Dungeons, Dragons, Kapres and Tikbalangs: Local Folklore as Launchpad for Speculative Fiction

Recently, I had a brief conversation with an online friend in Russia about spec fic. The conversation was sparked by her mentioning that in Russia, fiction that involves vampires, werewolves and other creatures from foreign mythology, is still considered somewhat inferior to realist fiction – one of the reasons being, readers are expected to have trouble relating to supernatural characters.

This revived my interest in Russian speculative fiction, as I’ve never really thought that Russia’s literary evolution could run parallel to ours in some aspects. Since I was little I’ve encountered Russian fantasy and science fiction translated into English in various SFF anthologies; obviously Russia entered the global literary market much earlier than we did, started with the SFF awards earlier, and has had a much more competitive publishing industry.

(Speaking of awards, I also learned from Dean Alfar today that the future fiction category of the Palanca awards will be gone next year! Naku next year pa naman ako unang sasali, paano na ako hihirit? Heheh. But that’s a whole new rant for another day.)

Is it just that spec fic will always be considered not “another” but a “lesser” branch of literature in developing countries? Sure magical realism is speculative and it’s legitimate enough in Latin America and elsewhere, but it’s still just one form of spec fic, and one that’s firmly rooted in the need to present modern social issues. How about science fiction or fantasy using characters “borrowed” from the folklore of other countries, like orcs, unicorns and dragons? How can stories like this contain “real” issues?

In brief, how can stories with elves and sword-wielding heroes in them ever be considered thematically equal to realist fiction? Frankly…? They can’t. Spec fic competes primarily in style, not in theme. Yes, many of our spec fic writers are able to weave in social consciousness and the pressing issues of the day and age, but speculative fiction per se, as defined by our beloved Wikipedia, is “a group of fiction genres that speculate about worlds that are unlike the real world in various important ways.”

At any rate, it doesn’t follow that using elements that are foreign in nature will draw us away from social issues. Neither does it force us to sacrifice all the elements of “good writing” even by the standards of realist fiction. You can write a socially relevant story even while speculating about shapeshifting fox-spirits.

But in the Philippines, especially, one serious issue may be reflected by the impulse to use foreign lore in spec fic: ignorance of local lore. It’s all right for speculative fiction writers to not write in the Filipino setting, but in some cases they gravitate to foreign settings, quite simply because those are what they’re more familiar with.

The proliferation of fiction that uses foreign folklore may be easily explained by the much greater availability of foreign fantasy fiction. Young people may know about the kiba-an, Lam-ang, and the nuno sa punso… but without enough to read about them, they simply end up not being as interesting as, say, the kitsune, King Arthur, or the Celtic elves.

The recent wave of telefantasya series does little to help, I think, as we’re thinking of inspiring writers and readers, who are an entirely different audience – although it does help, if only to introduce forgotten aspects of our folk literature to our deprived young.

We once had an internationally released comic that featured Filipino mythological creatures, done by an excellent comic artist who freely “modernized” local folklore for the cosmopolitan palate: Stone, done by the great Whilce Portacio, whom I was able to talk to in person during a symposium while I was in university. I’ve long since lost my notes on that symposium, I’m afraid… I wish I knew about blogging then.

Stone had the Tikbalang, the Kapre, the Nuno sa Punso – and best of all, it had a Filipino lead character named after a certain Filipino comic great! It had everything – all the references, all the love for the lore – and more. So how do we explain why Stone didn’t start a trend for local artists and writers? If Filipino artists and writers were just itching for the chance to flaunt the love for our very own oral literature, why did the interest in writing folklore-based fantasy die down after Stone?

Thankfully, international interest in local folklore is valiantly kept alive by the new wave of Filipino speculative writers and artists, among whom is Arnold Arre, the one responsible for the highly-acclaimed fantasy title Mythology Class. But our young would-be writers and artists appear to need more information, more persuasion, to become more interested in writing about local folklore. Foreign fantasy lore presents so many glittering possibilities, and we’re just drowning in them.

I suppose there’s one main reason why spec fic using foreign elements or settings is shunned by literary authorities in developing nations… in the Philippines especially. It’s not really that the readers will have problems identifying with the characters, but that they will have trouble identifying themselves as Filipinos through the characters. It draws the attention away from the need to create a “Filipino-ness” in our literature. We are still on the prowl for the “it factor” in our modern art which would make us great in the eyes of the world, something that would distinguish us both in style and in substance – a “cultural legitimacy,” as Emil Flores says in his excellent article Comics Crash.

We don’t NEED to write about anything real in our spec fic – not the Philippines, not our everyday woes, not social consciousness, not even local folklore. But it would sure be great if we were somehow more encouraged to. Strong cultural roots are always an excellent place to start dreaming.

Some links:

• Avalon Comics – official homepage for Stone and Whilce Portacio
• Arnold Arre’s official website
• Comics Crash: A Survey of Filipino Comics and its Quest for Cultural Legitimacy by Emil Flores
• An Introduction to Philippine Folklore (plug! somebody kick me to update this please)
• Chris’ (Selfaro on Multiply) collection of links on Philippine folklore and myths

Browse through these with me:

• SF Publishing in Russia by Serge Barros
• Russian prose and science fiction in English translation
• Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy