The
Reality Gap --
Or Do My Characters Know the Truth?
By
Jos
Howick
ou've
come up with a fun new world to base your fantasy or SF story in - drawn the
maps, named the countries, written the history - and you're all set to start
writing, yes?
No.
If
you go out into the street and ask ten random people how the world was made, I'm
betting the answers will fall into at least two groups: the evolutionists and
the creationists. Who's right? Well, unfortunately I can't ask the creator of
this particular universe - assuming that there even is such a being - so
I can't give you a definitive answer. But as the creator of your world, you have
a responsibility to ponder these weighty cosmological issues.
If
you're writing a science fiction story, then your world was probably created by
the Big Bang or some similar scientific phenomenon; conversely, many fantasy
worlds, like Middle Earth, were created by a deity of some kind. (Outside these
two genres, it's really up to you whether the origin of the universe is relevant
to your story.) Given the reality
that you, the creator, know, you have to decide what your characters believe.
There are three main scenarios:
1.
The Enlightened World
In
this type of world, the characters are in agreement with their creator. OK,
maybe they don't know the whole truth, or they may have slightly different
versions of it, but they're basically on the right track. This is the usual
scenario in hard SF (in fact in SF generally), and it is also prevalent in
fantasy; a classic example is The Lord of the Rings, where different
cultures have their own religions but they are all worshipping aspects of the
same immortals, and those immortals are definitely real. It's also the easiest
scenario because, patchy though your characters' information may be, they are
conveying the flavour of the truth. You can use the characters to explain the
nature of the universe, and the only problem lies in avoiding lectures and
infodumps. (Which of course you do, don't you?)
2.
The Schismatic World
Our
world is more like this one; there are at least two mutually exclusive versions,
i.e. divine creation vs. 'self creation' via Big Bang (not including all the
different religions and scientific theories), so presumably one of them must be
wrong. One could even argue that whichever version is true defines the genre of
your fiction. If this issue is important to your story, it seems likely that
your protagonists 'know' the truth, so their attitudes will colour the reader's
perception; in fact, if the issue is central to your story, there may be
definitive proof one way or the other. If it isn't important, your reader will
assume that your characters have different beliefs for reason of verisimilitude,
and won't worry about it. With a bit of care, this world isn't much harder to
write than the Enlightened World, though you may have to be especially sensitive
about lecturing the reader on the 'correct' world-view.
3.
The Ignorant World
This
type of world is mostly found in historical novels and science fiction set in
low-tech societies. The universe may well have started with the Big Bang, but
your characters don't know that - perhaps even the most learned scholars of the
period believe in divine creation (or maybe your rational atheist characters are
in for a big surprise...). In order to be accurate to the society you are
presenting, it may be necessary for characters to have a wholly mistaken view of
what is going on, but this runs the risk of misleading or confusing the reader.
For
this reasons this is perhaps the hardest kind of world to write, especially if
the setting is invented. After all, we know that some medieval people believed
in witches and demons, but the reader of a historical novel doesn't assume these
things are real just because the characters believe in them. Your problem with a
work of speculative fiction is that the reader knows you have invented the world
and that he is therefore dependent upon you to explain what is going on. If you
start off with spaceships and then throw in a bunch of gods and monsters, some
readers might think you don't have control of your genre. So what do you do?
If
you're writing fantasy in SF clothing, you have some leeway; in this situation
you're probably trying to jolt the reader out of their twenty-first century
complacency by revealing the cosmic truth to which the atheist characters are
blind. In a contemporary setting, this is an established sub-genre called
"urban fantasy"; if you're imposing fantasy on a futuristic setting
then I'm afraid you're beyond my area of expertise, so good luck to you!
If,
on the other hand, you are definitely writing SF, you have to establish your
credentials early on. That way when the fairies do appear, the reader will say
to herself "nah, this is SF - I'm sure there'll be a rational explanation
eventually" (and there'd better be!). You can do it in an upfront way like
Anne McCaffrey did in Dragonflight, which has an introduction carefully
couched in SF language: "Rukhbat, in the Sagittarian Sector, was a golden
G-type star." This is safe, but not exactly subtle!
What
I try to do is be sufficiently offbeat in my worldbuilding that the reader knows
this isn't a generic Earth-like fantasy world, even if it has humans with a
pre-Industrial culture and some familiar Earth flora and fauna. My world has a
ring system and an exaggerated axial tilt; the composition of its crust means
that everything from rock colours to native flora and fauna are distinctly
different from Earth. Hopefully, by the time the reader gets to the beings that
my characters view with superstitious awe, they will seem to fit into the SF
world instead of being a contradiction...
Maybe
by now you're thinking that this is all too much, and you want to stick with a
world where characters - as well as readers - know The Truth. You're probably
right, and if the description of Enlightened World that I gave above fits your
writing then go ahead; you'll be in top company. But at least you'll have made
that decision knowingly - and when it comes to building a world, the more in
control you are, the better your writing will be.