I’m OFFENDED!

Yesterday in comments, John brought up the fact I’ve got some very bad comments on Amazon, on the Magical British Empire Trilogy, from people who think I used every possible (and some impossible) politically correct stereotype.

I know about the comments, though the last time I even heard of them was more than a year ago, and I haven’t looked at the comments since. Part of this is because there is very little point in doing so – it only upsets me, which is what the commenters intend.

More interesting is whether there truly is a point to their comments – did I set out to write a politically correct work and kow tow to all the sacred cows?

Come on guys, you know me. Even if I agree with a stereotype, I feel vaguely uncomfortable using it in writing. In fact, even when I meet a stereotype in real life, it annoys me because come on… art should be deeper than that. It’s only afterwards that I think “Oh, wait.”  Like, the dry cleaners I take my clothes to: Asian, works insane hours, does alterations quickly and cheaply, exchanges ls and rs.  I love his work, but I feel so guilty that he’s actually like that: as though I made him up. I’d never write him like that!

So, why do these people think I use every possible stereotype? And that the only villains are white people? Well, the reason is threefold – one, I was then absolutely restricted to the traditional book market (one of the reasons I’m looking forward to maybe an upending, is the end of that gridlock, which in turn will open up greater creative license.  See 18th century French painting and their “one correct way to produce art” and the period after) which means that anything that blatantly went against the grain would simply not sell.

Does that mean I sold out? Uh… guys, if I ever sell out, it will be for a lot more than 12k a book. And I COULD sell out if I wanted to. I understand the mind set of publishers – we had largely the same education.  I simply can’t do it — though I berate myself — and look at myself in the mirror.

This brings us to reasons two and three – they think I use every possible stereotype because they’ve read SO MANY books that do, that they’re oversensitive. (Like, if the roulette keeps landing on red squares, you come to expect it, even when there’s no reason to.) From the moment they expect it, they then interpret everything as a stereotype.

As for the villains, no. I can honestly say all the books have bad people of all races. (And good people of all races.)

It will probably be easier to understand this if I explain how the (first) book came about.

I spent a lot of time in my childhood reading “explorer’s diaries” true and false both. For a while when I was six, I thought “native” meant “savage” which tells you the tenor of my reading.  For the longest time my family called me “the native” because of explaining at the table that I was feeling very native.  Meaning savage.

Then I discovered science fiction. And then…  Oh, twenty years later – I don’t remember what sparked it, but I think it’s the book about the sepoy rebellion called Our Bones Are Scattered – I started reading books about Africa and India and China during the Victorian age. (BTW The Washing Of The Spears is an excellent book.)

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but the beginning of ideating a story is often a craving to read “more of this.”  So I read  lot of these books.  All I could buy and all our library carried.

After a time I started realizing something. Here I must break off and point out that I never believed Europeans have some sort of genetic predisposition to colonialism. This is something that other peoples tell themselves and as a lullaby to put themselves to sleep or as a just-so story to feel virtuous. The problem is we’re not that genetically different. Humans are humans are humans. (Yes, I read the 10000 year explosion, or whatever it’s called, but I remain unconvinced.) All humans and humanoids for that matter (all other higher mammals too) are “colonizers.” As Heinlein – and Dave Freer – have pointed out, the rule of life is expand your territory or die out.

So, how come Europeans colonized the rest of the world and not the other way around? In reading The Washing Of The Spears I realized I was seeing a pattern, the same pattern I’d read in the colonization of the Americas or any other non-European land.

It wasn’t Europeans’ “superior civilization” or even their superior weapons. What gave them the edge and allowed them to colonize, rather than be colonized, was their overcoming tribalism.

When I posted about this at Classical Values, a year or more ago, M. Simon pointed out that started with the Egyptians. Perhaps it did. I’m not versed enough in Egypt to know that. I know Greece was still to a large extent tribal. But Rome wasn’t, which is what allowed the formation of the empire. And the Roman non-tribalism extended to Western Nations and became part of their DNA, encouraged by the Jewish-Christian idea of the brotherhood of all humans.

Why would this give Europeans an edge? Well, because it allowed ALL of Europe to react to a slight to ONE European group. And Europe had another innovation – fast communications: newspapers, telegraphs, etc.

This came up against one of the techniques of tribal warfare as has been practiced forever, or at least since we can discover/interpret records. When a part of another tribe moves to your territory and tries to colonize, you kill them all, preferably in a horrifying way. Best case scenario, when the rest of the tribe finds out, they look at how gruesome the killings were and decide you’re not to be trifled with. Worst case scenario, you get a tribal war, which you might win.

