Slavery in fantasy

I'd say that as long as you're not glorifying the institution of slavery, then you're pretty safe. If you can - and it may very well be impossible to do so - I'd suggest trying to work something into the naration that suggests you, the author, realize that slavery is wrong, but yet the characters, which are separate from you, do not. It's tricky, but it can be done.

I have a MAJOR dislike of slavery that is implied to be okay in fantasy. It's 2010, how can we be implying that the enslavement of humans or humanlike creatures is cool? I will give you a few examples.

There's a series of novels about people who keep dragons to fight in war, and I only made it 2/3 through the first book because the dragons were basically enslaved by the humans. They were intelligent, sensitive human-like creatures, and they were enslaved, and nobody remarked upon it as being anything less than super-awesome. The MC and his dragon were total BFFs, and yet, master and slave. Plus there was no reason the dragons didn't toastify everyone and free themselves. I couldn't get over it. I think this state of slavery may have been remarked upon later in the series, but I'll never know because I couldn't really get over it.

An UF series I read has humans who enslave genies in lamps, and only let them out to do their bidding. Again, the genies are intelligent and sensitive and humanlike. The main genie is even super sexy. Nobody in the book realizes that this is basically straight up evil UNTIL THE MC BECOMES A GENIE AND REALIZES THAT IT IS WRONG TO ENSLAVE GENIES. This sort of thing is enraging to me. I haven't read past the first book.

One book that I didn't really like DID have a nice subplot where the MC ended up hanging out with a humanoid cat which was the pet of someone in her apartment building. It bothered her that the creature was enslaved to its owner, so when she wound up inheriting the pet, she freed him and insisted he do whatever he wanted to do.

Another good example is "Bicentennial Man" by Isaac Asimov--a house servant robot basically "becomes" human and his owners encourage him. The movie isn't too bad, either.

I would suggest reading some historical fiction set in cultures where slavery was common (probably a good deal of ancient Greek stuff out there) and see how it's handled. I recall reading a book for class once, THE LAST OF THE WINE, in which characters had slaves, IIRC. (Also a sidenote, Rome might be good to watch. Slaves abound, acting like real peoples, fancy that .)

I don't know, but in fantasy you don't have to be bound by history. When I have written about it I have tended to treat it as a fact of life and not make a fuss about it. Mostly everyone is so horrible to everyone else as a matter of course that slavery is not the worst of it. Generally I think readers tend to treat fantasy differently from history and expect it to address the contemporary in some way or another,however obliquely.

Real life historical example: The Mosaic Law Code of the ancient Hebrews

Every tribe was given a certain amount of land, and every family of that tribe was given land within the tribe's area, thus giving specific areas of inheritance for specific tribes. People could lease land for a maximum of 49 years to get some extra money, because every 50th year was the "Year of Jubilee" when all land was given back to the original families (to preserve tribal and familial inheritance).
Same could be done with people. Running short on money? Starving? You could lease yourself to someone else, and they would pay you for your years of service, plus feeding and housing you (depending on the arrangement). In the Year of Jubilee, all slaves were set free again, whether Jewish or Gentile.

The MC in my wip is a slave. Part of what she's trying to accomplish is to track down her family and get them out of slavery.

edit: The culture that instituted slavery isn't evil. 300 years before the story began their ancestors conquered and enslaved the local people because of a religious edict that was passed down from their supernatural patron. Currently there are corrupt, nasty slave owners and then gentler humanistic ones who educate their slaves under the table and treat them decently. There are hardcore deists who reject any attempts to legalize the freedom of the slaves, and equally hardworking abolitionists.

I guess one of the themes that emerged as I was writing is that anything that takes the freedom to choose from another sentient being is bad.

I have a main MC who falls in love with a princess from a country where slaves are kept as servants and laborers. He hates the idea of slaves and slavery, yet he can not deny his love for her.

His love interest does not know his feelings until he wins a pleasure slave and before he can set the slave free, he is poisoned. After recovering, he convinces her of his true intent. But it is his love interest who show him that he can not just set the slave free in their society because of how she has been trained since a small child. They must teach the slave the true meaning of freedom and to do this, they must take her in as part of their group.

