From the Mailbag – Building an Imaginary Society
Every so often, I get a question that makes me blink. The most recent one was something along the lines of “How would a matriarchal society work, especially in terms of politics, child rearing, property, gender roles, religion, etc.?”
I always want to start my answers with a different question, to wit, “You do remember that you are making this stuff up, yes?”
In fiction, the key thing about the worldbuilding is that the writer makes it plausible over the course of the story. Writers can make...
date
newest »
newest »
I'm not an author, but I read voraciously. One of the issues I've noticed recently is my own difficulty in dealing with/staying inside a story if the actions of the women, particularly, are out-of-period. Examples would be Mary Robinette Kowal's Ghost Talkers and Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope series, beginning with Mr. Churchill's Secretary. The Maggie Hope series is set in WWII, mostly in England, and I'm among those readers who found the Americanisms and current-age feminist remarks to be difficult to pass over. Ghost Talkers is set in WWI, and again, there were too-modern feminist and other comments and attitudes.
Then I got to thinking, and finally realized that, at least in respect to Ghost Talkers, the story is in an *alternate reality*, so feminism might well have evolved sooner than in our own world. It's more difficult to keep that in mind with the Maggie Hope books, and perhaps some of the "erroneous" usages are just due to a lesser amount of research into period slang and mores.
Thank you for your comments, and for the pure pleasure I've had with your books. The The Cecelia and Kate Novels: Sorcery & Cecelia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician are particular favorites, and I re-read them regularly.