I wasn’t going to post more today, in light of the April Fool’s joke I played on you. But here’s me going at it again. Lots of stuff I wouldn’t normally stumble upon hits me via Pulse, and today I see this in Salon, Is “Game of Thrones” too white? – Fantasy fiction might have racial problems, but they’re just a reflection of America’s broader battles. Here’s the problem I have, imagine this subhead: “Fantasy fiction might have class problems, but they’re just a reflection of America’s broader battles.” You see, in epic fantasy fiction the class structure is a pyramid, with a few who have, and the vast majority who do not have (let’s take urban fantasy and the like off the table for this discussion). But that’s OK, it’s a feature, not a bug. That’s because epic fantasy is playing with the furniture of the past, and that furniture is riddled with a class system predicated on radical inequality.
The author of the Salon piece concludes:
Ultimately, A Song of Ice and Fire, like the Lord of the Rings, is the work of a brilliant and conscientious writer who is nonetheless writing in his own time and …