All of this of course is in the background to the main plot and other sub plots, but it adds tension and a little bit of social preaching, if one is so inclined to see it that way...

I think it depends on the kind of story you're doing.

If your world is like George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire & Ice where most of the characters are fairly despicable anyway, then nobody will probably care if some (or all) of them own slaves.

Now, if you're doing light-hearted David Eddings kind of stuff, then readers might have a harder time reconciling how the happy-go-lucky protagonists can be brutal (or not-so-brutal) slave-owners.

Giovanni_Spada said:

I think it depends on the kind of story you're doing.

If your world is like George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire & Ice where most of the characters are fairly despicable anyway, then nobody will probably care if some (or all) of them own slaves.

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True enough. There's hardly a character in that series that doesn't do something morally questionable at some point. Then again, there is at least one character who finds it disgusting and incites a slave rebellion, and doesn't respond very kindly at all to the slavers responsible. Some others disagree with the decision, but the story does not glorify slavery in the slightest.

I guess, to repeat advice already said, the characters might be perfectly content with such things, but treating it as a non-issue is likely to alienate readers.

If your setting is not as advanced as modern earth then your characters are likely to have very different views about slavery. That's just how it is.

It's important to remember that there were different forms of slavery, and different sources of slaves in different societies.

In the Antebellum South, there was very little (if any) legal protection for slaves, and slavery was based on race. But in many ancient societies, virtually anyone of any nationality could become a slave, and there were (some) laws that safeguarded the slaves. For instance, a Roman slave could theoretically save up to buy his own freedom with a sum called a peculium. In the Old Testament, one Israelite could become a slave to another, but had to be offered his freedom after seven years. In pre-Revolutionary America, a good deal of labor was provided by "indentured servants" who had to work off their passage to the New World under harsh conditions - but who might eventually become free.

Of course, the balance of power still lay overwhelmingly with the owners, and many of these laws were probably ignored more often than not. But one approach to slavery in fantasy is to acknowledge that slavery sucks, but that not all slavery is as absolute as that practiced in the American South before the Civil War.

Africa historically had several forms of slavery that were not considered bad. POWs, debtors, etc. Owning slaves may or may not make your characters unsympathetic depending on their personal feelings. A big portion of that is how those slaves are treated by that particular character.

KittyPride, sounds like “Temeraire”?

Slavery qua realistic slavery has been done so much and so well by so many famous and brilliant writers, as well as so badly by so many other writers, I don't see a need to attempt it myself. But I'm very interested in looking at social structures which are somewhat slavery-like but different enough that a moral judgment about them might come out different.

For example, what if one alien species or fantasy race finds it extremely fashionable to keep pets of other intelligent species? What if they actually treat them fairly well? What if they genuinely don't understand that beings of other species are 'people'? Or on the other hand, what if there's an organization where people can go to voluntarily become pets, and they get to specify how they are to be treated in the contract that must be signed by whoever owns them?

Or something quite different, what about a society where _everyone_ must belong to someone else, sort of like the president-governor-mayor system continued on down to the family-individual level? Or a military hierarchy down to squads. And individuals can switch their allegiance to another 'owner' if the new owner accepts?

How about a species which naturally lives in packs/groups of 6-8 adults, but they all want to be the alphas, so when they discovered other intelligent species they kidnapped or otherwise acquired these others to fill out the non-alpha positions, making them family?

sunandshadow said:

Slavery qua realistic slavery has been done so much and so well by so many famous and brilliant writers, as well as so badly by so many other writers, I don't see a need to attempt it myself. But I'm very interested in looking at social structures which are somewhat slavery-like but different enough that a moral judgment about them might come out different.

For example, what if one alien species or fantasy race finds it extremely fashionable to keep pets of other intelligent species? What if they actually treat them fairly well? What if they genuinely don't understand that beings of other species are 'people'? Or on the other hand, what if there's an organization where people can go to voluntarily become pets, and they get to specify how they are to be treated in the contract that must be signed by whoever owns them?

Or something quite different, what about a society where _everyone_ must belong to someone else, sort of like the president-governor-mayor system continued on down to the family-individual level? Or a military hierarchy down to squads. And individuals can switch their allegiance to another 'owner' if the new owner accepts?

