{"id":57823,"date":"2025-12-01T07:59:57","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/?p=57823"},"modified":"2025-12-01T19:34:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T00:34:05","slug":"critical-friends-episode-18-on-fantasy-and-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/non-fiction\/critical-friends-episode-18-on-fantasy-and-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Friends Episode 18: On Fantasy and History"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this episode of <\/span><\/span>Critical Friends<\/em><\/span><\/span>, the <\/span><\/span>Strange Horizons<\/em><\/span><\/span> SFF criticism podcast, Dan Hartland is<\/span><\/span> joined by Cameron Miguel and Nick Hubble to discuss fantasy and its relationship to history and history-writing. Is some sense of the recordable past baked into the genre? And, if so, with what effects?<\/p>\n\n

Transcript<\/strong><\/p>\n

Critical Friends Episode 18: On Fantasy and History<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"CriticalDan Hartland:<\/strong> Welcome to Critical Friends<\/em>, the Strange Horizons<\/em> SFF criticism podcast. I\u2019m Dan Hartland, and in this episode I\u2019ll be joined by the reviewer\u2014and newest member of the excellent Strange Horizons<\/em> proofreading team\u2014Cameron Miguel, and the scholar and critic, Nick Hubble.<\/p>\n

In every episode of Critical Friends<\/em>, we discuss SFF reviewing: what it is, why we do it, how it\u2019s going. In this episode, we\u2019ll be talking about fantasy in particular, and its relationship to history and history-writing. Is some sense of the recordable past baked into the genre? And, if so, with what effects?<\/p>\n

We take in Tolkien and Virginia Woolf, Augustan Rome and the Yukon Gold Rush, and we ask ourselves how power operates through history\u2014as well as what history even is. Most of all, though, we wonder: What can fantasy teach us about history writing \u2026 and how can it change it?<\/p>\n

But we began our conversation with Cam\u2019s most recent review for us. Fittingly enough, it was of K. J. Parker\u2019s Making History.<\/em><\/p>\n

[Musical Sting]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Okay, both. My job on this podcast, as I see it at the moment, is to put reviews and reviewers in conversation with each other, to try and give the reviews some more legs, to give the issues they discuss more airing. Just get the conversation a little bit wider.<\/p>\n

Sometimes my job is super easy because some great reviewers put in some fantastic pieces that are talking to each other without even knowing it. And your two most recent reviews for Strange Horizons<\/em> fall into that bracket: They just did their job for me. And Cam, I thought we\u2019d start with yours, because what really struck me about your review\u2014one of the many things\u2014was that you started it by saying, \u201cLook, guys, this, this book is just made for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what really struck me, was how your interests in history and language all aligned in this world that\u2019s been built by K. J. Parker, in a book called Making History<\/em><\/a>. So I just wonder whether you could talk us through what you think that book is doing, how its worldbuilding is working towards a sort of vision of how we interpret the past?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> Well, I\u2019d say that the main way that K. J. Parker\u2019s novella approaches the past is by viewing it as history being this malleable thing that can be shaped, molded, remade, subject to peer review, scholarship, reinterpretation\u2014just re-analysis of all the evidence that we have. And I was rereading the novella in preparation for today, and there actually is a scene near the end of the story where the narrator discusses exactly that: How we know for certain that this group of people migrated, one million en masse to a different location, to settle this specific region. The narrator later goes on to say, \u201cWe know now that none of that is actually true and that a few of them were brought over as slaves and they multiplied, and they either overthrew or flat out enslaved the people who enslaved them, and became the settlers of that region.\u201d<\/p>\n

I really like how he played with this idea of history and our understanding of history\u2014how everything that we read in books ultimately gets updated, revised in accordance with new knowledge that we learn. And it was really interesting for me, coming out of the academy not too long ago as a classicist, the ways that we constantly had debates about the classics and what they meant. And in my specific field, which was examining same-sex relationships and antiquity, there\u2019s this predominant assumption of just how every ancient relationship would\u2019ve worked. If you\u2019re looking at same-sex male relationships, we rely entirely on Plato, we rely on Athens; but the problem is every city-state had its own culture. And we see how those cultures are different, but we still try and impose this one model on everything else. And I think it\u2019s sort of hindered our understanding of the variance of sexuality, sexual behavior, and other things in antiquity\u2014because we\u2019re trying to impose an understanding of the world on them when we don\u2019t even understand ourselves.<\/p>\n

We know today that sexuality, gender, all of it is just incredibly fluid, inconsistent; but somehow we think that it\u2019s stable and sturdy in the past, that they never bucked their cultural norms or had illicit relationships. Everything just perfectly fit into these models. I like the way that Parker challenged that.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Yeah. And we will definitely come back to the ways in which fantasy literature sort of calls on the past and sometimes reflects it well and sometimes doesn\u2019t, and the kind of generic knee-jerk responses that fantasy sometimes has with how it deals with quote-unquote history.<\/p>\n

But one of the things that interests me as well about how you characterize Parker\u2019s approach to history is that the novella has this character, this dictator, right? I think he calls himself a \u201cfirst citizen,\u201d but actually he\u2019s a prince, right? And he\u2019s just trying to swap clothes to retain power\u2014whatever it takes. And it\u2019s this figure that is behind a lot of the most obvious misuses of history in the novella, right? He basically tells the academy, he tells all these historians, \u201cGo away and write a history that suits me, that makes my power authorized.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a really interesting grace note on what you\u2019ve just said, right? Because yes, sometimes it\u2019s misunderstanding that makes us misuses history or misinterpret history or miss out on the nuances and the valences of the past; but sometimes it is knowingly done. The novella, you talk about it being a meta-narrative of history. Can you talk a little bit more about how the first citizen\u2019s kind of approach to power shapes that kind of historical record in the novella?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> I\u2019m so glad you asked that because on my reread I was actually thinking, \u201cWow, this guy kind of reminds me of Augustus.\u201d And as I got further and further, I said, \u201cOh, he reminds me a lot<\/em> of Augustus. Uh-oh!\u201d<\/p>\n

