However, since I know Richard now, for a long time, I also know that his heart and mind are concerned as well with the larger ‘political’ meaning, and so I read that into his work as well.

I wonder if that would be incorrect, invalid readings? I am thinking, first, about “The Ogre’s Wife,” (title of his first, excellent short fiction collection) not to mention the story he wrote for Not of Woman Born, “Dopples”.

Love, C.

Fiction’s business, it seems to me, is primarily with these unquantifiable connections: between individuals, between individuals and groups, between individuals and circumstances, etc. And their emotional validity lends impact and plausibility which might otherwise be sadly lacking in fantasy, where imaginary heroes confront imaginary problems in imaginary settings.

Well said. Thanks for expanding on the comment.

I agree with the above, certainly, since I think that fiction is primarily about the human condition - whatever that is.

While I do tend to perceive creating settings as a “political” (in the broadest sense) act - even if an entirely unconscious one on the part of the writer - for me the best stories are ultimately those “unquantifiable connections.” One doesn’t preclude the other. That is, while I suppose there are writers whose characters never rise above the politics of their social roles, I would guess that most writers who care about character are trying to unveil character, not roles.

But I’d say there’s some dimension of the personal which is not political, and it’s especially important in fantasy.

And Kate Elliott responded:

James, I’d love for you to expand on this comment.

Sorry to be getting back to you so late: it’s been a busy week.

When I wrote the passage you wondered about, I was specifically thinking of my wife’s cat, a white fluffhead of a permanent kitten named Cleo. She had been abandoned and rescued by the Humane Society; when we got her she was starving and needed to be bottle-fed. My wife did most of this, and the cat bonded with her. Cleo is now healthy, pretty shrewd for a mentally-ill quadruped, and fanatically devoted to my wife: she spends hours sitting or standing at my wife’s side, obviously Protecting the Momcat from Evil.

Me, Cleo wants nothing to do with. In the soup of her life, I am but a drowned fly.

Except sometimes when I’m standing around, I’ll feel her rub her head fiercely against my open palm. She will sneak by to bump my ankles when she thinks I won’t notice. The other day she went as far as to jump up beside me on my office chair and help me type something. Everything was fine, until I made the mistake of formally noticing her, and she bounded away to continue her Ceaseless Battle Againt Evil.

My relationship with this free-floating white cloud of neuroses seems to be free from any political element whatsoever. Certainly there is no question but that her primary loyalty in life rests with the Momcat. Her drive-by head-bumping has no effect at all on the micro-society of our household. I don’t think Cleo is trying to have any effect on it: she would obviously prefer that I never notice her. But the relationship, such as it is, is important in some unquantifiable way to Cleo and me.

Fiction’s business, it seems to me, is primarily with these unquantifiable connections: between individuals, between individuals and groups, between individuals and circumstances, etc. And their emotional validity lends impact and plausibility which might otherwise be sadly lacking in fantasy, where imaginary heroes confront imaginary problems in imaginary settings.

If one is constructing a secondary world with its own geography, botany, zoology, history, politics, religion, even metaphysics, this necessarily involves the application of one’s own ideas of how such things work. When it comes to the socio-political sphere in which one is inventing human cultures, the most important in narrative terms, authenticity is at the mercy of assumptions. One’s ideological preconceptions will inevitably colour the types of societies one creates, how they are portrayed as functioning, how individuals are portrayed as functioning within them, often leading to utter nonsense of whatever persuasion — libertarian or liberal, reactionary or radical.

Man, that’s what I’m trying to say, only he said it better.

What is the quest for justice, after all?

Maybe we should ask John Milton, when he was writing his Paradise Lost?

For some this really is a golden age, I think.

OTOH, I’m not too crazy, generally, with its level of culture, at least lately, at least, again, not around the states, generally.

Love, C.

In some ways we do of course live in a Golden Age.

What is Heaven / Paradise, if not a world imagined as one would like.

Golden Ages — i.e., the Garden of Eden, abound in literatures.

Which, of course, is the only place they have really existed. Though I often think that if human beings survive the environmental catastrophe, we shall certainly look back to this era in the U.S. and Europe and parts of Asia and South America as the Golden Age.

Love, C.

I’m not all that fond of utopias or dystopias, now that I think about it.

When I talk about how there is something political about creating a world I tend to mean those assumptions we may not have examined when we’re making choices about how societies look or interactions unfold. It may be something as obvious as Heinlein transplanting a 50s-style housewife to Mars in Red Planet or as subtle as ways in which leadership might be portrayed as a male prerogative, for instance. Or non gender related elements, too - assumptions about nobility, or values, or ways in which the protagonist’s views reflect modern sensibilities (so that we can identify with him/her) even if the world around the hero is not meant to be modern.