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Mammothfail: An explanation for the hard-of-thinking	May. 16th, 2009 @ 11:50 am

I'm going to try to express this with as much clarity as possible, and to break it down as atomically as I can, because this was either inadequate, or people aren't reading it, or any of the other posts I and a zillion other people have been making about this stuff.

Let's see what's cropping up around the net.

peake: And in fact, as I understand it, Wrede did not 'erase' the Native Americans from her book, she just imagined a world in which their forebears did not cross the land bridge from Siberia, a perfectly legitimate invention since that crossing is one of the great might-have-beens of history

Your understanding, it isn't quite right.

This was, indeed, the justification Wrede employed.

Wrede: The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be that the various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas were unsuccessful; thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi Valley civilization, or Native Americans of any sort.... The absence of an indiginous population in the Americas is obviously going to have a significant impact on the way things develop during the exploration and colonization period, and I'm still feeling my way through how I'm going to finagle that to get to where I want. '

Which is, basically: A North America in which the threat of Indians was
replaced by the threat of un-extinct megafauna...

You'll note that she perceives Indians as a "threat"... but okay, that could be argued as being just a slight miswording, right? So as far as we've established, she is, in fact, looking at a vaguely legitimate alt-history setup. However, this quickly becomes extremely problematic:

Wrede: The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I'm not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won't get the right feel.

As I've discussed before, this is unsupportable as alt-history now - it's just bad history. It does not stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny. So you can't legitimise Wrede's book as an alt-history explanation. To be acceptable on that basis, it would have to have at least some effort to recognise the historical impact of this kind of change, which it doesn't. The closest Wrede gets to acknowledgement of that is this:

Wrede: ...since there won't be any Native Americans to have already done a certain amount of prepping land for human occupation, nor to be exploited later.

If you cannot see the flaw in viewing the net effect of thousands of years of inhabiting the land, modifying the environment, and cultivating crops by the indigenous population as "prepping the land for human occupation", there is a serious problem, but I'll try to explain it anyway:

1) Native Americans are, in fact, humans. Therefore they weren't "prepping the land for human occupation", they were improving the conditions of the human occupation already underway.

2) Viewing it as background preparation for the arrival of humans dehumanises the population there, and reinforces the "terra nullius" view that renders acceptable the invasion and occupation of inhabited land, with the attendant attempted genocide upon the people who were already there.

3) By viewing the Indians as a "problem" to be "eliminated" so that she gets to "play with cool megafauna", she is buying into a lot of very nasty assumptions about whether the native populations had a right to exist - or at least, to continue existing once the white people had shown up and made use of what they had done up until that point.

(Anyone else: Feel free to expand upon this in comments, I find it difficult to explain things which, to me, are intuitively obvious.)

If you still think this is a "legitimate" alt-history, please read the post I linked above, wherein I explain in depth why it is historically unsupportable.

As I have said before: I'm not saying it's impossible to write speculative fantasy on these premises - what I'm saying is that you can't do it as background. If you write a people out of existence as background, rather than as the setup for an exploration of how the world is different without their influence, then you're almost guaranteed to be doing it for reasons that are entirely offensive.

Meanwhile,

kerravongenius says:

However, the general tone remains that it is racist and evil and mean of Patricia C. Wrede to write about an America with no Native Americans but it is fine and good and reasonable to write an America with no European settlers.

Why cannot our dear raceflailers understand that if someone's ethnicity is the deciding factor in how they may be treated, that is racist?

Personally, I think it is the vilest possible insult to suggest that Native Americans cannot grasp the concept of fiction. Don't the raceflailers know that there are Native American authors WRITING fiction?

Raceflailers, accept it, you're all patronising bigots, insulting the very people you pretend to defend.

And I regret that I'm writing this sitting on my bed with my laptop on a chair next to it, because I have no desk to slam my head into. *headpillow*

No-one is suggesting that anyone - Native American or otherwise - can't tell the difference between fact and fiction. What we are saying is that the inherent assumptions behind The Thirteenth Child are extremely problematic and predicated on some very skeevy race issues, that the world-building is shoddy and implicitly dismissive of all contributions by natives of the Americas to world and local history, and that these things, in fiction, do in fact need to be challenged, because ideas are meaningful, and words matter.

Are we clear now?

