Category Archives: Writing
Appropriate appropriation
Recently I’ve had the pleasure, from afar, of watching a couple of Internet storms on the topic of cultural appropriation. In this context, that’s when a writer decides to set a character or society in an historical culture different to their own, and then gets it egregiously wrong in a manner that is compounded by their own wilful ignorance and implicit claim of the superiority of their own culture.
I can see why it hurts and offends. I’m a public school educated science fiction writing Christian believing scion of the military – that’s four quite key components of my persona that people who don’t get just Do Not Get, and I’m invariably irritated when people get them wrong. (I suppose you can add other categories to that list: English, male, quite tall.) It’s mild stuff compared to the compounded grievances of entire cultures that have been mis-represented or persecuted for centuries. Yes, I can see why cultural appropriation – or maybe that should be mis-appropriation – upsets.
I utterly fail to live in fear of fatwas by Mayan fundamentalists who are offended by my heinous and quite upfront misrepresentation of their culture in The Vampire Plagues. I did however stop and think about what I was doing/had done in Phoenicia’s Worlds …
Phoenicia’s Worlds begins on a colony world settled by a multitude of ethnic and societal groups from Earth, all of whom arrived on the starship Phoenicia before the story begins. The most dominant are a group calling themselves Los Hijos de Castilla, the Sons of Castille, a group who were dedicated to reviving the mores and culture of old Spain 1000 years hence. They woke up first from hibernation, they took over and named the planet (La Nueva Temporada), and they’re in charge despite being, by the time the story starts, very much in the minority.
How is this not cultural mis-appropriation? Their Spanish extends to their names and a few words or phrases that I gleaned from Spanish-speaking friends and Google Translate. They are nothing like the real Spanish.
Well, first, this is the future 1000 years hence, and any similarities between the present Spanish and my lot will already be pretty thin. Events of a 1000 years ago can still have an effect in the present day, but the societies at either end of that millennium are probably going to be quite different. (Queen Elizabeth II can trace her descent to William the Conqueror: the similarities between the two individuals are quite minimal.)
Second, even if the Hijos were present-day Spanish, the book isn’t about them. It’s about the society of their children and grandchildren on their new world. Any immigrant society in a new place immediately becomes its own thing. My people aren’t Spanish, they aren’t Castilian, they’re Nuevan – a society I created and can do what I like with.
And third, even the Hijos (at least the more honest ones) accept that they’re completely faux. At least, faux as genuine Earth-based Castilian Spaniards go. Completely bona for Nuevans, of course. Maybe a few founders of the movement could legitimately claim Spanish descent, but it’s all a bit silly and, deep down, they know it. I would give the same treatment to, say, any political group trying to revive the values and culture of Saxon England. The more they admitted that they were giving it their best shot but weren’t actually, you know, Saxon, the more I would respect them for it. I will generally accept anyone’s self-identification at face value because who am I to say otherwise about what is going on in their hearts? But the more serious and po-faced they were about it, the harder I would find it to take them seriously.
I chose the Spanish because part of the plot revolves around the fact that La Nueva Temporada is stuck in the grip of a fierce Ice Age and badly needs terraforming to be habitable. Okay, maybe there was a bit of good old English xenophobia at work here. Who would it be funny to stick on a freezing cold ice world? Why not the Spanish? Ho ho, hee hee.
In a future post, how the plot of Phoenicia’s Worlds was also affected by the shenanigans of the British Intelligence services during World War 2.
Phoenicia’s Worlds
Many years ago I had an idea for a series. Posit: a network of human-settled worlds, linked by wormholes, throughout the galaxy. For two worlds to be joined, a wormhole terminus has to be towed there at slower-than-light speeds in a starship, its crew (naturally) in suspended animation for a voyage that takes decades. Each terminus can only link to one other, at the starship’s last port of call. This has been happening for centuries, and human civilisation is now an interwoven web of many worlds and cultures. The frontier of the Expansion is all the worlds that so far have been settled through a wormhole, but have yet to send a starship on to the next world.
Then one day the network goes phut …
Rather, from the point of view of our heroes on a world at the end of one of the lines, their link to the last but one world goes phut. Maybe the whole network shut down, maybe it didn’t – they have no way of knowing (not for years and years, anyway) when they are forced again to rely on lightspeed communication. All they know is that their world is heavily dependent on supplies that come through the wormhole for terraforming, and will become uninhabitable within decades, so the only answer is to get into their ship for the slower-than-light journey back to the last world that will help them re-establish the link.
That would be Book 1.
Book 2, of course, they go on to the next world down the line, and the one after that, and … you get the picture. And other starships will be doing the same thing so sooner or later their paths will cross.
Series!
Then I sat down to write the puppy … And decided I really didn’t have time or energy for a series. But I could at least write one book. Meanwhile, I was busy getting married and ghostwriting and all that kind of thing, which on top of not feeling terribly inspired for an actual plot anyway led to a severe case of blockage. I persevered and hammered out a rough approximation of an epic space opera. But I was never really happy with it. I submitted it to my usual publisher, but withdrew it again.
Meanwhile it bubbled away at the back of my mind, and trusted friends were allowed a peek at the work. They all agreed it didn’t work, but their suggestions and my own bubbling led to resolutions. The galactic background that we never actually get to see was too complicated. The fact that it involved two worlds with no connection at all to Earth made it all too remote. And I was still handicapped by the thought that it might be a series so, Trek-like, I was pushing the reset button at the end to damn well make the characters do what I wanted rather than what the story said they should.
All this led eventually to a much simpler, streamlined and better novel. Just two worlds, Earth and its first extra-solar colony. Just one starship. Still a big phut. But being able to link this all back to Earth, even the Earth of a thousand years hence, meant much more emotional resonance and a far more satisfying read for the reader. And the characters do what the story wants them to, so it isn’t the contrived, series-friendly ending I was after.
Then I heard that Solaris was looking for Young Adult titles. I have never really thought of any of my science fiction as Young Adult, but the fact is that it how it has been published, so I sent it in. And then withdrew it, because I had something else to send them and the something else was the direction I wanted to go in.
And then, out of the blue a month ago, I got an email to say that the synopsis I had sent in was still somehow in circulation, and they really liked it, and would I be interested in placing it with Solaris as an adult novel?
A grown-up novel by a grown-up publisher, for the first time in my novel writing life. I thought about it for, oh, milliseconds.
And that, boys and girls, is how you will come to be able to read Phoenicia’s Worlds at some point, most likely in the summer, next year. Updates will be posted.
And yes, I am already thinking of a sequel.