Faufreluches: Feudal Future

Faufreluches: the rigid rule of class distinction enforced by the Imperium. 
'A place for every man and every man in his place'.

I'm calling this after the above concept from Dune because I've never been able to chase down its derivation. Anyway, as the last post made clear, the idea of the 'feudal future' has been on my mind a bit - perhaps, really, since this post by semiurge. 

Anyway, the question I have put to myself - and, by extension, to you: where does the appeal of the Feudal Future lie?

We can trace the derivation of the concept, certainly - Patrick Stuart does that nicely enough here. But there's a distinction between an idea emerging and its longevity. I think we must claim some degree of longevity for the popularity of the Feudal Future: Dune has gone through several adaptations - the last even being fairly well regarded. Warhammer 40,000 persists, even thrives. Leaving aside specific series or universes, recent science fiction has its share of space empires shown, to some degree, from within (no isolated farmboys): Martine's Memory of Empire, Leckie's Ancillary Justice, Muir's Gideon the Ninth. That Galactic Empires were the subject of parody or jest as early as Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965) or Fit the Ninth of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (first broadcast 1980) is at least one further way to gauge this.

(From Fit the Ninth: 'The term imperial is kept though it is now an anachronism. The hereditary Emperor is now nearly dead, and has been for several centuries. This is because in his last dying moments he was, much to his imperial irritation*, locked in a perpetual stasis field. All his heirs are now of course long dead, and the upshot of all this....'

A dying but never dead space emperor? Nothing new under the fading suns.)

A working definition is in order. A Feudal Future is not necessarily one where monarchies exist - the Klingon Empire (or any given monarchy encountered by the heroes) does not make Star Trek a Feudal Future; likewise Le Guin's Rocannan's World and The Left Hand of Darkness. It must be in the future - the All-American Flash Gordon getting whisked off to Mongo is out. It must be off Earth, I would assert - which rules out the post-apocalyptic (e.g., The History of the Runestaff) and the near-future dystopian (Lazarus). A Canticle for Liebowitz must be considered influential, but not necessarily representing an entry in the annals of Feudal Futures. There must be a feudal sensibility among the protagonist's civilisation - which I think rules out Star Wars, which leans either to the blandly liberal or the totalitarian, despite the presence of Princess Leia (the NPR Radio version might sneak under the wire, however). Compare and contrast the populations governed by Firefly/Serenity's various cattle barons and planetary magistrates. 

You may dispute all the above - but that's what I'm working from in this. 

Alas, Anderson's High Crusade must also be excluded.

Anyway, a few possible answers, some inspired by contributions of my fellows. 

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Scale and Distance

The distance between the stars mean that any interstellar polity will have to have regional governors wielding significant power; whether they are consuls of the Greater American Republic or lords-lieutenant of the African Planetary Union or satraps of the Malay Star Empire. They don't have to be drunken or incompetent, but they will end up with a somewhat feudal affect. Even if one only has a veneer of historical knowledge, there's a sensical element to it.

Simplicity/Familiarity - Borrowing from History/Historical Fiction

'Knights in Space take cues from previous depictions of Knights, Blog Readers Unsurprised.'

To offer a trifle more detail on this - Feudal systems have lots of display of rank and lineage, lots of ties to personal motivations: We fight not over trade or human rights or the succession of our preferred heirs to the throne of Ruritania, but because my Father killed your Father. And we do it wearing our distinctive heraldry. (There's a difference, of course, between real feudal histories and fictional ones in the streamlining and simplifications of systems and groups. Even works that draw from a realist palette can be boiled down to Team Wolf versus Team Lion in the telling, no matter how long and thorough the appendices. Boil down further for adaptation; distill once more for water-cooler discussion.)

Space Opera may originally have been coined in reference to Soap Operas or Horse Operas, but larger-than-life depictions of interpersonal conflict in soaring language with obvious visual cues mean that the likeness to Wagner-Handel-Beethoven-Verdi opera would eventually be made. 

All this allows for various complexities to be spun around a simple, comprehensible plot and inter-character relations. As an image of this, consider the literal (well, translated) text of the libretto compared with all the on-stage goings on in this version of Giulio Cesare. Imagine how all that might be described in a novel, and the implications in the reader's reception of all the costume and set and so forth.

