How many of us read fiction? I definitely should raise my hand here. How about fantasy or science fiction, dealing with places that never were or cannot be, or have not had the opportunity to come about yet? I'm there too.
No need to be ashamed of it, you know.
But have you ever wondered how those places work? That's what this diary is going to be about.
I believe that novelist Terry Pratchett was inspired to write about the broad cast of characters in his Discworld, especially in its largest city, Ankh-Morpork, because he noticed as a reader of fantasy that most authors wrote only about the guardsmen, the rulers, the adventurers, and so on; but left out the craftsmen and laborers who make any city work within its walls, or the miners, loggers, ranchers and farmers who contribute from outside. And thus was the population of Ankh-Morpork, almost a character in itself in most of the Discworld series, created.
So. It may be that one thing distinguishing a good fantasy or science fiction from a mediocre or bad one is the degree of verisimilitude with which the setting is described. Perhaps you have wondered: in the Star Wars series of... assorted media, why do Imperial citizens become Marines, or storm-troopers, as they were called? Is it just that they're losers and hope the nifty uniforms and body armor will help pick up girls? Is it a chance for them to rise out of poverty and become someone who matters? Are they conscripted? How is unit discipline maintained? Why are they such terrible shots, anyway? You may have wondered about these things... or you may not have, I don't know, but I certainly have. Now, Star Wars was written as space opera. Maybe it wouldn't have made for as-good space opera, but it might have made for better stories overall.
So some worlds I would like to explore the sociology of are, let's see, Winston Smith's Oceania; Cadia, of the 41st millenium; and Anuurn of the Compact worlds.
Starting with Oceania: you might simply think of such a place as any given Stalinist regime ruling over a heavy-industry-dominated economy. Most people are quite alone, although they may interact in groups, because of the suspicion that the State requires every citizen to hold of every other citizen (and possibly of himself). The State is pretty much God, as well as the main buyer in the economy. There are some commercially available consumer goods, but let's face it - life is pretty dreary, in Oceania in 1984. Nothing to buy, nowhere to go, nothing to do, nobody to know... although Winston and Julia, briefly, violate this restriction, until they are turned against each other by the State. Thank George Orwell for this one.
On to Cadia. This requires a bit of explanation. The story goes that the Cadian system is on the edge of a region of space that is the source of an implacable enemy's heaviest attacks. For various reasons, the enemy can only escape this region by traveling through Cadian space. For this reason, Cadia is an almost wholly militarized world. Minus the people who die in their teens, everyone born on Cadia becomes a soldier and trains rigorously; at some point, perhaps after a few years of service in a regular unit, soldiers become reservists and go back to their lives, generally supporting the Cadian war machine in one way or another. (This is excepting those who go on to become professional soldiers in the Imperial Guard.) Now, if I recall correctly, most places on Cadia are either heavily fortified or terribly polluted, due to the industrialization and population density, which means that agricultural products must be imported. If you stood on Cadian soil and said something about farmers, most Cadians would just give you a funny look. But, socially, Cadia is more laid back than other worlds and other systems held by the same government. Maybe leading such a regimented life in the military and then in the workplace would lead to a person needing to blow off steam when not on duty one way or another. Cadians are politically incorrect and arrogant, but entertaining in a way. (Do you know any Israelis? Does this description fit? I think it does.) As a result, they make political officers (none of whom are Cadians) furious, constantly, but because Cadians have also beaten back twelve massive invasions by the enemy and are universally regarded as soldiers par excellence, they're practically untouched by social criticism. (To my knowledge, no single author takes credit for creating Cadia.)
Lastly, and perhaps most interesting, is the alien world of Anuurn, where live (according to author C. J. Cherryh) a people who are sort of like big cats. Men generally think of themselves as all that and chips. Women think that men are not as smart as they are, and also generally think of themselves as all that and chips, with justification, because they do almost all the work. It's farming, hunting, crafting, trading, and so on. Maybe that's in part because the men are much larger than the women and less physically capable of doing anything requiring manual dexterity, but it's probably more related to the men being more inclined to focus on things like social status within their clans or social status of their clan with all the other clans; and this mostly involves sex and violence. Does social structure come from biology? In this case, our characters live in a world where men display ornamentation (beautiful hair, big muscles) and behavior meant to show that off, and women choose among them - generally speaking. And for a man to hold any position of authority, well, that's just not Done. Exceptions are considered weird, unholy, perverse, or "yeah whatever", depending on the degree of social conservatism of the viewers.
And, you know, I think the three story-worlds these come from are enriched, for having such detail. What do you think?
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Previous MSPW diaries can be found as follows (and don't read them if you're trying to preserve your unwarped mind):
Giant steam-powered robots, thermal depolymerization, nuclear airplanes, psychic powers, transgenic bacteria that make useful compounds, lightning in a jar, neural interfaces, powered armor, sonic weapons, rapid prototyping, putting Mentos and Diet Coke to good use, life on life support, combining farming and electrical generation, pigeon pilots, cuttlefish behind the wheel, the hafnium bomb, and building a better skunk.