 |
| Image courtesy of this Let's Play |
Possibly more than you might think.
The problem with writing ancient civilizations is striking the right balance between "our ancestors weren't stupid" and "they probably didn't know all the mysteries of the universe now lost to us, either". This post is on the former issue.
The image for this post came from a video game called Wild Arms. The characters are invited to a festival that will celebrate ancient knowledge in a way that only a steam-punk fantasy setting built on the ruins of a lost technologically advanced world can: by throwing a bunch of rusted metal into a nearby public park and posting signs about how mysterious it all is. One of the "exhibits" on display is a skeleton, which is "found in several places" but its "use is unknown". Unknown. To an agrarian community who make their living slaughtering sheep in between being menaced by random encounters of goblins outside the city walls. Huh.
The Wild Arms example is, I think, probably satirical, but that doesn't mean that Stupid Ancestors don't show up in a wide variety of writings. Stupid Ancestors have been invoked to claim that a divine authority would be needed in order to make some of the biologically sensible claims in the Bible, like the fact that if you lose too much blood, you die. You'd think that a people who work with sharp farming implements in between slaughtering livestock and very occasionally going to war with their surrounding neighbors could have worked that out on their own, but no, Stupid Ancestors it is.
And then there's the book I reviewed last year that I really wanted to enjoy, but the author was apparently so terrified of including any detail that might be wrong, that she went overboard and gave almost no details whatsoever. (I couldn't even tell if the characters wore clothes.) What was worse, though, was that her ancient peoples were all possessed of not a single ounce of skepticism: the main villain shows up and takes over their society simply by virtue of the fact that he claims God exists and sends him direct divine communication to boss people around. When the one person who opposes the villain mysteriously winds up dead when spending time alone with him, these innocent flower children don't for a moment consider the tragedy to be anything other than the sheerest of coincidence. Stupid Ancestors strike again!
The hardest part about overcoming Stupid Ancestors in writing is trying to imagine what our life would be like if it were completely different. For instance, I've never seen a skeleton before, outside of models in school and in shows on television. If you took my schooling and my television watching away from the equation, I wouldn't know what a skeleton looks like! And thus... Wild Arms.
The problem with this, of course, is that characters aren't created by taking yourself and subtracting bits away. Everything that is subtracted has to have something added to take its place, and these new sources of knowledge will change what your character does and doesn't know. Cut out modern medicine and you're going to have a race of people without a germ theory, perhaps, but they're also going to have a touch of experience treating all the open wounds that the EMTs and emergency personnel are no longer handling for them. Cut out grocery markets and they might not know much about high fructose corn syrup, but they may know a thing or two more about how to grow vegetables or kill a rabbit.
This is scary for an author. It's hard enough to build a plausible new world without trying to think up how every little aspect affects every character's life and inner knowledge. The good news is that in some ways, you don't have to. The key isn't "sit down and map out everything that every character knows", but rather "look back over what I've said they do and don't know and sanity check it". You can have characters interested in a skeleton without making them Stupid: make it a medical display ("we don't know how it works, but we know it's a part of us"). You can have easily duped characters without making them Stupid: give them reasons for why they can't cope with the harsh reality of the situation.
In other words, the key to avoiding Stupid Ancestors isn't rewriting your story to have different events, but rather rewriting specific areas to justify the events that come before and after. Your characters can behave essentially the same as before, but for different reasons than outright stupidity. And, really, all you need in order to do that is to write them from a perspective that has the same raw intelligence that the rest of us -- and most of our house pets -- were born with.
61 comments:
One aspect of this that drives me wild is not taking the real ideas of our past seriously, even if they turned out to be wrong. There were reasons that people believed the world worked the way it did, and what ideas were common knowledge vs. what were academic vs. what were trendy is well worth researching. Don't assume that someone who believes in a geocentric model is just stupid - nor is someone who believes Darwin over Lamarck automatically smarter.
The next protagonist who magically knows all modern physics/psychology/feng shui just so they can look smarter than the other characters in the setting gets a kick in the shin.
Also - and I've been guilty of this myself - the ancients had no sense of irony; they were never sarcastic. Especially when they were writing things down. Everything they wrote is intended to be understood by its immediate, surface meaning. This is because sarcasm wasn't invented until the 1920's. Hell, subtext only goes back as far as 1839; before that, people always explained everything that was going on and what it meant.
"It's hard enough to build a plausible new world without trying to think up how every little aspect affects every character's life and inner knowledge."
...And magic complicates this further.
...And magic complicates this further.
Too true. (Getting flashbacks to the Magic Birth Control discussion.)
I'm always amused by the "jack" (money) in Deathlands and other apocalyptic settings. Sometimes the authors in the series take the money concept seriously and explain how it can work with 100+ different big-fishes-in-small-ponds issuing "credits" for their economy to work on, in a world where backstabbing, cheating, and murder are part of the normal breakfast routine.
Other authors just ignore it and have the characters pull money out of their pockets when it suits them. It's problematic. World building is hard.