Because again, in the academy there\u2019s speculation\u2014debate, even\u2014about the influence Augustus had over not just politicians or the citizens, but also just the artists in the world. You mentioned, Prince Gugu, which is his original name, and then Gyges, if I\u2019m pronouncing that correctly, maybe it\u2019s Giese or something else. Not only does he tell them to write a history, in the narrator\u2019s specific instance, but he tells them to build an entire city that they can just uncover and use to create an expansionist project of making Aelia\u2014that\u2019s the land in the story\u2014far bigger, so they can eventually attack this other group called the Sasha.<\/p>\n

And it was reminding me a lot of Augustus, because Augustus supposedly strong-armed Virgil into writing the Aenid<\/em>. You got the Aenid<\/em>, you got the Lea<\/em>. I\u2019m seeing parallels. There\u2019s even an in-universe story called the Lea<\/em> which tells the story of how these nobles from a fallen city traveled to Aelia and became the Aelians. I\u2019m like, that\u2019s, \u201cThat\u2019s the Aenid<\/em>. That\u2019s just the Aenid<\/em>! I really saw a lot of parallels between Augustus and Gyges and the way that they try and use power to form narratives that suit them, their pursuit of power.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> There\u2019s so much going on in this. I mean, did you say like it\u2019s sixty-odd pages, this novella?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel: <\/strong>Yeah, it\u2019s about sixty-eight pages.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Yeah. And you are getting so much out of it, there\u2019s so much going on. You know, the people in the novella, the characters of the novella, are using history, but also Parker is using history, as you say, calling on that kind of Augustan sort of thing. And Nick, that\u2019s why it just seemed to me like I had to get you and Cam talking, because Cam in their review makes clear that this is a novella about history\u2014and when you are writing about Alix Harrow\u2019s The Everlasting<\/em><\/a>, you start the review with history!<\/p>\n

You say, \u201cOne thing we\u2019ve learned\u201d\u2014and I\u2019m not sure we have<\/em> learned it, but you\u2019re a hopeful person!\u2014 you say the one thing we should have learned is history is not a linear process, right? The Harrow, it seems to me, is doing similar things\u2014there are academics that are told \u201cyou\u2019ve gotta write this certain thing,\u201d and there are old stories that are refashioned in order to authorize power and authority. So I just wondered what similarities, what differences, are you seeing in The Everlasting<\/em> when you\u2019re listening to Cam talk about Making History<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> Yeah, I think there\u2019s clear\u2014I have to say, I\u2019ve actually read Making History<\/em>, given that it was only sixty-odd pages long.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> So you two are just making this too easy<\/em> for me!<\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean, there\u2019s a couple of absolutely direct parallels. One is that in both there\u2019s a kind of \u2026 well, it\u2019s more of a wannabe ruler in The Everlasting<\/em>, Vivian Rolfe, and she\u2019s a minister\u2014the Minister for Defense or something at the beginning of the book. But in various versions\u2014because they go backwards and forwards in history, and in that sense, it\u2019s a different kind of book because they move backwards and forwards in history\u2014and at various times she used to be the chancellor, she used to be the Prime Minister. She\u2019s trying to run history so that she\u2019s in power. And of course, part of the thing is you can\u2019t control it quite that well, so, you know, it doesn\u2019t quite work out.<\/p>\n

But she says specifically at one point, she has a quote where she says, \u201cI invented a lineage for myself, gave myself a name, a title, a birthright. Oh, don\u2019t give me that. Look, how do you think any king gets his crown?\u201d And that\u2019s kind of exactly what Gyges is trying to do in Making History<\/em>: invent this kind of past. So it\u2019s the same kind of process.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also got the historian, and also they\u2019re very also similar characters. The two historian characters, I don\u2019t think the historian is actually named in Making History<\/cite>, but the one in The Everlasting<\/em> is called Owen Mallory. And there\u2019s also a sense that it\u2019s kind of a play on Arthurian stories, because you\u2019ve got Mallory, and when the historian goes back in it is all to do with writing the history of a famous knight who is a woman: Una (or Oona!). So it\u2019s kind of like a gender flip to Arthurian romance.<\/p>\n

But the point of kind of similarity in both cases is that the historians are not from the actual nation that the ruler is trying to manipulate. The guy from Making History<\/em> is not actually an Aelian. He says at some point, you know, \u201cAnd thank God I\u2019m not,\u201d without specifying exactly where he might be from.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s similar, it turns out, in The Everlasting<\/em>\u2014that the historian is not actually from Dominion. (The country\u2019s called Dominion, so the kind of politics of it are rather, you know, made evident, because they took about dominion and everlasting dominion and so and so on and so forth!) But he\u2019s not from that country, it transpires, and also he looks different. At first it\u2019s not such a thing, but gradually, as the novel goes on, you realize that this is a significant part in that part of the history of nation\u2014that he actually looks different. He\u2019s a different sort of size. He has very much darker eyes. He has kind of crinkly hair. I don\u2019t \u2026 it is not explicit exactly how different he looks, but he clearly looks ethnically different to the people of Dominion. And he\u2019s actually from the people they\u2019re kind of conquering in, you know, ever expanding their empire.<\/p>\n

