Lazy worldbuilding? I think it is exceptionally clever to build a world by referring to (made-up) secondary sources.
The term “worldbuilding” has, I believe, two meanings - the first is how a world is presented; the second is how a world is designed. The book does the former in a decent enough fashion, I suppose, but utterly fails in the latter, simply grafting a poorly-designed magic system and mythology on an existing historical period, with no thought to in-depth implications.
I agree, there is nothing lazy about it.
As to why Strange & Norrell do not take over the world with their magic powers. Paraphrasing Strange “because a gentlemen would never do such a thing, sir.”
And even if they would, they don’t yet know how. It’s like asking why Isaac Newton never built an atomic bomb - skilled as they are, they simply don’t know enough about magic to conquer the world even if they had the slightest inclination to do so. Even John Uskglass, who was far more skilled, only took over northern England (plus a chunk of Faerie and another kingdom in the Bitter Lands).
Again, they can teleport cities. All they have to do is say, “Make me absolute ruler, or I’ll drop London into the Marianas Trench.” And the hell with them being gentleman. You know what they say: power corrupts; godlike power corrupts godlikely. Or whatever.
I’m both. Fantasy is my first love and Victorian literature is my second. I liked JS&MN the first time I read it, mainly because I didn’t know what would happen next, but I thought it went on too long. The second time I read it I thought it was entirely too long and the only character I really cared about was the Raven King which was
a huge disappointment at the end
so I sent my copy to live at the used bookstore.
I have the 1998 edition of The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror that has a story by Susanna Clarke in it. She’s not any more palatable in short story form. She understands the form of Victorian literature and the rules of fantasy, but she doesn’t have any clue about the subtle subversiveness of the former and the sense of wonder inherent in the latter.
But they don’t want to be ruler. Neither of them at any point show the slightest inclination to do so. They want to be magicians and do magic, not kings having to run a country. Indeed, Mr Norrell would have actively loathed such power even if offered to him (apart from using it to suppress other magicians at one point) because it would have involved talking to people constantly instead of reading books, and Strange pretty much avoided anything that resembled work before taking up magic so was unlikely to want a job that involved massive responsibility for the rest of his life.
Plus of course you can’t hold a gun to the head of the country indefinitely - even if you made it to the coronation, sooner rather than later there would be an assassination in your future.
I can agree that it’s cutesy. I don’t see this as a particularly strong point of criticism–indeed it’s not clear to me that it need be a criticism at all. I definitely disagree that it’s not smart. Just because its goal is different from yours, it doesn’t follow that it lacks intelligence.
My dear wife whom I love a great deal has a tendency to criticize movies on the basis that they end up being of a different genre than she expected prior to seeing the movie. To me, that’s a very poor kind of criticism–it means you had the wrong expectations, not that the movie failed in some way. I think you may be doing something similar here, though. You’re applying “alternate history” expectations to a work which is not in the alternate history genre.
Maybe. The way I see it, though, you give two ordinary people near-unlimited power in return for very little effort and no price, and no matter how much they think they’re “gentlemen”, sooner or later something will give. It’s basic human nature, and more than that - its basic storytelling.
But that aside, why didn’t they just offer to teleport Versailles to Hyde Park, with Napoleon inside, thus ending the war with a single stroke and saving hundreds of thousands of lives? They could have done that, easily. They had so much power that it’s amazing the French lasted as long as they did; having that much power would be like bringing a tank brigade and a flight of A-10 Watrthogs to Agincourt.
No, I’m expecting the same amount of logical rigor and internal consistency any fantasy or science fiction story should have. In other words, I expect that my favorite genre be taken seriously.
I agree that pretty much everyone involved has massive failures of imagination. When Strange moved Brussels I wondered whether he’d even considered just dropping the entire city onto the French army. It’s that “gentleman” thing again, I suppose.
But you read the book, right? The characters we’re talking about are just not the kind of people who would be interested in doing something like that. The way that this is so has been ably described by others in the thread.
Sure somebody would do that. Absolutely. But not this pair. The event you’re describing happens in a different story about the same world, set some time into its future when a few more people are using magic.
Okay, aside from your disagreement about what Strange and Norell would do with their power, what failures of logical rigor and internal consistency are you saying you see here? Or is it just that you don’t find Norell and Strange themselves to be realistic?
It’s been a long time since I read it, but it really seems like your whole problem is solved, as far as I can remember, by just keeping in mind that one of the rules of this fantasy world is that its Brits take stereotypical British culturalisms very very seriously. More seriously, perhaps, than real people ever did. This is perfectly fair play in a fantasy novel–it gives the author a way to explore the implications of these attitudes. Which is, of course, at least half the point of the work as a whole.
Which is a better reason for the “failure of imagination” point. Clarke’s English are really bad at “thinking outside the box” because “staying inside the box” is an intrinsic part of being British. I might even postulate that these English are more culturally rigid as a response to their history with the chaotic magic of the North.
Yes, I think you’re right about that. (I feel like this is possibly even addressed within the book itself but I could be creating a vague memory here…)
But your criticism is akin to asking why Oppenheimer never held Washington hostage after the Bomb had been developed.
If you didn’t like the book, that’s fine. It didn’t agree with your tastes. That’s not a fault of the book.
Well, to be fair, could Oppenheimer have realistically got away with such a thing? Surely he didn’t have physical access to whatever was necessary to launch a missile wherever he pleased?
But keep in mind that actual Victorian gentleman had no ethical qualms about ruthlessly exploiting India, colonizing Africa, forcing the opium trade into China over the objections of the Chinese government, and using young children as factory laborers and chimney sweeps.
The notion that “a gentleman wouldn’t do such a thing” is a lie, and always has been. Gentlemen have historically been perfectly willing to do the most horrible of things.
He could have gotten a van. Why didn’t he get a van?
If he had a van, he could have had someone drive it to Washington to hold it hostage.
I just demand a little consistency in my reality.