I watch Ancient Aliens on the History Channel sometimes. It can be funny, and some of the things they bring up are generally interesting. (They should have a second show that addresses the non-quackery explanations for how those things were done and how they fit into history.)
Occasionally I talk to the screen.
"Could they really have worked it out to this precision?" they ask incredulously.
"Yes!" I reply, "Yes they could. Because they didn't have TV and the didn't have the internet and they didn't have electric lights and they didn't have anything better to do than to sit outside and look up at the stars and they were BORED! Night after night generation after generation they looked up at the stars bright in the sky. Of course they knew more about it than you or I. You and I aren't astronomers*. They were. They probably looked at the stars more than most modern day astronomers you arrogant schmuck. Just because you could never work this stuff out without a university system to prop you up doesn't mean they couldn't."
And so on.
In conclusion, the Mayan calendar was not created by aliens.
And yes, I can imagine a bunch of guys with hand tools making all this.
(Though I do love Riley's "The aliens helped them," line from National Treasure.)
-
*Also, if the aliens really helped them, shouldn't ancient knowledge still be at least as good as our own? Why is it that, "They knew more about it than non-experts do today," is supposed to be convincing?
*piggy-backing off Chris* Oooh! Ooh! AND! Less light pollution. Very important.
In defence of the ancestors who happily let a villain take over based on claims of divine authority, we do have some modern evidence that this can work. How many reprehensible political leaders have gained popular support by stating that they enact the will of their followers' deity of choice? Mind you, that's a lot more complicated than just saying 'God wills it, so do it', and I don't get the impression that the novel in question paid much attention to the machinery of manipulating religious authority.
What about Anachronistic Monks? HA.
I'm assuming these are not Monks of History, charged with travelling throughout time to ensure that events happen as they must, so: what are Anachronistic Monks?
In conclusion, the Mayan calendar was not created by aliens.
Additionally, my desk calendar predicts that the world will end on January 31, 2012. ...Well, obviously that's what it predicts, otherwise it would show days after that! It's not like the calendar-maker just ran out of pages or something!
If you've seen, hmm. Dragonheart or Van Helsing, you've seen an Anachronistic Monk. They're the ones who invent gun powder and flying machines and easily-concealed and completely accurate crossbows for the heros. James Bonds' Q, basically, but for fantasy/history tales.
Oh! Or the girl who invents steel in...um... First Knight? That one Heath Ledger movie? Yeah.
The Heath Ledger movie was A Knight's Tale - I actually kind of like that bit (although the movie itself is ecstatically anachronistic in every way), as that the advance is limited to 'I found a different way to heat the steel'. It's startlingly plausible, since precision heating is so important in controlling crystallisation and toughening metal. In a movie where crowds sing along with We Will Rock You in the 14th century, Kate doesn't develop a perfect mix of iron and carbon dust and carefully-measured nickel alloying, she just... experiments with heating methods and finds a better one.
Van Helsing was a more hilariously blatant example, what with the semiautomatic crossbow and the "I made a sunlight bomb!" "What possible use could I, a vampire hunter, put that to?" "I can't think of any, I just decided to make it!" *two scenes pass* "Hang on, we're surrounded by hundreds of vampires - if only we had a sunlight bomb!" But - well, there were lots of reasons why Van Helsing was bad. In both of those movies, I think it's pretty clear that the writers knew what they were doing and had rejected logic.
I remember a central monk in Dragonheart, but I don't remember him doing anything glaringly anachronistic - mostly he composed poetry and was an impossibly talented archer.
I'm trying to think of an example where a story was really trying to be realistic and then featured such Monks, but I may have been fortunate enough to avoid and/or block out the memories. Medical monks seem like the most likely offenders - whipping up plague cures after three weeks' work with a windowbox full of herbs.
@Will, thank you! I misremembered that, I thought it was full on "STEEL! I MAKES IT!" That's much better, as you say. Though I should self-disclose that I saw that movie IN THEATERS and wanted to *scream* at the Designated Female Love Interest. That movie and I are not good friends. :P
What about Anachronistic Monks? HA. *kick*
Oh, Brother Cadfael, how I hate thee.
Look, Ellis Peters, I'm sure that you are very proud of your Mad Research Skillz and that the shoes and the hairpins and the sanitary facilities are all Absolutely Authentic (with CITATIONS!)
But no, twelfth-century people did not think like that. I don't care what weird broadening experiences Cadfael had with those crafty Arabs (Orientalizing much?), but sorry, reasoning by analogy and induction were far more likely to be part of people's mental toolkits than deduction from abstract principles and empirical skepticism. And if you presented a theology which was pure-quill Pelagianism to a British bishop, he was NOT going to say, "Huh, interesting, why don't you go on preaching that?"
As far as Alien Astronauts go, I'll never forget the one show I saw that proclaimed that the Egyptians and the Mayan were OBVIOUSLY tutored by the same aliens, because -- wait for it -- they both built pyramids! Even though their pyramids had different structures, appearances, purposes, and technology! Because, after all, our ancestors were WAY too stupid to ever pile up rocks and say to themselves, "hmmmm....."