Mix-up possibilities

There is the joy and interest of seeing the familiar juxtaposed with the new. This is true of every science fiction work that referenced a New Frontier or a Wagon Train to the Stars - and the contrast is heightened when it is not merely rugged frontiersman in space but mendicant friars, or samurai, or fifteen-foot robotic knights. Vary as necessary for institutions, stock characters, &c.

Reaction to Secular/Rational Futures 

Let us say that the Feudal Future explodes into the wider consciousness with Dune in 1965, with Foundation as a respected forerunner. We get Lord of Light in 1967. Some of this is simply part of New Wave SF - though one wouldn't call (say) Dangerous Visions really related to any Feudal Future elements. We should also look to the wider 1960s cultural shifts.

Anyway, if the clean, smooth, bland, secular, rational, vaguely egalitarian (probably Western) future (or present) was being questioned, it should not be entirely a surprise that it might be questioned by dirty, jagged, vivid, zealously religious, instinctual, hierarchical futures**. Dune, The Incal, Lord of Light - all Dionysian rather than Apollonian. (Of course, this doesn't mean that every author longed for a dirty, jagged, &c, future. It may mean only that they wished to explore profitably ideas that might be encountered in such a future.)

It has not escaped me that the 1960s was a while ago and that Feudal Futures have persisted in popularity. But cultural trends don't spread evenly, and the very reaction I speak would reoccur in later generations***.  

Detail and Variety - Across the Board

Now, works of Science Fiction before any given Feudal Future may have imagined a number of different worlds or aliens or technologies. Wonder and strangeness form part of the appeal. But would these have been applied to the protagonist and the civilisation around him? Less likely. 

Of course, an Atriedes or a Hawkwood is more approachable and familiar than a Harkonnen or Decados. But for all that they act as (ostensibly) nice clean White Hat factions, they are participating in the wider space empire - with Bene Gesserit and swordmasters and mentats on their staff. Compare 40k; zoom out from that squad of guardsmen - who might as well be GIs with laser rifles - and you find commissars in gold braid, psychic email servers and cyborg priests singing a hymn in praise of the rack and pinion gear. 

It's not that a non-Feudal Future couldn't do this, necessarily. Think of Banks's Culture: as strange, in its fashion, as the Idrians or the Empire of Azad. Still, this is, I think, part of the attraction: participating in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, rather than being a tourist. No chance of beaming back aboard the Enterprise.

Add to this - and tying into the above point on Reaction - there's the aesthetic element: a rebellion against Little Boxes on the Hillside. Characters dressed in hulking Gothic armour or elaborate uniforms, interiors with handworked furniture and traditional portraiture, buildings (to say nothing of megastructures) dripping in statues and ornament. Hence my writing this so soon after reading Emphyrio, which both has an element of appreciation of the products of an isolated, stratified world and condemnation of the laws, mores and living conditions its inhabitants endure (aside from other ethical conditions).

Motivated Borrowing 

I've called this 'Motivated Borrowing' to fit in with the above; if one may borrow from history or historical fiction for plot reasons or a sense of delight, one may also do so with an explicit agenda (and a more focused one than the cultural motives I suggest above). It should come as no surprise that we depict history in a variety of ways: 'the Golden Age', the 'Time of Barbarism', and so forth. These may be caveated or hung about with subtleties as desired, or as the skill of the writer permits. These depictions may be consciously used to advance a particular view.

You know all this already: I, stepping a degree further, venture to suggest that the same is true of fictions aping history. This is most apparent in historical plays in modern dress - but could readily be extended to feudal futures. Obviously, a work positing a certain quasi-familiar but fictional political arrangement is in an excellent position to discuss government and politics. 

This is all in addition to those Feudal Future works that actively announce themselves as a satire, of course; Nemesis the Warlock is perhaps the definitive example. 

Anyway, another source of appeal: to have one's worldview reinforced by a depiction of the future referencing the past. Speaking in general terms, a left-winger might look at a Feudal Future and say 'How terrible! We should purge or reform the warlike and superstitious elements of our society!'; a right-winger might look at it and say 'Even in the distant future, conflict and belief will still be with us: we cannot rid ourselves of these and any attempt to do so will fail or cause great harm!' 

Of course, any depiction of a Feudal Future presumably could possess no more authority than its author possesses and correctly communicates knowledge of human nature - something which is difficult to assess. The two puppets in the last paragraph are both mistaken and any actual human being holding such a belief similar to either expressed would be capable of (at the very least) camouflaging them in caveats and subtleties. 