So I think there are these two direct parallels, but then for the rest, you know, there\u2019s a more general sense that we\u2019ve both got historians who are at universities. There\u2019s a little bit of kind of playing around with university politics in this, so that every time the guy writes the story of Una the Everlasting\u2014which he doesn\u2019t want to do on the one hand, but he does because it gives him a chance to go back in history and meet her every time\u2014it\u2019s not that he\u2019s commanded to do it. He\u2019s told to do it, to get tenure!<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s a kind of a nice sort of \u2026 it nicely satirizes how academia works. Which is\u2014I can say as an academic, well, former \u2026 no longer a paid academic, put it that way\u2014you end up doing things, obviously you do things, that you don\u2019t necessarily want to do because you have to do them to go through the system, or you get told to do them, or it\u2019s to your advantage in some way\u2014and it kind of, it satirizes very nicely as well, the making history. Making History<\/em>, I would say, is a funnier book than than The Everlasting<\/em> in that sense.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Yeah. There\u2019s something about\u2014we\u2019ve talked about novellas on previous editions of the show, and I wouldn\u2019t want get sort of sidetracked again by the endless question, but! Satire seems to me something that a novella is particularly well disposed towards.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s really interesting to think about the academic side of it because that is in miniature a power structure, right? And it\u2019s a type of power structure under which the historians are laboring and must to some extent or another pay due deference\u2014certainly in order to advance within the structure, but also partly just to be able to do the thing that they want to do in the small space that\u2019s left to them by said structure.<\/p>\n

You quote, Nick, in your review, from The Everlasting<\/em>, where one of the professors says, \u201cIf the history you were reading wasn\u2019t filthy, then someone had censored the good bits.\u201d Are both of these works also trying to get at this idea that Cam began our discussion with: this idea that history was a lot messier actually than \u2026 let me put it another way. The past was actually messier than this thing we call history. Is that something you find in the Harrow?<\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> Yes. I think that that\u2019s definitely the case. And that particular professor, although academically superior to Mallory, is actually in some ways one of the moral consciences of the novel. I think she also says at one point, \u201cYou can be a historian or a patriot,\u201d to Mallory. \u201cYou can\u2019t be both\u201d\u2014implying that actually, what he\u2019s doing is, obviously, writing stuff for the greater glory of Dominion, rather than good history. And actually there\u2019s several points where we see him exactly doing that\u2014you know, sanitizing history.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a kind of time loop thing in it, in that actually\u2014although he\u2019s supposedly interpreting and translating this ancient medieval text telling the story of Una the Everlasting\u2014he\u2019s actually writing it himself when he goes back into history. So he is kind of rewriting his own story continuously. But there\u2019s a point where the Queen is supposed to have sent for her, when she was at prayer at some point, and she says something like, \u201cWell, uh, yes, I will put off my God in order to, to fight for my destiny.\u201d And then she, you know, tells him, \u201cNo, that\u2019s not how it happened. I was completely drunk. And I told them to go fuck themselves!\u201d And he thinks about it and he goes, \u201cHmm, well we don\u2019t need to include all that detail in the writing.\u201d I\u2019m, you know, I\u2019m paraphrasing!<\/p>\n

So you said something \u2026 Una responded as she always had done. How he writes it. So it just nicely \u2026 it is exactly messier, more fluid, than the version that \u2026 I think another difference between the two stories, perhaps, is he, doesn\u2019t \u2026 he kind of becomes more self-aware as the story goes on.<\/p>\n

I think the narration of Making History <\/em>is perhaps more self-aware from, from the beginning. So you get a slightly different kind of story in that respect. But the point of Owen Mallory becoming more self-aware is he gradually becomes aware that it\u2019s actually \u2026 he himself is complicit, and in writing this history has to kind of contend with his own sanitizing tendencies, if you like, and that comes across very well across the length of the novel.<\/p>\n

[Musical sting]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> One of things that struck me as I read both your reviews\u2014and as I\u2019m listening to you now\u2014is that there are so many echoes in these novels of prior fantasies that do similar things. So one of Harrow\u2019s previous works was The Once and Future Witches<\/em>, right? Which is, you know, in its title plainly a homage to T. H. White, who famously sort of did the Arthurian thing in this kind of fantastically rich, mixed historical setting: You know, you have Normans but also kind of pre-Christians, and also they play games that seem similar to what we might imagine a nineteenth-century student at Eton would have played. You know, there\u2019s this great kind of mixture of historical periods in this one supposedly coherent world.<\/p>\n

And it reminds me of this scholar, Irina Ruppo. She wrote this essay, \u201cWhat\u2019s Wrong With Medievalism?\u201d<\/a>, and she argues that epic fantasy plays a kind of game with history. There\u2019s definitely game-playing in both of these. Like, Nick, you say that Making History<\/em> is funnier than The Everlasting<\/em>. But there\u2019s no doubt that, from how you characterize it, The Everlasting<\/em> is having fun, if nothing else, right? Like, it might not be funny, but it\u2019s good fun.<\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> It is funny. Sorry, it is<\/em> funny. It\u2019s just not \u2026 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s so self-consciously comic throughout, put it that way. Yeah.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> So I\u2019m just thinking of all these ways in which these books talk to each other, but they also talk outwards. The commonplace about fantasy is that it looks backwards to the Middle Ages\u2014that it is, you know, kind of informed by medieval epic and all of that. And I think, you know, maybe the canonical statement of that\u2014and pretty much every recent history of fantasy talks about it\u2014but was W. A. Senior who wrote<\/a>, I mean this is years ago, but in the Journal of the Fantastic Arts<\/em> that fantasy looks back to medieval literature because it seeks, in a similar way to medieval literature, to confirm certain moral certainties, right? It is comfortable as a genre when ontologies are concrete.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of secret knowledge in fantasy. There are a lot of occult groups\u2014you know, I think of China Mi\u00e9ville, or I think of the Aes Sedai in The Wheel of Time<\/strong>\u2014and that\u2019s fine because nevertheless they have the knowledge. It might be secret, but it is gettable. The use of history in fantasy can work towards that. It can work towards, \u201cOh, well this world has a past.\u201d Like Tolkien: \u201cI can literally tell you thousands of years of history of this world. That must mean it\u2019s real.\u201d But of course it kind of also isn\u2019t, and this game with history is really interesting to me.<\/p>\n