@hapax, would that be from the Buck Williams school of theological debate? :D
(Reference to his OH YEAH WHAT ABOUT THIS VERSE debate with...ummmm. Matthews? Dagnabbit, I'm bad with names.)
Whoops, I got that it was a different book; just wondering if it was the same type of scene. Sounds like it wasn't, though. Poor Buck Williams. :)
What about Anachronistic Monks? HA. *kick*
I had a dream last night about an exceptionally skilled time travelling cat thief/Franciscan monk, played by a young Cary Grant. And yes, my brain named him Felonious Monk. Thank you, brain. (Also, WTF?)
I cannot even read the Cadfael books. I tried a few times, but I like my historical fiction to be more immersive. (It doesn't have to be 100%, and I can be lenient for romance, where not enough leniency can be kind of squicky.)
"Though I should self-disclose that I saw that movie IN THEATERS and wanted to *scream* at the Designated Female Love Interest."
Yeah, I had a similar reaction. The Designated Love Interest is attractive enough, I guess, but I'd have fallen for the smith, myself.
I'm also always amazed how *early* developments first appear. Long before I think people ought to have the tools to figure out geometry, or calculate the mass of the earth, or figure out the structure of DNA, there it is. I think that has to be tied up in this somewhere.
Yeah, I had a similar reaction.
For me, just the whole "lose for me, now win for me" head-games was nasty stuff. I dislike when writers confuse Strong Female Character with Jerk Female Character. Jousting is *dangerous*; telling a guy to risk permanent injury and/or death to prove that he For Realz likes you and isn't just interested in getting into your pants is Not Cool and just pushes stereotypes about women wanting to hurt/subdue men. My 2 cents.
I thought that the point of A Knight's Tale was to listen to Chaucer and the rest was just meaningless filler. Though the blacksmith was a nice character when she was allowed to exist.
I would say more, but the truth is that I like bad movies so machine gun crossbows don't bother me much. Of course if that showed up in a serious story then I'd have a serious problem with it. There was such a thing as a repeating crossbow, it was not very impressive.
Yeah, I had a similar reaction. The Designated Love Interest is attractive enough, I guess, but I'd have fallen for the smith, myself.
*throws a switch that shifts the rails, thus possibly diverting the train/thread from its intended route through the Deconstruction Prairie and straight into Speculative Replotting Town*
The smith did seem much more interesting, for what little development time she had (widow, blacksmith, empirically inclined, undainty, and we're done) and I find myself wondering what the story would have been like if she had been more significant. If she was, it's pretty much inevitable that she'd have been a second love interest, because this is a genre sports movie and everyone must revolve around the star athlete - them's the rules. And there's this whole unaddressed thing in Knight's Tale about William wanting to be a knight specifically so that he can joust - in essence, he's already achieved his goals as soon as his Sir Ulrich persona passes inspection. Being a noble, in this context, also implies a radically different lifestyle, but basically the only time such differences between rich noble and poor commoner arise is when Shallow Love Interest Jocelyn says they should run away rather than let him be jailed for fraud.
Jocelyn is plainly going to be a trophy wife for someone, seeing as she doesn't appear to do anything all day. (Yog only knows what her married life with the hero is going to be like. I can't think of a non-depressing version.) While William is now allowed to compete as much as he wants, he doesn't have her kind of riches, so he is still functionally a commoner and she is still an easy in to the wealthy life. In a way, she could turn around the lot that she seems to be stuck with in life - instead of being someone's trophy wife, she can pick her trophy husband, the star jouster, because she's got all the wonders of upperclassness to offer him.
Now now I'm imagining a version in which she's a sympathetic antagonist who sees William as someone she can use to defy her role as a bargaining chip, and since William is in it For The Love Of The Game he's attracted by her and her promise of noble legitimacy, but once the prince shows up and names him Sir William of Retcon, he realises that he much prefers the blacksmith who shares his worldview and who has collaborated with him to help them excel in their respective fields of metallurgy and grievous bodily harm. It would be about defying the notion that nobles and commoners are fundamentally different or that nobility is inherently valuable rather than arbitrary. (Jocelyn would still need more of a character arc, though. She would need to do something after William rejected her, rather than just accept that her life was pointless and outside her control.)
I would say more, but the truth is that I like bad movies so machine gun crossbows don't bother me much.
+1 on bad movie love. :D
*goes to read Will's comment*
Will, wow. There are like 8 different fanfic possibilities packed into that post and I like all of them. Wow.
I don't know, don't you think that the blacksmith deserved better than William? He doesn't make your list of worthwhile characters, she does. If she ends up with William she's ending up with someone beneath her in terms of character.
The only real benefit I can see for her from ending up with William is that she'd be getting nobility, but I think the five way partnership they've got going means she'll be getting whatever the practical result of that is anyway. Which is a good thing because it means that she could say yes or no based on whether or not she wanted the man rather than class issues.