I don't think this is necessarily one of the stronger draws: there's a reason I separated 'Motivated Borrowing' and other Cultural Reactions. But it's not not there.

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Two questions, at the end of this remain to me:

1) What have I missed? What element of Feudal Futures draws you, if any?

2) Having assembled such a list can I devise, if not the greatest Feudal Future, at least an adequate one?

Contributions in the comments for 1). For 2)...watch this space.

* "Son of a bitch, they Golden-Throned me! What in the name of Almighty Zarquon do I do now?"

**Emmy Allen positions such a questioning under the horror umbrella in this post. 

***HCK's post 'Embodying Existential Debate' is a near-perfect example of just this.

February-March '23 Miscellany

A few things to mention here. 

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Layer Cake is a 2004 film. It is not about baking. 

It's about a business-like cocaine dealer in contemporary London getting into escalating situations within the criminal underworld beyond his cosy specialist niche. It may get mentally grouped with Guy Ritchie, but is in fact the directorial debut of Matthew Vaughn and adapts a novel by a chap called J.J. Connolly who appears to have done very little since. Daniel Craig as the nameless protagonist. All packed into a lovely compact one hour and forty-five minutes.

I don't suppose this is a spectacular looking film - though I do get a (vaguely nostalgic) 'Blair-era' sense from it. Not that I myself associate that period with drug deals - it's something in the way they make London look (institutions that once might have been stuffy looking open and casual), the mobile phones, the music in the nightclubs. There's some long slow sequences that work quite well. The bits dealing with the actual, tense, protracted business of being a middleman dealing in proscribed substances are worth imitating. 

You will find people who call this film 'Daniel Craig's audition to play Bond'. Not altogether untrue, I suppose, but don't go in expecting a performance like that in Casino Royale. If there is any Bond in it, it's the Bond of Fleming's books, which has only vaguely been captured by Toby Stevens in the BBC Radio dramas. 

(Perhaps also the bachelor pads, alcohol, stake-outs, tight-lipped meetings and vertiginous sense of being on over one's head contribute; Re. that last point - Fleming-Bond is not an expert in volcano lairs [is anyone?] and isn't supposed to deal with regiments of goons. Neither, I suppose, is Movie-Bond - but Pastiche, Parody and so forth eventually prevail). 

Craig offers a callous professionalism and relative lack of suave-ness. His Bond, though moderately craggy, is a rather polished marketable craggy.

Frankly, though, stand-offs and gunfights are the least interesting bits about Layer Cake. It's really about the monologues: narration from Craig's anonymous protagonist, speeches from scarred underworld veterans and his crime lord superiors - who have a wonderful sense of presence themselves; look out for Michael Gambon and Colm Meaney. 

And much of these are well-delivered and charismatic and not blatantly boastful or false - and to some degree self-serving or deceptive or manipulative. Or set rules that are promptly jettisoned when convenient. This is most obvious in the opening sequence - "I'm not a gangster, I'm a businessman whose commodity happens to be cocaine" - but it persists throughout. If gangster films are about power and society, this is a very middle-class film (that the opening sequence contrasts Craig with yobbos behaving badly abroad may be of note; see also the code-switching in the nightclub). Has the phrase 'a thriller of manners' been coined?

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Pilgrim. Found at Itch.Io by Mateo Diaz Torres, who also did A Most Thoroughly Pernicious Pamphlet. Anyway...

You have been chosen. As a member of one of the tower-sanctioned expeditions known as pilgrimages, you must descend into the unspeakable chaos of the ruined old world. As you go, you will be charting unknown territories and setting foot in ancient, powerful, and extraordinarily dangerous places. Should you return alive, the rewards will be great. [...] However you see your journey personally is irrelevant to the architects. They need information, technology, and updates from the world outside to keep the horrors below on the other side of the spire’s walls. Regardless of your reasoning, it is not a choice. You must go.

Appetite whetted? It's a neat little eighty-three page setting about adventuring into the ruins of the old world, full of indecipherable tech, killer robots and yet stranger things. The comparison that struck me reading it was Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines - more in tone than content, though the megastructures of both are a more direct point of comparison. Both are very busy, bustling post-apocalyspes. 

