# What Fantastical Mileu hasn't been Fantasied?



## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 18, 2021)

Following on from this conversation, about Fantasy being stuck in the mud, and P Djeli Clar's novel "A Master of Djinn" set in an alt-history Cairo, what mileus haven't been featured enough in fantasy fiction?


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## CTRandall (Aug 18, 2021)

Pretty much all of sub-Saharan Africa is untouched. Probably due largely to the relative paucity of African fantasy writers. Pre-Columbian North America, i.e. Native American/First Nations, is also unrepresented.


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## Vince W (Aug 19, 2021)

In western writing there's very little about the Slavic/Rus peoples.


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## Astro Pen (Aug 19, 2021)

Iceland, despite its mythology and dramatic landscape.


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## Vince W (Aug 19, 2021)

I don't think I've ever seen anything written about the Inuit peoples.


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## AllanR (Aug 19, 2021)

CTRandall said:


> Native American/First Nations


There is this in the works Coyote and Crow - Coyote & Crow


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## Guttersnipe (Aug 19, 2021)

Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, etc.


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## Wayne Mack (Aug 19, 2021)

I feel there are a lot of ignored or under-represented cultures and environments that could lead to interesting tales. Pick up a world map and pick almost any locale, save much of western Europe, and research tits history. Also, skip using elves, dwarves, and European dragons.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 19, 2021)

Wayne Mack said:


> research tits history



tee hee


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## Fiberglass Cyborg (Aug 19, 2021)

CTRandall said:


> Pretty much all of sub-Saharan Africa is untouched. Probably due largely to the relative paucity of African fantasy writers. Pre-Columbian North America, i.e. Native American/First Nations, is also unrepresented.


One that's always intrigued me is the Great Zimbabwe civilisation. A secretive culture in the East African interior who mined, traded and crafted gold, built some seriously impressive stone cities, and who disappeared a mere 600 years ago leaving no written evidence and no oral tradition. (Almost certainly not a lost tribe of Israelites, contra the archaeologists of Rider Haggard's day.) Seems tailor-made for a writer who's interested in history but willing to speculate a bit.


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## Wayne Mack (Aug 19, 2021)

Mon0Zer0 said:


> tee hee


Ooops! I think that one has been well fantasied.


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## BAYLOR (Aug 19, 2021)

What about Mayas, Aztecs Incas, Toltecs, and all various advanced cultures I the new world.     Ans what not a fantasy series dealing with the Anasazi ?


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## Abernovo (Aug 21, 2021)

BAYLOR said:


> Mayas, Aztecs Incas, Toltecs


Aliette de Bodard and Rebecca Roanhorse have written fantasy with the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. The cultures have also worked their influence into some of the South American magical realism, in terms of settings amongst the ruins, myths, and supernatural themes.


Fiberglass Cyborg said:


> One that's always intrigued me is the Great Zimbabwe civilisation.


I was fascinated by the city of Great Zimbabwe when I first saw pictures, and I have been ever since. On the plus side, sub-Saharan voices are gaining more traction in fantasy, both in the diaspora, and at home. Ben Okri, Tomi Adeyemi come to mind. There will be others.

For my own interest, I'd love to read a fantasy detective story, set in ancient Sumer, where the cases are recorded in cuneiform. However, that's so specific, I may have to follow the old advice for when you can't find the story you want to read. Or a non-violent (or not overtly violent) fantasy set in ancient central Asia.


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## The Big Peat (Aug 21, 2021)

Wayne Mack said:


> I feel there are a lot of ignored or under-represented cultures and environments that could lead to interesting tales. Pick up a world map and pick almost any locale, save much of western Europe, and research tits history. Also, skip using elves, dwarves, and European dragons.



This. And even in the sort of triangle that forms most of fantasy's underpinnings - basically France, the British Isles, and Scandinavia - there's no end of fascinating little tidbits that have gone ignored for the most part.


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## CTRandall (Aug 22, 2021)

Vince W said:


> In western writing there's very little about the Slavic/Rus peoples


Naomi Novik's novels often draw on Slavic folk stories/traditions. Check _Uprooted_ and _Spinning Silver._


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## Fiberglass Cyborg (Aug 23, 2021)

A couple more visually arresting settings:

The pre-contact Amazon basin. Before the indigenous population crash and colonial land grabs, there were large agricultural areas deep within the forest. Careful management of soil quality was a matter of life and death. Many of today's small, semi-nomadic tribes apparently have traditions inherited from their settled ancestors. I love the image of these islands of sustainable farmland hidden in the jungle.