Tags: history, race

Leave a comment | 31 comments

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From:	acari
Date:	May 16th, 2009 12:04 pm (UTC)

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I don't say this often about people, but there is no point at all in engaging

kerravongenius on pretty much any issue.

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From:	darkrose
Date:	May 17th, 2009 12:44 am (UTC)

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THIS.

(Reply) (Parent)

From:	sami
Date:	May 17th, 2009 02:32 am (UTC)

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Don't worry, I have no intention of doing so - however, using idiots as illustrative examples to deride is so very much not beneath me.

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From:	cpolk.livejournal.com
Date:	May 20th, 2009 10:41 am (UTC)

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...Yeah, I got that impression pretty fast.

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From:	acrimonyastraea
Date:	May 16th, 2009 01:29 pm (UTC)

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Isn't it lovely how kerravongenius disappears the Native Americans and First Nations people who actually are in the discussion? Talk about patronizing bigots. (I fail at tags and can never remember how to make the username into a nice lj link.)

(Reply) (Thread)

From:	keeva
Date:	May 17th, 2009 01:11 am (UTC)

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I noticed that too.

BTW, here on Dreamwidth it's:

<user name="ljname" site="livejournal.com">

E.g.:

<user name="kynn" site="livejournal.com">
gives

kynn

Leave off the site="" part if you're talking about someone on DW.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	sami
Date:	May 17th, 2009 02:35 am (UTC)

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... and lo, Sami realises OH WAIT THAT'S YOU.

Heh.

(Not that I can talk, given: not only am I using a different name on Dreamwidth from the one I use on LJ, I'm carefully avoiding making the link too explicit because I'm avoiding trolls following me here from LJ.)

(But anyone who wants to know, is allowed to.)

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	keeva
Date:	May 17th, 2009 02:56 am (UTC)

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Hello! I'm me!

(Says on my profile and stuff.)

(Reply) (Parent)

From:	maevele
Date:	May 17th, 2009 06:48 am (UTC)

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now i am wondering if you are someone i was already following on lj.

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From:	sami
Date:	May 17th, 2009 07:10 am (UTC)

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Not by anything like this name. On LJ I am t!e!v!r!i!e!l without the !s. (I'm avoiding googlepops if possible too.)

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From:	smillaraaq.livejournal.com
Date:	May 16th, 2009 03:10 pm (UTC)

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Don't the raceflailers know that there are Native American authors WRITING fiction?

Knowing some of the books and writers that some of the "raceflailers" have blogged about in the past, I'd venture they are on average much more aware of that fact than this person is aware that MANY OF THE PEOPLE IN THE DISCUSSION ARE NATIVE. Nice job further illustrating our points about erasure and invisibility and racist assumptions, buddy!

(Reply) (Thread)

From:	sami
Date:	May 17th, 2009 02:36 am (UTC)

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whut

WHUT

you lie!!!

Native Americans can WRITE?

not possible! Next you'll be claiming that, like, they are capable of keeping their own history and stuff and don't need white people to tell them who they are.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	smillaraaq.livejournal.com
Date:	May 17th, 2009 02:01 pm (UTC)

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Crazy talk, I know! And the idea that natives actually can USE COMPUTERS and POST ON THE INTARWEBS, oooh, that's science fiction right there, it is!

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From:	delux-vivens.livejournal.com
Date:	June 7th, 2009 05:53 pm (UTC)

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Hush, my sockpuppet.

(Reply) (Parent)

From:	(Anonymous)
Date:	May 18th, 2009 06:22 am (UTC)

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Not much to add to that, but.
About the right to make thought experiments:
The right is absolute. You get to do any experiments you want. No thought police. SF writers have been known to wipe out the entire human species just like that.
However.
If your thought experiment turns out to mean that you wave a magic wand at embarrassing and difficult (for you) issues to make them go away, you can expect criticism.
This may have been suggested already, but if I wrote an alternative history in which 1) there weren't any Jews in 20th century Europe because they had all conveniently converted and assimilated a few centuries ealier (I could, for extra credits, make a gentile Albert Einstein head an alternative, Mitteleuropean Manhattan project), 2) there weren't any Romany either, because their ancestors had stayed in India and 3) some big epidemic, let's say the 1918 Flu, had cleared lots of Lebensraum in the east by killing most of the population of Poland, Ukraine and Russia, some people would probably make educated guesses about my thought processes and values.
Wishful thinking just isn't the right kind of thought.