How about a species which naturally lives in packs/groups of 6-8 adults, but they all want to be the alphas, so when they discovered other intelligent species they kidnapped or otherwise acquired these others to fill out the non-alpha positions, making them family?

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Great. You go write that. The OP wants to know about slavery.

I like the idea of slavery as part of the shock effect.

Historically, there has always been opposition to slavery, mostly from slaves themselves, along with the most progressive types of people. (Most "heroic" characters would fit into that category.)

But, as Smiling Ted says, there are different forms of slavery. Some are basically just contracting yourself out for a limited duration to pay off a debt. Others are apprenticeships. And others are brutal, rape-filled violations of someone's basic humanity. Really depends on what type of slavery you're talking about.

It's mostly just important to present slavery as a bad thing, or present it as part of an overall bad society. (As said above, if all of your characters are anti-heroes, readers will expect horrible things. It's when the characters are noble heroes that inexplicably support slavery, that's a problem.)

The main issue is slavery is not justifying what your character thinks, but presenting it in a way that doesn't anger the reader. If you're very clear that pro-slavery characters are wrong, that's fine.

But if you present the society as functional, with happy slaves that don't mind being raped and tortured and dehumanized, you're going to look like a slavery apologist and anger readers. Also, you're going to mess up suspension of disbelief. Slave-reliant societies in real life always have huge problems because of it.

Check out ancient Athens, ancient Sparta, the Roman Empire, the United States, and the concentration camp system in WW2 Soviet Union and Germany for examples of slavery feeding on itself until it undermines stability. In the first four examples, fear of slave rebellions caused a lot of strain on the military. In the latter two cases, things are more complicated, but the slavery aspect ended up causing a cycle where they became reliant on their prison systems for their war efforts, which caused some problems and certainly was evil and destabilizing.

Of course, as in other things, exceptional skill means you can ignore any guideline and still have a popular book.

For me, the main thing is to show slavery realistically. Make the slaves people and give them different reactions. Don't shy away from showing the bad sides, but also don't make it a cheap evil marker (those with slaves = evil, those without = good).

I don't like it when heroic characters act as though they were born in modern times. If we see a slave beaten to death, we blame slavery. If a heroic character of the past sees a slave beaten to death, s/he is more likely to blame the bad slave owners of the world and the people who let them get away with it.

That said, some people are the reverse... they need to see the main character being anti-slavery out the gate.

You can't please everyone.




Mild spoilers for Temeraire/His Majesty's Dragon:

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I didn't have trouble with this book, because it showed the suffering some dragons went through as slaves (and hints that any who tried to rebel/escape were confined to the breeding grounds). The main character is thinking about the problems, even if he hasn't reached the point of realising it's slavery. That works for me as a reader, as it's clear he's basically a good person, but also one who is a product of his time. Understanding that dragons are people too and slavery is bad is not something I'd expect him to understand easily.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

Great. You go write that. The OP wants to know about slavery.

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I don't know, I thought the comment actually could add a nice dimension to the conversation.

I think it is wrong to apply modern standards of thought to a situation where our standards don't apply. The Romans thought they were the epitome of civilization but had no qualms about slavery. There were some slave revolts, of course, but few thought Romans were 'evil' for having slaves and quelling revolts. The only reason there is no slavery in my novel is because civilization evolved with the aid of scientists who came from earth, and therefore they did have our modern thinking about slavery at their disposal.

There are so many types of slavery--and reasons people become slaves--that it's nearly useless to talk about it in a general way. Also, we apparently can't decide on a boundary between slavery and non-slavery. You'll have to tailor the institution to the society, and only you know enough to pull that off.

bearilou said:

I don't know, I thought the comment actually could add a nice dimension to the conversation.

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Well, I was reacting more towards the “don’t do that, it’s dull” sentiment expressed at the beginning. Saying this makes me sort of a hypocrite, but “everything” has been “done” before.

