good” terminator who doesn’t quite work in my opinion, and the explanation for whose presence gets a bit flaky, and at this point the plot also starts to get those crises of motive believability (“I don’t think he would do that”) which can spoil an otherwise enjoyable movie. But then some more shit blows up, and everything is okay again.

    But the ending was infuriatingly bad. Silly silly directors!

    Anyway, go watch it. The first half an hour is like Halo with terminators. After that there’s another half hour  of really intense chase and combat scenes. Then it got a bit flaky for half an hour, there was the obligatory (not very good) inspirational speech which you can’t really believe will influence anyone, another half hour of intense fighting, and then the end. That’s an hour and a half of terminators hitting things or being hit. Well worth the effort!

  • Current viewing: Let the Right One In

    I saw this last week, and I liked it. It’s a Swedish Vampire movie set in 60s Sweden, so it has a simple and  old-fashioned feeling to it, with that sense of slight poverty that movies set in that time tend to have. Like most Vampire movies it is a love story, but this one involves 12 year old children and so mixes in an interesting element of pubescent self-discovery. There is no kiddy sex[1] but there is kiddy horror, which I always find a bit disturbing. There are only 1 or 2 real special effects moments in the movie, with most of the horror being done through creepy sounds and implication, in the best tradition of low-budget and/or Japanese horror movies – this one has a lot in common with the Ring for its low-key methods. For example, when the Vampire girl gets hungry the noise she makes is a mixture of doves cooing and a dog growling, which is very effective[2], and when she is hungry she starts to smell funny.

    It’s difficult to say anything about the plot of this movie without giving a lot away. The ending is, of course, tragic, but  not in the sense one would expect at all. The key to the success of this movie is the simple and believable nature of the relationships as they become increasingly entangled in – or distant from – the central, slightly pathetic figure of the Vampire. A very interesting reinterpretation of the classic vampire mythos.

    —

    fn1: though I don’t object to kiddy self-discovery movies which imply or investigate this. e.g His Dark Materials…

    fn2: particularly for Yours Truly, who was pooed on today by a pigeon.

  • Conservatism and High Fantasy

    In the interview linked to below, China Mieville claims that high fantasy is conservative, and that due to its prominence the fantasy genre in general is judged as conservative by critics. This seems pretty uncontroversial to me, but over at Monsters and Manuals this claim was disputed as a shallow interpretation of Tolkien and of high fantasy generally. It’s not just the 3 people I’ve been arguing with over there, either (hi guys!). Many people try to rescue Tolkien (or their other favourite high fantasy writers) from this claim, because they think that somehow being conservative means they shouldn’t be reading it  (or that people think they shouldn’t be). But it doesn’t work. Tolkien’s books are fun but they are politically pretty obnoxious, and the same goes for high fantasy generally. I’m going to expand on Mieville’s throwaway points in that interview, and add in a few of my own, with examples. Then we’ll discuss the core issue of choices. It’s been a while since I read much high fantasy, so I hope my examples aren’t too off beam – and of course when i say “High Fantasy novels say that…” I don’t mean every novel shares every point. Just add a silent “in general” to my phrases. Let’s first look at the characteristics common to most high fantasy novels:

    • Racial Essentialism: This is the main criticism of Tolkien, and it’s definitely a strong one. High Fantasy tends to divide the world into races with really clear essential characteristics, both physically and psychologically. The physical characteristics are exaggerated, and the psychological characteristics are really restrictive. Dwarves are stubborn and proud, elves are more intelligent and creative than anyone else, etc. This extends to the evil races too, which are clearly intellectually and socially inferior. The stereotypes of the evil races clearly relate to stereotypes of black people that were extant in the 30s, and in general the evil races also happen to be swarthy and kind of, well, blackish. If the humans ever have any racial diversity, this also follows strict characteristics – the “cruel haradrim”, for example. It doesn’t necessarily matter whether the races follow black/white colour lines, because the key conservative point is the essentialism. Races are different, and they shouldn’t mix, and when they do society degenerates. The model for Gondor and the mingling of High and Common Men is a clear reference to racial theory of the 30s. Wriggle as much as you like, but Tolkien is an established eugenicist and his writing doesn’t shy away from that. This trope is repeated in an awful lot of subsequent high fantasy – it’s a struggle to find any that doesn’t contain this idea, and this idea is a cornerstone of 20th century conservatism.
    • Racial exclusion: almost all heroes in high fantasy are white. For more information about this – and for some example of what it means and has meant historically for non-white readers – I recommend this article, which I came to from Ursula le Guin’s website. This problem has been discussed extensively as well in the world of literary criticism, and as far as I can tell it’s not up for debate anymore. High Fantasy is white. Now, it may be that the authors only want to write about their own colour, but if that’s the only reason, it’s kind of an unfortunate coincidence that racial exclusionism also happens to be an essential element of much conservative politics.
    • The male saviour: Most fantasy stories involve a male saviour rescuing a crumbling nation state from an external threat. The saviour is always male, and of course white. Harry Potter, Belgarath, Frodo (not to mention everyone else in that story), Eragon, the kid in the Robert Jordan series, Druss, Tanis Half-elven, Conan, whatever… they’re all male. When women enter high fantasy they do so as teachers or wise women, or occasionally in support roles.
    • External threats and nation states: In LoTR, the world of men was crumbling through racial intermixing, and awaited a racially pure king to resurrect the nation state. In most High Fantasy there is an external threat which only a strong nation state can protect against, and the role of the hero is to uncover their puissance and take power over the nation state, guiding it again to greatness. Although the nation state was not a strong concept in Dragonlance, the external threat was (it was an evil god); but the presence of both together is prevalent throughout the genre. The enemy within is usually a nerdy, anti-war figure who accomodates the enemy out of fear and is used as a spy or traitor. Consider the Wheel of Time, that awful Terry Goodkind stuff, Stephen Donaldson, the Worm Ourouboros, Eragon, the Belgariad, Magician, etc. It’s a very common idea.
    • Gender roles: sure, in modern High Fantasy there are sometimes female characters, but the world itself is continually recreated as a world in which women serve and men rule. It’s fantasy, anything goes, but for some reason women always are “goodwives” (shudder) or feisty aunts at best. And the female characters are not acually quite the feminist achievements one might expect – read this review of the Wheel of Time for a good description of how female characters often serve to reiterate classic stereotypes of feminine weakness, intransigence or triviality. Often as well the powerful ones get knocked down a peg or two before the end, and although women in general can’t rule in these worlds, they are often over-represented amongst the bad guys (e.g., there are two female characters in Dragonlance and one is evil). Harry Potter is a good example of this – Hermione is ostensibly a strong female character, but at every climax in the first novels she is knocked unconscious or otherwise unable to be an active participant in the plan she helped formulate, ultimately being rescued by the boys.
    • Nuclear family: we know that in the middle ages Nuclear families were not the norm, and that this is a modern invention, as is childhood as a concept. Yet High Fantasy worlds – which are sticklers for the truth when it comes to the role of women in peasant societies – seem to be very good at ignoring the real family structures of their carefully reconstructed societies, and instead populating them with perfect nuclear families. The nuclear family is a touchstone conservative issue, and is reproduced out of time and place in almost all fantasy novels.
    • Inherited Wealth: Not necessarily in the form of money, because in fantasy worlds money plays second fiddle to magic, which is usually inherited either as a talent or through attendance at a special school which it is only possible to enter through selection. Even though magic breaks the rules of conservation of matter, and therefore in principle enables High Fantasy worlds to be utopias like The Culture, magic is always hoarded by a powerful class who dispense it amongst their favourites. Harry Potter is a really good example of this – there is an elite world which he is allowed into by dint of his having inherited this form of wealth, and throughout the novels he is given for free things which only the very rich can afford. Free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can’t – a conservative trope, and well reproduced through the medium of magic.
    • Heteronormative: do we know of any gay characters anywhere in High Fantasy? How coincidental, in a world of nuclear families…
    • Glorification of war: having read the Silmarillion, I find it impossible to comprehend the claim that Tolkien doesn’t glorify war. That’s all his stories are about. I  suppose you could excuse it because he’s british, but still… it’s also not the case that “glorifying war” means saying “yay! more people dying”. Literature which glorifies war always talks about the tragedy, the loss of youth, the hardship. It’s part of the admiration of muscular masculinity and discipline which is going on beneath this glorification. It’s a hard life to be a soldiering bloke, but how noble it is, etc. This is prevalent throughout fantasy too – in The Worm Ouroubouros, at the end of the novel the battles are over and they all go back to their homes to plan the next war because life without war is boring. The Sturm side story in Dragonlance is a classic example of this mixed glorification/tragedy complex. High Fantasy stories without war at their centre are rare.
    • Genocide is cool: because of the glorification of war and the racial essentialism, it’s inevitable that the bad guys are going to be wiped out to a man. This has been discussed extensively as a criticism of D&D and it’s true – there is an unquestioning acceptance throughout High Fantasy that mass murder is acceptable. It’s worth noting that when the genre began, eugenics had taken over in anti-semitic literature, and extermination as the “final solution” was beginning to become an acceptable notion, because racial essentialism based on biology (rather than culture) demands it. You can read about this link in Hitler’s Willing Executioners (which is otherwise a pretty dodgy book). I don’t think anyone believes Tolkien supported genocide in reality, but the logic of High Fantasy demands it and that is essentially what was planned throughout the novels, by both sides. It has continued to be an acceptable act in subsequent iterations of the genre.
    • Libertarian or authoritarian communities: High Fantasy tends to allow the good guys only two types of community. On the one hand we see small rural idylls run on generally libertarian or communitarian grounds,  because life is so simple that they can be self-managed, and there is no racial mixing to cause crime; and on the other we see large kingdoms run by strong men, usually inheriting their position but sometimes voted in. The concept of a strong man appointed by popular election was popular in the interwar period, when liberalism and democracy were beginning to look a bit shonky, and it was supported by a much larger segment of the world than  just Germany and Italy. In fact most of Europe was under this leadership, and many in England and America beyond Oswald Mosley were looking for the same thing. This is reflected in modern High Fantasy, whose origins lie in that turbulent time. In contrast, the bad guys often have a classless or semi-classless society, run by a strong man or sometimes anarchist, often with strong inter-racial mixing. Sounds a bit like a well-described conflict from that time…

