Microfiction from the SLP Community: Part 1

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article here

With thanks to @Sideways, @zaffre, @Mumby and @Charles EP M.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Accidental President Theodosia is *chefs kiss*

 

[Thande]

This is a good idea for an article, we take the list-based fiction for granted but it's probably quite an unusual concept outside AH circles.

 

[Time Enough]

A great selection of lists here, I did like this remark;

It can also be an idea that can later be expanded on, many of SLP's novels are based around ideas first expressed in that kind of list. Once you have thought up a world, you can then explore it in much more traditional narratives

Whenever I write lists it’s often with the idea of “If I were to do a work set in this world, what would it feel like?”

Lists are just as much about capturing a mood or an idea for a thematic direction than just a list of figures. I do think the most interesting ones, are the ones which are about telling a compelling idea or story in a very small space.

 

[RyanF]

This is a good idea for an article, we take the list-based fiction for granted but it's probably quite an unusual concept outside AH circles.

Outside of AH I don't know if list-based fiction would be considered something in its own right as opposed to just part of reams and reams of worldbuilding notes. Probably helped in part because some of our understanding of history is itself list based: lists of governments, monarchs, French Republics/Empires...

There's no reason you couldn't do a similar list for non-AH. Say, for example, a list of starship captains in a science fiction setting. Only thing is, I think most would see that as a starting point or background to something else as opposed to a thing in itself.

It's particularly useful for AH because often times there are ideas that are best served by the brevity of a list format. Like, you might not get a full TLIAx out of, for instance, Patrick Stewart choosing to leave Star Trek: The Next Generation between seasons three and four, nor is that idea really conducive to an actual vignette/story, but a list of series stars/captains of the Enterprise-D would be interesting and enough to capture the idea.

 

[Time Enough]

There's no reason you couldn't do a similar list for non-AH. Say, for example, a list of starship captains in a science fiction setting. Only thing is, I think most would see that as a starting point or background to something else as opposed to a thing in itself.

I recently did a list of Prime Ministers of a Fantasy Nation inspired by the chaos of the Post War West. Like there is a limit, but as a way to dip your toe into an alternate or fantasy world it’s fun and additionally allows you to experiment with names (like foolishly using Esperanto for your politicians names).

 

[RyanF]

I recently did a list of Prime Ministers of a Fantasy Nation inspired by the chaos of the Post War West. Like there is a limit, but as a way to dip your toe into an alternate or fantasy world it’s fun and additionally allows you to experiment with names (like foolishly using Esperanto for your politicians names).

Funnily enough, I was thinking about lists in that exact context this morning. The way authors like Anthony Hope or Ursula K. Le Guin would just make up a European country as a setting seems an underused concept round these parts. I wanted to do something on a nation lurching from crisis to crisis and just being a mish-mash of various aspects of France, Germany and Italy from the late 19th to early 20th century.

 

[Ciclavex]

Funnily enough, I was thinking about lists in that exact context this morning. The way authors like Anthony Hope or Ursula K. Le Guin would just make up a European country as a setting seems an underused concept round these parts. I wanted to do something on a nation lurching from crisis to crisis and just being a mish-mash of various aspects of France, Germany and Italy from the late 19th to early 20th century.

For most of European history since Charlemagne, the idea of there being some small, obscure country no one had heard of from among quite a variety of different cultural mixes and backgrounds has been perfectly reasonable; even if you knew it was fictional, it feels like a real place in a way that it’s harder to do in more recent times.

A lot of fairy tales and their modern adaptations essentially take place in areas like that, as well as more modern speculative stuff and alternate history.

 

[Thande]

Outside of AH I don't know if list-based fiction would be considered something in its own right as opposed to just part of reams and reams of worldbuilding notes. Probably helped in part because some of our understanding of history is itself list based: lists of governments, monarchs, French Republics/Empires...

There's no reason you couldn't do a similar list for non-AH. Say, for example, a list of starship captains in a science fiction setting. Only thing is, I think most would see that as a starting point or background to something else as opposed to a thing in itself.

It's particularly useful for AH because often times there are ideas that are best served by the brevity of a list format. Like, you might not get a full TLIAx out of, for instance, Patrick Stewart choosing to leave Star Trek: The Next Generation between seasons three and four, nor is that idea really conducive to an actual vignette/story, but a list of series stars/captains of the Enterprise-D would be interesting and enough to capture the idea.

It could definitely work for something like fantasy football (list of managers, list of world cups, whatever) but I don't know if it's ever been tried.

 

[Time Enough]

I wanted to do something on a nation lurching from crisis to crisis and just being a mish-mash of various aspects of France, Germany and Italy from the late 19th to early 20th century.

Consider my version of that style of idea. I think it’s fun because it allows you to explore ideas with a bit more freedom in some aspects, for me, allowing me to explore my favourite ideas about the Post War era and the Consensus that emerged and how a number of people shredded it for power, profit or grand ideals etc.

