Here Be Dragons (40 page)

I
consider myself a seasoned traveler in the realm of fairy story. I have long since lost count of all the places I have visited in the myriad fantasy stories I have read over the years. Often, a setting feels more well-known than wonderful, like a vacation resort one has visited several times before. Equally often, however, I blink (my mind's eye, at least) at the fresh wonders that glitter between the pages: windswept tussock grass in lurid colors, a forest of strange beasts and weird trees, a city of miracles … Whether familiar or alien, the setting combines with characters and plot to create the fantasy story. There is widespread agreement that settings are central to fantasy works—indeed, that a fantasy setting has much in common with the characters who live in, travel through, or otherwise experience it. Nevertheless, few critics have examined the genre from a perspective where those settings are in focus. It was this discrepancy between proclaimed significance and lack of scholarship that gave rise to my original question: what can we learn about particular works as well as the genre in general by examining fantasy settings? That question sparked this exploration into the representations of fantasy landscapes and the ways in which those landscapes interact with their respective stories.

I have proposed the term
topofocal
to describe an approach to texts that focuses on the setting. This is not to say that characters and plot are of less importance, but it does mean that it is the setting—in any of its many aspects—that provides a critical way into the work. Each of the four main chapters offers a different topofocal perspective, examining one particular aspect of fantasy settings.
Chapter 2
presents two studies—one quantitative and the other qualitative—of what is arguably the most visible manifestation of fantasy settings: the fictive map. In about three to four fantasy novels out of ten, the setting is presented by both text and map(s). These maps typically share an aesthetic that is relatively free from modern map elements, such as scale and legend; but they nevertheless mostly adhere to modern map conventions. At least
two thirds of fantasy maps portray secondary-world settings, but elements or conventions invented as part of such worlds are rare. Overall, the maps convey an impression of adherence to genre conventionality. This apparent conventionality is deceptive, however, as all maps are the result of a mapmaker's choices about what to include and exclude. If we bear in mind that every map has an author, a subject, and a theme, for instance, a close investigation of an individual map may reveal much about the world of the work. Rather than showing us only where the protagonists are and how they got there, a fantasy map can offer insights about the attitudes embedded in it. These are attitudes to particular map referents, to the culture and land of the map, and to the very world portrayed.

The discussion in
chapter 3
springs from a conspicuous difference between fantasy geography and the geography of the actual world. The same reality prevails all over the actual world (with the exception, perhaps, of extreme cases such as black holes and elementary particles), and on the other side of any border or boundary we cross, the same laws of nature and causality still apply. A fantasy world, by contrast, can be divided into different realities. It is possible to find that magic works on the other side of the border, or to walk from the land of the living to the land of the dead. Such borders may appear to be sharp demarcations, but they are often indistinct, gradual transitions from one reality to another. Regardless of what domain lies on the other side, the hero's courage is put to the test when crossing the border into the alien and unknown—but it is generally the return that marks the real trial, of one kind or another. Fantasy landscapes are also dotted with enclosed areas—polders—protected from the outside world by a boundary. Inside these boundaries, climate, the nature of magic, even the passage of time itself may be different from the surroundings. Polders are anachronisms, bubbles of the past that are part of the world's topology as well as its history.

A key element of many fantasy definitions, and one I take as a defining feature of the genre, is the presence of something impossible that is accepted—and treated—as possible by writer and reader. The different realities that the borders and boundaries keep apart are actually territories of different possibilities. What is impossible in one place is possible on the other side of the border. A fundamental function for both boundaries and borders is, in fact, not to separate but to unite; to join opposing realities. To cross from one side to the other is to rethink the world and to see the impossible as possible.

Rethinking the world is the issue underlying
chapter 4
. Fantasy is a genre that, in principle, allows us to rethink, reimagine, and reconsider anything. One of the central relationships that a setting can present is that between nature and culture. The guiding question for this chapter was how the nature–culture relation is portrayed in fantasy cities. In the four close readings, we encountered highly dissimilar relations between the two domains, relations possible to arrange according to a variety of principles. Looking, for instance, at how nature is or is not incorporated in the cultural domain, we find that in Minas Tirith, nature as a part of culture signals just governance. Newford uses the opposition between the natural and cultural domains as an expression of society's flaws. In New Crobuzon, the two domains dissolve into each other as part of a general inclination against categories and toward hybridity and the grotesque. Ombria turns the natural into a liminal phenomenon that marks out the borders between the city's cultural domains. A range such as this does not in itself reveal much about the role of the nature–culture relation in the genre, even if it is quite revealing in the respective settings. In each city, however, the relation between the domains displays a connection to a key theme or concern in the stories. This kind of topofocal reading can thus indicate an area of a work that deserves further investigation.