On the other hand, if we're rewriting things then maybe William can end up being a more worthy character. (I still think she deserves someone more on Chaucer's level than William's though.)
-
If we are randomly rewriting characters to add a more complex love plot then I think I'm going to pick the current love interest's servant. Have her as a go between so he's interacting with her more than noble lady (she already does a little of that, add some more), and have her be visibly unhappy about having to deliver the manipulative orders. Possibly have her try to get him to stop subjecting himself to abuse and just give up so he'll stop getting hurt. Definitely tries to convince noble lady to call it off.
And now I have this scene in my head:
"I tried to convince my Lady to stop toying with you and..." *looks at her feet*
"And?"
*Meekly looks up* "And she now commands that you win the entire tournament." *Looks straight back at her feet* "Sorry."
The absolute best/worst example of Anachronistic Monks I've seen was Cave Dwellers, where the Conan-esque hero makes a hang glider off screen*. That bit vies with the part where the female lead gets arrowed in the torso and starts limping as the most ridiculous scene.
*And as Mike and the bots point out, you can see a modern city in the shot where he's flying it.
William didn't make the list of interesting characters because, as main character of a virtuoso sport movie, he gets much more development than anyone else but is at the same time required to be sufficiently bland to have broad appeal. I almost never like the main character best in these situations, because they're often unfairly hampered in the degree to which they are allowed to be a character rather than the hypothetical audience surrogate. (I think there are a lot of movies that could benefit from removing the lead and diving time more equally among the 'secondary' cast.) So I don't know whether to judge him by blandish movie version or by the implied meta-version that he might get to be if all characters were treated equally.
Alternatively, we could just ditch the focus on William and have a movie about Chaucer and Kate manipulating tournaments with oratory and metallurgy until they destabilise the entire feudal system and institute a democratic republic. I am open to this concept.
I also like the idea of giving the servant a more significant role, particularly in obediently delivering Jocelyn's latest orders and then hissing "Alternatively you could get a grip and not kill yourself trying to impress a sociopath, but obviously as a noble you know better than I do!"
" That bit vies with the part where the female lead gets arrowed in the torso and starts limping as the most ridiculous scene. "
The movie must be using Resident Evil video game rules: Whenever you are damaged, you start limping, just to show that you aren't at full health. It doesn't matter if you were hit by a zombie, slashed by a claw, or stung by a giant spider. You limp.
Limping is pretty much universal shorthand for 'suboptimal health'. People on various Star Trek series are well-known for limping after being shot in the chest. Or the joke - "*coughcough* I won't be coming in to work today." "You have the flu?" "No, a migraine, but I don't know how to make a migraine sound over the phone."
Will: Oh, yeah. It's just hilarious, is all!
Central heating is a class of heating systems with early examples used by the the Romans which I was told was forgotten about until someone looked at some ruins, said, "I wonder what that's for?" figured it out, and reintroduced it. I can't find a source for the whole forgotten and reintroduction thing though.
It's when you heat something in one part of a building and then transport the heat to the rest of the building. A single furnace supplying multiple radiators would be an example of a central heating system.
"For me, just the whole "lose for me, now win for me" head-games was nasty stuff. "
Ye gods, I'd forgotten about that part. (In fact, it's quite possible that I've forgotten most of the movie - I only saw it once.) I remember thinking of it as fairly brainless entertainment, at the time, unlike my Beautiful Wife who hates it with the burning fire of a thousand suns. But now that you've reminded me of that, I'm wondering why I thought that Designated Love Interest was even remotely acceptable.
"Alternatively, we could just ditch the focus on William and have a movie about Chaucer and Kate manipulating tournaments with oratory and metallurgy until they destabilise the entire feudal system and institute a democratic republic."
I would absolutely watch that movie.
I remember thinking of it as fairly brainless entertainment, at the time, unlike my Beautiful Wife who hates it with the burning fire of a thousand suns.
Your wife is correct; I share her burning hatred for that movie. :D
"Alternatively, we could just ditch the focus on William and have a movie about Chaucer and Kate manipulating tournaments with oratory and metallurgy until they destabilise the entire feudal system and institute a democratic republic."
Seriously. That sounds AWESOME.
Wait, what? Damn it. this is what happens when I try to respond to this thread while in the middle of composing another post. I get all jumbled and forget the important stuff. Not that Pthalo isn't important, but I was supposed to say that this:
Alternatively, we could just ditch the focus on William and have a movie about Chaucer and Kate manipulating tournaments with oratory and metallurgy until they destabilise the entire feudal system and institute a democratic republic.
would be awesome. And if I had said it when I meant to I'd have been the first now I'm just, what, thirding it?
I love Cave Dwellers. That is one of my favorite MST3K movies ever.
oh, thanks Chris. That explains where we get the "central" from, it's just that in our case, the heat is pumped into about half the city. The radiators at my last place (and the one before the one before that) weren't central heating then. Most of the time I didn't heat the bathroom -- lighting the radiator is tricky, much more so than lighting a stove, and I burned my hands a few times. So I mostly lit one radiator once a year and then kept them on pilot light if we had a warm spell.