    We can’t help that the original stories were written in the interwar period when racial essentialism, nuclear families, eugenics and dictatorship were popular. But we can help the choices we make as modern authors. Why, for example, do modern authors decide to be meticulously careful in their reproduction of mediaeval gender roles for their fantasy society, but completely ignore the family structures of the time? In both cases, the result fits perfectly with a conservative project. Why do they go to great lengths to reproduce the poverty of that time, while sprinkling the world with a series of perpetual motion machines (i.e. magic) which could solve all economic problems overnight? Because they want to reproduce and intensify structures of inherited wealth, and present them as inevitable, objective facts even where the solution is freely available. This is why those early fantasy novels provided the means to ensure free health care to everyone (healing magic) but you never saw it in action – except when the king goes to war, and his soldiers go to the healing tent.

    Many authors are no doubt reproducing these tropes without thought, but when you reproduce a conservative worldview without consideration, you are by definition being conservative. That’s what conservatives do. Some authors (such as Goodkind and Tolkien) are more actively using their work as a political screed in favour of conservatism. The beauty of the High Fantasy world is that it is fun, so you can reproduce these things without boring your readers’ socks off. But let’s not pretend that the world couldn’t be just as interesting without a few changes – women and men being equal, for example,  or racial intermixing being positive instead of negative. And if you don’t want to do these things, you have to accept the conservative label which this kind of thoughtless reproduction of conservative politics will earn you.

  • eh?

    Further to that last little critical warp-spasm, I just took the “what fantasy writer are you” quiz, and I’m Orson Scott Card – someone I’m pretty politically opposed to, I suspect. And my exact opposite is China Mieville. How timely! And how completely wrong…

  • Mieville vs. Tolkien, the stoush of our time

    This isn’t really about China Mieville vs. Tolkien at all, but about me vs. the chap Mr. Noisms over at Monsters and Manuals, who has put up a post attacking Mieville’s view of Tolkien and fantasy. This gives me a chance to indulge in a pastime I really enjoy – faux literary criticism – and since I made the mistake of sleeping for an hour at 8pm, and I’m drinking some kind of plum tea with gold flakes in it, I might as well take the time to have a go at Mr. Noisms.

