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July 26, 2005
Can Democratic Fantasy be Written?
Just finished The Golem's Eye (book 2 of the Bartimaeus series by Stroud). It is an interesting book which ends on a very disquieting note. The hero of the first book has turned into an evil character. I wonder if the author really knows what he is doing but we shall see.
My real question is: can one write fantasy in which the main characters either live in or fight for a democracy. So far, fantasy is the last bastion of the aristocracy what with princess and princesses and long-lost kings all forming the main characters of the stories (from Eddison's The Worm Ouroborus to Tad Williams series Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (the first book is The Dragonbone Chair, a title that really makes no sense within the context of the book).
I'm not the first to point this out. David Brin clearly talked about this in his commentary about his novel Glory Season (which is not really a fantasy though it comes close in feel).
Why might this be? I can think of some reasons.
1) Democracy (or rather Democratic-Republic) is hard to understand, messy in practice, and free of a great deal of trouble which causes plot in normal books (i.e. rightful kings displaced by grasping nobles).
2) Democracy is new. The first real democratic government in the modern world is the U.S. and its only been around since 1792 (with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution).
3) Common sense suggests that democracy can't work as most people think other people are stupid and make poor decisions. Most people think Mackay was right (The Madness of Crowds). The new, alternative theory that crowds are smart (pushed valiantly by Surowiecki) is not widely understood nor believed.
Clearly this is something that I could write, if I could write fantasy.
Posted by rakhier at July 26, 2005 10:34 PM