Some of the newer buildings here let you adjust the heat a little bit -- you can't turn it completely off, and you can't turn it on if they've decided it's not cold enough, or if it's the wrong time of year (5°C in summer because of some volcano? too bad. it's summer. no heat for you.) but you can now turn it down or up (but can't get more than the amount they decide you need). Actually, though, I haven't noticed much difference whether I turn it down or not, but on the fifth floor I get heat from all the floors beneath me (and there's no one above me), so I keep it turned down. They turn the heat down at night, up in the morning, then down during the day when everyone's at work (though I work from home), and then up again in the evenings. I suspect the dial on the radiators is mostly just to give a person an illusion of control.
Haha, I am pleased to find someone else who noticed all the random knowledge you can get from CSI. It's why people know what a gas chromatograph is, even if nobody knows what one looks like. =P Half my education came from that show. And Mythbusters.
And (trying to be intelligent and somewhat on topic) stupid ancestors is right next to the problem of unacceptable ancestors. Much or human history included slavery, women owned by husbands, dogfighting, pick your unpardonable from the list. So to be acceptable to modern readers, the protagonist must fight against these things, but to be accurate, zie must accept them as normal, even good. This makes historical fiction... sort of impossible. 9_6
To some extent.
I write historical paranormal--and tend to veer away from ultra-realistic historical stuff--because...you know, I don't *want* to deal with, say, typical Victorian attitudes toward women and sexuality. I know that's how people thought back then; it was a revolting, horrible way to think; I don't want it in my entertainment except as a villain perspective. Same reason I don't want to deal with hygiene and grooming pre-20th.
I get around this in writing by giving the characters excuses to not believe the stupid stuff (easier than one might think, especially with enough research--any era is going to include a fair number of people who don't follow the official doctrine) and in reading, I look for authors who do likewise.
tl;dr: I like realism until it interferes with my enjoyment of the story, or my sympathy for the characters, and it can.
Yeah. I stopped watching the movie about the time Jocelyn started being...Jocelyn. Because I wanted her to die. Who *does* that?
I'm going slightly off the Knight's Tale topic, but that's cause I've only seen bits and pieces of it. However, regarding historical/speculative fiction, one of my big examples of things done ok/things I can't stand is "The Pillars of the Earth." I like that the world(? can we call it world building if it's rooted in history?) he creates is identifiable. I think it gets whitewashed, but it's not (usually) shown as "Look at these backwards, ignorant, overly zealous people who do stupid things, and then get the plague." On the other hand, he does have a lot of "STEEL! I HAZ CREATED IT!" moments that remind me of Chef Elf's critique of the Rancor (which seems COOL! when you're twelve, and then trite when you're older.)
Now that I'm thinking about it, a lot of the fiction that I've read tends to be very . . . glossy (high fantasy/12th century technology coupled with long life spans, very little illness and a general cleanliness of the population, sort of thing). The main exception that comes to mind is China Mieville (whom I have other problems with)
Funny, it's the "12th century technology coupled with long life spans, very little illness and a general cleanliness of the population, sort of thing" that drives me MAAAD. I can't read it, especially when the author loads in modern ideas about gender and religion that sort of stick out at right angles in the world building. Cannot. Cope.
It really depends on the author for me. Some, I can deal with, like I've read books where magic can/does play a major factor in why everyone's healthy and everything's clean.
In the sequel to Pillars of the Earth, set in the 13th century or thereabouts, there's a scene were a woman gets pregnant and goes to the nuns to have an abortion.
So Ana, so I read your review there. So, this author tends to give a pretty narrow meaning to the name of the species she's writing about, does she?
Dav: The next protagonist who magically knows all modern physics/psychology/feng shui just so they can look smarter than the other characters in the setting gets a kick in the shin.
Words to live by.
@Pthalo: Ha.
On the other hand, maybe they were an order of St. Brigid? Who, when one of her nuns fell inconveniently pregnant, is said to have prayed over her, "and the child disappeared from the womb."
@Izzy: I am pleased to report that Amazon tells me that my copy of No Proper Lady is on its way. Also, that my local library branch is featuring it on the "New Paperbacks" shelf this month. ("Hey, that's Izzy's book! Cool!")
So, this author tends to give a pretty narrow meaning to the name of the species she's writing about, does she?
I was so sad! I had high hopes for the book. I'm hoping Clan of the Cave Bear will be better -- I've got that on my To-Read list.
Hahahaha ohgod I can't watch.
Hahahaha ohgod I can't watch.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a train wreck. Can anyone please write a good pre-history society that isn't... well... "evo-psych plus animal-skin bikinis" is the only phrase I can think to use at the moment.
So you know how I said I watch Ancient Aliens? I can now recognize George Noory by voice. His voice shouldn't have been so familiar to me, as if I'd known the sound of it ... er, whatever. Also the fact that I know his name.
I should probably find something else to serve as background noise.
The movie Clan of the Cave Bear sucks.
