Poul Anderson, On Thud and Blunder (Doing Fantasy Worldbuilding Right) | Speculative Fiction Studies

[@wlinden]

The best treatment of poison I have found is in Baron Corvo's "Chronicles of the House of Borgia", where the excursus on "The Legend of the Borgia Venom" concludes that "the Borgia could no more poison artistically than they could send telegrams." Along with such interesting details as an essayists listing of a dozen ways to get rid of unwanted guests.

[@LeoSlizzardEngine]

"We certainly got plenty of obscene ceremonies in honor of assorted toad-like beings. Both of these do have their historical counterparts. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see an imaginary society which was pervaded by its faith, as many real ones have been." This was an interesting point Anderson made. There are few fantasy novels, beyond maybe the Wizard Knight duology, that seem to centre around proper religious or spiritual thinking/notions, as they existed in some periods of Western history. Obviously, The Broken Sword features epic and saga notions of religion. Thanks for the lecture, Dr Sadler. The lecture is food for thought, particularly as we have to stave off poor writing and misconceptions from everywhere, including whatever it is we deem "genre fiction"!

[@GregoryBSadler]

I'd say that since the time of the post, there have been many fantasy novels and series that do plenty of worldbuilding in terms of religion.

[@LeoSlizzardEngine]

@@GregoryBSadler Good point. I guess my comment showed only my willingness to understand some things as "religion". Inherent in your lecture, and Anderson's essay, is the idea that our reception, understanding, and methodology casts spectrums onto primary sources, which are themselves not perfect. But Anderson still understood how social relations in history informed technology, religion, class, military doctrines/institutions, city planning, and farming. Not exactly historical materialism, but something more self-conscious of all things, which precedes the "postmodern" trope of historiographical metafiction, without the pretentious name. Quite nice to see it happen in 1978, before Linda Hutcheon "pronounced" this revelation in the 1980s.

[@GregoryBSadler]

@@LeoSlizzardEngine There's nothing "inherent" in my lecture that I can see connects with all the stuff you're saying here, which is rather tough to follow

[@LeoSlizzardEngine]

Well, no point in debating just my own views of literary worlds and historical research for writing. It was just refreshing to hear about a proper discussion on research for worldbuilding.

[@wlinden]

That is what irritates me about Barbara Hambly's works, where "TheChurch" has no real connection with the actual life of the people, apparently no theology beyond "Wizards are evil", and no purpose except to make life miserable for Our Heroes.