Only Nerds Ride Silver Dragons

Quick bit: only one week left until we choose the winners of the ARC Giveaway Contest.  Submit now.  SUBMIT OR BE DESTROYED.

Anyway, how many of y’all remember Dragonlance?  Saladin Ahmed, my fellow SFWA Author (did I not mention I joined SFWA?  Well, I’ll tell you all about it when you’re older), does.  As he brought up this point (which I will now horribly paraphrase because I am not going to sift through Facebook posts just for YOU, Ahmed) in a recent Facebook post:

It’s not “cool” to like Dragonlance anymore.

For those of you who are unaware, Dragonlance is one of the many series that fall under that auspicious genre of “Tie-In Fiction”: fiction where the commonality between books is the world and the mythos, not the author or characters, usually based on table-top or pen-and-paper games.  Dragonlance was one of these, and along with stuff like Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun, it formed the introduction of a lot of young men and women into fantasy literature.

And it was awesome.

But Saladin is pretty much right.  For those of you who are aspiring authors out there: you are not allowed to enjoy Dragonlance, or any tie-in fiction, once you become published.  That was something you did when you were younger, like thinking spinach was gross and watching scrambled pornography.  Now you’re a big man and you will read ADULT FICTION ABOUT MAGICIANS AND THE WOMEN WHO LOVE THEM.

Actually, what’s far more likely is that you’re probably going to become startlingly aware of the mechanics of tie-in fiction.  You’ll have seen where the magician keeps his rabbit, so to speak, and suddenly it’s just an old pedophile in a fancy suit on stage.

There are a number of grievances against tie-in fiction: it’s cheap, it’s not original, it’s “kiddie,” it’s for dorks who aren’t serious about their fantasy, whatever.  Amongst all of these complaints, the only one I see as truly valid is the one that also ruined a lot of tie-in fiction for me: it’s limited by the world.

The characters and the author become slaves to the worldbuilding: they can affect it, but only so far as it can pertain to the world.  A king can be unseated, but only temporarily.  The Unspeakable Darkness was defeated, but only in a little part of the world (and there’s an even more Unspeakable Darkness two books down the line).  Things can change, but only as long as the source material allows.

It’s the same reason MMOs are generally not as satisfying as single-player games.  Sure, you’ve defeated the Forces of Evil with your Ragtag Band of Heroes and you’ve Saved The World From A Thousand Years of Darkness, but so has that other guild (and their shaman doesn’t stand in the void zone, you big stupid).  In a single-player game, once the evil is dead, it’s dead and you killed it.  In a non-tie-in fiction book, the impact is felt a little stronger because you know there’s not going to be an external source that contradicts what happened.  Ned Stark is not coming back.

But there are merits of tie-in fiction (when they’ve been given good authors) and that’s because there’s a subtle, silent advantage in having “the world” not matter very much: in such a case, characters matter so much more.  And this is pretty much the difference between good tie-in fiction and bad tie-in fiction: you come for the characters, not the world or its complex political systems or its oh-so-awesome magic weaving.

And this is basically my point (you didn’t think I had one, did you?  Shows what you know!).  It seems that we occasionally skirt a line that suggests characters don’t matter as much as a unique gimmick or angle on fantasy does, be it a magic system, worldbuilding or mythos.  These are important, sure, but as ever, they don’t matter if they don’t affect the characters.

In my impetuous youth of six months ago, I considered “nice worldbuilding” to be a backhanded compliment, the equivalent of saying “she’s got a great personality” about a book: it’s unspecific, unimportant and sort of sends the conflict and characters to the backseat.  Granted, I’ve wisened up some and realize that sometimes the worldbuilding is just pretty awesome in a book and it deserves recognition.  After all, characters need to affect the world, but if there’s no world to affect, it’s kind of pointless to be writing in fantasy.  No one wants to hear about how Raygar the Mighty experienced a personal epiphany while filing his taxes in That City That Is Totally Not New York Because We Gave it a Different Name.

But when reading reviews, I’ll occasionally see someone rave about the unique magic system, the complex socio-political structure of a race that never actually does anything, the haunting lyricism of a created language that was once used to write a poem about things that are no longer happening and have no relevance to the plot.  This is great and all, but what’s the point?  If it doesn’t affect the characters, why do we need to know about it?  We don’t and it’s kind of unfair to show us all this awesome lore and backstory and then tell us it’s never going to be used in the book in a meaningful way.  Worldbuilding without characters is a fancy playground behind an electric fence: it looks awesome, but you can’t do much more than look.

And this is what we have to learn from tie-in fiction.  We should not look at it as kiddie or lame or unoriginal, but rather we should use it as a study as to how to make complex worlds apply to the characters.  We should see why we care about Enus the Wise if his magic is the same as everyone else’s magic.  We should see what makes Boris the Barbarian worth more than his axe.  We should see what makes these characters, insignificant and limited, work in a world that continues to move regardless of their deed.

If that doesn’t convince you: a tie-in fiction author won the David Gemmel Legend Award.  So…you know…

Est sularus oth mithas, bitches.