In writing this, I think it is accurate to say that my goal seems to be to achieve something of a synthesis between two of my heroes: Steinbeck and Tolkien. Which is crazy, I know. It did not help when I read a quote from Tolkien in which he said that fantasy and realistic fiction were intrinsically opposed to one another. And I see why he says that.

Yet, that is how I am striving to write this:
A story taking place in a semi-medieval setting - not on Earth - with the harsh overtones of realistic fiction, yet certain of the fanciful aspects of Tolkien-esque stories. It is quite hard to explain...I do not have the magnificent heroes and villains like Gandalf, Aragorn, Saruman, or Sauron: everyone is very human. (Yes, human...not elf or dwarf or any of that.) But, is still the underlying sense of GOOD and EVIL powers constantly at odds in the world. (As I perceive our own world.)

Anyway, I would simply like to hear some general thoughts on such a work. As well as any suggestion for any books that are perhaps of comparable description that I might gain some wisdom in reading.

I don't see why fantasy and realistic fiction can't be compatable, I suppose it depends upon what you mean. I have a feeling that you and Tolkien are speaking of different aspects of the tale. All workds of fiction, no matter the genre, have the potential to overlap in themes, morals, and even some basic plotlines. (mystery, romance, adventure...)

I don't think I understood exactly what you think the problem might be. Perhaps if you gave us a little better description ot the tale you 're trying to tell...?

I think that fantasy/realisim is a natural combination, and I am surprised that Tolkien (sp?) dislikes it so much; this only serves to decrease my opinion of him. However, what you're describing does not seem to be a fantasy in the classic way.

My question is: Are there going to be anything that outwardly is obviously metaphyiscal? If not, then the story can't be classified as fantasy.

If the only thing that you change is adding a new race, like dwarves, then the story is classified as Science Fiction.

In fantasy, generally, you have these larger-than-life heroes who swim for days underwater to find monsters in the murky depths and fight them with swords wrought by giants. You have guys who are quite capable of suddenly taking off on foot and running for weeks after enemies who have captured their kidnapped friends. You often have all these magic elements that the reader is not supposed to believe actually EXIST, but that they are simply overt metaphors of certain aspects of reality. Fantasy tends to be for those who like to pull out certain aspects of the real world and blow them up, to make the easily defined black-and-white world that humanity has always wanted.
In realistic fiction, though, you can do none of these things. In fantasy, though the charactes might not know that the orc-wizard is evil, the reader DOES know, simply because he's an orc-wizard! You have good guys, and you have bad guys, and they are clearly defined, and that is fantasy. So it seems to me.
In realistic fiction, though, not every day is spent fighting embodied demons or seeking world-saving relics, and nearly everyone is kind of good and kind of not.

I guess my main problem is that I am trying to make these somewhat overt usages of absolutist symbolism in a world with not-so-absolutist characters. Essentially, in a nutshell, I am trying to put Grapes of Wrath characters in The Hobbit. (Well, not quite that extreme, of course.) I have just become somewhat aggravated with the fact that, the more I develop the plot, the more it wants to lean one way or the other. For instance, I keep trying to throw in MORE seemingly magical aspects of the story when my original intent was to make them quite few and far between.

Not all fantasy consists of heroic epics. Take your mainstream storyline, then subtlely imbue your characters and/or the environment with magic/metaphysical significance. Use them to SLIGHTLY exaggerate certain aspects of your story in unexpected ways.

There are a lot fo different kinds of fantasy--sub genres if you will.

I think what you are going for is magic realism. Magic in a modern setting --think Charmed.

There is epic fantasy--think Jordan.

Traditional fantasy--Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons based.

Time travel unless in a Sci-Fi setting is fantasy. (by magical means)

Alt History is considered fantasy.

Prehistoric fiction, a great deal of that is considered fantasy.

Fantasy is a broad sweeping genre no longer limited to magic(dragons, elves, etc.)(swords and sorcery) (Tolkien based) stories.

Your world can be whatever you want it to be, no longer penned in by traditional rules-- unless you want it to be.

You need to write and let the story go where it wants to go. Many times when you try to make the story conform you will lose the "magic" of the words.