Over and over again, this worked. Until the Europeans.

Descend on some small European settlement and kill everyone in horrifying ways, and the Europeans decide you’re evil. And with their communications and their large nation states, they annihilate you, or come close to, and then rule you, because you’re too savage to live on your own. (If you read the colonization stories, this was usually how it went. Greed was there, of course, but didn’t play as much of a part as certain Disney movies make it sound.)

So… I set about to illustrate this, and also our… complex relationship with the colonized lands. (“Our” being western culture, though Portugal is… er… a little different. But it WAS a colonizing power. The first, in fact.) I set it in a parallel world, and I made the magic of Europe be unified (yes, I made Charlemagne and Queen Victoria the villains. Has it occurred to anyone I don’t much like hereditary rulers?) And the magic of the rest of the world fragmented and therefore unable to oppose European magic. Much of the story is attempts to unify the rest of the magic, or to unify the world under one ruler.

Did I set about to use a character from every race? Uh… no. I wanted to use characters from three tribes, in Africa, because I wanted to illustrate how different tribal culture can be. I made reference more than once to tribal warfare (the Zulus arrived in South Africa just ahead of the Caucasians. And, oh, yeah, their wars of expansion were horribly bloody.) Yes, I also made reference to the atrocities of the Congo – because they happened, and did you think Europeans were wonderful by virtue of their blood?

Yes, the first book has an Anglo-Indian main character. I needed her to have a chip on her shoulder and also a magic that had been incomprehensible to other Europeans. Since Magic in that world is inherited/genetic, I gave her a double heritage.

Yes, the main villain in the first book – not the others – is European. That was a story-necessity. He needed to mean SOMETHING to the main male character. Also, to be honest, how many times in the twentieth century have Europeans (Eastern, mostly) gone to Africa, promising freedom and national unity and wanting only power, under the cover of their “ideology.” Look up the history of the Russians (and Cubans) in the old Portuguese colonies, sometime. What seemed like a native uprising was really just the old USSR expansionist tactics. So I used a similar device in Heart of Light…

Things I’m upset that all the detractors missed:

Emily feels discriminated against for her dark skin. Do you EVER see any of the characters think she’s less than beautiful? Yeah, I’m sure her step mother and maybe some girls at her school made her feel isolated and like an outsider. So?  There’s a reason for hte stories about stepmothers and anyone who read “boarding school stories” knows conformity was the order there.

Peter says a lot of politically correct nonsense. Peter is a member of a (left-wing) anarchist group that would have destroyed the world if it got its way.  Does it sound like I’m putting myself in him and speaking through his mouth?  Well, gee, thank you so much.

Nigel is perfectly willing to fall in love with Nassira, despite her skin color – Nassira, OTOH, has issues considering people of OTHER TRIBES as full equals, much less a white man.  Does this make her a bad person?  No, she’s from a very insular culture.  They all are.

In the second book – mostly because I was tired of reading a lot of nonsense while researching it – Sofie brings up the problem of what she is: part European, part Indian, belonging to India for generations. When they achieve liberty, is it right to kick her out? Why?

In the third book, at the very end, Nigel’s very proper parents are EFFECTIVELY color-blind. (Did it happen in Victorian England? A few times, recorded in history and biography.)

Yes, there is a gay couple in the second book. It’s necessary for plot reasons. I actually had that character as a “villain” but that made him too cartoonish. Having him act and decide things on the basis of impulses he’s denying made the book far more interesting. (Read got him and everyone else in trouble and peril.)  Note BOTH members of the gay couple have to leave their cultures at the end, though the cause of their being despised by each culture is different.

Should I go on? The books are as close to unbiased as I could make them. Yes, the story says some hard truths about what happened in Congo and some awful stuff about the arrow war and terrible stuff about the native cultures, too. Yeah, it points out humans are humans and all fallible.

Pardon me, but it is a hobby horse of mine that there is no such thing as a noble savage and no such thing as hereditary guilt. If you want to be mad at me for that, be my guest.

But don’t be my guest because you take things I put in the mouth of characters as my opinion. Look at the character first.

Yes, I know you’re flinching from the expected slap, but it does not excuse you not engaging your brain.

If readers are that offense-prone, maybe they should read only things certified to agree with them?

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m late to look at an office to rent. I’ll be back.