    The basis of Mr. Noisms critique of Mieville is his opinions as expressed in this interview, written fully 9 years ago after Mieville had written only 2 novels (King Rat and Perdido Street Station, both of which are very good and very escapist). Mieville has some strong views on Tolkien and he clearly believes that writing is a political project, whether explicitly or implicitly.

    Mr. Noisms doesn’t like this idea, I think, and also doesn’t like marxism, and I think this has led to a certain overreaction to Mieville’s opinions. Here are my reactions to the three main criticisms Mr. Noisms levels:

    1. Falling for non-fantasy readers’ definitions of fantasy:
    In the interview, Mieville is asked why fantasy appears conservative and he answers with the reasons he thinks. He also gives an extra paragraph (which Mr. Noisms didn’t quote!) where he defends fantasy as not conservative. Mr. Noisms argues, however, that

    almost no mainstream high-fantasy is like this. Even ‘high fantasy’ writers who I consider to be utterly dire, like David Eddings, Trudi Canavan, Robert Jordan and Weis & Hickman, write novels where female characters are just as strong as men, where peasants are often main characters, where threats are as much from within as from without, and where the idea of kingship itself is challenged.

    I don’t know quite where Mr. Noisms gets this from. In David Eddings’s most famous work, the main character is a king hidden away as a peasant, and the threat came from an evil overlord from another land. Likewise Canavan, whose lead character may be a girl but she has the inherited “wealth” of magic – and the threat comes from a nasty country over the hills, which seemed suspiciously Muslim to me. Weis & Hickman’s dark enemy comes from Hell. That’s a pathological external threat, in my book. Kingship is never challenged in any of these books, as witnessed by, for example, the fact that the lead character becomes a King. Even when peasants rise up the ranks it is almost universally due to their inheriting magical powers – usually from someone special – and in the context of fantasy stories magic is pretty clearly a kind of inherited wealth, marking one out as special as much as nobility does in the real world. It’s almost an allegory of the same.

    Plus of course a whole bunch of authors – Robert Jordan, that hideous kid who wrote Eragon, and that nasty Goodkind chap, for example – are literally conservative, and if you can’t see that from their works you are reading a very blinkered version of them (a claim Noisms makes of Mieville’s reading of Tolkien). Not to mention that some of them openly state their allegiances. (Orson Scott Card springs to mind, but I suppose he’s sci fi…)

    2. A whole load of misconceptions about Tolkien.

    This is the bit where Mr. Noisms claims Mieville hasn’t read Tolkien, even though in this section of the interview Mieville quotes Tolkien’s essay on writing fantasy. I don’t think this is a good debating tactic, Mr. Noisms, but I’ll let it slide. How magnanimous of me! But I think it’s a bit mean to say this:

    Young fantasy writers often like to talk down Tolkien – they think it makes them look cool and rebellious.

    because Mieville was asked to give his opinion in an interview at a Marxist conference, and he gave it. It is actually possible that he genuinely didn’t like Tolkien – many people don’t. I didn’t, and I’m not even half as clever as Mr. Mieville or Mr. Noisms.

    In this part of his post, Mr. Noisms says a lot of antagonistic things that I think are misinterpretation of Mieville’s opinions. For example, he says

    nor did he write that “the function of fantasy was ‘consolation’” as if it was an “article of policy” for fantasy writers – he only ever wrote about himself and his own point of view, and made no sweeping statements about what the fantasy ‘genre’ (there wasn’t such a thing back then) should be.

    but Mieville never made the claim that Tolkien wrote about what the fantasy genre should be. He simply states what Tolkien thinks a fantasy writer should do. The broader claim Mr. Noisms accuses Mieville of making would require Mieville to have presented evidence that Tolkien tried to influence other writers’ underlying philosophy. Given Tolkien’s massive influence, it’s reasonable to claim that his opinions on fantasy writing were adopted by others – but Mieville doesn’t make this claim in the interview. He simply cites Tolkien’s opinion about writing, and criticises it. If Tolkien’s writing about writing is above criticism, then we really are in a dire situation!