There's some low-lying religious theming (the idea of pilgrimage, a Babel-ish tower, demons, a fallen world), but not enough to become obvious or onerous. Evocative rather than blatant: there doesn't appear to be a definite kind of story you should be telling. Which I appreciate.

It also looks good. Sketch illustrations like those in the Pamphlet, boxes and borders in a simple but distinctive style. Compare Punth: A Primer or In the Hall of the Third Blue Wizard - apparently, I'm a fan. Not so fond of the Microsoft Word shape art used to fill in some of the white space. I see what it's going for in the slightly-gnomic blocks and geometric patterns, but it needs to look a little more finished if it's going to work properly. 

But if that's my biggest problem, this is at least a work worthy of your time. Pay what you want on Itch, so go and take a look.

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Jodorowsky and Gimenez's The Metabarons. I've been mulling over some thoughts on 'Feudal Future'-style space opera, and wanted to take this in. I'd read The Incal previously, and come across the whole semi-mythologised Jodorowsky's Dune. 

I've seen people call The Incal inconsistent, lacking in coherent world-building (which isn't everything, of course, but given the galaxy-spanning subject....). So it's no real surprise that Metabarons takes advantage of an episodic, generational tale to dart around a bit and use a series of left-over ideas - Cf. the castrated Othon von Salza and (Jodorowsky's) Duke Leto, and their method of making an heir.

Going into this knowing some of that, and plugged into the Grand Narrative of The Incal (which may or may not have been retconned?) almost makes this into, what, Funhouse Dune? The satyr play to Dune's Classical Tragedy? (But the Satyrs are Robots without the usual desire for drink and sex as a kind of meta-humour??) Though, actually, it's all too sincere and full of big Metabaronial emotion to be parodic, no matter how many times they mention 'Paleo-Marx'.  

Enough of this. Time to examine The Metabarons in isolation. It feeds you a stack of ideas and scenes and galactic institutions in quick succession. You never see an isolated farming planet; it's always a farming planet with a mystical secret at its core or a sect of psychic botanists growing beetroot the size of a Citroen 2CV by stroking iridescent beetles. Presumably there's a bunch of boring planets out there: the court of generic decadent nobles have to get their wealth from somewhere. 

And this is good fun! Inventive and notable and carefully illustrated. It's big and it doesn't stop being big. Further, it's unremittingly personal. It doesn't turn into being about Freedom or Justice or The Cause - rather, it stays about this Metabaron and their desires, and the interlocking of sexual desire and the wish for an heir. A most operatic space opera - especially how some modern productions can dial up the eroticism.  The Metabarons manages to work; that's the main thing. 

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Random second-hand fine: Jack Vance's Emphyrio. 

I had my expectations semi-set for this from the noisms post 'On Emphyrio and Vance's Libertarianism'. Still, such an interpretation didn't stay at the forefront of my mind as I read: there's enough world-building and simple entertainment. That must be a good rule-of-thumb for quality, no? If you read an article saying X is really about Y but you read it and you note Y but also interesting ideas or images A, B and C?

Anyway, the assorted craftsmen of the planet Halma live under Lords, Guilds and a snooping bureaucratic Welfare Agency (all libertarianism's foes combined into one Legion of Doom?). The Lords, in addition to owning key portions of their infrastructure, also export their finished pieces across space. There's got to be a planet of these fellows in every feudal future setting, right? Some fiefdom in Dune turning out cabinets for Atriedes and Harkonnen alike, some ascetic cyborg Chippendale in Metabarons. The emphasis just on Halma and the city of Ambroy keeps this pleasingly 'grounded'. 

I agree, incidentally, with noisms that the father of the protagonist, Amiante, is the real hero. Ghyl Tarvoke's deeds are clearly of an heroic stature, but they feel sort of perfunctory next to the slow, careful resilience of Amiante. 

The wonder of the goods produced on Halma and the resistance to mechanical reproduction is interesting - in an age of Ikea, the care spent on these by the narrative and the characters feels desirable. Of course, this might lead one to believe that the government and culture of Halma was likewise desirable, in that it protects and sustains such things - but the snooping and sniping by the Welfare Agency rather undercuts any argument in that direction.

Tonally, it rather differs from The Dying Earth or Lyonesse (the only other Vance I know). An exception for the leaping religion of Halma, which seems like it could slot as an episode in Cugel very neatly. This actually feels a little like a weakness to the novel: religion should fill or purport to fill some human need, and quite what it offers is never as clear compared to the Guilds or Agency. 