While reading your initial post I could not believe the importance you placed on what it will be clasified as. In all honesty, fantasy is anything that is not set in reality, and is not classified as science fiction. Well, there is an exception, it can be very reality based, but have some little something which would never happen in the real world.

Magic is something you either get, or don't. You can accept it or not. If you have a problem with accepting magic, or midevil super heros then don't concider them. I think most people here will just tell you to write your story, do it the best you can. Make the story good and leave the classification to someone else.

If you write your story in a medevil style stetting with swords and castles. It will most likely end up in fantasy just by the setting. Fantasy does NOT require magic, or other races, or super hero's to be fantasy. If you look closely at Tolkien you will notice only a few people had any control over magic. Magic was arround, but not in large quantities. Most of the Characters had normal weapons, road normal horses (when they had them), and besides being a bit above average...they were just people. Magic was more a part of the setting than a commonly used element.

Write a good story. Make it believable (I can believe in a lot of things myself). When it is done, let it be classified however it is. Don't think it has to be unrealistic to be good fantasy. Good fantasy is realistic. I would rather read a book with believable characters that happen to have more abilities than a normal person, than a super hero with incredible powers that is roaming arround looking for something to do. Normal people have to struggle to achieve what they want/need to do. The super hero types can become boring very fast. How many monsters can you describe dying before it gets old? How many long journies can you have where the main character walks/rides non-stop while killing monsters on the way?

A good story requires something for the reader to connect to. Last time I checked we have a serious lack of super hero's in our world. Yes, they can be nice to read sometimes, but the good stories include more average people. If you are planning a story with everyday kind of people who get drug/placed in a very bad situation and have to struggle to survive...I'll be interested.

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You often have all these magic elements that the reader is not supposed to believe actually EXIST, but that they are simply overt metaphors of certain aspects of reality.

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If you're interested in 'realistic' fantasy, this is exactly wrong. If magic exists, you have to show how it effects everyday life. What new careers and trades will come about because of the magic? Can anyone use it or do you have to be born under special circumstances or have unique genetics? Are those that have magical talent hunted down and killed? Or do they lord over the talentless members of society?

Keep asking questions like these until you have consistent rules for your magic. Once you have that, you'll be able to convince your readers that your magical fantasy world is real.

If you want some excellent examples of what I'm talking about, read Lyndon Hardy's "Master of Five Magics" and Glen Cook's "The Black Company" series and "The Tower of Fear." They both have very different magic systems, but are completely convincing.

[This message has been edited by Nexus Capacitor because he forgot how to spell.
(edited October 13, 2003)]

Yes, as I was writing the original post, I realized that I was making quite hasty generalizations, mainly because the only fantasy I have read is Tolkien and the more classic fairytale/heroic fiction stories (Ivanhoe, Beowulf, etc.).

Well, again, thanks for the advice and all. Back to the ol' word processor.

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These sound like rather bold (and not quite accurate, IMO) generalizations for one who admittedly does not read much fantasy.
Not all fantasy consists of heroic epics.

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The main heroes by any measure are the hobbits, including Merry and Pippin. All the epic stuff is just that, epic stuff. It is the literally smaller than life sized characters that give us the majority of the action, not only from their POV, but in terms of doing the most important things. Merry and Pippin take the war to Isengard, and Merry helps Eowyn (who is also not larger than life) kill the leader of the Nazgul...even though both of them are nearly killed in the process. It is Pippin who goes to the Black Gate with the King's army to defy Sauron at his own door.

And of course, it is Frodo, Sam, and an ultimately very human Gollum who go into the heart of Mordor and destroy the Ring, which comes more than merely 'close' to destroying them all.

Hubyo and Adaya: parents of Lorila. In the first part, to make a long story short, Adaya dies and Hubyo loses his sight in the attempt of saving their daughter Lorila from being born blind (as they were told by a Seer would happen).

Lorila: She has her sight, but the cure that was given her while still inutero turned out to effect her too strongly, and she cannot stand to see with her eyes, as it magnifies an inner Sight that she has to the point of being extremely painful. She can essentially see into your heart through your eyes - but only the wicked and painful parts. So she wears a blindfold all the time.