But Cam, you talked about Classical history, and it seems to me that recently certainly there\u2019s been quite a bit of fantasy that draws on other histories, and I wouldn\u2019t want to necessarily echo this flat assumption that fantasy is just European medieval. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true anymore. What thoughts do you have about that, about this idea that these books \u2026 yes, they\u2019re in dialogue with each other, but also they\u2019re in a long tradition of fantasy being interested in history?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> I would say that history writing is kind of baked into the nature of fantasy, as you\u2019ve already said. In fact, one of my thoughts was just about Tolkien and Martin, because these two authors create entire histories that go along with their stories, and they\u2019re built into their narratives. That way, everything that shows up in the story has some sort of weight to it. It\u2019s just this sort of way of confirming the truth of the narrative itself: If the narrator is reliable, everything that the narrator says is true because the narrator is reliable; so therefore everything the narrator has to say at the past, unless the narrator is being deceived, is therefore true.<\/p>\n

And being able to have these concrete facts about the world helps you build up an understanding of what type of culture, what type of language types, of education systems that these people may be building, experiencing\u2014and the ways that they just influence each other constantly. At least to me!<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> I think Juliet McKenna\u2019s written\u2014there\u2019s an essay on her website<\/a>\u2014in which she talks about how she uses history to do exactly that, to like provide kind of texture and ballast and believability to the world. But what\u2019s interesting, of course, is that these books\u2014these two books, Making History<\/em> and The Everlasting<\/em>\u2014make it absolutely clear that that\u2019s not what history is, and that in fact it\u2019s much more complicated than that and much more partial and much less reliable.<\/p>\n

So is there an issue\u2014and this is to either of you\u2014is there an issue here where fantasy has come to rely on history and chronicle and the idea of building a world from a verifiable past when in fact, you know, those are not solid foundations in the way that the genre has sometimes assumed?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> Yeah, history is pretty messy overall. I think that fantasy narratives tend to rely a lot on the fact that they are narratives. And again, that they create the facts of the world straight from the author\u2019s brain, which isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing. But when you look at history and fantasy and then history and antiquity\u2014specifically Herodotus\u2014you get a lot more plausible deniability in Herodotus!<\/p>\n

Every tale that he tells you is prefaces with \u201csupposedly<\/em>\u201d \u2026 \u201cthey tell<\/em> me this is what happened.\u201d \u201cI wasn\u2019t there!\u201d \u201cIt could have gone down this way, but it might not have.\u201d Whereas in fantasy, you\u2019ll get, even with my own writing, details about someone, a specific person\u2019s past\u2014that\u2019s their history, and how it led them to where they are currently\u2014or a group of people, a nation\u2019s, past, and how it led them to where they currently are.<\/p>\n

Simply because it\u2019s an easy way to communicate with the reader. A period where we don\u2019t have worry about being plausibly deniable.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> I think it\u2019s Kari Maund, who is well known to fiction writers\u2014fiction readers<\/em>\u2014as Kari Sperring, in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy<\/em><\/a> who says something to the effect that, you know, fantasy and history are completely, she believes, completely interlinked, totally interrelated.<\/p>\n

Some people, I think, might imagine that, \u201cWell, fantasy is all made up and history is all real, right?\u201d But there\u2019s something actually that is \u2026 that\u2019s not true of either. And this hybridity is part of what they are. They reflect each other in that way, that approach to history. You know, the sort of Lord of the Rings<\/em> Appendices approach to history: The timeline, the absolutely irrefutable fact of it. It\u2019s very seductive. It has a power because we kind of want to believe it.<\/p>\n

I just wonder whether there\u2019s something here, Nick, about identity\u2014where we want to believe that Middle Earth has this verifiable past because it means that Aragon is definitely who Aragon is meant to be, and the hobbits are slot where they are meant to be. History gives us this illusion of \u201cslotability\u201d: I mean, is there a way that that really helps a fantasy world and also comforts a reader? Maybe? I don\u2019t know what you make of that.<\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> Yeah. I mean, I think that\u2019s exactly true. I mean, one thing that comes to me is both Tolkien and Martin, who we mentioned, both actually do have a level of self-reflexivity. The Tolkien stuff is supposedly begun by Bilbo and finished a bit by Frodo, and Sam sort of tops it off in these three volumes of the Book of West March<\/em> or whatever it\u2019s called. Martin, in Fire and Blood<\/em>\u2014which is the source material for the House of the Dragon<\/em> TV series\u2014gives a historical narrative compiled by some archmaester who does sort of point out, \u201cThis actually might not be entirely true because, you know, the sources are in conflict and you know, and this stuff.\u201d So they play those games, and obviously, yes, we do!<\/p>\n

