From: aryk@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (A.J.S. Nusbacher)
Subject: Re: the component of fiction
Organization: University of Toronto -- Office of the Provost
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 19:46:05 GMT

In article <9210030132.aa24115@mc.lcs.mit.edu> SAUNDRSG@qucdn.queensu.ca (Graydon) writes:

>'Fiction' implies 'making something up'; the present metric for what
>we should make up goes something like 'can we document the components
>of the construct to a period culture' (theoretical metric, anyway).

...

>I prefer to describe the SCA as an organization of recreators; we
>recreate different things, and some of those things are certainly
>fiction (Arthurian mythos just as much as people who want to be
>Deryni).  Since what, and how much, is to be recreated is voluntary,
>(a point that it is important to emphasize to newcomers - stick around,
>find out what you care about, and put energy into that) and some
>of what is recreated are elements of physical culture (not much
>fiction in a chair), a stated constraint of fiction obscures large
>elements of the voluntariness of the recreation.

I would suggest almost the contrary.  The term "re-creation" has been applied
to the SCA not because it is an apt term, but to distinguish the SCA from
re-enactment.  Example:  A participant in a re-enactment of the Battle of
Waterloo knows how it's going to end.  A participant in the Pennsic woods
battle does not, therefore he is not re-enacting.

Independent of that distinction, however, the SCA is not re-creating except
in the narrow sense of re-creating certain artifacts or experiences within
the broader whole of the SCA.  When Balderik makes parchment, he is re-
creating.  When Ilaine dyes with woad and urine, she is re-creating.  When
a whole bunch of Scadians go to an SCA event, however, they are not re-
creating.  They are actually creating an environment, not from whole cloth,
but from a mixture of re-creations, from fictions, and from a bit of that
bolt of whole cloth.

The name "Society for Creative Anachronism" is in many ways an albatross,
but when it comes to thinking of a broad description of what the SCA
actually does, it is quite apt -- an environment is created which is
both internally and externally anachronistic.  (To what extent the name
has been a self-fulfilling prophecy is, of course, open to question.)
So rather than try to bend the definitions of historical re-creation or
of historical fiction to fit around what the SCA does (or the opposite--
to try to bend what the SCA does to fit historical re-creation or historical
fiction), the SCA might take advantage of the utility of the term "creative
anachronism", and accept it as a description of what the Society does.

>Or, to put it another way, one ought not to explain to newcomers
>that they have to make it up.

There I must again disagree.  The environment created by the process of
creative anachronism can work at its best, IMHO, when everybody knows
hat is going on.  If Charles the New is told (as many new people are)
that he is re-creating the Middle Ages and Renaissance, then not only is
he not being prepared for the process of creative anachronism, but he
is being set up for a fall.  Just so, if Charles the New is told that he
is participating in the creation of historical fiction, he is being ill-
prepared for the element of re-creation which is a component of creative
anachronism.

Defining a discreet process of creative anachronism also opens the possibility
of applying the process to millieux other than the European Middle Ages and
Renaissance.  Consider the possibility of applying the process to Victorian
England, to the Arthurian cycle in particular, or to a fictional millieu.  Or
to mediaeval Japan.

Aryk Nusbacher