    Mr. Noisms also takes issue with this:

    This arrogant assumption that everybody else, if they are rational adults, must surely be a Revolutionary Socialist and against Tolkien too, frankly pisses me off.

    but there’s no evidence anywhere in the interview that Mieville believes this, nor does Mr. Noisms cite any. Mieville criticises Tolkien’s work as “literary comfort food” but he doesn’t criticise Tolkien’s readers. He nowhere argues that people should or shouldn’t want to read this stuff. A common complaint of person A who doesn’t like person B’s politics is that person B wants person A to think like person B because person B gave an opinion. But what is the alternative – that Mieville should shut up and not give interviews?

    In essence, Mieville makes it clear he thinks Tolkien has a theory of fantasy stories, and he goes on to criticise this theory, and Mr. Noisms can’t find a strong argument against Mieville’s criticism, because the evidence is there, written by Tolkien. So instead Mr. Noisms gets huffy with Mieville for having an opinion.

    3.Thinking that escapism is a bad thing

    I think that Mr. Noisms gets a bit disingenuous here. Mieville is asked if he thinks fantasy is escapist (the precise question is pretty unambiguous: “Is fantasy escapist?”). Mieville thinks that a) fantasy is not escapist b) escapism is impossible in literature c) to the extent that any text is “escapist”, non-genre texts can be just as bad and d) under a particular definition of “escapism”, the post-Tolkien trilogy style of fantasy is escapist and many critics of the genre focus on that style when they criticise the whole genre.

    Mr. Noisms takes this to mean that Mieville thinks a) all books should be political and b) if they’re political, they’re better and c) if you don’t like that you’re a bad person. I think this is bordering on disingenuous. It’s clear that Mieville is engaging in a particular form of literary criticism (all texts contain political influences from the time of their  writing) which is not just marxist to defend fantasy. Specifically, he states that

    Take a book like Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle. It’s set in a fantasy world, and it involves discussions of racism, industrial conflict, sexual passion and so on. Does it really make any sense to say that the book is inherently, because of its genre form more escapist than what Iain Banks calls ‘Hampstead novels’, about the internal bickerings of middle class families who seem hermetically sealed off from wider social conflicts? Just because those books pretend to be about ‘the real world’ doesn’t mean they reverberate in it with more integrity.

    He is clearly here arguing that non-fantasy novels are just as “escapist” or more so than fantasy novels, and that it is the content of a novel – not its genre – which determines its vulnerability to this claim. He doesn’t argue that Rats and Gargoyles is good because it’s political and, frankly, I don’t know how Mr. Noisms could argue that he was. He uses this example to argue against the common criticism of fantasy levelled against it by “genre snobs” and “leftists”. He finishes by claiming that fantasy is not escapist. He is defending the genre against what he believes is an unfair criticism. I don’t see how this can justify Mr. Noisms in his final angry denunciation, viz:

    Thirdly, escapism is a worthwhile thing in itself, and not something to be sniffed at. As somebody who isn’t a card-carrying member of the Pretentious Socialist Worker Party Elite, I like to sometimes jack my brain out of the Capitalist hellhole in which I find myself and in which my “every human impulse is repressed” and just, you know, think about something mindblowing and weird and get away from the world. Am I supposed to feel bad about that because China Mieville thinks I should constantly be engaging with “the real world” and if not I’m being “mollycoddled” and “comforted”? Fuck that.

    Also, the claim that fiction should “always, always be about the story and that’s all that a fiction writer should care about when he’s writing” is, frankly, silly. It also falls into exactly the trap which Mieville discusses in his criticism of Hampstead novels. If you write a story, you are inserting character, plot and, usually, conflict. You have to make choices about these things. These choices are driven by something, and to pretend that that something can just spring pure and independent of the cultural and political milieu of the writer is hopelessly naive. To suggest as well that one must be compromising the story by inserting political or cultural aims is to make a claim which I would like to humbly suggest that George Orwell, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco, Ursula le Guin, Shakespeare, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, RM Meluch, Earnest Hemingway and Ben Johnson all disagree with. For example.