The book (and all the rest of the series) is fantastic. If you want to go into the book cold, stop reading after this paragraph. Minor spoilers follow, but they aren't spoilers for major plot points. The first paragraph spoils something that is explained in the first few pages of Clan of the Cave Bear. The following paragraphs contain spoilers for extremely minor plot points in the later books.
Much of the historical details are very accurate, but there have been some archaeological developments in recent years that disprove some things. Specifically, it was thought that the Neanderthals lacked the hyoid bone and were thus incapable of speech. This is now known to be false, and it is now believed that Cro Magnon man learned learned to speak from the Neanderthals. So, the Neaderthals, probably didn't use sign language. This is a forgiveable mistake, given that several books had been published before this information came to light.
Other problems with later books in the Clan of the Cave Bear series (that aren't present in the first book):
1) throbbing manhood. every 100 pages (literally, give or take 5 pages) we are treated to a throbbing manhood. This starts in book 2 and continues throughout. Read a sex scene once and then skim the rest, because blah blah manhood blah blah nipples blah blah blah this is the best sex of my life blah blah blah yawn. Sex scenes last precisely three pages.
2) Ayla comes to invent practically every technological invention of the prehistoric world: the domestication of animals, making fire with flint, poking a hole in a needle and using it to pull leather strips through holes in animal skins (improvement on using a needle without a hole to push the strips through the holes), a device for throwing spears that was a precursor to a bow, the travois... it goes on and on. With the exception of the domestication of animals, this can be forgiven if you view Ayla as representative of thousands of different people throughout prehistory who invented these various things, and it is pretty interesting to see how these things could have been invented. It really only gets annoying in the later books or maybe on a second readthrough. I kept waiting for her to invent the microchip.
As for the domestication of animals, the author seems to take the idea that it is possible that an animal here and there might have been domesticated even before this was widespread, and the animals Ayla domesticates are still wild animals. She doesn't think of the animals as hers, she views them as creatures with free will who make a conscious choice to spend time with her and whose desires sometimes fall in line with her own. As far as I can tell, this is an accurate representation of how pets were treated in some cultures. So they aren't really domesticated except in the way a baby carnivore might be taught to accept a nomadic human as its mother or part of its pack, and even hunt with her from time to time, but it would remain a dangerous wild animal who might not attack its mother human, but would not easily accept other humans, and if it were the type of wild animal that traditionally leaves its family as an adult, then it would do that.
All that said, I'm eagerly awaiting the next novel (and have been for some years).
And I see someone already got to Brigid!!!
Sorry.
Couldn't agree more with all you've said about CotCB. The first book is best, from a literary standpoint, and I think it is awfully good. After that it does veer off into sex and inventing every damn thing. After the third or fourth one I was basically done. But they are fun, at least the first three books are.
Maybe I'm misremembering CotCB. V erzrzore n obeqreyvar encr fprar naq fbzr cerggl hapbzsbegnoyr enpvny vzcyvpngvbaf jvguva gur svefg srj puncgref. Naq V sryg yvxr gur urebvar jnf n tvnag Znel Fhr. Nz V guvaxvat bs nabgure frevrf?
@Dav -- we're probably thinking of the same book, but we seem to have had different reactions to it.
trigger warning, non graphic discussion of rape. There will also be some spoilers for later books.
Some survivors are triggered by rape scenes and want to avoid them, while others find them cathartic (but sometimes still triggery), and for others it depends on the details of the scene in question (how graphic it is, whose perspective it is written from, how similar to their lived experience, how emotional, etc.) My experience as a survivor reading the book was that it was cathartic, and even well handled. The rapes continue for some time, but we aren't given the lurid details of each and every one, which I appreciated. And it also helps to set the tone. When it's a regular occurence in your life, the details of them all blur together anyway.
Other people don't respond to help the survivor of these rapes or act out against the rapist because they don't see it as rape, and don't understand how it's different from sex. When a man gives the signal, the woman must obey, the women also have their own signals that they use to encourage a man to give them the signal, so usually it appears that a form of non verbal consent is taking place. Also, sex doesn't seem to have as much meaning in this culture as it does in our own.
But in spite of all this, the survivor feels that something is not right. It is definitely rape in her mind, even though she doesn't have the words to explain why. And when she encounters a different society in different books, it is labeled as such and discussed. The only thing that pissed me off about the way it was handled, was that, aside from initial shyness and fear and worry that sex would be just like the rape, once she meets the throbbing manhood consensually, she's all better and completely recovers from the trauma. I thought it was realistic up until that point, as far as her reactions, but after that, no, consensual sex does not make it all better. which is another thing i hated about the sex scenes.
But I think there are a lot of parallels to our own culture. Here in Hungary, it marital rape was only made illegal in 1999. Before then, women were assumed to have given blanket consent to all future relations on their wedding day. I know these laws came sooner in the US, but I'm not sure how much sooner. When these books started being written in the 70's I think it was, the attitude that if you were dating someone you had the automatic right to have sex with them whenever you wanted was more prevalent than it is today, but it still exists now.
