The numinous in America

[klwilliams]

At Westercon, both Lois McMaster Bujold and Michael Swanwich brought up the idea that fantasy needs to contain "the numinous", a spiritual or divine element, the supernatural. I've been thinking about that in regards to fantasy set in the United States. I find that stories with elves set in the downtown of a major city usually (though not always) feel grafted on, because elves aren't something that started out in the U.S. Neil Gaiman's American Gods were gods brought over to the U.S. from other countries. There are good stories with Native American gods and mythology, but I've been wondering what "the numinous" means in the WASP, urban United States, without bringing over gods or mythologies from other continents.

Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series springs to mind, based as it is on American folk magic and the Mormon religion. While both have their roots in Europe, they are still distinctly American. (The Book of Mormon is, roughly, the story of Jesus traveling though North America bringing his Word to the Indians.) Nina Kiriki Hoffman's The Thread That Binds the Bones, and her other supernatural stories, are another example. Michaela Roessner's Vanishing Point, while more science fictional than fantasy, is set in the Winchester Mystery House and contains at least a supernatural (science indistinguishable from magic) element.

What are the numinous elements in, say, downtown Manhattan, or the Financial District of San Francisco, or even downtown Pocatello, Idaho? There are always ghosts. Neil Gaiman created the Endless. American churches, such as the Baptists or Presbyterians, don't have the same kind of almost-magical liturgy that Catholic-based churches have.

I'd love to hear your suggestions.

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I think the reason science fiction is such an American form is because we don't have a legitimate fantasy mythology, and because we are such builders. Although the superhero comic is an American fantasy mythology, though embued with science fiction elements.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not sure we're more builders than, say, the Japanese or Germans. I honestly do think it is because we lack the medieval experience, specifically. We have no stories like King Arthur, where history and fantasy are mixed up inextricably. I feel pretty stronger it's the American lack of that that makes it hard to write distinctly American fantasy combined with our extreme technophilia. But it can't just be the technophilia, because Japan is even more absurdly technophile than we are, but they have a lot of Japanese themed fantasy -- because they, too, had a dark age where legend and history gets mixed up.

But the reason I said conspiracy theory instead of comic books is because the same sort of mixing of fact and the absurd happens with conspiracy theory as it does with legend. Oh, comic books routinely produce the most iconic characters in American literature, but no one past the age of 8 believes in Batman -- but a lot of people believe that aliens come down and probe people, or slaughter cows, or make art in fields, or even have replaced the government with robots. Like with King Arthur or Robin Hood or Roland, they can't seperate fact from fiction.

(And, for what it is worth, comic books are far more sci-fi than fantasy. Almost all the popular and successful characters have sci-fi backgrounds and the number of sci-fi stories strongly outweighs the number of fantasy stories, in large. So comics are more sci-fi with some fantasy than the other way around, for what it is worth.)

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I think the combination of no historical mythology plus being builders is what makes us a science fiction culture rather than a fantasy culture. We have hints of fantasy, but as others have said, we tend more towards horror than the numinous.