The huge recent success of steampunk has done a lot to show that fantasy
fiction, even the most traditional and epic version of the genre,
doesn’t have to draw purely from medieval European history, its social
structures and its cultural detail. It’s been great fun to watch the
New Victoriana taking over fantasy as a genre, replacing tunics with
bustles, and dragons with airships.
Though of course, we can always have dragons AND airships, which is
even more fun. We’re also getting our fair share of magical Regency,
with empire-line gowns, the marriage market and Napoleonic dragons.
Using
the first half of the 20th century as your historical touchstone has
its difficulties. I didn’t realise how difficult it was, of course,
until I was in the middle of trying to do it.
One of those finicky world building details most likely to drive
authors completely up the wall is whether we use conventional Earthly
names for objects or creatures in fantasy worlds, or new words. Of
course, pretty much all the words we use have Earth derivations, and
some readers (and authors) are more picky about them than others. This
is where medieval vocabulary often gets a pass, because there’s
something more familiar about chatelaines and knights, paladins and
princesses.
But what about the word Flapper? One of my beta-readers protested
at me using that particular word in my manuscript, because it felt like
such an Earth-based term to her. But I stuck to my guns largely because
there were so few places in the book where I could drop in elements to
evoke the 1920’s rather than pre-industrial historical snippets.
The Creature Court trilogy is a mash up of historical influences
from various eras, but I was very firm on wanting to give it that early
20th century flavour. But it was only very late in the writing process
that I let myself include aspects of industry - Victorian style sewing
machines, for instance, and trains. So the best way to convey the
1920’s influences were through fashion, music and other cultural
details, and the vocabulary of my characters.
Music was the hardest, of course. Ever tried describing jazz in
words without using the word jazz? I tried, though I think I ended up
just using the words from our world because, you know. We have words
for a reason, and sometimes the only way to access the connotations you
need are by using the most obvious word.
Costume was easier for two reasons: my protagonist was a dressmaker, and saw the world through clothes; but also the magical underworld of the Creature Court was heavily reliant on appearances and theatrical presentation to augment status, which meant that I was totally justified in describing every single outfit.
I talk more about my approach to the costuming side of the Creature Court over here.
I know that many people have come out of the Creature Court books having
not particularly noticed the 1920’s aspects of the world building, and
it works fine without being aware of that. But if you read the books
and don’t come away at least with a visual image of Livilla looking like
the quintessential 1920’s vamp flapper in the red dress with sharp
black bobbed hair, I’m not doing my job right!
For tone and voice, I fell back on an old writing trick that has
proved greatly reliable in the past: I read fiction from the era I
wanted to evoke. You can only learn so much from factual books, but
fiction is brilliant for the details they take for granted, and the
casual vocabulary that their characters drop on the page. It can
influence the author almost on a subconscious level, and while I never
applied the same rigour to my research as Mary Robinette Kowal (who only
uses words in her Regency magic series that she is certain existed in
Jane Austen’s lifetime) it can have a most pleasing influence.
I developed this particular technique quite by accident - I re-read
Pride and Prejudice while writing my first novel, and there’s one scene
that never quite recovered from all the unexpected formal diction and
curtseying that suddenly arrived in my prose. Later I thought, aha! I
can use that power for good, not evil. It doesn’t work, of course, for
historical eras where there are no extant novels. But you can't have
everything.
There are many tiny world building details and dialogue tics in the
Creature Court that came about because I was reading Evelyn Waugh and
Nancy Mitford novels, and even if that wasn’t the case, it’s not like
time reading those authors would ever count as wasted!
I have nothing against the medievalist tradition in fantasy fiction
(though I do rail rather against the faux-medievalist tradition and the
overwhelming use of the less interesting aspects of medieval history in
some fantasy fiction) but I am flying the flag for other historical
periods to become just as powerful and influential. We’ve made a good
start with the Regency and Victoriana, but what about the neglected
history periods of the world? Where is our Egyptian steampunk, our
Sumerian YA, and our 1950’s urban fantasy?
History is fun, but it’s more fun once you start adding werewolves to it.
Seriously. Try it for yourself.
Some of my favourite recent historical mash up fantasies:
Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis - middle grade regency romp with magic
Soulless (and sequels) by Gail Carriger - Victoriana comic urban fantasy
Temeraire (and sequels) by Naomi Novik - Napoleonic dragons
Shades of Milk and Honey (and sequel) by Mary Robinette Kowal - Regency romance with magic
Cold Magic (and sequels) by Kate Elliott - epic Afro-Celtic post-Roman
fantasy with Regency icepunk, Phoenician spies and trolls I AM JUST
REPORTING THE FACTS HERE.
But I'm sure many of you can make your own recommendations...
This post was written by Tansy Rayner Roberts for her Flappers with Swords Blog Tour.
Tansy’s award-winning
Creature Court trilogy:
Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts, featuring flappers with swords, shape changers, half-naked men and bloodthirsty court politics,
have been released worldwide on the Kindle, and should be available soon across other e-book platforms. If you prefer your books solid and papery, they can also be found in all good Australian and New Zealand bookshops.
You can also check out Tansy’s work through the Hugo-nominated crunchy feminist science fiction podcast
Galactic Suburbia, Tansy's short story collection
Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press). You can find her on the internet at
her blog, or on Twitter as
@tansyrr.