The author has a lot to say about rape, including interracial rape. There is a huge plot point in later books where the neanderthals are viewed as animals, and cro magnon guys going around raping them is "disgusting because it's one of "us" sleeping with an animal (but it's not really rape, they're not really human sheesh)." which is reminiscent of the horrible things that were done to women of colour in the US south particularly (and of things that humans have done to each other all over the globe). The woman who was raped in the first book does a lot of work trying to convince people that the Neanderthals are sentient beings, capable of all the good and all the evil that the cro magnon are capable of, who deserve to be treated with respect.
end rape trigger warnings
I am not a person of colour, and I cannot speak for how people of colour viewed the series, and I'd be interested in reading other people's critiques of the way race was handled in the CotCB series. To me, as a white ally, it really did seem overall positive. Whenever racist attitudes were displayed in the narrative, this was condemned by the narrator and by the viewpoint character as well...
As for Mary Sueism, Ayla seems more nuanced than a generic Mary Sue, aside from inventing all the tools used by prehistoric man thing, she was likeable enough to me.
Eh, just to make it absolutely clear, I think the books did an excellent job of clarifying what's wrong with the "they're not even human" attitude, and Ayla, having been raised in their society and knowing their customs is in a unique position to bring about understanding between the two peoples. She sees herself as more neanderthal than cro magnon. She's genetically cro magnon, but culturally entirely neanderthal, and suffers from not really fitting in well in either culture, but does the best she can.
spoilers ahoy:
The book also does a good job of showing different types of racism. Jondular starts out extremely prejudiced against the neanderthals, reacting with horror and aversion when learning that Ayla had son who was half neanderthal, half cro magnon. But over time, he grows more and more sympathetic and does a lot of work on himself to root out this prejudice. This is a long process for him. Long after he accepts them as basically human, Ayla and him meet up with a neanderthal couple and he finds himself shocked at the deference and respect Ayla shows them. This causes him to examine his prejudices some more and he realises that he's still a racist if he thinks that neanderthals are people too but a lesser sort of people not deserving of respect, and he comes away from this encounter with a lot more respect for them.
Shelters in Stone in particular has a lot to say about racism at both a societal and individual level, about internalised racism, about the origins of racism, about othering and privilege. The whole thing reads like an allegory for modern day society, but it manages to stay true to the 10,000 years ago premise, while also avoiding the stupid ancestors trope.
oh oh oh the land of painted caves came out this march! yay! the series is finished after 31 years! yay!
31 years? I guess George R. R. Martin's fans have nothing to complain about. Then again, at the rate he's going, it might be 31 years total before he gets to the end.
@Makabit: No matter, I'm sure the saint, that "excellent woman," doesn't mind a double tribute.
I'm not thrilled with the "look what I invented!" trope either, but I admit to a certain fondness for that small scene in one of the Dragaera books when Vlad Taltos and Lady Teldra come up with the recipe for bagels-and-lox.
There must be some good novels with a prehistoric setting, but I'm drawing a blank. Anyone?
Yeah, book one came out in 1980. The others... I'm not exactly sure of the timeline, because I didn't start reading it until June 2001, at which time there were 4 books. I quickly got up to speed, then Shelters of Stone came out in 2002, and we've been waiting (and re-reading the series) ever since. It's not uncommon for Auel fans to go a decade waiting for a new novel.
I've found myself a torrent. I know, I know, but it won't have been translated into Hungarian yet, so no local libraries will have it, amazon doesn't even ship to Hungary, and I'm dirt poor anyway. I do own physical copies of the other books and I'll buy a copy in a few years when I can afford it. My choices are read nothing but blog posts for the next few years or download a torrent of a book now and then, which I see as being somewhat analogous to checking a book out of the library.
So far, twelve humans have scared off fifteen lions (and killed a few of them) with spear throwers and they've taken a field trip to a cave. Protag got one of the other women to watch her baby while she was killing lions.
I was writing a novel when I was eleven that was set a long time ago. Not ice age -- pre Columbus native americans. I found the draft of it not that long ago, written in pencil. The plot was that a girl (she was 14, i think, which seemed really old to me at the time) gets a dream to go into the forest for a year, so she does. she doesn't tell anyone where she's going or why. she's sad about this because she misses her family and friends. she builds herself some sort of a house in the woods. it takes a long time. she gets lonely a lot, but she isn't bored because there's a lot of work to do to prepare for winter all by herself. i got bored around here because i was having trouble thinking of new ways to describe her day to day to life, which was mostly more of the same each day, so i stopped writing. but after the year of living in the woods, she goes back and finds her entire tribe is dead. the end. so she's been saved by that dream, but she hasn't really been saved for anything. she's alone for the rest of her life.
There must be some good novels with a prehistoric setting, but I'm drawing a blank. Anyone?
Well, "prehistory" covers about four billion years, so maybe you want to narrow down the setting a bit?