    In summary: Mieville has some serious criticisms of Tolkien and Tolkien’s overarching impact on fantasy writing; he criticises Tolkien’s stated opinions of what a fantasy novel should do, on the grounds that they are limiting and naive; he defends the fantasy genre strongly against the criticism (made by leftists and genre snobs) that it is escapist; he derides the idea that any novel in any genre can escape from reality; he explains why he thinks that fantasy writing can appear conservative but defends the genre against this claim; and nowhere does he claim that a novel is good because of its politics. This seems like a pretty healthy interpretation of the fantasy genre to me,  and a robust defense of the genre against both elitist literary critics and those who think that the genre is shallow because it is politically conservative. I would have thought Mr. Noisms would approve!


  • Compromise and Conceit 12: The Messenger

    While planning how to destroy the colonials’ plans – and while trying to determine what those plans were – the characters had also sent an emissary to the French, to point out to them that their involvement in treachery was uncovered, and to suggest to them that they should withdraw from the game if they did not want their plans to be revealed and their forces outmanoeuvred. However, their messenger sent them the following letter after a few days away:

    Dave

    I had a chat to Monsieur le Frenchie Homme. He is unwilling to stick his neck out over hearsay or anything else for that matter, more than ‘is job’s worth. So he is sending a letter “up zee chain” and once the garlic’s been wiped off it’ll be read by someone with authority. Should take about a week. Don’t know if anyone but Louis himself actually has any authority, but if they do they’ll start to act like there’s a serious problem with their allies in about a week or so.

    Until then, everyone more important than the local cannon-cleaning gaffer doesn’t think there’s a problem, so I wouldn’t recommend you start a war in the next week unless you are really really really sure that you are gonna come up smelling of roses. Or at least unless you’re confident you have a good bolthole. The trouble you stir up is gonna be like Turkey, only smellier.

    Also, have you seen any injuns lately? God knows I haven’t, and I kind of miss having ’em around, with all these thorny-arsed colonials walkng around acting touchy.

    Your garlicky mate

    Bob

    This note made it very clear that any attempts to arrest or attack Washington within the next week would lead to a war starting between the British and the French, with the colonials aiming to inherit the rubble.

    Except… that the characters knew now that there was a messenger which would deliver urgent messages to the French. So they decided to start a war, and to ambush the messenger so that the Colonials would act believing they were going to receive aid from the French – when in fact no such aid was coming. They had one week to do this before negotiations commenced with the French to secure their refusal to aid the colonials, and in that week much damage could be done to the colonials which would lend weight to the British side of the negotiations.

    With this in mind the characters enacted two crucial processes:

    1. Russell Ganymede was resurrected. Upon his return from death, he seemed a little weaker, with a strange light in his eyes and also on the scales of his semi-demonic skin, which down one side of his face was now slightly luminous, and flickered in many different, brighter colours when he was upset, hurt or angry
    2. They delivered all the evidence they held so far on the connections between the French and the Colonials to the British, though for their own sinister reasons they withheld evidence about the NWFC’s involvement

    As expected, when the Governor learnt of Washington’s treachery he sent a force to arrest him. By then the characters were long gone, however, lying in wait at the cave to which the French messenger would be heading. By blind good fortune they knew this cave’s location because they were the adventurers who had cleared out its original occupants, when they first began adventuring together. Such fate! ‘Twere as if there were a designer, planning their destinies…

    So the messenger appeared, on cue, two days after the British government moved on Washington. It emerged from the shadows in front of the cave where the characters hid, moving stealthily in extremely expensive combat armour, of the sort which only very powerful companies and national armies tended to own, and it emerged from nowhere with the menacing air of a stalking beast in full charge of its environment. Humanoid in shape, carrying a demon longbow and a rapier, the creature was clearly a teifling, some hellish spawn of demon and human born naturally but soulless and abominable in design.

    The characters sprung their trap but the beast was fast. Their initial surprise strikes barely touched it, and it moved swiftly from the point of ambush, nearly eviscerating Russell Ganymede and springing over a wide swathe of grass to strike at Merton St. Helier. In its wake it left two demonic fighters, figures of shadow, fog and wood, which attacked Father David Cantrus and Anna Labrousse’s summoned monster. However, the beast though fast and strong was no match for our heroes. Dave Black struck it from the rear and, while it flailed at his elusive and shadowy form, he slowly cut it to ribbons. Within a minute or so the messenger was dead, its message lost. The French would not come, and Washington’s fate was now sealed.

