The Speculative Fiction World

SF – Speculative Fiction has great power. It allows us to speculate in ways that other genres don’t. Do you want to want a world with a matriarchal society? No problem. It’s only as far away as your imagination – and your readers will suspend their disbelief as they read your book. (Or you will suspend your disbelief as you read of just such a world in someone else’s book.) However, place that speculation in our world, in modern day Chicago or Toronto or Tokyo, and every page, someone will say or think, “But that’s not how it is.” A very good writer will find a way to convince her readers, but it won’t be easy. Place that society on the mythical world of Xrth, and such problems disappear.

Yes, you can bend the rules slightly for stories taking place in the present day – such as an advanced technology which gives us Jules Verne’s submarine in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, but a wholesale change in societal mores in our world becomes quite a different story.

So, I like SF for the opportunity it gives me to explore questions, creating worlds around them that I can use as foundations. How would humans have to adjust to operating in a very polite society? Elizabeth Moon has such a place in her “Vatta” series, where excessive rudeness incurs the death penalty. What are the strengths and weaknesses of a highly formal society, with rules for practically everything dealing with societal interaction? Simply travel to Miller & Lee’s “Liaden Universe” to get one perspective on such a world.

For me, these form backgrounds in which I can explore how a character reacts to various stimuli. But it all starts with the character and his or her problem.

What is the difference between sacrifice and suicide? If a man in the trenches of WWI throws himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades, does he do so out of love for his fellow men (sacrifice) or does he see this as an honourable way out of a horror so immense that it seems to be eating him whole (suicide)? Is this an act of bravery or of cowardice? In the end, does it matter?

I found that particular question plaguing me (the difference between sacrifice and suicide), together with its ancillary questions of cowardice and bravery, honour and dishonour. To more fully explore it, I found a character or two in which to embed the questions. One, Rel Panace, an injured young man running from a gang, which wished to beat him, begins to consider himself a coward for running. An older man, Coll, who has the brand of a coward upon his face – for cowardice on the battlefield – saves him.

I could have set the story in today’s world, but we don’t brand (physically) our ‘cowards’, and I wanted to explore how such a brand might affect the wearer of it. Thus, I set the scene in a medieval world where one could not escape the consequences of such a mark. All recognize it for what it is and what it means. Those who wear it find themselves reviled by society – they can’t simply disappear into the masses, move away, like someone so named could do today.

The medieval world setting gave me added bonuses: difficulty of travel, social hierarchy, face-to-face communication, man-to-man combat, horses. “Horses?” you ask. With horses come stables. With stables comes manure. With manure comes people who must muck the stables and cart the manure out of the city. And that is the only sort of job people like Coll can get. He can’t hide away in a room and do a job via computer modem like one could today, meeting no one, yet earning a good wage. He must constantly face those who will see his brand; he must accept the most menial of labour for the most menial of wages.

Rel, the son of a noble, also cannot hide. But, mostly, he can’t hide from himself. He can’t revenge himself on the gang with a gun, thus he must undertake training in order to become able to defend himself in any similar situation that might occur in the future.

Thus, my world aids me in placing my characters and their question in a crucible from which they cannot escape. And thus, hopefully, my readers will suspend their disbelief long enough to get entranced by my story of Rel (coming of age) and Coll (redemption).

In the middle of writing “In the Company of Cowards”, someone I knew did commit suicide, which threw me off writing the story for over a year. I had immersed myself in this fictional question of ‘sacrifice or suicide’, and life intruded with reality. There, I could observe some of the effects of this man’s actions – both on myself, who just barely knew him, and on another who had closer ties to both of us. It made continuing – and finally finishing – the novel somewhat uncomfortable.

But I digress. The world – universe – I create allows me to more readily tell the story I wish to tell. It provides a foundation and appropriate level of technology to best suit my characters and their adversities. Thus, I give my thanks to the SF genre for this boon.