:-)
Short version, if by "good", you mean "reflects good science (even of the science current when they were written" -- the answer is "No". At least not for the Paleolithic / Mesolithic eras; I don't have the background to talk about the later eras. I've heard good things about the Gears' "First North Americans" series, though.
I've never read the Auel books -- they sounded SO Not My Thing -- but I did read a hysterically funny scathing review in American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Alas, I don't think it's available online.
I'm not picky about it: I'll take any time before written records are available for wherever the story is set. :-)
And by "good" I mean "good in a literary sense," or even, "not embarrassing." Although good science, or at least not wildly inaccurate science, would be nice too.
I have a vague memory of a book I read as a kid, the story of the tragic love between two young people from opposing Bronze-Age tribes. I have no idea whether I'd think it was "good" if I came across it again now, but it remains notable to me as one of the first books I read that had an unhappy ending. I was quite shocked to realize that no, it's not going to work out all right. Must have been before I read "Romeo and Juliet," I guess.
Though I should self-disclose that I saw that movie IN THEATERS and wanted to *scream* at the Designated Female Love Interest. That movie and I are not good friends. :P
I have an ongoing affection for it, although the Shallow Love Interest is not included in this. Mostly it's Chaucer. And Wat. And Kate, those five times she gets lines! And what is up with the Incredibly Simplistic Class Issues theme? I am not entirely sure! (There's a deleted scene in which the Evil Rival, having been snubbed by Shallow Love Interest, take a walk at night and starts throwing handfuls of money in the streets, where beggars and others scramble to gather it up. I get the impression that perhaps some percentage of the writing team had more complex ideas about how the story should go, but was outnumbered.)
As far as Alien Astronauts go, I'll never forget the one show I saw that proclaimed that the Egyptians and the Mayan were OBVIOUSLY tutored by the same aliens, because -- wait for it -- they both built pyramids!
It is also highly suspicious that so many cultures use base-10 counting systems. Such homogeneity on a global scale? It has to be an alien plot. And you don't want to know about the sinister truth behind braids.
I feel like there's a lot of bleed-through between the idea that ancient civilisations all looked like that Monty Python scene with the Gumbies performing surgery and the idea that other cultures/races must have had help/cheated if they were able to do really impressive things before Us. In the aforementioned case of a villain maknig themself leader of a society by claiming to be a god - well, how ridiculously common is the idea of 'advanced white man finds primitive culture, is worshipped as god'? Somewhere along the line I suspect some guy got freaked out by the idea that ancient Africans included some incredibly good engineers, and decided that they must have been given free stuff by someone else.
(Then there's that 'theory' that northern cultures became most advanced because living in cold climates forced them to develop more technology in order to prosper - an idea which I feel the absence of the Great And Bountiful Inuit Empire rather undercuts. A lot of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures will also want to have a word once they finish inventing basically All The Math Forever.)
When I saw Anachronistic Monks, my first thought was stories based on old-school AD&D, with Shaolin-style monks in an essentially medieval European setting. (Why, Gygax, *why*?)
And (trying to be intelligent and somewhat on topic) stupid ancestors is right next to the problem of unacceptable ancestors. Much or human history included slavery, women owned by husbands, dogfighting, pick your unpardonable from the list. So to be acceptable to modern readers, the protagonist must fight against these things, but to be accurate, zie must accept them as normal, even good. This makes historical fiction... sort of impossible. 9_6
Well, yes and no. I write historical fiction, and while making historical people explicable and appealing to modern people is a bit of a tightrope act, it's far from impossible. First, you have to assume that your reader can cope with knowing that not everyone is just like them. Most readers will do that, given the chance.
In the sequel to Pillars of the Earth, set in the 13th century or thereabouts, there's a scene were a woman gets pregnant and goes to the nuns to have an abortion.
Well, there is a legend about St. Brigid, in which one of her nuns gets pregnant and comes to her, very distraught. Brigid prays with the girl, and she is no longer pregnant.
Your very suspicious guess is as good as mine.
@hapax, would that be from the Buck Williams school of theological debate? :D
No, it's from .... aggh, I forget which Peter's book, but I gave up on them pretty soon after.
Basically, the set up is this young protege of Cadfael's is terribly worried by his religious doubts -- it's a major subplot about his Dark Secret -- and when he finally confesses them to Cadfael, the good monk says, Oh, why don't you go talk to the bishop? Who pats the boy on the head, and basically says, yes, we all have these ideas from time to time, no biggie, believe whatever you want.
Except that Peters doesn't seem to notice that these "doubts" are a perfect encapsulation of Pelagianism, which is not only one of the MAJOR heresies that anyone who had learned to read Latin would be extremely familiar with, but also was customarily stereotyped in the Middle Ages as "the British heresy", so any twelfth-century Bishop of Shrewsbury would be extraordinarily touchy about even the appearance of endorsing such doctrines.
Peters may have got her characters' underwear right, but once you get into their heads, they were indistinguishable from twentieth-century moderately skeptical Anglicans, which I consider a major research fail for someone setting her stories in a medieval monastic milieu.
Post a Comment