(Reply)

From:	elspethdixon
Date:	May 19th, 2009 07:14 pm (UTC)

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Raceflailers, accept it, you're all patronising bigots, insulting the very people you pretend to defend

Because the various Native fans who've posted saying "dude, not cool," are what, imaginary? (this person's name sounds vaguely familiar, too. Did he/she say anything similar to this during the blow-up over Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age books? Or the massive round of discussions that followed it? So many people were involved that I can't remember who said what anymore, save for Avalon.Willow & Deepad's posts)

I'm still stuck on how a North America without any native inhabitants (not to mention magic and mammoths and slavery ending thirty years earlier than it actually did) could be anything but wildly divergent.

(Reply)

From:	rubyfruit
Date:	May 20th, 2009 02:17 am (UTC)

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All right, do you mind if I sit out on this fail? At all? If I let myself get involved in this, it will make me want to throw things at people/walls/ screens.

Then again, I'm not even in this neck of the Fandom Woods, so I think I'll stay the hell out of it.

(Reply) (Thread)

From:	sami
Date:	May 20th, 2009 02:56 am (UTC)

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I think, rather than me, you should be taking this up with whoever it is is holding a gun to your head making you read this entry, or post in reply.

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From:	rubyfruit
Date:	May 20th, 2009 03:00 am (UTC)

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No, no, it's an interesting topic, it's just a whole lot to process for someone not quite schooled in the topic of alt-history.

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From:	rubyfruit
Date:	May 20th, 2009 03:14 am (UTC)

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In specific, I didn't want to just leap into something and be angry about it without knowing what it is that makes me angry. I mean, I'm not in the sci-fi/fantasy/alt-history fandom, but the topic itself was all over my friendslist here and on InsaneJournal, and I was directed here by one of those friends who said that this entry was a good place to start. So if my previous comment sounded bad, I apologize.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	sami
Date:	May 20th, 2009 03:16 am (UTC)

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Okay, that makes more sense. So are you wanting me to explain further, or...?

This post is long, but I would argue it makes a better introduction to what actually started all this.

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From:	rubyfruit
Date:	May 20th, 2009 03:50 am (UTC)

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Thanks for the link. That one cleared up a lot of stuff.

...I really don't think I want to read The Thirteenth Child. I made okay grades in History, and I still have to wonder how an author can either ignore or wave away with magic, the historical impact of pretending an entire race of people didn't exist. It's like...everything that can go wrong, basically did, at least writing-wise.

And reason-wise.

I had just wanted to get the whole picture on this issue.

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From:	sami
Date:	May 21st, 2009 03:11 am (UTC)

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I'm sorry I responded so crankily - there's been a lot of hostile reaction from people to the very concept of this discussion taking place, which is what I thought you were saying, and - not that this is an excuse - your comment landed when I was in a rather grumpy and hostile mood myself.

And yeah, that's basically the problem. It gets worse, in terms of being able to think that Wrede wasn't being horrible herself, if you look over comments she made during the planning stages. It's really, really hard to make a case that she doesn't actually hold some very unpleasant attitudes, herself.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:	rubyfruit
Date:	May 21st, 2009 04:51 am (UTC)

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That's perfectly all right.

To me, this discussion needs to take place, considering how disturbing Ms. Wrede's attitudes seem, now that I've read more on it.

(I start to ramble a bit after this. If I make no sense, I apologize.)

Ms. Wrede's responses and Director's Commentary (I don't know the proper name for it) just makes me twitch for some reason. I know that a writer is not their work and the worldviews held by their characters are not necessarily those of the author behind them. But when someone tries to justify simply whisking a whole people out of existence because of wishful thinking or to "play with cool megafauna"...makes me twitchy for so many reasons. One point that sticks out to me is that even if it is difficult to write a different culture from one's own without falling into stereotypes used by authors who have gone before, pretending that those cultures do not exist isn't the solution. It's just creates more problems, not to mention the fact that it magnifies even larger problems, such as her using language that basically dismisses Native Americans as a threat, or as "nonhuman". That's just...I have no words for that. None at all.

I'm sorry again if that made no sense, or if I've rambled.

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From:	sami
Date:	May 22nd, 2009 12:11 pm (UTC)

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Rambling is totally okay - seriously, if you've looked at my posts, you gotta know that this journal is the natural habitat of teal deer.

