Creating Cultures
As a Fantasy reader, one of the things that really makes a good story for me is a developed world and culture, or sometimes several cultures interacting in a common world.
In my early days of discovering the genre, I was totally enchanted by the world of Anne McCaffrey's Pern, where one of the customs was for children who aspired to become dragon riders to touch the available dragon eggs, hoping to 'impress' the baby dragon so that it would choose them when it hatched.
Another was the elaborately fleshed out world of Darkover, created by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The novels collectively depicted a variety of cultures sharing a planet; The rulers with psychic gifts, who lived in opulence, even castles with crude luxuries against the cold of their world, the Terrans, a military base from Earth tolerated by the local government, mountain dwellers who had their own local laws and customs, the desert dwellers of Shainsha, the Chieri, a fascinating native people redolent of elvish lore, and of course the towers where the psychics among the noble classes trained to use and control their abilities.
Whatever gossip about the author's personal life might dominate social media, the world she created was an amazing landscape.
And who could forget the world of the Deryni, created by Katherine Kurtz?
Later as an adult, I discovered even more fantastical worlds, most notably Amber, a world developed by Roger Zelazny where multiple worlds existed (including ours) as shadows of a place called Amber and the royal family had an ability to travel though these worlds, even creating details of shadows of their own.
This one had a lot of toxic relationships between siblings and political machinations, real seat ripping stuff.
As time has gone on, the Fantasy genre has expanded exponentially and especially with the advent of self-publishing, the many worlds of imagination have exploded in number, no longer hampered by publishing executives who once kept the gates limited, knowing the readers were ever gasping for more.
No longer are we restricted to clones of whatever sold well most recently. We can travel within the goblin caverns or sing by the campfire with the magicians in Jaq D. Hawkins' Goblin Trilogy, or travel by wyvern pulled balloons in the rich tapestry of the Ravenglass series by Jon Cronshaw, or share a psychic bond with a dragon as in The Dragon Treasure series by Guy Donovan.
We can time travel with a people who can do so at will as in Shanna Lauffey's Time Shifters Chronicles or go on a quest with a Keeper, as in The Keeper Chronicles by J.A. Andrews, or maybe fight as a gladiator mage as in the Battleborn Mage series by Angel Haze.
While few of these have the broad tapestry of different cultures like we see in Darkover or Songs of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, all of them (and many more) offer us multiple cultures within the story structure where we find conflict, or sometimes co-operation from a different perspective.
A great Fantasy writer doesn't just create Middle Earth, but also contrasts it with the worlds of the elves and dwarves, and even the orcs of Mordor, to show us multiple views of what the characters perceive of as normal life.
While some story cultures are based on historical precedents, many are completely imagined by the authors, creating societies and ways of living that we can only experience through the pages of their books. This is why my favourite quote is the well known one by George R.R. Martin:
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
