Facts and Fiction

A few years ago I found myself having a conversation about the merits of the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I thought that it was a good swashbuckler, but with some weaknesses (including Maid Marion's sudden transformation into a screaming girlie in the last fight sequence). The person I was talking to had a list of faults, all of which were all factual: Kevin Kostner's accent, the presence of Hadrian's Wall in Nottinghamshire and the wrong sort of minaret in Jerusalem. This sparked off a chain of thought about the necessity of factual accuracy in fiction which, by way a debate on the Dr Who Allen Road mailing list, has wound up with this article.

My immediate reaction to this kind of debate is that such facts are largely irrelevant. I no more believed that Prince of Thieves accurately depicted Jerusalem in 11 whatever than I believe that Bamburgh Castle is Nottingham Castle (I think it was Bamburgh they used - if not, I'm sure Matthew will be able to substitute the correct castle name - much embarassment if it was Nottingham castle but I'm sure the reader will take my point). At the same time, why on earth do we think a modern English accent would be "more authentic" than a modern American accent? I have encountered a more extreme version of this prejudice - my mother refused to watch Dangerous Liaisons because of the American accents. To her, English spoken with an English accent is a better approximation to French spoken with a French accent than English spoken with an American accent.

People generally complain about factual inaccuracy on the grounds that it destroys their suspension of disbelief. This is clearly partially the case, but the reality we want them to adhere to is some conventional story book reality where everyone in England throughout the ages had spoken with a modern English accent. We are happy for one castle to stand in for another, but not for one Wall (in this case Hadrian's) to stand in for another. Factual accuracy is not simply a matter of easing the job of the reader.

There are even cases where I not only think factual accuracy to be unnecessary but actually detrimental to the story. The book which caused so much controversy on the Allen Road mailing list was one of the recent Dr Who Books, The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin. This was clearly inspired in places by Stephen Hawking's musings on the nature of time and his suggestion that in a contracting universe memory would work backwards (if there were any entities around which could be described as having (human-like) memory which is, apparently, very unlikely). Lance Parkin sets this situation up and puts some people in it whose memories work backwards. Now this is a perfectly valid exercise for a soft SF writer and no one except a hard SF extremist would think it unreasonable to explore this situation despite the improbability of people existing in a contracting universe and the current thinking that the universe won't have a contracting phase. Parkin had an interesting story to tell, based on scientific musings, and the relative improbability/impossibility of the situation should not have stopped him.

Where the ground gets rather shakier is the dressing Lance Parkin gives his setting. In order to tie in with other parts of the story, the people in question have to be placed a few years before the big crunch and Lance Parkin commits the (apparently unforgivable) sin of having them in a cold universe (which would occur if the universe were to continue to expand) rather than a hot universe (which would occur if the universe contracts - all this subject to my rather limited knowledge of physics). You can make an argument that this was also dictated by the needs of the story (the people in question are "found" because their environment contains so much more energy than the surrounding universe) but this is (probably) stretching the point.

Here we come to what really seems to anger people about factual inaccuracy. It is lazy. I shall use the Dr Who story Time and the Rani by Pip and Jane Baker (with apologies to any fans it may have out there) as an example of what I consider laziness. The basic motivation for the Rani's actions in Time and the Rani is that she wants to build a sentient time manipulator. To do this she has constructed a giant brain by slurping up the minds of genius's (?genii). This giant brain is to construct a strange matter substitute which she will fire at a local asteroid of strange matter. This asteroid will then supernova releasing Helium Two which will fuse with the atmosphere of the planet to form a shell of Chronons (time particles). As a result of this, the the brain will grow to fill the enclosed space because of trapped gamma radiation and become a time manipulator. Now I don't know enough physics to be sure, but most of this sounds like utter nonsense punctuated by scientific words to me. It is also vastly convoluted and its purpose in the plot is merely to give the Rani a reason to want to destroy the planet (not because of anything inherently interesting about brains, strange matter or Chronons). This, in my opinion, is laziness. I don't dislike Time and the Rani because the science is bunk, I dislike Time and the Rani because it is lazy. The plot is a rather unoriginal retread of evil scientist wants to destroy planet for scientific ends (admittedly with a few, well one, rather amusing diversion) and no amount of technobabble can hide the fact. Bad science is just a symptom of the laziness which afflicts the whole story.

Obviously factual inaccuracy, especially unnecessary factual inaccuracy, is irritating and most good authors put a lot of effort into avoiding it. But I don't think factual inaccuracy is ever the only reason I, or even most people, dislike a story. Inaccurate facts can indicate genuine mistakes, laziness or deliberate decisions. Genuine mistakes will always happen, an author must decide when enough research has been done and then draw a line under it and concentrate on other aspects of their novel - like plot and character - otherwise you end up at that equally irritating end of the spectrum where the author is more concerned with displaying the vast amount of knowledge they've amassed than telling their story. I think most of us are prepared to forgive the odd inaccuracy in an otherwise storming piece of fiction. Laziness will exhibit itself in many ways in a book (or TV program or film or whatever) of which factual inaccuracy will probably be one. Lazy books are rarely enjoyable or good. The "deliberate inaccuracy" is a thorny area. Sometimes the facts have to be wrong because the story won't work otherwise or they need to be wrong for practical reasons, like a film in French is likely to have a rather smaller audience than one in English. Sometimes this will simply not fit in with someone's world view or interests and, for whatever reason they will decide not to suspend their disbelief that much. I think that was the real problem the friend I mentioned in the opening had with Prince of Thieves. He was not interested in the story book Middle ages. He was interested in a world which was dangerous, where life was nasty, brutal and short. He was interested in realistic drama, not swashbucklers. Soft SF gets criticized by people who want hard SF, Star Trek by people who believe that humans are not universally good, enlightened and fluffy, Friends by people who think Americans should have a less provincal outlook.

There is one situation in which authors do, clearly, have a responsibility to get their facts right. This is when the facts they spout can affect (or reinforce) people's opinions or when their fiction purports to be educational. Minority groups who complain about their representation in the media have a genuine and important point. The arguments against misrepresentation of various sorts are well rehearsed and so I won't go into them here. Actually, I have a personal bugbear in this category, which is the often inaccurate portrayal of scientists (I can't say a film has ever been ruined for me because of it, although one of the things that lifted the fairly average film Relic for me was its accurate portrayal of scientists, even if the science itself was the usual hokum). I don't think it helps people's understanding of science because it seems to contribute to either the belief that scientists are going to destroy the world and should be stopped or the belief that they are going to save it and should not be criticized.

Criticizing a piece of fiction for inaccurate facts is, in my opinion, a sign of a mixture of laziness and self-aggrandizement (look what I know!!) on the part of the critic. Simply pointing to a factual inaccuracy is not a criticism. To be a valid criticism you must say why the inaccuracy is damaging or irresponsible or point it out as an example of general laziness (or whatever).

There is one definite plus to pedants, however, as the above no doubt shows: In discussing the factual basis of fiction you learn many interesting things about wide-ranging subjects from the design of 12th century minarets to the eventual fate of the Universe. I'm always interested to learn what was wrong with a piece of fiction I just don't think that, of itself, an inaccuaracy can greatly diminish a work.