Discussing worldbuilding in books by Alastair Reynolds, Leigh Bardugo and others
Housekeeping:
My post from last week featured a video and podcast for the first time, check it out if you missed it!
I’ve added a link to a related interview I gave at the bottom of “Class Trip” from two weeks ago, find that post here.
The Right Amount of Context
What was the last book, TV show or movie that offered you too much exposition? How about too little? Where on that spectrum are you most comfortable?
I live for mystery and ambiguity in fiction, and relish moments when my imagination can expand to fill in the gaps. It’s a big part of my distaste for today’s YA and “New Adult” books, which feel the need to explain everything up front so that readers can focus on the same tired teenage romance stories again and again.
A.K. Larkwood’s The Serpent Gates presents a vast multiverse of possibility
In many of my favourite franchises growing up, this potential for imagination manifested through vast settings: from the unexplored areas of Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire to the infinite space of Dune and Star Trek. Each of these followed a single narrative thread in a world potentially quilted from thousands, and occasionally referenced ideas that had no immediate purpose yet were candy to my young imagination.
Pop culture today seems determined to exterminate this experience I treasure. Our one true god Capitalism decrees that profits must be squeezed out of every last part of successful stories, so tranquil spaces of imagination are mulched into things like Pottermore, ten hours of CGI buffoonery named after a children’s book and the seamless explanation of Han Solo’s name.
The Plot is the World
Alastair Reynolds is among my favourite Sci-Fi authors working today. His short stories “Beyond the Aquila Rift” and “Zima Blue” were adapted to wide acclaim in the first season of Love, Death and Robots – check them out on Netflix if you haven’t already!
Reynolds’ imagination is matched only by his determination to offer a quasi-scientific explanation for every idea he puts forward - making his books “hard science fiction” in the classical style.
If you want to give him a shot, I’d highly recommend:
Revenger if you’re up for a little bit of YA (I survived it, so you can too)
Chasm City if you like a good SF thriller
Pushing Ice for unadulterated Reynolds Science Fiction
Out of almost any Alastair Reynolds book - Generated by AI
Despite displaying more imagination than most entire bookshelves and tackling philosophical and scientific concepts which span the universe, Reynolds’ books often give me similar issues to those I have with YA and NA fiction.
The fact that he has thought out explanations for everything means that his characters always have to arrive at those same conclusions and spell them out for the reader - often amidst the climactic action.
This isn’t always a huge problem – barely noticeable in the books I recommended above and entirely tolerable in one of my other favourites, House of Suns. But it did go a long way toward dampening my enjoyment of Eversion and Redemption Ark, when otherwise cryptic and unaligned characters started solving fundamental questions of the universe together through conversation.
Art shared by Alastair Reynolds on his blog in 2011 (artist unknown)
The other issue I have is a simple lack of extraneity. House of Suns seems to offer infinite mysteries to a first- or even second-time reader as you follow a small group of characters cutting a swath across a far future galaxy. Yet when you look back, it’s easy to see how the pieces of Reynolds’ world fit perfectly together – with little room for further exploration.
I think these both come down to the same thing: Reynolds gives a great deal of thought to everything he includes in his novels, so nothing is likely to appear that isn’t directly related to the plot. However vast the world may seem, it is strictly defined by the course and requirements of the narrative.
Inextricably Bound
That same relationship is perhaps even more pronounced in the dark fantasy novels Ninth House and Hell Bent by author Leigh Bardugo, known predominantly for her successful YA series. Similar to the Dresden Files (Jim Butcher) and Babel (R.F. Kuang), Bardugo draws on her intimate knowledge of a real world setting to tell the dark, modern and academic tale of protagonist Galaxy “Alex” Stern at Yale University.
Alex Stern from Ninth House and Hell Bent, art by PhantomRin
Mystery and sinister ambience imbue every page of these books, as Alex learns about and does her best to oversee the eldritch rituals being conducted by Yale’s secret societies. Leaving gaps in the world for the reader’s imagination to fill in should be as simple as including pictures of food in a cookbook – the entire horror genre is built on the principle of less-is-more.
Sadly (in my opinion), Bardugo’s YA beginnings shine through when it comes to advancing the plot of these novels. The most painful example is the inclusion of a vampire in Hell Bent. The reveal caught me off guard in the best way, since the character seemed at first to be a random fantasy creature whose existence suggests a far more interesting world.
In The Dresden Files, The Stranger Times, The Magicians or the book I’ll discuss next, that’s exactly what this vampire would have been. At the very most, he’s personally connected to the plot in a tangential way.
No such luck in Hell Bent. It turns out he’s the only one, cursed into this form by something directly plot-related. Perhaps this is a strange thing to complain about, but it nonetheless truly dampened my excitement for the future of the series.
When the Plot is Everything, and the World is Still Bigger
If I ever write about worldbuilding and forget to praise The Library at Mount Char, please check in on my wellbeing. Scott Hawkins’ 2015 novel taught me a lot about how much is possible in the realm of speculative fiction, and stands alongside House of Leaves and This is How You Lose the Time War for me as a pillar of the genre.
I’ll once again do my best not to spoil this novel, and instead focus on what it does from a structural perspective. Similar to Time War and to a lesser extent House of Suns, The Library at Mount Char has a plot which threatens to encompass all of reality. It deals with divinity like Game of Thrones deals with monarchy.
(Another – perhaps surprising – comparison comes to mind here: His Dark Materials actually shares some big themes with Mount Char. I may have to make my aversion to YA a little more specific in future.)
The ‘Librarians’ of Mount Char, art by SharksDen
Yet Scott Hawkins leaves room for imagination in his masterpiece, where Bardugo and Reynolds stick to the straight and narrow. Of the twelve “librarians” only ten are ever described, and of those five or six are actually involved in the plot. There are obscure references to all kinds of fiction and mythology on top of simple inventions.
The “Last Monstruwaken” dwelling in the “black pyramid at the end of time”, Barry O’Shea, Q-33 North, the ages of the world… These are peripheral details that you have to work to understand, and which for me make Hawkins’ setting uniquely vibrant and fascinating.
Granted, these exact qualities seem to be the focus of many critiques of the novel by readers who want more comprehensible structure. Everyone has different tastes, but I do wish more people could experience the bizarre beauty of this novel.
At the Close
I suppose the moral here is that tastes may differ, and I can’t help but crave more vast and alluring speculative fiction worlds. I also can’t help but examine this argument in the context of how much I’ve recently enjoyed completely non-speculative fiction novels like The Heart’s Invisible Furies, Demon Copperhead and Sharp Objects. These books come as close as possible to an objectively understandable world (ours), but manage to hit some of the same fascinating notes for me through sheer tension, emotion and exploration of the human condition.
It is difficult to imagine a speculative fiction novel which surpasses the incredible scope of novels like House of Suns, Mount Char, The Magicians or His Dark Materials – though I do have a (likely incomprehensible) story idea in mind.
On the other hand, it is eminently possible to imagine speculative fiction which better incorporates the human element. This has always been a blind spot for me (I blame aspects of my neurodivergence but it could simply be some moral failing), but I now truly believe the future of the genre must incorporate more humanity alongside the social issues and incomprehensible magical nonsense.
As long as I can still get unfathomably excited over that incomprehensible magical nonsense.
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How do you feel about structure vs. imagination when it comes to worldbuilding? Are there any novels (or other media) that come to mind?
Thanks for reading!
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