(Is it a problem of any novel of political rebellion that we never inhabit the mind of a true believer for the regime? Ghyll spends much of the first act confused or neutral.)

The actual final revolt feels oddly Burgher-ish. Like some event from Swiss or Flemish or Dutch history, with a foreign power routed and an honest-but-angered citizenry. 

Another novel worth your time, and one that has sparked a few ideas. Watch this space.

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Last and First Men; a strange film adaptation of Olaf Stapledon's history of the future. Released in 2020 posthumously by the Icelander Jóhann Jóhannsson and first introduced to me at Coins and Scrolls. 

I regret not watching this on the big screen. There's films that do not benefit from being watched on my laptop; this is one of them. 

I have read Stapledon, but a while back. I'm not sure there's a better way to adapt Last and First Men and still have it feel like 'a movie' rather than an art project. So: long, even narration by Tilda Swinton and lonely decontextualised cyclopian monuments. More than the sum of its parts? If properly approached. Moving? Maybe not. Something to appreciate? Yes.

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War of the False Primarch: a blog fleshing out a conflict from Warhammer 40,000. An interesting fan-led project; a bit too Space Marine-heavy for my tastes - but it's fun seeing what people come up with an the various conversions it involves.

Stodgy to read, and I wouldn't mind a PDF of the material instead. But worth dipping a toe in the water and seeing what people have come up with.

Your Wizard is a Journeyman

What does a wizard do in order to establish themselves in the world? Why are they wondering the world with the rest of these rag-tag adventurers? With the more or less Vancian magic of Terrae Vertebrae, this was the answer.

They might find a wealthy Patron, enter the officially mandated and recognised guilds, enter a religious order, become wandering ‘petty-mages’, wander in and out of naturally magical realms like Faerie, become hermits or try and form academic communities, 

Wizards of a high enough level tend to be solitary creatures, who like to try and conduct their research in peace somewhere isolated. Even in the Universities, they lurk in their towers unless necessary/desirable to address a problem or cooperate on a shared project. They are detached from the world. A certain resemblance to the powerful, self-sufficient, self-satisfied creatures, of Jack Vance's Dying Earth would not be amiss.

As younger types, they raise money/garner good will by serving the powerful in some capacity....generally for something vaguely resembling/not entirely contrary to the greater good. We hope. They attempt to build up a reputation as a reasonable sort. Universities and Guilds enable Wizards to leverage power without being Clients of a Patron/Institution that might force something on them....but it can be very difficult to form a Guild, and joining one is likewise tricky. Guilds or Universities require high standards, either/both in one’s magical abilities or/and in ones probity.  And an unprotected wizard might well have encountered problems with mob or the powerful of the world which can blot their copybook. Entrance fees are likewise high.

Adventuring wizards are something like Journeymen (whether attached to a Guild or Guild-like structure or no). They have mastered some basic spells, can speak and read Arcane or other Magical Tongues, and so are not Apprentices (who are presumably still mastering their irregular verbs). However, to be of a ‘Master’ level implies settlement, true accomplishment within the craft –to the point of crafting one’s own spells, as well as teaching others or in some way adding to the great body of magical lore.   [Hence the proliferation of named higher level spells; Bigby’s Crushing Hand, &c. ]

Further, one imagines ‘Master Wizards’ are not so engaged in the ugly little pragmatisms of Adventuring, preferring to fathom the mysteries of the universe from their (possibly literal) ivory towers . Further, the use of a ‘Master Wizard’ on anything less potent than a dragon would be overkill; frightening to non-magical persons and authorities, demeaning to the master magus and otherwise unfitting. (Everyone remembers what happened when wizards tried to run things...)

Thus, our Player can never reach ‘Master’ level; this would imply they can pull thunderstorms out of their back pockets and peer through the aether to distant realms. Even if our wizards can stretch themselves at high enough levels to ‘Master’ level feats, I’m not letting them play with the fabric of space-time. Not that any of my players are have been anywhere near such a level.  Player wizards cannot be Masters; it would require much more study than they have done. Decades more.

NB, any Master Wizards our Player Wizards may encounter may well be remarkably patronising about the Players quest and the line of work they find themselves in....