{"id":26936,"date":"2014-10-02T06:30:55","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T17:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=26936"},"modified":"2014-10-02T09:32:22","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T20:32:22","slug":"historical-fiction-vs-historical-fantasy-using-hild-as-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2014\/10\/02\/historical-fiction-vs-historical-fantasy-using-hild-as-context\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical Fiction vs Historical Fantasy, Using “Hild” As Context"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hild\"<\/a>Last week\u00a0 I posted on how much I was enjoying reading<\/a> Nicola Griffiths’ Hild<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I also remarked on a “moment of puzzlement”, ie that Hild<\/em><\/strong> was shortlisted for the “…Nebula Award this year, which\u00a0 is given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for works of science fiction or fantasy. But as above, I am currently a good three quarters of the way through this novel and so far can detect no sign of it being anything but historical fiction.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Seregil of Risingshadow.net <\/a>commented that: “the Science Fiction Writers of America may consider this novel to be historical fantasy and that\u2019s why it was nominated for a Nebula Award.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, that got me pondering on the line between historical fiction and historical fantasy, which led me to conclude that in order to be fantasy a book not only has to contain<\/em> magic, but the characters in it\u00a0 have to believe<\/em> in that magic\u2014or disbelieve<\/em> yet be proven wrong through the course of the unfolding story.<\/p>\n

The novel Hild<\/strong><\/em> is set in the sixth century British Isles, so the characters in the book believe in signs, portents, and magic (as folk did in those times), including that the main character, Hild, is a seer. Yet there is no sense, as the story develops, that what occurs actually is<\/em> magic. In my view, therefore, the novel is unquestionably historical fiction\u2014and very good historical fiction, at that\u2014but not<\/em> historical fantasy (in any way, shape, or form.)<\/p>\n

So I remain puzzled at the Nebula Award shortlisting. Personally, I think\u00a0Hild<\/em><\/strong> should have been shortlisted for, and won, the Booker.
\n.<\/span>
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week\u00a0 I posted on how much I was enjoying reading Nicola Griffiths’ Hild. I also remarked on a “moment of puzzlement”, ie that Hild was shortlisted for the “…Nebula Award this year, which\u00a0 is given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for works of science fiction or fantasy. But as above, I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-writing","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26936"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26943,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26936\/revisions\/26943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}