I mean, both of those books are immensely popular because they have that in-depth kind of history, but actually both of them are so big that they\u2019re not internally consistent. And you know, we can read that because the level of scholarship into Tolkien, we can see that. And also because he changed it, so if you\u2019ve got a second edition of The Hobbit<\/em>\u2014which I\u2019ve got, because that was the one I read as a child, you know\u2014it\u2019s still got all this stuff about policemen on bicycles and stuff that at some point got taken out to make it more internally consistent. So you can reinsert that playful bit. And again, both of these writers are, when the mood takes them, playful as well, they kind of can\u2019t help themselves.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s that level in there. But I think the issue with these kind of fantasies\u2014and I think it\u2019s even true to an extent of somebody like Terry Pratchett, who\u2019s more cynical and more trying to show his readers the kind of flaws in this kind of thing\u2014there\u2019s still a sense that they\u2019re still in hock to history in some sense, to this idea of history, the idea of history itself that we can in the West\u2014or in a country like England, that can trace a history back to, I don\u2019t know, Egbert or whatever, who fought with Charlemagne and stuff, and then came, you know, Boedica and Alfred the Great and so on\u2014there\u2019s this kind of history which in some ways is, \u201cYeah, you can trace a history back, but also obviously it\u2019s a myth.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a story and immensely powerful story. And I think all these fantasy versions of it, although they play off that, they\u2019re also partly in awe of that kind of structure. So you can read Tolkien and Martin and Ursula K. Le Guin for that matter\u2014I mean, you can read it from a kind of politically right, conservative kind of position. It\u2019s not like the readership of all of these texts is kind of necessarily progressive or liberal or whatever. Whatever you want to describe the other side as! I mean, Joe Abercrombie, for example, has also done that kind of replay from an even more cynical kind of perspective.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s still \u2026 I mean it\u2019s good for the writers, obviously, because they get big, big readerships\u2014because it kind of appeals to everyone. But I think The Everlasting<\/em> is definitely taking a side in that. It\u2019s not kind of in awe of that kind of history. It\u2019s trying to pull that history kind of apart and say, \u201cYou know, it\u2019s part of the process of imperialism.\u201d And so, in that sense, I think it\u2019s different to this other version of, you know, the more dominant, if you like, epic fantasy kind of reliance on history.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> And it\u2019s interesting that you talk about epic fantasy specifically there. You know, we are painting with quite a broad brush here. I mean, I wonder whether there are examples in, you know, whatever you want to call other types of fantasy\u2014the uncanny or the weird\u2014where this kind of quote-unquote reliance on history is less pronounced, or maybe not.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not convinced, for example\u2014I mentioned Mi\u00e9ville earlier\u2014I\u2019m not convinced that the sort of the leading lights of the new weird\u2014you know, Mi\u00e9ville, VanderMeer, and Steph Swainston\u2014really kind of broke away from it as much as the New Weird might have liked to believe it did. But there are currently quite a few fantasists, I think, who are<\/em> very actively trying to kind of dissolve that.<\/p>\n

You know, I\u2019m thinking of maybe Kai Ashante Wilson, you know? Sorcerer of the Wildeeps<\/em>: You read Sorcerer of the Wildeeps<\/em> and I don\u2019t feel the certainty. This is an episode of Critical Friends<\/em>, so we have to mention Vajra Chandrasekera, it\u2019s not allowed for us not to. So The Saint of Bright Doors<\/em> does this very explicitly\u2014you know, deals with past and history and identity and how those things are built up over time in a fantasy setting\u2014but is aware, you know, of what are the perils and the pitfalls of this.<\/p>\n

Is fantasy able to sort of get around its own reliance on history? Because we started this conversation with The Everlasting<\/em> and Making History<\/em> both \u2026 I mean, basically the villains in those novels are trying to convince us that history is verifiably the truth. The villains<\/em> are doing that, right? So that seems to me really important, because if fantasy as a genre isn\u2019t escaping that assumption, we\u2019ve got ourselves a problem. Do we feel like it is, it has, it can?<\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> Well, I suppose that\u2019s the question\u2014you know, you\u2019re right!\u2014that\u2019s the question we\u2019re asking. But it\u2019s kind of a big question!<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Have a swing at it!<\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> Having said all those fantasy texts are complicit, I mean, I think we have agency as readers. That\u2019s what I try and tell people, and used to try and tell students at one point: you know, we have agency as readers, so we don\u2019t have to necessarily \u2026 I mean, there\u2019s also resistances in all those texts.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s kind of what modern literary criticism is: You read for complicities and you read for resistances, and you try and sort of negotiate what you can out of that. But then, you know, like, I kind of grew up reading Tolkien, you know?! I can\u2019t actually excise that from myself! There\u2019s no way I can do that. And I must admit I like all those fantasy writers and Steph Swainston\u2019s version of doing it if we go into the New Weird.<\/p>\n

But yeah, I do think it is \u2026 on the other hand, if you ask me to be cold-blooded about it, yeah, it is kind of complicit. I mean, the other thing is the genre is evolving, so something like The Everlasting<\/em>\u2014which I think will be a (I\u2019m sticking my neck out at the moment!), I think it will be a landmark thing\u2014in a sense, it\u2019s kind of fantasy where the actual goal of the fantasy is to escape from history in some ways, to escape from nation. And I think that\u2019s probably the key? Well, one of the key things, because what it highlights for me, what the novel really highlights for me, is the relationship between fantasy, history, and nation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about, I mean, with, in this case, as I said, the nation\u2019s called Dominion, so it\u2019s like fairly clear. It\u2019s a bad, I, you know, it\u2019s a bad thing. And then when you think about all those. They\u2019re always about nations. I mean, some are more cynical than others. Actually. The fantasy I was thinking about, which I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve mentioned so far is, is The Witcher<\/cite>, because I was trying to watch series season four, the Witcher, but, and that\u2019s kind of quite cynical about nation, but the nations are still there.<\/p>\n

