Fantasy where Setting or World-Building is the Star?

J

Jen526

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This is kind of a difficult recommendation request, since I'm not sure I can explain it very well and less sure that such a subset of fantasy really exists.

I'm currently rereading Queenmagic, Kingmagic by Ian Watson. The premise of the book is of a fantasy world that is built around the rules of chess, with light and dark kingdoms at war and key characters on each side who command magic in keeping with their associated chess piece. (When a queen is killed, a pawn/squire can be ritually sacrificed to pass the queenship on to a new queen. That sort of thing.) Later, the main character finds a way to visit alternate universes that are built around other board games (snakes & ladders, etc.)

The story itself is enjoyable, but what I think appeals to me most is this sort of... structured world-building, I guess. It's like the setting is really the star of the work. Kind of Flatland-ish.

Another series that this reminds me of slightly is Lyndon Hardy's long-OOP Master of Five Magics series. It's a fairly mid-range fantasy series, but it appeals to me, again, for the way the author builds a structured world around clear-cut magical rules, and then changes up those rules.

I'm not usually keen on stories where the author wants to let you know every little thing about this magnificent magic system s/he's created, but something about the more ordered, practically scientific approach to the setting or world-building really jazzes me about these particular reads.

Is this making any sense? Any other books where the setting is, in some way, as much a star of the story as the characters?
 
Try the China Meilville novels particulary Perdido Street Station

The city of New Crobuzon is as much a character in the novel as anything else.
 
Tad Williams' Otherland is built around multiple variations of this conceit, although there is a rationale explanation for it (they are linked but autonomous VR worlds within a vast computer network which is going insane). One world is actually based around chess, another is a HG Wells derivation, another is based on the idea of the Aztec Empire surviving into modern times and sending ships to discover Europe, another is based on Middle-earth, there's a giant house which our heroes have to traverse...pretty immense stuff, and it goes on for ages (the four books amass nearly 3,500 pages between them), but it's also quite compelling, with good characters and storylines.
 
pyanfaruk said:
And so's Dune, by Frank Herbert.
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Oh, if we're talking Science Fiction; I thought this was a fantasy special.
Lots of science fiction authors concentrate on the environment to the almost complete exclusion of characterisation - it's a standard fault.
 
Dune's science fiction? I always thought of it as fantasy - giant worms, mystical fighting systems, magic life-changing drinks, mental powers.....
 
chrispenycate said:
Lots of science fiction authors concentrate on the environment to the almost complete exclusion of characterisation - it's a standard fault.
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Or strength, depending. The same can be said, really, for the early Gothic novels, where the setting became one of (and sometimes the) main characters; yet several of those were beautifully written and can still carry the reader "elsewhere" today. Characterization is important, but with a fantasy tale (I'm including sf in here as a species of imaginative literature) creating a setting that the reader can feel is even more important, in many cases, as without it the characters' actions seem either flat and pedestrian or out of proportion (since the background is unconvincing in itself, we can't understand why they act so strangely). So, depending on how well it's written, and how well it conveys the alienness or "otherness" of the milieu to the reader, it may not be a fault at all; simply something that separates imaginative literature from the increasing trend toward "realism" in the mainstream.
 
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
Viriconium by M John Harrison
The Etched City by K. J. Bishop
City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer (or any of his Ambergris work)

Of course, like Lucien said, anything by China Mieville, who absolutely fits your definition, especially with Perdido Street Station. The city of New Crobuzon is almost a character itself, and there is a scientific, structured magic system - itself disguised as a science.

Most of what is sometimes termed "New Weird" fantasy tends to give atmosphere and setting rather more prominence than is common in epic fantasy - there are novels with atmosphere as incredibly important, though it's a little harder to find this in conjunction with the scientific style magic system.
 
Obviously not clear enough; 'twas not the environmental detail which I criticised, but the loss of the characters. I have read (and swelp me, enjoyed) novels where the characters were so flat that a writer of stories for five year olds would have been ashamed of them. In the Cambelian fifties, ideas frequently dominated to a point that the characters were not merely non-memorable, but transparent to near invisibility. I was going to say not the greats, but even some of Heinlein's characters were so uninportant relative to the lovely technology…
And yes, as an antisocial little runt who didn't understand human emotions (and who hasn't changed much with the years) and did like gadgets, I revelled in it.
The ringworld is a glorious intellectual toy, but the characterisation? Teela? Even Speaker to Animals? The ringworld itself is the star, with the fleet of worlds, the hyperdrive and stasis field as supporting cast. And I read the book decades ago, and still remember the scale, the puzzles and solutions - almost detective fiction, with the universe as one suspect. Would this have been diluted by a few characters we could empathise with? Maybe; certainly the fact that the most memorable characters are frequently non-human suggests a certain alienation on the part of the authors, and the readers (hands up anyone who can remember a single human from "A case of Gravity"? "The Black Cloud"? Even "The Silver Eggheads"
I suspect this is more prominent in science fiction than any other form of fiction - even fantasy requiring more solid characterisation to succeed.
 
I rather thought that's what you meant; I'd just meant to say that I don't see that as a fault, necessarily. I think that with some types of stories, concentration on character actually does dilute the work; and there are several examples of this in science fiction and fantasy, as well as horror or "weird fiction", as not all of that is horrific.

As for world-building: I'd say that Clark Ashton Smith's tales of Zothique and Hyperborea, as well as Averoigne, certainly qualify there, though it is handled much differently than in more recent fantasy. Also his "City of the Singing Flame" concentrates entirely on the characters' reactions to the bizarre experience of this new realm they've entered.

I agree entirely with the Gormenghast books being mentioned here; even the haunted New England of Lovecraft would fit there, as place is very much a character in his work. Of course, Tolkien certainly spent an enormous effort on making Middle-earth so real one could see each blade of grass and tell the difference between each tree. George Macdonald did this, to a somewhat lesser degree, with Lilith and Phantastes, as well; as did Lord Dunsany in The King of Elfland's Daughter and Don Rodriguez: The Chronicle of Shadow Valley, as well as several of his shorter works like "Idle Days on the Yann".

A. Merritt did this with The Metal Monster, as well as large portions of The Moon Pool (despite its rather nauseating romantic element) as well as Dwellers in the Mirage and The Face in the Abyss. Characters are there, but they are almost secondary to the weird environment they are in. And certainly, with his "The People of the Pit", it's all about the strangeness of the place. Algernon Blackwood does a great deal of that, as well, capturing the mystic feel of a place so that it becomes the main character.

There are plenty of examples running throughout fantasy, though only in the last two to three decades has it become so prevalent ... again, courtesy of the influence of people like Tolkien, Donaldson and Company.
 
I'm late coming back to this, but thanks for the feedback on this folks. :)

j. d. worthington said:
Also his "City of the Singing Flame" concentrates entirely on the characters' reactions to the bizarre experience of this new realm they've entered.
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I think this is an integral part of what I'm looking for, actually, although I hadn't really recognized it at the time. Both of the books I was thinking of in starting this thread involve characters exploring and expanding on their knowledge of the rules their worlds operate under.
 
Brys said:
Viriconium by M John Harrison
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Virconium is actually a very interesting case as it's more like anti-world building, given that details are deliberately inconsistent. between the books.

I suggest Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy or Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber.
 
Tales from the Dying Earth by Jack Vance

Michael Shea's Nift the Lean stories
 
I think one could make such a case for both Dungeons and Dragons and Forgotten realms .
 
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