The World, but not as we know it...

 

I've read a few books recently which have left me feeling, at the very least, short-changed, and in one case, downright fed up and angry. In most cases I've managed to bite my tongue and carry on reading and reviewing the book. But in that one case I couldn't even finish, let alone review, it.

So what was the problem? In a word: the World. All these books were fantasies, ranging from stories set in the real world with the odd thing tweaked, to a full-on alternative world dystopia (which was the one that gave me the problem) and stages in between.

Now, maybe I've spent too much of my life reading and watching sci-fi and fantasy,  maybe I'm too much of a fan of masters of these genre, people like Stephen King, Philip K Dick, JRR Tolkien, to name a few. And maybe it's because I write fantasy and scifi myself. Whatever, as far as I'm concerned, if you create an alternate world, no matter how minimally alternate, then it has to hang together. Totally. And these books didn't do that.

Here's an example from the book I couldn't finish. It's set in a dystopian world, riddled with disease and failing technology. So far so good. Then the protagonist visits a club with coloured floor lighting and you wonder where the electricity comes from, especially as the vehicle she uses to get there has to be powered by burning coal. But you keep going. After all, maybe the electricity is just for the wealthy few. Then one of the few pulls out a quill pen to write a letter.

 

A quill pen?Seriously? Aside from the fact that there is no mention of birds anywhere and as plant life seems to have largely disappeared, it seems reasonable to asume that there are no birds to provide quills anyway, why go for a quill pen in the first place? So, there are no factories to produce biros or gel pens or whatever. But what about nib pens? Surely they would fit more neatly into the whole steampunk environment suggested by the coal-powered cars.

Maybe this seems petty to you but it bugs the hell out of me. It speaks of sloppiness, a lack of faithfulness to the genre. Fantasy only works if the reader can suspend disbelief. But if she is constantly fussing about details like this, disbelief goes out of the window, and the story you are trying to tell goes with it.

And that all got me onto wondering how this could have happened. How could a book where the alternative world was so badly constructed have been published? My first thought was that dystopia is the thing at the moment and maybe this is what happens when the parties involved don't really understand the fantasy genre. And then another, rather saddening, thought hit me. Maybe it's because these are books for children and young adults; maybe the parties involved think it's not so important to get everything tight, that kids won't worry about quill pens and coloured floor lights.

Either way, it's a shame. Fantasy and sci-fi have their own rules and you break them at your peril. Readers won't put up with this sort of shoddy world-building and in a crowded marketplace it's not a good idea to alienate your potential audience.