Also it’s just fun playing with your own characters on occasion instead of twisting a real life figure to fit a narrative.

 

[Alex Richards]

For most of European history since Charlemagne, the idea of there being some small, obscure country no one had heard of from among quite a variety of different cultural mixes and backgrounds has been perfectly reasonable; even if you knew it was fictional, it feels like a real place in a way that it’s harder to do in more recent times.

A lot of fairy tales and their modern adaptations essentially take place in areas like that, as well as more modern speculative stuff and alternate history.

I think it's telling that this shifted from 'somewhere in approximately the Rhineland' to 'somewhere in the Balkans' around WWI.

 

[Jared]

I think it's telling that this shifted from 'somewhere in approximately the Rhineland' to 'somewhere in the Balkans' around WWI.

Someone slipped over the Borduria.

 

[M_Kresal]

I think it's telling that this shifted from 'somewhere in approximately the Rhineland' to 'somewhere in the Balkans' around WWI.

Ah, Ruritania, how I’ve missed thee.

 

[Thande]

For most of European history since Charlemagne, the idea of there being some small, obscure country no one had heard of from among quite a variety of different cultural mixes and backgrounds has been perfectly reasonable; even if you knew it was fictional, it feels like a real place in a way that it’s harder to do in more recent times.

A lot of fairy tales and their modern adaptations essentially take place in areas like that, as well as more modern speculative stuff and alternate history.

And of course we have graduated from 'some island somewhere that's not been mapped yet' to doing the exact same stories but with alien planets (hence why they rarely seem to be bigger than a village on an island in storytelling terms).

One fascination I have is - in the 1950s and 60s we realised we could no longer set alien stories on Venus or Mars because we now knew what they were actually like; at what point does our list of local exoplanets become sufficiently settled and well-known that sci-fi authors can no longer make up an alien homeworld orbiting Epsilon Eridani or Alpha Centauri?

 

[RyanF]

And of course we have graduated from 'some island somewhere that's not been mapped yet' to doing the exact same stories but with alien planets (hence why they rarely seem to be bigger than a village on an island in storytelling terms).

One fascination I have is - in the 1950s and 60s we realised we could no longer set alien stories on Venus or Mars because we now knew what they were actually like; at what point does our list of local exoplanets become sufficiently settled and well-known that sci-fi authors can no longer make up an alien homeworld orbiting Epsilon Eridani or Alpha Centauri?

Move onto islands on those exoplanets that haven't been mapped yet.

And the cycle begins again...

 

[Coiler]

For most of European history since Charlemagne, the idea of there being some small, obscure country no one had heard of from among quite a variety of different cultural mixes and backgrounds has been perfectly reasonable; even if you knew it was fictional, it feels like a real place in a way that it’s harder to do in more recent times.

It's basically the opposite of North America being dominated by three genuine space filling empires.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Superhero comics continued the Ruritanias (and they did those too) with dozens of small Latin American and African nations. It's been years since these worked as the traditional 'who knows all the countries there' approach but it sticks around as a genre trope.

 

[Von Callay]

It's basically the opposite of North America being dominated by three genuine space filling empires.

It does work on the level of being able to make up a completely fictional huge city just about anywhere you want to put one in the United States, though.

 

[Thande]

Superhero comics continued the Ruritanias (and they did those too) with dozens of small Latin American and African nations. It's been years since these worked as the traditional 'who knows all the countries there' approach but it sticks around as a genre trope.

It does work on the level of being able to make up a completely fictional huge city just about anywhere you want to put one in the United States, though.

This is another good example of a 1930s holdover trope sticking around in the big US superhero comics universes which fell away in other media, like the article I wrote about the "Clark Kent Problem" - in the 1930s, characters who were Masters of Disguise were common, so nobody found it odd that nobody recognised Clark Kent as Superman or vice-versa. (In fact, in early stories he routinely disguises himself as other people too).

I think you could argue it's also a case where the tendency to put the older 'more genuine' version on the big screen then keeps resetting the comics when they try to move on, like how in the Bronze Age they tried to update Clark Kent to being a TV anchor, but then the Christopher Reeve films maintained his classic interpretation so it ended up being reset in the comics. Similarly, I believe they tried to come up with a coherent geographical location for Metropolis and Gotham City in the Bronze Age comics but that ended up being reset too (though it did kind of appear on the big screen in Batman V Superman).

 

[Charles EP M.]

Similarly, I believe they tried to come up with a coherent geographical location for Metropolis and Gotham City in the Bronze Age comics but that ended up being reset too (though it did kind of appear on the big screen in Batman V Superman).

I've seen an old map that has Smallville near Metropolis and it's in New York or Jersey rather than Kansas, as the films decided