But I think that is the key thing: Do we get away from nation? What would it mean to get away from nation? What would that kind of society be like? And that would possibly involve, it would involve not just going back to history and realizing things were a bit more fluid and messier than we thought; it would involve actually saying that should be the state we want, where everything\u2019s fluid and kind of messy.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s this sort of fixed hierarchies and binaries that you get in nation and history that have to be kind of opposed. I think that\u2019s what Harrow\u2019s doing in The Everlasting<\/em>. She is actually trying to pull apart those kind of binaries and hierarchies at the same time as satirizing history and fantasy, and also kind of pulling it apart, but also homaging a bit to people like T. H. White and other twenties, thirties writers. She\u2019s just recently written\u2014Alix Harrow has recently written\u2014an introduction to a reprint of Sylvia Townsend Warner\u2019s Lolly Willowes<\/em>, and those twenties, thirties fantasy writers were also kind of cynical.<\/p>\n

I mean, some, something like Virginia Woolf\u2019s Orlando<\/em> is very cynical about history, although it kind of relates four hundred years of it. And it is about kind of escaping from the history, escaping from gender, as it were escaping from hierarchies. Similarly, Hope Mirlees\u2019 Lud-in-the-Mist <\/em>is another one that does that. There\u2019s a number of fantasies in that period, and I suppose they are also key fantasies in the history of fantasy\u2014and I think what I like about The Everlasting<\/em> is it seems to be able to draw from a lot of these traditions and do something different with it that\u2019s very, very contemporary, but pay respect to all of those things.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Cam, when Nick was talking\u2014particularly when they were talking about nation and history and escaping from it\u2014I was thinking about your review of Ley Lines<\/em><\/a>. Do you remember this book?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel: <\/strong>So I do remember Ley Lines<\/em>. It\u2019s such a weird little book!<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Isn\u2019t it? And your review of it really gets into the weirdness of it. And it\u2019s a fantasy\u2014it\u2019s not an epic fantasy, but it\u2019s definitely a fantasy, in the way that it is a \u2026<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> Psychedelic Odyssey is how the blurb described it.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland: <\/strong>I was gonna say in the way that a bad trip is a fantasy, but yeah! Psychedelic odyssey works, too. Yeah. But it looks like a western at first, it looks, you know, gold rush and saloons and all that stuff. But it\u2019s not that at all, and it completely dissolves all of the kind of assumed \u2026<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> It\u2019s Canada, so there are a few less guns!<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland: <\/strong>Yeah, yeah, yeah. It\u2019s kind of a Call of the Wild<\/em> thing, right? It\u2019s, it\u2019s a Jack London White Fang<\/em> thing. So my question \u2026 I guess the reason I bring that up is that this is a book that really does dissolve all of the silent symbologies of nation and history, and I mean\u2014just so that people have \u2026 if they haven\u2019t read this review, I mean\u2014basically it starts out as a sort of cowboy thing, but before long they\u2019re being chased by giant disembodied ears and noses and things. Right?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> Not even chased, more like just followed, casually menaced. But instead of ascending this mountain\u2014coming back with their glory to get their bounty, whatever it was\u2014they come back with this ear that\u2019s just slowly floating after them. It\u2019s not even doing anything. It\u2019s just standing there, not even standing, just floating and it doesn\u2019t do anything. But it gives this weird eminence that seems to have an effect on everyone and drives just pilgrimage to this dying town in the Yukon.<\/p>\n

It is a really interesting book, especially because, while it deals with history, it seems like it\u2019s more about examining the way our exploitation of the environment creates this death cycle where things progressively get worse and worse and worse. There was a book that came out a little while ago, everyone in the left political sphere was talking about, I think the name was Enshitification<\/em>: How Everything Just Got Worse<\/em>. And thinking about enshittification and then Ley Lines<\/em>: Yeah, everything in this book just keeps progressively ratcheting up in a way of getting worse and then coming back to where it was, getting worse and coming back to where it was, but being in different locales and transcending time.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Which I think is kind of valuable because, if we think like Nick does\u2014and I tend to agree that (I\u2019m holding you to this, Nick!) fantasy is complicit in some way in this kind of deadening narrative that the past leads to the future in a sort of meaningful chain of events\u2014there\u2019s a danger that we become nostalgic for a time when things weren\u2019t so enshittified.<\/p>\n

Every schoolchild in Britain at one point was thrust a copy of a book called What Is History<\/em> by E. H. Carr. This is a book that\u2019s really easy to kind of roll your eyes at now\u2014it\u2019s a very kind of certain mid-century British thing. But it ends with a chapter in which Carr worries about nostalgia. He worries that Anglo-American historiography is not going to be open to all the new ideas it needs to be open to in order to escape this sort of dread gravity of, \u201cOh, things were better in the olden days.\u201d<\/p>\n

And I think sometimes fantasy can fall into that because it\u2019s often construed as, if not set in our past, then certainly something that looks like it. Is that something we experience when we are reading fantasy or are there recent or older fantasies that we read that feel a bit more forward footed? Can it project forward or is it always going to be kind of a little bit backwards-looking?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> As someone who engages not just with reading but also with other forms of media, and who is in the comic book space and the film space necessarily by living in LA, in the friend group that I\u2019ve built\u2014the creator friend group that writes comic books, has people in the industry\u2014I\u2019ve noticed there\u2019s this dramatic shift towards nostalgia in everything, a hatred for anything potentially new.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t necessarily blame them. Because everyone wants to go back to, \u201cBack in my day when cartoons felt good\u201d\u2014because you were young and cartoons were great because you were a child! You didn\u2019t have to think too critically about the story of a cartoon. But then you look at a kid and they\u2019re like, \u201cThis cartoon rocks!\u201d I know because I\u2019m an educator\u2014I see how these kids react to their cartoons\u2014and not only are we becoming stuck in nostalgia, it\u2019s going to create this sort of vortex where any type of new narrative goes. And it\u2019s already happening. It\u2019s just dismissed as woke or garbage or anything because it doesn\u2019t live up to impossible expectations we have because of something we saw when we were younger.<\/p>\n