    The characters entered the cave that the messenger had been about to enter, hoping to find evidence of its messaging device. Here they found the body of the witch they had once killed, slowly decomposing on an altar that smelt of attar and  roses, two bowls of uncongealed blood by her head. This was clearly the messaging device. The characters destroyed it on the spot and, leaving the cave behind them in a cloud of smoke and burning flesh, turned back towards Albany, to finish the rebellion which had only recently been begun in such haste…

  • Found in the NWFC Offices

    Mr. Smelthy

    The messenger is not, as you suggest, yours to call upon. It is very clearly established that the messenger is not, in fact, NWFC property at all, but constitutes a private arrangement between the French and our friends in Albany. We are able to use the messneger on such occasions as we have a message of desperate importance to deliver to the French, but the messenger is sent by our and with their permission.

    The messenger only delivers messages to a single, agreed location, in Mohican territory – it is near a disused monster cave on the Northwest road, whose necromancer occupant was cleared away just prior to the French and Indian war. Of course the messenger does not take the road, but it is an agreed focus point for the communication method it uses.

    To invoke the messenger, you need to proceed through the tunnel beneath the headquarters, and ask Monsieur Lombard in the trading house there to take your preferred message directly to Madame Custis. She will assess its worth and then pass it on to Washington, or invoke the messenger herself.

    Again, I must impress upon you that this messenger is not in our service and its sole purpose is for our friends to send urgent messages to their allies to the North West. Do not even attempt to use this service frivolously, as the cost to you will far outweigh the cost for us. We remain

    Yours &c

    The Senior Partners

    Northwest Frontier Company

    New York

  • Compromise and Conceit 11: Slaughter on the Docks

    Having learnt of the nefarious entanglement of genocidal colonials, French troops and the supposedly British Northwest Frontier Company, the characters decided to investigate the offices of the most vulnerable of the triad – the NWFC – in Albany, and see what they could find.

    The NWFC offices consisted of a two-storey warehouse in the docks, the upper storey of which fronted onto a normal street, and the rear of which opened onto the docks. The characters spied out the front and discovered a single guard standing by, with perhaps more inside. Fearing that there might be more guards below, or worse, they decided – after some planning – that the best approach would be to knock the guard unconscious and send in Anna Labrousse in his form. This was easily accomplished, with Dave Black dragging the unconscious guard into a back-alley for further “investigation”. Anna Labrousse entered through the main door, with Lord Merton St. Helier invisible beside her in support.

    Inside she found a room with some more guards, which she and Merton passed through into a larger room full of storage boxes. From here, stairs led down into the lower level of the warehouse. Rather than descend directly, Anna and Merton passed back into the guardroom and between them destroyed the guards, combining Anna’s Garden of Proserpine and Merton’s lethal weaponry.

    The remainder of the party entered the warehouse then, and they descended the stairs. Unfortunately, down below they were attacked by a Myrmidon, but this time they were prepared and slew it in short order. Relatively uninjured, they headed from the main storage room where the remains of the Myrmidon lay and into the offices of the NWFC head trader. Finding a room obviously hastily abandoned, and a closed door on its far side, the characters ran forward. Russell Ganymede foolishly opened the door without checking for the room’s contents, and as the door opened a hideous, swirling, ghostly form burst forth. This ethereal beast plunged through Ganymede and killed him where he stood, sucking his soul away to an eternity of fiery torment. The characters stood aghast for a moment, and then charged forward and struck the beast dead with their magic weapons and spells.

    Beyond Ganymede’s lifeless, drained corpse lay a small waiting room, and on its far side cowered the NWFC trader. The characters trussed him up and searched the room, finding some letters, trade manifests, and a tunnel which lead to a nearby French trader’s offices. The strange ethereal beast had been hiding in this tunnel, which was covered with a sheet of paper painted with the same symbol as the characters had found in the chest on the French boat. The NWFC trader was also wearing the same symbol, which must obviously protect its wearers from the predations of this strange new hellish beast. The beast itself resembled in every one of its particulars the kind of beast which are summoned whenever Father Cantrus invoked his Angel of Death spell, though this beast was obviously of demonic origin.