Chapter 5
, finally, engages more immediately with the connection between setting and characters. Whereas
chapter 3
considers geographical divisions found in fantasy but not in the actual world, this chapter explores how fantasy bridges divisions that are taken for granted in the actual world. Fantasy rulers may be linked more directly to their realms than we commonly consider actual-world rulers to be. The sympathy between ruler and realm is greater, and the two act as each other's complement. A sterile king governs a barren realm, a languishing empress reigns over a fading land, and an evil lord rules a blighted and hostile country. The genre offers great variety in type and magnitude of sympathy, although the Dark Lord with his (or, occasionally, her) evil land has become a stock character in much fantasy of the portal–quest variety. Even so, each dark realm deserves careful attention, as the similarities between them are mostly superficial. Furthermore, it is a mistake to read the landscape as only a metaphor for its ruler. The direct link between ruler and realm is a fantastic element; to ignore it, or to regard it as other than “real” within the frame of the story, is to deny the impossible made possible that lies at the very core of the fantasy genre. Whatever
other reading of that special connection one makes, the direct link must first and foremost be accepted for what it is. Indeed, the nature of the link—its magnitude and type—may itself be central to the construction of the plot.

My topofocal approaches center on four types of divisions of the fantasy setting, and each approach provides a partial answer to my original question. As I had expected, placing the setting in focus afforded a glimpse of what the fictional worlds contain and how they are assembled or expanded along geographical, historical, and fantastical dimensions. More surprisingly, the topofocal readings revealed much about fundamental aspects of the works, such as their underlying attitudes and central concerns. These readings turned out to be useful in clarifying the roles and nature of certain characters, and they helped demonstrate how plot, character, and setting are interwoven. The reading of any fantasy work, it became evident, would benefit from an exploration of its many environments—and clearly an understanding of some areas of the genre will profit from a focus on settings.

I say “some areas,” because even though I strove for the widest possible range in my selection of examples, I did choose works that belong near the center of the genre's fuzzy set—as far as I can tell, they are unmistakably works of fantasy. I also picked texts that would provide the clearest possible examples of the features under discussion. It could thus be argued that other texts, texts that are less typically fantasy, may display other characteristics. A similar case can be made regarding liminal fantasy, the least represented of Farah Mendlesohn's fantasy categories among my examples. These are valid objections; but they do not invalidate my findings, they merely underscore the need for further topofocal explorations of the genre.

One possible area for future exploration is suggested by the Cauldron of Story. In the introduction, I explained how I consider the (mostly unabashed) incorporation of material from the Cauldron to be a fourth dominant feature of modern fantasy (apart from the three features already identified by Brian Attebery). Places as well as characters and plots simmer in the pot, and they are often ladled out and added to fantasy stories. One perspicuous example in this book is the inclusion of an entire complex of related myths surrounding the Fisher King figure in Powers's novel. Another, less obvious, example is how the landscapes of evil tend to share a number of recognizable building blocks. Places such as Faerie and the land of the dead, as well as the polder element itself,
have bubbled in the Cauldron for a long time. Other settings have been added more recently: the urban blight, the “Oriental” city, the sewer systems. The most frequently used ingredients, in particular, certainly deserve more critical attention, not to find out where they come from but to see what flavors they contribute to the dish.

This book has provided only a small part of the answer to what we can learn by examining the settings of fantasy. The four approaches introduced here do not constitute the sole way of reading the genre from a topofocal point of view. Fantasy worlds differ from the actual world in innumerable ways: fantastic elements can be introduced as part of the landscape; strange environments can be inhabited or traversed; any number of categories can be rethought. Topography, hydrology, and ecology can exist under different rules. Employing a topofocal perspective does not necessarily mean using one of the approaches outlined and exemplified in the four chapters recapitulated just now. It only means finding an interesting aspect of the fantasy setting and placing it in focus.

By discussing the same work—
The Lord of the Rings
—in terms of maps and boundaries, as well as of the relations between nature–culture and ruler–realm, I demonstrate how analysis of a single text can benefit from all four approaches. My topofocal reading of Tolkien's work is by no means exhaustive, but even this limited exploration of the settings of Middle-earth can clearly provide new insights about a book that has been very thoroughly analyzed over the years. As for the other texts I have used as examples, I have barely scratched their surfaces. I could instead have looked at the relation between the king and his realm in Nix's books; the map in Miéville's
Perdido Street Station
; the border between de Lint's Newford and its Otherworld; the nature–culture relation in Brust's Dragaera books … not to mention the construction and function of forests, rivers, mountain terrain, and other landscape types whose stories run through these works. Those topics, and many others, await future scholarship. This book outlines some paths into the vast and varied interior of Fantasyland; but a great deal remains for subsequent applications of topofocal criticism: other worlds to investigate, new landscapes to visit, more fantasy settings to explore.

Appendix A: Method for the Map Survey
¹

To obtain unbiased results with a known margin of error from a quantitative study, a sample should be randomly selected from the entire population, with every unit in the population having the same chance of being drawn. Hence, to sample the fantasy genre, one would compile a list of all the works of fantasy ever written and randomly pick as many works as are necessary to obtain the desired margin of error. This is simple in theory but impossible in practice. Even if a straightforward definition existed that would determine unequivocally whether a given text belonged to the genre or not, it would be impractical to check everything ever published in English (or even everything published in English after 1858 or 1954, or any other arbitrary start date for the genre) against that definition. If one accepts Brian Attebery's suggestion that fantasy is a fuzzy set, where genre affiliation depends on similarity to a number of core works,
²
listing the works of a genre becomes impossible even in theory, as works belong to the genre
to some degree
.