And yeah, it's the Director's Commentary (I like that term) that makes this quite so problematic.

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From:	rubyfruit
Date:	May 23rd, 2009 12:54 am (UTC)

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The little kid in me that has always wanted a pet dinosaur thinks that it'd be awesome if the native people of the Western Hemisphere domesticated the "cool megafauna". If it hasn't been done before, and if no one else wants to write it, then I am totally tempted to do so. But I am weird.

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From:	sami
Date:	May 20th, 2009 03:14 am (UTC)

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Right, but why do you need to comment just to tell me/us how you don't want to get involved? Why ask if I "mind"? I have no idea who you are. We're not friends and to the best of my knowledge you're not involved in any community I care about = I have no reason to care what you do or don't do.

You're welcome to read anything I or anyone else posts publically. You'd be welcome to open discussion on any point I raise (though my answer will depend on available time and will, etc), and most people would say the same, but I don't get why you need to comment to point out your wish not to get involved.

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From:	floriatosca.livejournal.com
Date:	May 20th, 2009 04:27 am (UTC)

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I've seen a slightly different version of the "fictional depictions of such-and-such group tend to include tropes I dislike, so in my own work I'll pretend these people don't exist" thing before, applied to female characters, and it always annoys me. People are more than the sum of their accumulated fictional stereotypes - is it so hard to be a little creative?
Also, my mind is boggling over how Wrede seems to think it's possible to have a setting that's remotely American Frontier-like without any Native American cultural influence. Does she know how *long* it took to domesticate corn?

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From:	sami
Date:	May 21st, 2009 03:16 am (UTC)

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APparently, it's way too hard.

And she covered the whole thing about influence when she acknowledged that the Indians had done a lot of work "prepping the land for human habitation".

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From:	stranger
Date:	May 20th, 2009 05:21 am (UTC)

Alternate story concepts, since you're right

(Link)

Turn the premise around a bit. Given magical megafauna in (what we at present call) the Americas, animals ferocious enough that settlers via the Bering Strait or other Pacific routes weren't able to settle after all, what would happen to European explorers finding the "West Indies" or "Vinland"? This leads to a couple of questions, such as why there aren't ferocious magical animals in Europe/Asia/Africa. Um... allow that as a story premise, maybe. And, yes indeed, the continent as discovered by Leif Ericsson or whoever would be so vastly different that it's effectively a re-set on *all aspects* of American history, North and South. No Pizarro stealing the Incas' gold, giving Spain a huge inflation and currency devaluation problem. No good reason to fund many exploratory fleets, if the investor doesn't get something like chocolate or tobacco or potatoes (after the metal trinkets have messed up the economy) out of it. The Americas becomes a dangerous curiosity, not a potential colony.

In fact, if the megafauna are as effective as all that at keeping out human invaders, do any of the explorer ships come back at all? Let's assume people keep trying, since it's not *quite* as hard as getting out of a gravity well and jumping to the moon. But, it would be hard work for no real reward, even though (popular history to the contrary) it was reasonably well known that the Earth was not flat and nobody could really fall off the edge, so the sailors who went thataway had to be going *somewhere*. Wouldn't one possible outcome to be that a subset of explorers who made it across the Atlantic would manage some kind of accord, or communication, or symbiosis, with the magical American megafauna, and bring them back to Europe, whereupon the magical megafauna mojo proceeds to depopulate Europe as well? (And thence Asia and Africa, but maybe someone in there would figure some kind of co-existence technique. Or rival magic.) Okay, that's not the story we're after, but it's something to consider.

Would Europeans eventually get a foothold on the new continent(s) because of counter-magic -- and what kind? Would it be physical weaponry such as gunpowder and silver bullets, biotoxins, lasers? It might take a few centuries more than it did in our history, and the Renaissance and a good lot of the Industrial Revolution would have gone on anyway... I think. Would those have been a little different, or a lot different, without American colonies interacting with various European nations?

Um, that's the first couple of questions I can think of. Benjamin Franklin-esque history in the 1700s A.D. in North America is *just not on*.

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From:	(Anonymous)
Date:	May 30th, 2009 04:12 pm (UTC)

kept out by

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Earlier attempts to colonize America (by Siberians and others) failed because of ice dragons living in the straits and by a magical barrier (whose breaking is a big plot premise of the book).

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