The Counterpublic Papers vol. 8 no. 3

What, to America, is John Brown? Maybe a lesson about people who refuse to learn from the instructive dissent of social movements, whatever “side” they’re on. But the fact that there are only three statues of Brown in the country tells us something of a particular shame attached to his legacy. I don’t think the shame is for his violence. I think it’s for our white history of coordinated repression, instead of the moral courage needed to finally create a just, multi-ethnic democracy.

What James did with Black Leopard Red Wolf is not as simple as an “African Game of Thrones.” That’s just the elevator pitch James used… Now in as much as what George R. R. Martin did with The Song of Ice and Fire was introduce grey to a genre that was mostly black and white, in part by telling almost the entire story through a a variety of first person point of views (nine in the first volume alone, 31 in the series up to date), James does this. But more. Because while Martin was aiming to bring a hefty dose of realism into the fantasy genre he was still using the European landscape, and also working with a set of standard fantasy motifs.

I can think of three elements that bind James to Martin. James uses a similar point of view—the story is mostly told from the perspective of one character, Tracker (aka the Red Wolf). We meet Tracker in prison, and he’s telling his story to an inquisitor. Many of the other characters we meet have stories as well, but these first person stories are themselves told through Tracker. But unlike in Martin, Tracker is, untrustworthy to put it mildly. The other two books in what is expected to be a trilogy will tell the same exact story but from the standpoint of two other characters, who may or may not be more trustworthy, depending. This plays with the entire concept of truth as usually deployed in fantasy fiction and plays with the idea of the linear progressive tale as well.

James also alters some of the other concepts in fantasy. There is a fellowship—but the fellowship in this case reads to me more like the X-Men than, say, the Fellowship of the Ring. There are objects of power that must be found, and a great evil that must be defeated—but in this case that object is…well…that would be telling. And although there are wizards and witches, monsters, and goblins, tree-cities, and magic portals, James’ use of North, East, West, South, and even African American (there’s a white mad scientist in the novel that I swear reads a little like the Nation of Islam’s Jacub) and Caribbean mythologies reimagines them radically.

And his language. Talk about rhythm on the page…

The Dandelion Dynasty is a four-volume silkpunk epic fantasy series that took up the bulk of my time and creative energy over a ten-year period. The Veiled Throne, as you note, is the third volume. While writing the series, I learned a lot about myself as a writer, as a father, as a husband, as a grandchild, as a technologist, as a lawyer, and as a person. I can’t wait to take a new reader from the opening lines of this book all the way to the final period after the last sentence in Speaking Bones.

A preliminary note: I invented the term “silkpunk” specifically to describe the aesthetic in the Dandelion Dynasty series. (Other authors have used my term to describe their own books, and I won’t be talking about their uses. My only concern here is my definition, for my aesthetic.)

In creating the silkpunk aesthetic, I was influenced by the ideas of W. Brian Arthur, who articulates a vision of technology as language. The task of the engineer is much like that of a poet in that the engineer must creatively combine existing components to solve novel problems, thereby devising artifacts that are new expressions in the technical language. In creating the silkpunk aesthetic, I was influenced by the ideas of W. Brian Arthur, who articulates a vision of technology as language. The task of the engineer is much like that of a poet in that the engineer must creatively combine existing components to solve novel problems, thereby devising artifacts that are new expressions in the technical language.

It is not “Asian steampunk.” It is not “Asian fantasy.”

The “punk” part is also not a worn suffix devoid of content. To me, silkpunk is about a key punk project: re-purposing what was for what will be. These books are my rewriting of the narrative of modernity (and in the later books in particular, the modern American national narrative). This is a vision of modernity no longer exclusively centered on what we think of as the “Western” experience. Rather, it melds multiple traditions and myths important to me, from the Iliad to Beowulf, from Paradise Lost to wuxia, and transforms the Chu-Han Contention into the foundational political mythology of a brand-new, modern people.

Why did I do this? Well, a driving impetus behind this series is my desire to challenge and interrogate the conventional narrative of modernity, which is often modeled on a particular telling of the story of my country, the US of A. The Story of America is most often told using allusions to Western models such as Classical Rome (just think of how many aspects of American politics and national culture evoke images of America as a “New Rome”). But when you are constrained to one set of allusions, there’s a limit how much you can push readers to see something new in a familiar tale or, even bolder, to change the narrative.

Something radical had to be done. I decided to depart from the “New Rome” model and instead evoke East Asian models in this fantasy epic recasting of the Story of America — and by extension, the narrative of modernity. Thus, I borrowed much of the plot of The Grace of Kings, the first book from the Chu-Han Contention, as interpreted by the historian Sima Qian, and built up a vocabulary of non-Western political allusions and precedents that could then be drawn on in the re-imagining of the epic of modernity.