The Liangzhu culture in neolithic China. Early city-builders who were heavily into water management. Their capital city was like an ancient version of Venice: there was a network of canals within the walls, linked to more canals and dams sprawling across the flood plain.


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## CTRandall (Aug 25, 2021)

Considering we're talking about fantasy, why not go further afield? How about a whole novel set in Hell? Or inside a clock, with springs and sprockets as characters?


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## Guttersnipe (Aug 25, 2021)

Antarctica. Magic-wielding penguins. Or a charmed summery land therein.


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## AllanR (Aug 25, 2021)

Guttersnipe said:


> penguins


There's the albino penguins at *The Mountain of Madness*.


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## Guttersnipe (Aug 25, 2021)

CTRandall said:


> Considering we're talking about fantasy, why not go further afield? How about a whole novel set in Hell? Or inside a clock, with springs and sprockets as characters?


There are lots of novels set in the afterlife, even, at least, one in Hell (Chuck Palahniuk's Damned). It's called Bangsian fantasy. But you're right--there are many options if you let your mind go wild. That's what's encouraged.


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## Harpo (Aug 26, 2021)

This forum has plenty of its own fantasy RP stuff in the Lounge, and I’m guessing there might be other online message boards (excluding fan fiction) with similar things. So perhaps collectively it’s all part of an unrecognised ‘forumiverse’.


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## Fiberglass Cyborg (Aug 27, 2021)

I guess there are two traditional sources for fantasy settings: real-world cultures, and the mythologies of those cultures. I've encountered a lot of fiction set in British fairylands, and a little set in Russian fairylands or Japanese-ghost-story-lands.  Suspect it can get a bit appropriationey if you base a fantasy setting on someone else's actual current religion.... What little I've encountered of Native American / First Nations mythologies seem to follow a bizarre and fascinating sense of narrative logic very different from anything else in the world. But I'd feel a mite itchy about pinching it.


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## Guttersnipe (Aug 28, 2021)

If the mileu is fantastical, I'd say I've never read a fantasy about Lemuria or Mu.


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## Harpo (Aug 28, 2021)

Fiberglass Cyborg said:


> I guess there are two traditional sources for fantasy settings: real-world cultures, and the mythologies of those cultures. I've encountered a lot of fiction set in British fairylands, and a little set in Russian fairylands or Japanese-ghost-story-lands.  Suspect it can get a bit appropriationey if you base a fantasy setting on someone else's actual current religion.... What little I've encountered of Native American / First Nations mythologies seem to follow a bizarre and fascinating sense of narrative logic very different from anything else in the world. But I'd feel a mite itchy about pinching it.


Pinching it?

that’s theft....... it implies somebody no longer having it


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## CTRandall (Aug 28, 2021)

Harpo said:


> it implies somebody no longer having it



That is precisely the danger when playing with someone else's culture. For hundreds of years, Native American culture was reduced to either the 'noble savage' or just plain savage by films, serials and novels. The only version of Native American's that was known to most people was a simplified version of the semi-nomadic tribes of the Great Plains who rode horses and hunted buffalo. Native Americans had to fight hard (and are still fighting) to regain control of their own narratives and identities.

That doesn't mean an outsider can't write about Native American mythologies (in my opinion, at least). It's just that an outsider has to be careful about how they do it.

Which is all beside the point of the OP. I don't think India has had much of a fantasy treatment, and it is a culture that seems bursting with possibilities.


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## C3nobite (Aug 28, 2021)

I've always thought that Ottoman Turkey or the nineteenth-century Arabian Gulf had rich political conflicts and mileux that would make them really amenable to fantasy stories. Andalusia during the Reconquista has also struck me as a good candidate. Too bad I write science fiction...


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## Fiberglass Cyborg (Sep 8, 2021)

Another entire category: the animal world! Adrian Tchaikovsky seems to have that all to himself these days, but it used to be a more common source of inspiration. (Furrydom aside.) The last couple of decades have been a good time for "ethology", or the study of the natural behaviour of animals. So, alongside the visual imagery, there's a lot of sociological material going begging. Ringtailed lemurs would be a good one- picture a battle where warrior queens duel whilst carrying infant twins strapped to their backs, as the men dance about sluicing perfume everywhere....


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