Something that reminds me of this already is the discourse happening about the recent Predator<\/strong> movie, which is science fiction. But having watched the 1987 Predator<\/em> film just yesterday, uh, because I watched Badlands<\/em> and loved it, so of course I go all in on things. I was thinking, wow, \u201cBadlands<\/em> just takes the Yautja far more seriously than Predator<\/em> 1987 does.\u201d And I know people will come for me when I say that! But what I mean by \u201ctakes them seriously\u201d is: It fleshes them out as a people. It gives them culture, it gives them history here, it gives them norms. Really interesting! And then the first Predator<\/em> movie, you sort of just have this apex predator\u2014as in the name\u2014who\u2019s trying to kill a bunch of commandos. And there\u2019s nothing wrong with that, it\u2019s a good film; but if you want something that takes its subject seriously, I think Badlands<\/em> is a bit better of a film.<\/p>\n

[Musical sting]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> For all that I\u2019m giving, you know, my sort of emancipatory readings of Making History<\/em> and The Everlasting<\/em>, they are also just narratives as well\u2014I mean, \u201cjust\u201d\u2014but, you know: narratives, stories, novels all work, you know, on one level have to work as entertainment\u2014and they do. They\u2019re both very entertaining. I can assure everybody who\u2019s listening! So, yeah, in some ways you don\u2019t, you can\u2019t, quite ever kind of escape from the circle, but maybe that itself is understanding it as a circle.<\/p>\n

Because we can still \u2026 even nostalgia is not necessarily bad if you don\u2019t think that history is linear. To get back to my starting point, if it\u2019s not completely linear, then nostalgia is not necessarily bad because this doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re necessarily just going back into the past. It can be nostalgic for the future in a way, as well. You know, there\u2019s different ways that that can play out.<\/p>\n

I think that the way to do that is to be kind of mentally agile. And I think that\u2019s what both of these books do. They sort of encourage you to be mentally agile. So, you know, it\u2019s not that you have to abandon everything from the past. It\u2019s not that, you know, we don\u2019t have to \u2026 I was saying that earlier with Tolkien. It\u2019s not that we have to completely throw out Tolkien or you know, anybody else.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Do we think that we, that fantasy as a genre is\u2014or at least parts of fantasy as a genre, I wouldn\u2019t want to talk about, you know, all fantasy, that\u2019d be silly\u2014is it moving forwards? You know, where are we? It feels to me like a lot of the things that we\u2019ve been discussing here\u2014and we\u2019ve been very circumspect and careful, you know, we\u2019ve talked about medieval Europe, we\u2019ve talked about the Roman Empire, we\u2019ve not talked about today, right now\u2014but I think a lot of what we\u2019ve been talking about has, you know, urgent contemporary resonances. Is fantasy sufficiently conscious of all of this?<\/p>\n

You know, we\u2019ve been sort of bringing this forward, these complicities or these potential sort of areas where we might sort of break free. Do we have confidence that this is something that fantasy can do? Where is all this going? It seems to me that fantasy is really very current right now: In the end of year lists that are coming up soon, my suspicion is\u2014partly because of romantasy, but also I think just generally\u2014fantasy will be well represented in a way that science fiction might not be. Between the two of them, it feels fantasy is having a moment.<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s true, is that okay? Are we \u2026 is fantasy gonna look after us in this moment of its zenith?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> I mean, in the same way we don\u2019t expect perfection from literary fiction, especially when it was the dominant genre, we expected just good art, I think fantasy is in a similar position. Fantasy has narratives that appeal to all types of people and some of those narratives deal with things that are current or don\u2019t deal with things that are current at all. I think for readers that\u2019s completely fine, but if the aim of fantasy itself is to be critical of how things currently are, it may not be prepared to meet that challenge.<\/p>\n

I mentioned that I had reread Making History<\/em> in anticipation for our meeting, and as I\u2019m looking at Gyges, not only am I thinking about Augustus, but I\u2019m thinking about the orange guy in the White House, and the fact that he just mobilized our biggest warship off the coast of Venezuela, supposedly to target drug cartels. You need missiles to target drug cartels?!<\/p>\n

This idea of strong men, dictators or strong men\u2014would-be dictators\u2014who rely on lies and mixed stories that allow them to get away with committing crimes up the wazoo: That\u2019s all Gyges decided to do. He even went as far as abducting the academics at the beginning of the story, just having his guards wrestle them out of their homes into that little crowded room, so he could tell them, \u201cYou guys are gonna make a city for me so I can go invade somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> Because we are living in fantastic times\u2014I mean, we are not living, you know, in the sort of periods where \u2026 we are not living in this kind of rational, instrumental change period that would suit some of \u2026 science fiction and fantasy in some ways, I think, is a slightly false distinction because they quite often play off similar ideas as we know, and the boundaries are not hard and fast. But you can imagine there\u2019s a kind of cold sort of \u2026 there\u2019s a kind of Star Trek<\/em> moment of optimism and enlightenment that is possibly not just not consonant with what\u2019s actually happening in the world at the moment to us.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we\u2014I think why we\u2014are reading fantasy. But on that hand that makes it the field of contestation, and we don\u2019t quite know how that\u2019s going to play out. I mean, in some ways it\u2019s quite exciting that fantasy is the dominant genre. I mean, who would\u2019ve thought that, you know? That would\u2019ve been, as recently as the nineties, considered absolutely ridiculous. The fact that that\u2019s actually happened itself is just, you know, interesting. I don\u2019t think we pay enough attention to it.<\/p>\n

