Reality Skimming

Dialogues: Lynda Williams and a guest author tackle the same topic from two points of view.

Lynda Williams: Why Did it Have to be Swords?

What's the social function of combat?

Two fold. Sheer bloody win because your life depends on it. And a competition to identify the better man. It's usually been men, throughout history, and biology leans in that direction. Which only makes Vrellish culture all the more interesting, for me, but that's a separate issue.

The fascination Sevoites show for dueling is a combination of our culture's engagement with sports, jurisprudence and politics, because Sword Law combines these. Honor, meaning trustworthiness, is critical because it underpins economics. A cheating fencer is just as apt to cheat you on trade deals. A house that puts on a good show on the challenge floor is more attractive -- strong and trustworthy. So an honorable rep also functions as advertising and public relations. In Sevolite society, the cost of cheating is much greater than the cost of losing a single duel. Usually. And when it isn't, people are tempted. Just like Olympic athletes are tempted to cheat when winning becomes the only "good".

Ancient warfare is full of examples of competitive warfare vs. total warfare. It makes sense for any culture, not just reality skimming ones. Total warfare trashes economies and devastates populations. In the Okal Rel Universe, Killing Reach is a legacy of total warfare. Nesak wars border on it. The last three books deal with this delicate balance teetering and breaking down in patches. I believe war between Rire and Sevildom would be much worse than the worst Nesak war, though, because the signals for crying "hold enough" just wouldn't work and it would escalate to genocide.

The fact combat is personal and targeted to one enemy, is ultimately what makes hand-to-hand combat more honorable. Never entirely fair, for the reasons Matthew suggests in an email discussion: "A woman fighting a man twice her size is likely to be at a serious disadvantage in unarmed combat, though training can mitigate this risk. The use of swords can further mitigate this disadvantage, but the use of firearms can make the advantage commonly enjoyed by men over women almost irrelevant." What is "fair" though? If it means you play by the rules and have some opportunity to decide whether to engage, then hand-to-hand combat under Sword Law is much fairer than involuntary victimization of civilian populations in total war. In the same email conversation, Matthew writes, "The problem with firearms is that if you miss, you might end up shooting bystanders. Furthermore, the use of modern military firearms makes warfare impersonal. If the sword is a morally superior weapon, it's because it makes combat personal; you have to look the person you're fighting in the eye, and you can't dehumanize him and soothe your own conscience by calling him a mere target."

Here's the problem as I see it. There's always an element of any society that craves competition to get ahead, however that's defined. If you don't provide legitimate outlets for ambition, the society is in trouble. But these outlets should be regulated so as not to trash the neighborhood in their expression. I particularly like this quote from Matthew in our email discussion: "A sword is an extension of your body. A bullet can have your name on it. A nuke, however, is addressed "To whom it may concern".

In our world, the outlet used to be excelling in school. In the medieval world, it was becoming a knight. All sorts of unfairness, cheating and cruelty of various sorts abounded. But there were also rules. For example, knights might be abominable to peasants (particularly peasant bowmen) but they treated one another like gentlemen when holding prisoners for ransom. Honor didn't mean you couldn't beat a servant or rape a woman. It meant you had to be trustworthy in the eyes of your peers: friends or enemies.

Horth is one of my experiments in fairness. Is it fair to the opponent who goes up against him on the challenge floor or in space, that he's a spatial genius? Not really. Unless the person who volunteers for the experience is well aware of his talents, like D'Therd in Throne Price. (There's also the whole fairness issue in D'Ander's duel with D'Therd in Pretenders, but that's another matter.)

But flip the tables and suppose winning depends on an argument or social graces. Then Horth is at the disadvantage.

In the last book of my series, I introduce VRs -- super Sevolites with little personality, created by the Lorels. Eler advises crack swordsman Vras Vrel not to volunteer to go up against one of these beings and the sense of unfairness is there, again. Vras is a real person who duels. The VR is something else. The context in which Sword Law is an expression of civilized behavior is breaking down.

In my research on fencing I read a lot of historical accounts of the use of swords in both field warfare (where usage is very different) and personal combat of the more showy or personal kind. And there's nothing at all "nice" about the injuries. A person really does need nerves of steel to face someone else, one on one, who is planning to kill him, as well. As Erien always complains, in my saga, killing people with swords is an ugly, brutal business. And he's right. But it's still more civilized than cracking planets or stations using rel-ships.

Dialogues: Lynda Williams and a guest author tackle the same topic from two points of view.

