Who is Sylvia, what is she?
May. 29th, 2008 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceIt's time for definitions again - or rather for an absence of definitions, for a shrug and one of those indefensible assertions, "it is what I say it is".
This story I have been writing, the Alexandria story: there has never been any doubt in my mind that it is fantasy. Sometimes I say it's about Vikings in Alexandria, but that doesn't matter; it's still not historical fiction. They're not Vikings, and it isn't even Alexandria. It's a city with a dozen names, all of which sound a bit like Alexandria, and it has a face to match each name; I hope for a dozen stories in the end. It might perhaps occupy an Alexandrian space on the map, except that there are no maps. It is a city of my imagination, a city of exile, the last place on earth; undoubtedly, it is a fantasy and so are all the stories that I have to tell about it.
And yet, and yet - it struck me suddenly, today. No magic.
There is nothing about this story to say that it is fantasy, except that I made it all up. It's about recognisably human people doing recognisably human things. There isn't even the rumour of something strange off in the shadows somewhere: there is no suggestion that this is in any way not a story of this world, except that you won't find its setting in Wikipedia. Yet.
And yet, in my head: utterly and irredeemably fantasy.
I find this odd.
This story I have been writing, the Alexandria story: there has never been any doubt in my mind that it is fantasy. Sometimes I say it's about Vikings in Alexandria, but that doesn't matter; it's still not historical fiction. They're not Vikings, and it isn't even Alexandria. It's a city with a dozen names, all of which sound a bit like Alexandria, and it has a face to match each name; I hope for a dozen stories in the end. It might perhaps occupy an Alexandrian space on the map, except that there are no maps. It is a city of my imagination, a city of exile, the last place on earth; undoubtedly, it is a fantasy and so are all the stories that I have to tell about it.
And yet, and yet - it struck me suddenly, today. No magic.
There is nothing about this story to say that it is fantasy, except that I made it all up. It's about recognisably human people doing recognisably human things. There isn't even the rumour of something strange off in the shadows somewhere: there is no suggestion that this is in any way not a story of this world, except that you won't find its setting in Wikipedia. Yet.
And yet, in my head: utterly and irredeemably fantasy.
I find this odd.