Tethiyan: Believed to be a Messiah figure of his strictly theocratic people. He rises to power and leads his people in a massive holy war. He is a natural leader and magnificent fighter, but he has secret sins that plague him: fornication and whatnot.

Alifan: Tethiyan's brother. He believes that the signs attributed to Tethiyan are truly in reference to him. However, nobody really takes him seriously, since he is nothing of a fighter. He despises his brother.

Haden: cousin to Alifan and Tethiyan. Just an all-around decent guy, though somewhat wimpy and just too trusting of Tethiyan.

Nailix: A snollygoster. On one hand, he's a prodigy of an epic poet. On the other, he's a snollygoster; he criticizes everyone and everything, and does so quite well. Except Haden; he likes Haden. He is one who "curses beautifully".

Parents that encounter tragedy because of their attempt to thwart prophecy, a girl with the second sight who wears a blindfold, a false Messiah leading a jihad, his envious brother's plot of betrayal, fools, knaves, and various complications.

Start asking yourself who your characters know who *isn't* a noble or a mage. Work out your nation's economies. You mentioned there's a holy war going on -- what are the weapons? Who's making them? Who's paying for them? Are people starving to fund the war? How do they feal about it?

No religion has universal belief. How are minority religions treated in the theocracy? (If this is foreign territory to you, read about Moorish Spain, and then about the Spanish inquisition -- those are the two extremes.) How are believers in the theocracy's religion treated *outside* the theocracy?

See if you have answers to these questions. If not, then you may find useful material in considering them. Remember that it's not just major characters who act human, but the masses who support them as well.

I am discussing a lot of stuff with this theocracy, in that I am showing the good points of theocracy (this is, taken as a whole, a magnificently functioning society) along with certain bad points.
One thing about this society that sets it apart from the others I am going to present is that there is not as much of a difference between the particular social levels. Also, they have been pretty much isolated for centuries, so, though they have assiduously kept their men trained for war, they have not actually FOUGHT any wars for generations.

I've already had some stuff to say about metallurgy, though I should probably read books about it before I think I'm finished with this (*wonders what "bessemer" means*). As it is, the theocratic society has the best metallurgists in the world, and they have all steel weaponry, while many that they will fight will be fighting with copper and bronze weapons. This is kind of balanced out, though, in that the theocracy people are highly outnumbered, and they have religious bans on the use of cavalry and think archery to be cowardly.

How are the theocracy's believers treated outside? They are hated by most. Mainly because they pretty much start an unprovoked war.

As for food and all that...I have already established means by which this decently sized population thrives in such a harsh environment...though I am not sure how practical it is. And pretty much every man, though trained as a soldier from the age of ten, is either a farmer or a fisherman as well.

Judaism around the turn of the era and classical greece were both heavily divided religiously. I have trouble picturing a theocracy in which different sect disagree on questions like 'who's in charge?' and 'what powers do they have anyway?' You know how Roman Jews reacted to the arrival of a self-proclaimed messiah. I think a fairly sophisticated secret police would be required to maintain everyone's 'faith'. This is eventually a resource drain and a hotbed of corruption (though maybe not if it's done by magic), but can last in the short term.

Ritualistic preperations for war are of limited use. There is likely to be a period at the beginning of the war during which tactics must be brought in line with reality. I would expect a great deal of friction here, as the commanders who have some actual experience find themselves in conflict with sacred traditions. After a year or so of combat, this should probably settle out.

I doubt the taboos on archery and cavalry would last if they were losing, but so long as they keep winning, they might. I would expect them to get butchered against cavalry in the open plain, and have great difficulty besieging fortresses without arrows (do they use catapults?) but be victorious in rough terrain.

As for geothermal farming, I would point out that all major geothermal features I'm familiar with (yellowstone, iceland, mid-atlantic ridge) put out large quantities of sulphur, which is poisonous. A different world might have a different geochemistry (or biochemistry) so that this might not be a problem.

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Do you think that it is feasible for people to have thriving farms in arctic river valleys where the water - emerging from the ground - is heated by geothermal energy?