Matthew Graybosch: Why Did it Have to be Swords?

Even the most casual reader of speculative fiction will notice the preference for swords when a protagonist must resort to violence. This cannot always be justified in science fiction, but the preference becomes more pronounced as science fiction softens, puts aside rationalism, and becomes fantasy. Hiro Protagonist bore an unnamed katana in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Jedi and Sith alike bore lightsabers, swords with plasma blades, in the Star Wars films. Michael Moorcock's first protagonist, John Daker, first bore Kanajana, and then the Black Sword -- and his other incarnations wielded other manifestations of the Black Sword, such as Dorian Hawkmoon's Sword of the Dawn, and Elric's hellblade Stormbringer. Gandalf, the archetypal wizard of modern fantasy, carried the elvish sword Glamdring. Even in Alexandre Dumas' historical romances, the Musketeers did most of their fighting with rapiers, not firearms.

Why do swords figure so prominently in fantasy? One could point at human history, and suggest that in every human culture capable of metalworking people forged swords. Swords, named or unnamed, figure prominently in the mythology of many European and Asian cultures. Perseus was given a sickle-bladed sword with which to behead Medusa. King Hrothgar gave Hrunting to Beowulf when he set out to kill Grendel's mother. In Judeo-Christian mythology, the archangel Uriel carried a flaming sword with which to keep humans from returning to the Garden of Eden. King Arthur wielded Excalibur, but was warned by Merlin to value the scabbard more highly than the sword, for the scabbard would preserve his life no matter how badly he was wounded. The French knight Roland carried Durandal. In east Asia, the Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi (Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven) figures so prominently in Japanese mythology that when it was given to the mortal Yamato Takeru it eventually became part of Japan's Imperia Regalia -- emblems of the Emperor.

We can claim that swords hold preeminence in fantasy because they figure so prominently in so many cultures' hero myths. However, that still does not explain our fascination with swords in a century where wars are fought with more efficient weapons: semi-automatic rifles, machine guns, cruise missiles, and now remotely piloted drones. Who needs a sword, to fight enemies one at a time and hand to hand, when we have the technology to kill in bulk and at a distance?

Though I am neither a psychologist nor an anthropologist, I would submit that we romanticize the sword because we have made violence utterly impersonal in real life. A modern soldier in a modern war can be killed without warning by an unseen enemy, and have no chance to fight back. The use of the sword makes violence personal. By making violence personal again, we limit the scope of conflict to the combatants. Lynda Williams builds an entire ethical system based on the need to preserve habitable space by restricting the scope of conflict in her Okal Rel books, and her Sevolite culture gives this system a simple name: Sword Law. I work along similar lines in my Starbreaker series, since characters in my setting not only wished to preserve their environment, but live in a culture possessed of a horror of government-sponsored mass violence.

As seen in films like The Princess Bride, the use of swords makes violence more appealing in the aesthetic sense, as we can see the combatants make of combat both a dance and a dialogue. I doubt anybody would be satisfied if Inigo Montoya were to say, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.", and then open fire on Count Rugen with an AK-47 set for fully automatic fire.

It is reasonable to claim, however, that violence could be made personal and the scope of conflict limited without the use of the sword. Clubs, knives, and brass knuckles would do just as well, to say nothing of empty-handed martial arts like aikido, kung fu, savate, and krav maga. Indeed, bare-handed fighting figures prominently in Asian media, though Chinese martial arts films tend to blend empty-handed fighting with the use of melee weapons. However, there are other reasons for heroes in speculative fiction to carry swords, and not knives or brass knuckles. The sword is considered an aristocratic weapon, while knives and knuckle dusters are for thugs and gangsters. Though every man in Rome's legions carried a sword, later European cultures limited the use of the sword to the upper classes for economic reasons. Though the Roman gladius was a weapon simple enough for a common soldier's use, swords in use during the European Renaissance tended to require years of rigorous training for which only the wealthy had time. By the Enlightenment, swordplay had become a liberal art, and the use of swords in combat was limited to cavalry charges, and duels between gentlemen.

Bearing all of this in mind, it is little surprise that with exceptions like David Gemmell's Druss, most heroes in fantasy and the softest forms of science fiction often favor the sword. Our mythological heroes carried them. Knights and nobility carried them. Officers and gentlemen (and sometimes ladies) carried them. Why not place them in the hands of starfaring Sevolites, or Adversaries sworn to the defense of liberty and justice for all?

Next week: Lynda Williams writes her response to the central question.