h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It ought to be more fun writing fantasy, or sci-fi than realistic Aga-saga narratives. You can create a world where there are supermen who jump off the top of skyscrapers and prevent the muggers beating up their victims (instead of relying on ordinary, fallible police forces.)

But it seems to me that, although you can make your monsters as monstrous as you like, your main characters remain human. They might appear to be rabbits, or hobbits, or robots, but they think and talk and act like humans. I've sometimes thought that the only reason 'The Lord of the Rings' works is because the hobbits are actually ordinary blokes caught up in a conflict that is too big for them.

But if your characters are human, then they need to be worked up like real humans, with foibles and fears. I started reading 'The Fountains of Paradise' and decided that the characterisation was weak. But perhaps I've read too much literary fiction .

Hey, good thought. I'm not the right person to ask, because I'm not fond of fantasy.

That's probably because I would expect from non-human characters that they behave in a way that's consistent, but, er, non-human.

That may be why Terry Pratchett is so popular. His 'fantasy' is just everyday stuff with funny names slapped on.

Maybe it's just that the reader has to identify with the characters.

In "Watership Down", the rabbits do some authentic rabbit things, like living in burrows and eating grass. But they display an ability to reason and plan that is surely human.

I'm afraid I haven't read that one - though I've heard good things.

I think Golding did a terrific job in 'The Inheritors', getting you to follow a kind of thinking that wasn't what we usually expect from humans.

But it's a good point. How to get the reader to 'identify', without being dragged down to the reader's expectations?

That's a good challenge for a writer. Invent a character who's not fully human (I won't use the word 'normal' because I'm not sure what a 'normal' human is) and make him/her sympathetic.

Yeah, you're right.

Perhaps we should say, 'describe someone whose reactions/experiences are out of the range of most readers' personal spectrum'?

Depends on how your readers are.

This is so true.

Hi Dmitri and Minorvogonpoet! The thing is, humanity is staggeringly diverse. To Americans and Brits, or even to most Europeans, the majority of the world's several-thousands-of-cultures might appear extremely alien. I myself belong to such an 'alien' culture, and the understanding I have of the other ethnic groups in my own country suggests to me they would also not be easily understood by 'outsiders'. Another thing is to think about how cultures change with time. Contemporary American (mainstream) culture for instance is very different from what it was a hundred years ago. And how might it be different a hundred years from now? And thinking historically of *other* cultures and some of the 'situations' that have existed amongst us ... some have been quite incredibly weird. If you could magically visit every place in the world and spend sometime observing without being observed, what would you see? People with some very weird ways, for sure. But they're still humans.

The challenge might as well be trying to get 'ordinary people' from one place and time to be sympathetic to 'ordinary people' from a very different place and time. Fantasy writing could be a vehicle when trying to do this. It doesn't even matter if the characters are physically alien or not. Many human beings have actually been, and many more will be, much more alien than the most imaginative science fiction/fantasy writer could imagine.

How right you are, Willem.

In fact, last night, Elektra and I were discussing this very matter. You see, we'd just spent three nights watching 'To the Ends of the Earth', a film trilogy based on the works of our beloved William Golding. These people lived in 1814. They were British. No problem.

Last night, we started watching the BBC miniseries version of Stendhal's 'The Red and the Black'. Our conclusion: we have no idea what's going on in these people's heads.

We decided that it was because they were French.

(Even though the wonderful Alice Krige is South African, of course. )