Belle-Île-en-Mer : awesome inspiration

When I was a kid, I often went on holidays on the island of Belle-Île-en-Mer (Brittany, France), situated 15 kilometers (about 9 miles) off the coast of Morbihan. The whole island basically fits in a 6-mile hex, and it takes the better part of a day to cross it on foot. Circling it takes 3 to 4 days.

Here I jot a few notes on what's cool and interesting there. I have long wanted to create some kind of module, adventure or sandbox there. When I was a kid, we often went there around the time of Halloween, and it was ripe for autumnal adventures.

So. On this tiny hex, you can find :

- 4 villages, including a fishing harbor, a military harbor with a seaside huge citadel, an ancient abbey, a secluded village... and none of them gets along, 

- almost a hundred hamlets comprised of family farms (about 2d6 houses each), 

- a whole system of cisterns and fortifications around the citadel, including weird sewers and buried places where no one has set foot in three or four centuries,

- a magic / witch forest,

- at least three menhirs,

- a small lake, some ponds, an orchard, 

- 20+ beaches lodged in small coves between sharp cliffs, including : one with hellish waves, one with weird seashells and small bits of explosives washed ashore by a sunken WW1 ship, one with a weird marsh, one infested with jellyfish and venomous fishes, one renowned for it's lethal currents, one that's almost impossible to access unless you cross a maze of brambles and thorn-trees...

- at least one sunken 17th-century galleon with rumors of treasure and gold, 

- three lighthouses and one meteo station,

- the ruins of at least three other lighthouses and semaphors, and one windmill, 

- several seaside caverns and grottoes, including a giant one that's closed because the waves and rocks are too dangerous, another nicknamed the Vazen pit or the Devil's pit, and another that was used by pirates and English soldiers for smuggling and clandestine operations, 

- one islet that gets cut off the island when the tide comes, where you can get trapped for 6 hours if you're not careful, 

- a cove named "Borderune" (Runeside) with a rock looking like a giant bear, 

- wild boars sometimes, 

- all manners of strange mushrooms, in autumn there's an annual display of the weirdest, biggest, most colorful mushrooms found by people in the preceding weeks, 

- traces of occupation and encampments from both Bronze Age people and Roman soldiers,

- a dozen small seaside forts, ruined or occupied, one once built and owned by a famous actress, 

- a former orphanage / child prison that's full of ghosts and awful stories, 

- lots of bunkers built by the Nazis and left in place along the coast, 

- a tiny airport, a ranch...

Belle-Île-en-Mer means "beautiful island in the sea", which does sound a bit precious. But it's former names, most meaning the exact same thing, are all very inspiring : Vindilis in Latin, Guerveur in Breton / old French, Kalonessos in Greek...

Of course the island is exceptionally packed with stuff, and of course most of these places might be of little interest for a more epic or lengthy campaign. But it shows how much stuff you can pack in small distances such as a single traditional 6-mile hex, and Europe is certainly a great inspiration for this.

As for me, I'm definitely in the mood for making something out of this...

Genre distinctions in speculative fiction

This article was originally a response in comment of this post over at Grognardia, where James Maliszewski discusses Lovecraft and "the changing meaning of literary genres".

Since the comment was too long (thanks, Blogger), I've decided to make it its own post.

It mostly talks about the evolution of speculative fiction genres in the French-speaking world, as I understand it. Enjoy !

Literary genre questions are interesting, because they vary by language and literary traditions, even if not by much, as you'll see.

In the French-speaking sphere, at the time Jules Verne wrote (second half of the 19th century), there was an overall distinction of three genres :

- le merveilleux (the wondrous, the supernatural), which had elements of fairy tales and magic : fairies, dragons, witches, talking animals, faraway lands shrouded in myth and mist, etc. So that's the fantasy & fairy tales sphere.

- l'anticipation (... anticipation, alright), which was speculative fiction aimed at imagining possible futures. So it covers sci-fi, but not fantasy with sci-fi trappings. Jules Verne's novels are most of the time in this category.

- le fantastique (the fantastical, the weird), which is the irruption of the weird into the normal life. It broadly maps to weird tales and horror, and was a very popular genre in France from basically 1820-1920. Seriously, there's so much stuff.

There was also the "feuilletons" : at the turn of the century, they were serialized stories published in journals. If they met success, they were then collected and published as full-length novels, and then adapted for theatre plays. Much like, nowadays, a comic book will have movies and novelizations. Those feuilletons were the bit earlier, French equivalent of pulps, and their genres were mostly :

- historical (all things Dumas, for example),

- crime stories (see Arsène Lupin),

- and adventures of characters with peculiar powers who were fighting crime or exploring Mars. They're precursors, sometimes direct ancestors of super-heroes and planetary romance stories.

Of course, all of these genres were served with a healthy dose of pulpy, fast-paced, drama-filled, cliff-hanging adventure fun — that's what they were for. 

Then there was an after-war snobby backlash against all of this. Feuilleton stories, anticipation and the fantastique were either elevated to the "good literature" pantheon, or thrown in the trash or the "roman de gare" ("train station novels") category (and that's why we don't have real French super-heroes anymore. What a loss).

The merveilleux was relegated to children stories, despite a centuries-long tradition.

What was left of non-children comics, fantasy and sci-fi was relegated to the marges, where a whole counter-culture grew around them in the 70-80s, blending them to create a fun science-fantasy-weird hodge-podge. That was expressed in comics and zines that were marginal at the time, but have grown in popularity and recognition since then. Métal Hurlant / Heavy Metal would be the most famous one.

So, for a long time, all of speculative fiction was basically divided in this manner :

- "for kids" stuff,

-  "officially great" literature contained many great pieces of sci-fi and weird, even though rarely advertised as such,

- what was called "science-fiction" and was the counter-culture corner, almost at the back of bookstores. (Plus some pulp-like novels only sold in train stations and the like, mostly spy and crime stories, adventure novels, or things like Bob Morane where a modern spy/agent has pulpy adventures spanning various genres.)

Nowadays, it's all much more recognized, save perhaps for the 1900-1920 super-heroes who have only begun to be unearthed in the last 20 years. In the recent years, publishers have mostly adopted the American genre distinction, with sci-fi, fantasy and horror being clearly labeled next to each other. Here you'll have Lovecraft sitting in horror, Howard sitting in fantasy, and sci-fi being more about the trappings than the anticipation side.

Meanwhile, pulp, the weird, and old folk tales are non-existent, save for anthologies and collections of older texts identified as such.

The "young adult" sections will regroup a lot of stuff, not ignoring genres and sub-genres, alas, even using their fine distinctions as marketing arguments. But at least it places a lot of things under the same umbrella.

Most of this all will be dubbed "SFFF" in literature studies, meaning "Science-fiction, fantasy, fantastique" (much like our initial, historical three-part distinction).

And still, in the general literature sections, you'll find Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, R. L. Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas, Maurice Leblanc, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Franz Kafka, and many other authors that we have decided to integrate in the "classics", which they rightly are, but without noting them as belonging to particular genres.

I would personally push to either integrate more things into standard fiction, or widen the definitions of genre fiction to encompass more authors and genres, forgotten or subsumed by time and fashions.

But, anyway : what is most important, in the end, is that the realm of speculative fiction is more accepted and alive than ever !