Glad to see my meander is sparking discussion.

Given the Boxing Day theme, it’s interesting to note how few holidays are celebrated in SF/F literature. The medieval period was filled with the fests of one saint or another while the number of obscure holidays celebrated in Europe during the summer today would probably shock the average American. It seems like everything shuts down here every other Thursday throughout June and July.

And yet, one can read through multiple genre series without ever encountering a single character celebrating a holiday of any kind, patriotic or religious. It’s the lack of any holiday at all that would make a fantasy world feel less credible and less convincingly human, not the fact that no one happens to celebrate St. Stephen’s Day there.

Keep up the meandering! That’s where real thinking starts, I think.

To me, some kind of absolute objective historical authenticity is not really of primary importance in fantasy fiction. We aren’t writing academic treatises on various periods in human history, so much as we are telling stories which resonate as a kind of pseudo-mythology (if not outright mythology). Sure, they need to have some level of authenticity in order to pass the general public’s Hemingway “bullsh** detector,” but beyond that, the story and the characters are what’s important.

What people read reflects the tastes and understanding of their times. I wouldn’t want to see a great story ruined merely to satisfy somebody’s idea about what is more “accurate.” I don’t feel like we’re being graded for that. Shakespeare was liberally inaccurate even with historical facts, and certainly anglicized every tale he wrote about, in settings from Denmark to ancient Rome. Not to mention all the anachronisms. And yet he’s achieved a kind of literary immortality most of us could never dream of. Should we tell people to stop producing those plays, and put those folio editions down, because *gasp* they didn’t really have cannons during the times in which Macbeth is set?

As you say, things are very different now. You put it beautifully, that writers must treat their assumptions with care, and I feel that that cuts both ways, from authenticity to considering the reader who is going to pick up the story and read through it.

There, now I’ve meandered too. Happy Boxing Day!