Three Worlds Worldbuilding
Another great long article by Kali Wallace on the Books of the Raksura https://www.tor.com/2020/05/06/you-cant-eat-something-that-talks-people-and-cultures-in-the-books-of-the-raksura/
Even as an enthusiastic, self-appointed cheerleader for Martha Wells’ Books of the Raksura, I sometimes struggle to explain the series’ worldbuilding to potential readers. Not because the world doesn’t feel vivid and real to me, but because it’s hard to succinctly describe an imaginary world without resorting to real-world analogues like “fantasy War of the Roses” or “space opera Byzantine empire” or “magical Nordic saga” or yet another “inspired by Victorian London.” (I suspect there are more of those than there were ever actual Victorian Londoners in Victorian London.) These real-world analogues are so ingrained in how we talk about science fiction and fantasy literature that to be denied that shorthand causes a bit of mental flailing.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t real-world analogues in the Books of the Raksura. It just means that they aren’t always human analogues. I have to admit it took me—a person with multiple degrees in the natural sciences—far too long to figure it out. I can justify it by claiming that I was so swept up in the world and story that I wasn’t thinking about how to classify or corral, but that’s really no excuse for not realizing much sooner how all the vibrancy, weirdness, and rich diversity of the world in the Raksura books is comparable not to eras or nations of human history, but to the natural world.
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They do not see small, agrarian settlements or nomadic groups as “primitive” or “developing,” nor do they see large cities with complex cultures as “advanced” or “civilized” or something to aspire to. They don’t look upon the massive architectural ruins of dead societies as evidence of past greatness or superiority. They don’t view their nearest neighbors, the forest-foraging villagers called the Kek, as less advanced or less accomplished simply because they live in wooden huts, use wooden tools, and speak a language entirely unlike their own. Nor do they view the many species of people who live in large cities full of bustle and commerce and social stratification as more advanced or more accomplished.
There is an interesting moment in one of the books where somebody has to explain to a Raksuran character the concept of servants and a service class, because the Raksura have no such strata and have no context for a culture in which such classes exist. To them, having servants and masters in a system of resource disparity is not a natural result of cultural development but a weird, unsettling custom that some people insist upon observing even though it makes no sense.
That is not to say those concepts don’t exist in the Three Worlds. There are several groups of people who hold the hierarchical view that civilization is a series of steps that a culture must progress through in order to climb toward some lofty goal. These people view the tree-dwelling, raw-game-eating, constantly in-fighting Raksura as “primitive” and “savage.” But it is not the dominant view in the world, and it is certainly not the dominant view in the narrative. The Raksuran characters tend to greet such judgments with exasperated eye-rolling about how weird and rigid and full of bizarre quirks other people and cultures can be.
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Even as an enthusiastic, self-appointed cheerleader for Martha Wells’ Books of the Raksura, I sometimes struggle to explain the series’ worldbuilding to potential readers. Not because the world doesn’t feel vivid and real to me, but because it’s hard to succinctly describe an imaginary world without resorting to real-world analogues like “fantasy War of the Roses” or “space opera Byzantine empire” or “magical Nordic saga” or yet another “inspired by Victorian London.” (I suspect there are more of those than there were ever actual Victorian Londoners in Victorian London.) These real-world analogues are so ingrained in how we talk about science fiction and fantasy literature that to be denied that shorthand causes a bit of mental flailing.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t real-world analogues in the Books of the Raksura. It just means that they aren’t always human analogues. I have to admit it took me—a person with multiple degrees in the natural sciences—far too long to figure it out. I can justify it by claiming that I was so swept up in the world and story that I wasn’t thinking about how to classify or corral, but that’s really no excuse for not realizing much sooner how all the vibrancy, weirdness, and rich diversity of the world in the Raksura books is comparable not to eras or nations of human history, but to the natural world.
***
They do not see small, agrarian settlements or nomadic groups as “primitive” or “developing,” nor do they see large cities with complex cultures as “advanced” or “civilized” or something to aspire to. They don’t look upon the massive architectural ruins of dead societies as evidence of past greatness or superiority. They don’t view their nearest neighbors, the forest-foraging villagers called the Kek, as less advanced or less accomplished simply because they live in wooden huts, use wooden tools, and speak a language entirely unlike their own. Nor do they view the many species of people who live in large cities full of bustle and commerce and social stratification as more advanced or more accomplished.
There is an interesting moment in one of the books where somebody has to explain to a Raksuran character the concept of servants and a service class, because the Raksura have no such strata and have no context for a culture in which such classes exist. To them, having servants and masters in a system of resource disparity is not a natural result of cultural development but a weird, unsettling custom that some people insist upon observing even though it makes no sense.
That is not to say those concepts don’t exist in the Three Worlds. There are several groups of people who hold the hierarchical view that civilization is a series of steps that a culture must progress through in order to climb toward some lofty goal. These people view the tree-dwelling, raw-game-eating, constantly in-fighting Raksura as “primitive” and “savage.” But it is not the dominant view in the world, and it is certainly not the dominant view in the narrative. The Raksuran characters tend to greet such judgments with exasperated eye-rolling about how weird and rigid and full of bizarre quirks other people and cultures can be.
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