I did a review of Neal Stephenson's mammoth "Baroque Cycle" a few entries ago. Briefly, it's a 3000 page historic epic set in the late 1600s and early 1700s, and follows the lives of three linked individuals. As I was reading it, and as I've been reflecting since finishing it, I was noticing the differences between Stephenson's historically accurate world and the setting of a typical fantasy novel.

1. The corrupt nobility. In fantasies we see the prince or duke with their swords and armor and chivalry. Kings are kind and benevolent. The nobles of Stephenson's series are ruthless killers. Their ancestors got where they were because of their skill with armed weapons: in other words, their ability to kill people. The kings and queens of Stephenson's series are inbred, corrupt, and indulgent. Half of them are infected with syphilis.

2. Squalor. It's something we never get exposed to in fantasy novels. Nobody talks about the filth that people must have lived in. Stephenson seems to delight in literally rubbing his readers noses in shit. By the end of his book we know that moats may have had a defensive function, but they also served other more practical purposes as well.

3. Brutality. It was a period in which most people lived in extremely deplorable conditions, and desperation could drive them to do almost anything. Stephenson seems to justify the brutal system of punishments that existed as the only way of keeping rampant chaos in check. The noble kings and dukes of our fantasy novels don't have people's hands chopped off for stealing a loaf of bread, but Stephenson seems to suggest that such drastic measures were a necessity.

4. Progress. The worlds of most fantasy novels seem trapped in time. For thousands of years they have the exact same technology: steel swords, stone castles. Stephenson's world is one in the middle of enormous change and development. And not just in the scientific field, where brilliant minds like Newton and Hooke and their like were making society altering discoveries, but also in views towards religious tolerance and the development of new systems for doing commerce.

I think Stephenson was doing it deliberately. I think he wanted to highlight these contrasts. It wasn't essential for his plot development to describe duchesses having to pull up their skirts while walking the in hallways of Versaille in order to avoiding getting human shit on them. He didn't need to have one of his main characters undergo surgery to remove a kidney stone without anesthetic.

Last year, I quoted a passage from the first book in the series about how civilization could be seen as ship wreck in reverse. How we started out in the middle of the raging sea with a few boards, and then built our boat out of nothing. We live in Act I or maybe II, with the boat beneath us, and with lives our ancestors couldn't even imagine. A lot of the fantasy I read seems not to understand that in midevil times we were in the sea, desparately clinging to a few pieces of wood and fighting for existence. Stephenson I think is deliberately and intentionally reminding his readers of that reality.