For instance, the European humans in Temeraire treat the dragons like pets. They treat them well and even great by the standards of pet care. Most of them don’t really see dragons as people. Dragons can technically choose not to be “harnessed”, though most don’t. That fulfills quite a few of S&S’s suggestions. I’m not going to spoil the books, but there’s also an example in the books sort of like the contract system, which also has even more similarity to the idea of pampered pets.

So yeah, ‘sbeen done.

For me, it's more a question of what the thematic reason for including slavery in the world is.

If there is a theme about rights, freedom or any of the other things that slavery oppresses, then slavery is a good thing to include in the book. It reflects part of the world/culture of the story, its people, and the simple fact that it's there will generally get the reader emotionally involved.

If there is a theme about self-improvement, choices, etc--again, slavery could be a powerful expression of that kind of theme and fit well into the story.

However, if slavery is in the book because the writer defaulted and didn't (or didn't want to) think about the implications of it within the scope of their world, I think it's just BAD writing. That's bound to come back and smack the writer like a gauntlet because readers will have a reaction--good and bad--to that element of the world.

Slavery is one of those things that carries a LOT of connotations and baggage with it. If a writer includes it in their story, then they'd best understand those connotations and baggage and make it work for their story instead of against it.

knight_tour said:

I think it is wrong to apply modern standards of thought to a situation where our standards don't apply. The Romans thought they were the epitome of civilization but had no qualms about slavery. There were some slave revolts, of course, but few thought Romans were 'evil' for having slaves and quelling revolts. The only reason there is no slavery in my novel is because civilization evolved with the aid of scientists who came from earth, and therefore they did have our modern thinking about slavery at their disposal.

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Actually, many or most non-Romans had all kinds of moral problems with what the Romans did, considering the Roman model was to conquer their neighbors, demand tribute, and sometimes enslave them. Roman history was pretty much one long sequence of people trying to kill Romans over "moral disputes." (The "moral dispute" part is generally self-interest by victims of Rome.)

So, yes, people did have our "modern ideas" about Roman slavery, and people did see the Romans as evil, and people did kill them over it. It's just that we often study history from a Roman perspective and ignore the majority "not Roman" opinion. It gives a distorted view that "everybody" was cool with Roman slavery, but actually, only a numerical minority were cool with it. It just so happens that the numerical minority had the power.

Popular belief about South Carolina just before the American CIiil War would be, "It was a different time, and they didn't see anything wrong with slavery."

But this is incorrect. The majority of South Carolina residents were anti-slavery, and many were willing to kill slaveowners if they had a chance. That's because the majority of South Carolina was enslaved.

When people say "the Romans" and "the Greeks" didn't see anything wrong with slavery, they should more specifically say "Romans who benefitted from slavery" and "Greeks who benefitted from slavery" didn't see anything wrong with it.

Even non-slave, non-slaveowners will sometimes have a problem with slavery, simply because it is a form of wealth that gives slaveowners more power over non-slaveowners. (If the slaveowners make sure that non-slaveowners still benefit from the system, such as in the American south, this won't be such a problem.)

Basically, if 99% of your fantasy population is benefitting from slavery and 1% is enslaved or not benefitting, it's reasonable to say, "They have a different view."

But if 50% of your population is harmed by it, and such characters actually appear in the story and slavery is part of the story, it's not believable to have those characters be pro-slavery based on the idea that "they don't have our modern ideas." Because I'll guarantee you that in an abusive slave system, the majority of slaves will have our "modern ideas" about slavery.

If your protagonist is from the slaveowning class, she might not think about it. That's entirely reasonable. But it's still morally wrong, not just by our moral standards, but by the moral standards of many of her contemporaries.

(Basically, this whole post is a rant about people condemning the imposition of "modern" sensibilities on ancient societies. When I condemn slavery in the past, I'm not imposing modern ideas. I'm merely agreeing with the slaves of the time, who sometimes had the majority opinion. There's nothing "modern" about it.)

Mara said:

Actually, many or most non-Romans had all kinds of moral problems with what the Romans did, considering the Roman model was to conquer their neighbors, demand tribute, and sometimes enslave them. Roman history was pretty much one long sequence of people trying to kill Romans over "moral disputes." (The "moral dispute" part is generally self-interest by victims of Rome.)

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As the saying goes: History is written by the winners.