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Absolutely. This is a great setting. The valleys should be thin and deep. You could have waterfalls of steaming water emerging from the valley walls. There should be a constant fog at the top of the valley where the humid air reaches the ice pack.

But the points that Narvi mentioned are quite relevant to the realism of your setting. Not only were both classical Greece and Judaism under Rome notoriously schismatic and incapable of united self government, they were also undergoing radical changes that destroyed both societies within the span of a century. The Athenian democracy lasted less than a century, the Jewish temple was destroyed for the last time less than a hundred years after Christ.

One thing that was going on in Judaism is that not only were there the Sadducees and the Pharacees (or however you spell that) fighting over the temple all the time, there were also the Samaritans--who followed a mixture of Judaism (or Israelism, I guess) and the religions of the various regions from which they had been imported. Not only this, many of the most faithful Jewish sects were in the habit of haring off into the wilderness and forming tiny subsistance level communities to avoid the inevitable corruption of the faith they saw in Jerusalem.

And the situation with the Greeks at the time of Socrates and all those other guys was even more complicated, and far less stable.

Combine these, plant them in Iceland (where a bad couple of years can spell extinction--and it has happened in the past), and I think that you've got a problem with asserting that it could have survived unchanged for centuries. A society that is planted in a highly stable climate can be stable over that kind of timespan, but for Icelanders...no. It is not possible. Particularly not for Classical Greeks and Roman Jews.

Also consider that both societies were extremely class conscious, the Greeks having an outright aristocracy and total slavery (with all the classes in-between except the middle class) and the Jews having a form of indentured servitude (and a law that permitted slavery) and houses of royal descent and wealth (but they also had something like a middle class in between).

Both societies also had glorious military traditions, but both were utterly destroyed (as extant societies, at least) by not significantly superior technology in the hands of two different empires. And I'm not going to touch the difficulties inherent in anything like a true combination of the two.

Bessemer is a modern process, named for the inventer. It simply means turning cast iron into steel by pumping air through the molten mass to remove some of the carbon (this done in a furnace that fires a blast of compressed air up through the metal, called a blast furnace).

Anciently, there was a technique that achieved a similar result though on a smaller scale. The iron ore and selected amounts of charcoal and some other minerals (according to varying recipies) was sealed in a clay crucible and heated in a furnace. Difficult and labor intensive compared to using a blast furnace, but you don't need the blast furnace (which is difficult to hit on by trial and error). One technique that was actually similar in underlying principle was heating cast iron in a crucible with iron ore (which contains oxygen). By this technique, it was possible to cast something in nearly the final form, then transmute the cast iron into something like high carbon steel, then work it at a lower temperature to produce the final product. It wasn't quite as good as high quality steel, but it was much cheaper and easier.

Infantry with no cavalry or missle support is okay in dense terrain (like fields of standing stones or in a deciduous forest) if it is of superb quality. Particularly if they are not facing cavalry with stirrups or high quality archery (long or composite bows). If they are facing stirrup cavalry with either lances and heavy armor or composite bows, then they are going to die thats all there is to it. Ditto for highly disciplined missle troops with longbows, composite bows, and heaven forbid you face crossbows.

Given everything you say, there are a lot of elements that just don't fit together. Probably the worst one is the idea that a largely classless, agrarian, insuler and ultra conservative society can exist for hundreds of years and still be technologically superior to the rest of the world. That simply isn't possible, unless they weren't part of that world to begin with (and yes, I mean unless they came from another planet, time, dimension, what have you). Conservative, insuler societies that don't have much class mobility and complex economics always fall behind very rapidly, even when they are ridiculously advanced to begin with (just look at China--one of the few examples of a society that even survived that mistake).

I have to agree that ritual preparation for war is nearly worthless, particularly when your ritual discounts the use of cavalry and missle troops.

When you base elements of your society on an anciently existing society, it is a good idea to pay attention to what happened to that society and why.

I accidentally italicized half the post

How is this organism widespread if it is edible to humans? Typically, anything that is actually edible to humans is edible to virtually everything else too. Is this based on any known phenomenon with which you are familiar?