    Upon searching the storage room, the characters found crates of the small amulets which they had found on the Unfortunate Lapse of Discipline. There were sufficient amulets to protect a large fighting force and their families from the predations of the strange angels of death. An interesting pointer to things to come…

  • Documents on the Unfortunate Lapse of Discipline

    1.    Captain’s Log

    The Captain’s log reveals that the Unfortunate Lapse of Discipline is a ship based in New France, which makes regular trips between New France and various unregistered stopping points along the East Coast of America. It doesn’t give details about the cargoes, but does occasionally mention passengers, or give reference to sensitive cargo. It was requisitioned about a year ago.

    The Captain has several connections in Albany, the most obvious being Madame Custis’ Wizard Harnock, who (it turns out) was escorting La Belle Dame Sans Merci to the Coast, and so is now dead. The captain would receive letters from Harnock, and occasionally met him incognito in the Albany Offices of the North West Frontier Company. His main connections in Albany were registered French traders, who could deal with him without arousing suspicion.

    One such trader has a tunnel leading from his warehouse to the offices of the North West Frontier Company. It is rumoured to be guarded by “something ferocious”. The Tunnel was dug by the NWFC.

    The Captain’s log confirms that the Cancer Labora Armour was obtained from the NWFC (with the wry additional comment “of course”).

    The Captain knows of the Irish mercenaries on Newfoundland but has only been there once to collect them, and doesn’t want to go back. Their presence on Newfoundland is seen as a necessary evil and it’s not clear why they’re there. Newfoundland appears to have been purchased from the Scottish Government by an organization called The Iron House. Presumably the mercenaries and the House are connected.

    The Unfortunate Lapse of Discipline was commandeered for use in New France a year ago, and it is clear from entries throughout the Captain’s Log that he is not comfortable with what he has seen. Particular examples of his discomfort are:

    • The NWFC seems to have a lot of infernal technology with which he is unfamiliar, and he is uncomfortable with it
    • He has clear impressions from the colonials he has met that they intend to deal  out mass slaughter in America, to drive the British out and to eliminate Indians
    • The French have been forced to make compromises with shady organizations and individuals they “would not normally spit on” in order to protect their position in America, because they cannot spare forces from Europe to protect their colonies. These compromises have meant, for example, allowing a sinister force to establish itself on Newfoundland, tolerating a colonial independence project which is likely to lead to many natives fleeing to New France, and being willing to imagine the creation of “an independent kingdom where now stands New Britain”
    • The Captain makes it clear that some of his correspondents in France are very uncomfortable with this, and think the long-term consequences of French game-playing in America could be devastating. But they are too concerned with “the difficult position of the French King” to act
    • At least some of the secret movements of the Unfortunate Lapse of Discipline have involved delivering military hardware and small contingents of marines and elite forces in disguise to key British cities, where they are being hidden by the colonials in anticipation of an imminent  uprising.


    2.    Letter from Madame Custis

    Dear Captain laroge

    Thank you for making your ship available to me at such short notice. As you know, your friend and sometime companion Miss Merciless will be heading downriver from Albany this evening, and aims to reach the coast at one of our established collection points within 3 days. She will be accompanied by some of our mutual friends from Newfoundland. If you value your responsibilities to your country and to an old friend, you will move your ship with all haste to the North Stones 3 collection point, and prepare to meet her. I have no reason to believe that her escape is known to anyone but myself; however, it would be wise to come ashore in force, for recently our plans have been foiled by some loyalists.

    I should warn you, matters are beginning to come to a head, and I cannot spare the energy at this time to defend your old friend. I suggest you spirit her to safety as quickly as you can, and then prepare yourself for that for which every military man is born. I promise you, that what happens from here shall be written in the history books of 2 continents, in blood. Until that fateful day I remain

    Your &c,

    M. Custis

    3. A small crate

    which contains a set of pendants (sufficient for the crew plus the full complement of marines on board) with the following symbol:

    who would wear this?

    and a single note, which states

    “ Wear in the event that the Northern Skies glow Infernal, or Washington is captured”