The problem with people who use terms like “nihilist fantasy” is that there tends to be a fairly good point frequently buried under a mountain of shit that inevitably turns into the most bizarre paranoia ever spewed about fantasy. That point tends to get lost, because who wants to wade through shit to get it?
Me.
I do.
And I did.
Beneath all the buzzwords, the namedropping and the contempt for youth, there is an actual point to the idea that fantasy should not be a vehicle for negativity. It’s an idea that’s been tossed around a bit on a few Facebook posts (that eventually became kind of looney, and I’m lazy, so I won’t go hunting them down to link) that fantasy needs…well, to be fantastic.
A hero, a monster and a quest, the theory goes, is what’s needed. There’s something about these traits that makes fantasy what it is, something that protagonist, antagonist and conflict lack. Something loftier, perhaps: the kind of qualities a hero has that we can aspire to, the kind of villainies that a monster has that can make us fear, the kind of weight a quest has that makes it so much more than the tension of a guy and a girl staring at each other, thinking.
There are obvious issues with this, of course. Heroic qualities can remove the protagonist too far from reality, denying us the chance to relate to him. Villainous properties can make a monster a shallow and boring and, if we can’t relate to the monster, then we don’t know why he’s a threat aside from the fact that the author told us so, in which case we’re removed from the story and it feels hollow. And dropping the One Ring into Mount Doom is not something someone experiences as much as a guy and a girl staring at each other, thinking, thus making the stakes for the latter frequently higher.
But then there’s the other end of the spectrum: the idea that fantasy is just like reality and that it’s a good vehicle for exploring how utterly shitty humanity can be. In the name of relatability and reality, we have grit, and in the name of grit we have a lot of really depressing instances where people never rise above their shit and frequently sink down further into it. War is everywhere and everyone is dying, there are no goodly kings and fair princesses since all the politicians use people like pawns to murder each other, the sex is loveless and the romance is completely gone and at the end, you don’t so much not feel the warm fuzzies as you feel pretty crappy.
There’s obvious issues with this, too. Portraying something as unrelentingly bleak and despairing where there simply are no good people, and if there are, they’re too stupid or just fated to get fucked over time and again is as unrealistic and shallow a conflict as one where all the Good People are always happy and beautiful and all the Bad People live underground because that’s where they belong. A conflict in which no one wins and everyone ends up shittier than where they begin can often feel like a talk with Lie Bot: meaningless, empty, designed just to make you feel bad.
So, which is right? Well, as impotent an answer as it is: no one is.
In my opinion, conflict is up and down, give and take. We need to see the protagonist succeed and the antagonist succeed from time to time to keep things interesting. And we need to be able to relate to both of them so that we’re invested in their successes and failures, hence why I tend to lean away from the idea of traditional “good must always win and evil must always wear black armor” fantasy, since it tends to discourage relatability in the name of escapism/tradition.
And yet, at the same time, I believe in magic words and I believe in love. I want the hero to succeed in some way. I want the villain to be taken down, after a huge fight. I want my talking magical creatures and ancient worlds and my heroes and my monsters. I want fantastic stuff and I don’t read to feel like shit.
Tome of the Undergates is gritty, sure, but it has love, it has inspiration, it has wonder and poetry and tropes alongside the grittiness and the stomping in of groins and the despair and sorrow. I wanted that. I can’t see how you can have one without the other. The real thing I don’t want to do is have it all clear-cut and easy to figure out. I don’t want love at first sight and I don’t want villains to wring their hands and cackle. But I don’t want Lenk drinking himself to death in a pile of his own filth as he gently strokes a blood-soaked picture of Kataria, wondering how it all came to this.
I guess, at the end, the best answer I can give is that the ideal end to this is conflict.
See, all art, by its very nature, makes a statement about humanity. How loud and how convincing a statement it makes, of course, is up to the author. If the hero ends in a puddle of his own shit, the statement is still loud. If the hero gets the girl/boy and becomes king, the statement is still there. This is why, in general, we don’t like stories where there is no struggle, no conflict and the hero ends up exactly where he was. The statement is something akin to shuffling your feet, clearing your throat and going “uh…I don’t think manatees are completely worthless, no.”
But here’s the thing: which of them makes the bigger statement?
So, as ashamed as I am to take such a weak stance, I’m really not sure what the right answer is. Maybe there is none. Maybe that’s the statement. Either way, that’s why I wrote this and that’s why I’m opening it up to you.
Shit-holes or cloud-nines, people?
If all art makes a statement about humanity (a point I completely agree with) then it’s fair to say (although not universally) it makes a statement of how the artist sees it at the time (either by mirroring it or by contrasting it).
History will look back at the last 10 years as pretty shitty times. The War on Terror, surveillance, the rise of the police state, homegrown terrorism, banking collapse. Our real world villains have turned from the unseen superpower nuking the world to kingdom come, to the neighbour next door who could bomb us on a train. In short, things are pretty fucking bleak, and our fiction, our art and our culture will reflect that.