Confederacies are typically very weak and easily destabilized (per the example of the Greeks and everyone else that called themselves a confederacy--got to add that to the Evil Overlord list of don'ts), they don't usually last for hundreds of years. The same is actually true of the moral codes followed by Israel under the Romans, the interpretation of "The Law" has always changed pretty drastically over any significant length of time. It is not necessarily true of every moral code, but complex codes associated stongly with belonging in a sharply divided community (which is the function that different interpretations of "The Law" have often served) do tend to do this.

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...if there is a mist constantly above, when and how are any plants being grown in there going to get sunlight?

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The mist will make the skies seem overcast all the time. Not all plants require direct sunlight.

Try doing a google search for "canopy forest" and "shade tolerant plants."

Fungi would probably grow very well in dark, hot, humid places. Maybe you have some caves in your valley walls. That would be consistent with a karst terrain, especially if you have hot springs running through it.

After the stench and decay have thier bones rise up and join together to become one main entity. the remains of the booth so called Good and Evil become one. Then have them jump off thier planet and swallow it whole. Fly over to earth and have the creature puke its digested planet on the earths surface. then crumble into ashes on top of this murky stew.

Fungi (in the terran sense) will not help you. They are heterotrophs, and cannot be the base of the food chain.

Here's an idea:

In the lightless depths of the ocean, there is a separate ecosystem that is supported not by plants, but by bacteria cultures that utilize the heat from geothermal vents in the ocean floor to perform a process essentially the same as plants to create their own food.

Could I invent some type of fungi or protist organism that might thrive in underground, submerged caves in this area that are full of geothermal vents?

And Damascus...you scare me. Very much. And I'm not scared for myself...I'm scared for you.

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In the lightless depths of the ocean, there is a separate ecosystem that is supported not by plants, but by bacteria cultures that utilize the heat from geothermal vents in the ocean floor to perform a process essentially the same as plants to create their own food.

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It's actually a hydrogen sulfide based ecosystem. The heat keeps things warm enough, but the bacteria eats H2S from the vents.

Something that eats sulfur would probably be poisonous to earth humans. I doubt you wanted all life to have evolved from these valleys (but I could be wrong.)

But I still think this is all a bit of a misdirected discussion. If you don't want to write a fantasy, then don't.

The important point is that this sort of agriculture is going to have very thin margins. Soldiers don't farm, but they do eat. If your nation provides its own food, you can send at most one tenth of the able-bodied men out to war.

Now, if you can import food, that's a different matter. It's tough to transport it (especially in rugged terrain) and you have to pay for it. Maybe some fertile foreign nations are paying tribute instead of being conquered, despite what religion demands, because everyone will starve otherwise.

Meanwhile, there's got to be a rationing system domestically. This will severely annoy the rich who used to live in luxury, but exempting them from it would break down everything. Presumably, they're being bought off, somehow.

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The biochemistry isn't really important. I'd just make the humans sulphur-tolerant and be done with it.

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While reading your initial post I could not believe the importance you placed on what it will be classified as.

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This is from up a bit further--but just wanted to add that you should be concerned what it will be classified as. An agent will be concerned, and a publisher may be scared off by not knowing how to market it.

A lesson from experience--I was lucky I wrote a "doesn't fit a genre" novel. I got an agent--we spent a good amount of time on the phone trying to figure out which genre it would go into--time travel, mysticism, and alt-history with a romantic element. Yikes.

Finally decided on mainstream fiction.

So it's best to know before hand so when your agent or publisher asks well when you wrote this what genre were you aiming for? Then you don't have to sound like the backside of a donkey when you say "ah--I don't know."

Oh and as to our attention seeking D--if you seek help from other writers, try to offer help in a sane way to others.

Or, novel idea, just use magic plants.

Survivor, your abrasiveness is like sweet music.

I think mundane plants would be better. You don't have to explain them if you don't want to. But if everything in the entire world is magic, including the plants and bacteria etc, it's going to be nearly impossible for the reader to relate to your world. Literally ANYTHING could happen at any time. Cause and Effect would be meaningless.