And perhaps, you know, that might be a way to go. You mentioned romantasy there, and I do, in the review, sort of discuss a bit where the Harrow is. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s really a romantasy-type novel, but it might attract some of that readership. You know, it\u2019s kind of<\/em> romance. Romance is a way of learning the world. It\u2019s a way of getting agency. It\u2019s a way of thinking about different systems of power or thinking about power dynamics in sort of interpersonal ways. As a critic, I feel we can work with that. As a reader, I feel we can work with that. So, I mean, therefore, that\u2019s my optimism if you like.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> I agree. We should be paying more attention as critics to what is going on there. But of course one of the critics, one of the notable critics, that has been is Cameron Miguel!<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> So are you about to talk about The Entanglement of Rival Wizards?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> We are.<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> Is that what we\u2019re doing?<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> We are!<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> OK, let\u2019s do it.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> OK, let\u2019s do it! So go for it. You reviewed this for us relatively recently<\/a>. It was the last book before Making History<\/em> that you reviewed for us. Yeah. That\u2019s a romantasy book \u2026 and you loved it, right?<\/p>\n

Cameron Miguel:<\/strong> Yeah, I\u2019m big on romance. When I was growing up, as a child there wasn\u2019t much representation of queer people in literature. At least there wasn\u2019t much representation of queer people in literature that I was allowed to read as a little kid. I would certainly not recommend this book for little kids, either, but, as a grown adult now who has free will and choice, I chose to read this book, and of course I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n

It has queer characters in it. It handles serious topics pretty well, including abuse and the way family members can deny abuse if it\u2019s done by someone else; the way institutions abuse people, the way that academics play into institutions. And I was just thinking about The Entanglement of Rival Wizards<\/em> when I finished discussing fantasy that\u2019s not meant to or not able to meet the moment of being critical of power. I wouldn\u2019t expect an Entanglement of Rival Wizards<\/em> to challenge an invasion off the coast of Venezuela. That\u2019s something that I do from Making History<\/em>, and that doesn\u2019t make an Entanglement of Rival Wizards<\/em> bad. It just makes it a different book that appeals to a different audience.<\/p>\n

Entanglement of Rival Wizards<\/em> can challenge our assumptions about sexuality, gender, the nature of gender, culture, all of that. You can look at other books and how they target race and the superstructures that we\u2019ve invented across the Western hemisphere to subjugate certain groups of people. There are certainly ways that books can be sophisticated, critical. All of it really just depends on what the author is going for.<\/p>\n

Nick Hubble:<\/strong> You just have to have a slightly more agile way of thinking about it. And I guess that\u2019s kind of what the culture\u2014you know, the broader whatever-you-wanna-call the fan\/critical culture embodied in something like Strange Horizons<\/em>\u2014is trying to do in some \u2026 I\u2019m not giving it a conscious purpose, which is perhaps overdoing it, but it works as a kind of hive mind collective. That\u2019s kind of trying to do something, something like that. So that would be my \u2026 I mean, maybe that\u2019s just me! I would always want to try and find some optimistic take on things.<\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Critical Friends<\/em> isn\u2019t known for its optimism, so let\u2019s try, let\u2019s try!<\/p>\n

[Musical outro]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dan Hartland:<\/strong> Thanks for persevering through another episode of Critical Friends<\/em>, the Strange Horizons<\/em> SFF criticism podcast. Our music is \u201cDial-up\u201d by Lost Cosmonauts. You can listen to more of their music at grandvalise.bandcamp.com.<\/p>\n

After our last episode, on hope in science fiction<\/a>, friend of the show Abigail Nussbaum wrote to push back on the idea\u2014sort of raised during our discussion of Forfeiture<\/em> by J. P. Nebra\u2014that forcibly displacing a population, quote, \u201cfor their own good\u201d is a positive, hopeful storytelling choice. Ruthanna Emrys\u2019s A Half-Built Garden <\/em>isn\u2019t perfect, Abigail says, but at least it recognizes that this would be\u2014is\u2014colonialism by another name. As Abigail notes, the prime directive exists for a reason.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Paul Kincaid reflected on Paul March-Russell\u2019s remembrance of he and our late colleague Maureen Kincaid Speller being baffled that anyone could enjoy the work of Becky Chambers. In his defense, Paul says, the world that Chambers paints is in fact far from hopeful\u2014because it faces no obstacles and overcomes no challenges. PK writes that, because everything in those novels is predicated on everyone being so unutterably nice, everyone can afford to be nice to everybody else because they\u2019re not putting anything on the line to get to that point. Paul emphasizes that building a community out of difference is not easy. And that hope might be found in the measure of discomfort those giving something up might be willing to experience.<\/p>\n

And on that note, Roseanna Pendlebury on Bluesky found herself tending towards the belief that literature can\u2019t, and generally doesn\u2019t, change the world, or even really hearts and minds. She wondered if anyone has written about this more generally. Answers on a postcard! Zadie Smith in the NYRB<\/a> comes to my mind, as does a collection of essays entitled Can Fiction Change the World<\/em>?<\/a>, edited by Alison James, Akihiro Kubo, and Fran\u00e7oise Lavocat.<\/p>\n

As for changing the world \u2026 well. See you next time.<\/p>\n
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