Fantasy with Friends: Anachronisms in Fantasy

Fantasy with Friends is a weekly meme hosted by the good people over at Pages Unbound. Fantasy with Friends poses questions each Monday about fantasy, either as a genre as a whole or individual works.

This week’s prompt is:

Do anachronisms in fantasy bother you? Should fantasy be “similar” to the time period it’s based on, either in terms of language used or things like invention, fashion, customs, etc.?

I’m nervous about my answer to this, because I think it will be easy to go through the last 13 years of posts here and find places I’ve said something other than what I’m about to say. Eh, there’s that old maxim about foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds, right?

By and large, I don’t care.

Let’s start with the language used–either by the characters or the narration (assuming it’s 3rd person). I remember a Creative Writing professor in college saying that you need to choose to either stick with time/place appropriate language or contemporary language–and stick to it. If you falter at the language usage just a bit, you ruin the whole effect, and likely the book. And don’t think you can get away with “what people think people in the fourteenth century sounded like”, you need to know that. And then, since what most people “know” about that century is wrong…well, you’re doomed. You litter your manuscript with “verily”s, “forsooth”s, “thou”s, and “thine”s, you’re apt to flub something up–and the prose is going to feel clunky. Add in the fact that most people don’t understand the proper use of ye, thou, thy, etc. (see John McWhorter’s Pronoun Trouble for a quick discussion of that). I want to say that Stasheff’s Warlock of Gramarye series uses that kind of language, and it bugged me as I read it.

Also, profanity was used to a degree that we don’t like to acknowledge. And the words used to describe minorities, women, and social classes would get authors and publishers in trouble (see the difficulties people have with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for example. And that’s relatively modern compared to a Middle Ages-set book)

And then the technology? Well, again, we run into our own chronological snobbery and understanding of earlier eras largely based on fictional depictions in TV and movies rather than pesky facts. Same for fashion.

And then we have to deal with the “time period” idea. Books like the dozens of Shannara books take place in our far-flung future, despite their semi-Medieval trappings, right? So… how do you determine an anachronism? Ditto for Brooks’ Magic Kingdom of Landover series. Or when is the Broken Blades trilogy set? Berne’s Partial Function can sort of be mapped out in relation to his Hybrid Helix, but as it’s on another planet than Earth, who’s to say what counts as legitimate custom for the time?

I can pile on examples along those lines. But you see where I’m going. One of the cruxes of the issue is that by and large, Fantasy novels don’t have a time period to be anachronistic about. They’re (mostly) some sort of Medieval/Middle Ages thing. Although some are more Renaissance-ish (The Gentlemen Bastards leap to mind). And I’m honestly not sure when things like Winter’s The Burning or Chu’s The War Arts Saga is supposed to be. Don’t even get me started on Wang’s Blood Over Bright Haven or Vadney’s Crownfall (books that I will be returning to in a few weeks for another topic)…

Now, at the same time–someone sitting around a campfire with their armor and sword sitting next to them using a post-Edison device–like a phonograph or a pocket calculator–is going to throw readers out of the moment. But a retired mercenary orc using a goblin invention to introduce humans on the other side of the kingdom to espresso-based drinks is fun. If you can justify it in-story, go for it.

Part of the fun is that it’s Fantasy, we get to set aside a lot of the reality of time, place, custom, and whatnot for something that serves the story and characters best. People complaining about a warrior riding a gryphon into battle wielding a musket instead of a crossbow is missing the point. Also, now that I’ve thrown that sentence together off the top of my head, if anyone can point me to a series/book that fits that scenario, please tell me.

I’d encourage you all to go read some of the other responses to this prompt, I can tell from the title of Briana’s post at Pages Unbound that there’s going to be some good diversity of opinion. I think it’s entirely possible that people like Briana are going to make me alter my position (I’m going to wait until Monday evening to read her post, so all I can go off of is the title).