I believe at some point the collective consciousness will say “fuck that shit” and start trying to be more optimistic. Maybe when we have more reason to be optiomisitic in our own lives or maybe just when we get pissed off with all the negativity. And just like 50s SF following WWII, art will feature an abundance of optimism.
Maybe this is the start of that, but it ain’t gonna happen overnight. We’re talking years, but it’ll happen… everything happens in waves.
You raise an interesting point, of course, and it’s neat to see how history affects us in ways that aren’t relegated to allegory or cautionary tales. I wonder if today’s dark and gritty novels are a product of the times alone, though, or if they’re enduring?
See, now I found your book to be gritty, but not overly so. Yeah, the characters share a special kind of hatred, but there is also heroics in there, and the main characters begrudgingly accept good things about one another at times too. I didn’t find your book to be overly gritty and such either, and I agree with you that there are ups and downs in those books, and that’s good and what is needed.
Look at Erikson’s Malazan books. They can be gritty, incredibly bleak and visceral…but at the same time some of it is so glorious that I can’t even explain how my heart soared when reading it. There is a balance, and I personally thought your book was balanced rather fairly on the whole.
My two cents, brother.
Balance is the trick, it seems. The thing is, it’s not a particularly hard trick to pull off. I’d say you can go extraordinarily negative and still have great success. And maybe it all comes down to personal taste. I’m a huge fan of the Felix Castor series and that dude never catches a fucking break. I love Abercrombie and there’s nary a moral or reason to stick your neck out in any part of his world. It might just be a matter of tone, style and taste.
There’s gritty and loathsome and then gritty and human. People are flawed, and I prefer to read books that reflect that. The characters in Tome of the Undergates are problematic, murderous, rude, smelly and often a bit irritating, but they’re not mindless, awful killing machines (hell, the one that comes closest is the one that also gets the scene damn near made me cry – TELL NO ONE). They’ve got real problems to overcome and they’re doing their best. That’s infinitely better than perfect people with fake problems. I went to high school with enough of them to last me a lifetime.
I have a bit of sympathy for readers that go straight from candy-cloudland of clearcut epic fantasy to something like TOMES, but I think if they go through it with an open mind, they’ll learn to appreciate a better kind of story at the other side. How’s that for patronizing? There, there little high-fantasy reader. If you only stick with the books that have the big tough words, you might find yourself learning a little!
An open mind is really what we need to encourage, which is why we need to resist the concepts of tribalism and restrictive tradition. I don’t want to make it sound like fantasy readership occasionally gathers around a single golden idol and barks staunchly that all other idols are false, but we’ve seen it happen, haven’t we? The adherents to Tolkien and Howard and true myth and hobbit porn are an extreme example, but how often have we seen more passive forms of tribalism? The off-handed comments of “oh, this author is okay, but THIS author could have done it better,” when the books of this and THIS author are totally different. The desire to see the “next” big thing that is sometimes attempted to be passed off as cynical humor.
They can be subtle, but they’re there. My dream, as ever, is that each author will occupy his own space and readers will encourage that. But my dream might not even be the right one. Moral ambiguity!
Again you hit it all on the head, Sam, but the real deal is, did you enjoy writing it. Did it make you happy?
You wrote a kick-ass novel, one that I found compelling. You didn’t, I believe, write that kick-ass novel for me. You wrote it to get for whatever reasons you have to write, to create. Everyone who creates does.
They would not be so offended, if it was not so successful. They rail against change because it makes them uncomfortable, makes them stretch.
There is still enough vanilla out there. I prefer moose tracks just now.
I suppose the general grievance lies with the fact that the vanilla is now shrinking as demand for moose tracks and raspberry delight and rainbow sherbet is increasing. They’ve a point, of course: the last attempt to ape Tolkienism was a tremendously awful flop. Maybe there just isn’t room for the next Tolkien. Maybe there isn’t a need for one. Or maybe we should just stop looking for the “next” soandso and encourage originality and passion over standards and traditions.
Screw ice cream! I want deconstructed, caramelized apple pie. With a dash of fresh-beaten whipped cream and sprinkle of multi-colored verbiage.
Any chance of a tour in support of the new Moose Tracks?
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Great post — it’s inspired me to read your book when I get a chance! 🙂 I’ll admit that I’m new to this vicious Facebook war over nihilist fantasy. Could you give me an idea of where these kinds of discussions happen? Vague ideas that don’t involve much effort on your part? I’d love to follow the discussion elsewhere. Or if there are other savvy commenters: could you help me out?
Regardless, thanks for the post. I’m torn between thinking your answer is a wise cop-out or just plain wise. 😉
I was rather surprised at how upbeat the TOME ends. Our heroes retrieved the maguffin; vanquished the bad guys and swam off into the sunset. Denaos even got the girl. (in a manner of speaking)
There isn’t even a single named character death. Except Moscoff/Mossud and (maybe?) Rashod. Hell, Fellowship of the Ring had a greater body count! This isn’t a good or bad thing, just surprising from a tale with so much genital mutilation and scatological humour.
Keep up the surprising work. 🙂