One of SFF’s grand traditions is carefully filing the serial numbers off historical events (the American Revolutionary War, perhaps, or the Napoleonic Wars), or famous and classic works (Lord of the Rings, the Hornblower series, Zulu), and re-purposing the result as SFF1. This is usually known as “research” (See Tom Lehrer on this point). Examples abound—my disinclination to deal with crowds of irate authors protesting at my door precludes naming them here.
SFF is also quite fond of plots featuring all-powerful autocrats. Some of these autocrats (Patricians, Empresses of the Twenty Universes, whatever) are…well, pleasant may not be the right word, but “dedicated” may do. Dedicated to a greater good, that is, not personal enrichment or aggrandizement. Others are black-clad villains who would certainly twirl their moustaches, had they moustaches to twirl. But good or bad, most SFFnal autocrats tend to be quite competent.
Lamentably, actual real-life autocrats are not always competent. In fact, a lot of them were the very opposite of competent. They are the sort of people who manage to unify three nations (once bitter enemies of each other) in hatred directed at the autocrat themself; who despite controlling the apparatus of a powerful state find themselves on the wrong end of a rapidly descending guillotine blade; who declare war on the sea; or who, despite all the best advice, are born into the House of Stuart.
This aspect of autocracy has been poorly represented in SFF. Allow me to offer a model of an incompetent autocrat from whom SFF could steal unashamedly derive inspiration: Clarence Threepwood, Earl of Emsworth.
Clarence, who figures prominently in P. G. Wodehouse’s (extremely) comic Blandings Castle Saga, is the product of nine generations of careful aristocratic breeding2. In science fiction, this sort of thing produces supermen and superwomen—paragons boasting marvellous psionic powers and exemplary physical prowess. In real life, directed breeding of aristocrats produced the Habsburgs, humanity’s pugs. Clarence is closer to the Charles II of Spain end of things than he is to Kimball Kinnison. He is perpetually bewildered, has an attention span measured in hummingbird wingbeats, pays absolutely no attention to any of the responsibilities of his position, and occupies himself with hobbies like pig-breeding.
You may wonder how it is Blandings Castle has not had its own People’s Revolution. Why has the befuddled Clarence never found himself vaguely wondering why he was tied a stake and what that line of soldiers were planning to do with the rifles pointed at him? The answer may lie in the fact that rich idiots can be a useful resource. A small army of people are employed at Blandings Castle, maintaining it and protecting it from various ne’er-do-wells. If Clarence were not in a perpetual fog, the castle might be run along much more efficient lines…the natural consequence of which would be general unemployment.
Along with the loss of jobs, there would also be considerably fewer zany plots. Under Clarence, Blandings is an ideal place to stash inappropriately infatuated scions until they come to their senses3. It is an irresistible target for various scamps, imposters, and rogues. Wodehouse set eleven novels and nine short stories at Blandings. There would probably have been more had not the author inconveniently died.
Authors: if your work in progress involves a grand autocratic state and trillions of sophonts subject to the whims of an all-powerful leader, do consider the possibility that the all-powerful leader be someone like Clarence4. Bad news for their subjects—but fun for your readers.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He was a finalist for the 2019 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, and is surprisingly flammable.
[1]Re-purposing Lord of the Rings as fantasy is, of course, pretty easy.
[2]Not all the Threepwoods are amiable knuckleheads. The women of the family are often competent. Clarence’s brother Galahad might have made something of himself had his heart not been broken in youth. There’s a lesson here re: the consequences of thwarting true love.
[3]Wodehouse being Wodehouse, sometimes reason prevails, but that’s not the way to bet.
[4]There are other Wodehousian models, of course. Bertie Wooster as the Supreme Leader and Jeeves as his faithful vizier practically writes itself.
Objection. You didn’t properly credit The Empress of Blandings. What’s wrong with you?
The photo you used immediately brings to mind the characters of Wormtail (harry potter) and Beadle (sweeney todd) both played by the always amazing Timothy Spall but neither character is quite an autocrat, just a hanger-on side kick, with some level of influence in the case of Beadle. But you’re absolutely right, the wealthy businessman who is a little bit insane and has grand ideas does NOT need to be front and center antagonist all the time, they make great chaotic bad/neutral characters.
An example of this is Varrick from Legend of Korra, you never quite knew whether this bombastic eccentric rich dude was going to mess everything up or do something genius and though he was typically on the side lines, sometimes his work would end up becoming the focus of the plot for the core characters.
Another great example is Ozymandias from Watchmen, both in the graphic novel and especially now in the TV show. You know this dude is doing SOMETHING but it isn’t clear what because we rarely get his perspective. But in the graphic novel he ends up being the final baddie whereas in the show (which is not yet finished) we get the sense that he’s sort of a failure and not entirely important anymore, though again like Verrick, his actions will sometimes intersect with the main plot.
Final example, and this one is a big SPOILER for the wheel of time book series so continue at your own risk, but the forsaken Demandred, we know is a half step below the dragon in terms of sheer power so the reader knows he will eventually be a problem but again he is working in the shadows off screen somewhere and only at the last book becomes a huge problem for the main story, while not necessarily being the final confrontation, and in this example he fails completely and dies
Overall these larger than life characters work very well from the side-lines, their sphere of influence makes them impossible to ignore completely but it’s also more interesting for the narration to let them work in the shadows
Since I’m in the mood for humorous SF to counter my mood about the news and world, I command (OK, beg, whine and plead) that some competent authors take this on.
Jim C. Hines and Patrick Tomlinson, I’m looking at you. And L.X. Beckett can play it up for her hold outs from before the Clawback as well as her autocratic aliens.
I guess the Gormenghast books would be the SF equivalent of the Blandings Castle sequence (except maybe funnier)?
The Blandings books are very funny, and I’m a big fan of Timothy Spall, but I found the Earl’s portrayal in the TV series painful to watch.
In the book it’s easy to see him as an extremely absent-minded eccentric but when I actually saw it on the screen it started to look a lot more like mental illness, which was being played for laughs.
I am reminded of von Hammerstein-Equord:
@6, I recall a similar rule being stated in Drake and Sterling’s The General series. Said general observes that with the first three types of officers something can be accomplished. But the third type can only lead to disaster. Lord Elphinstone of the First Afghan war is a wonderful RW example of a stupid hardworking officer.
“They are the sort of people who manage to unify three nations (once bitter enemies of each other) in hatred directed at the autocrat themself,”
Oh Dong Zhuo, you stupid, stupid tyrant.
Larry Niven’s Svetz series had a hereditary global ruler (Secretary-General of the UN) who was pretty much the opposite of competent. (Mostly expressed in the stories via whims for pets that sparked expensive and dangerous time travel expeditions.)
Asimov’s Foundation series had a fair number of incompetent autocrats for the plucky Foundation to overcome, though also the occasional competent and dangerous variety.
IIRC, most rulers in Discworld who aren’t the Patrician or from Lancre tend not to come off terribly well.
A SFF version of any of Wodehouse’s books sounds like something Diana Wynne Jones would have done sublimely, and it makes me horribly sad that she’s not still around to write such a series.
Zaphod Beeblebrox comes to mind(s).
Well. Real life autocrats, and I speak from bitter experience living under such regimes for two decades now, prosper because their opposition, internal or external, are just as incompetent or moreso. Otherwise, an incompetent regime undermines and destroys itself before long, usually before than what it takes to build up a satisfying narrative lasting a reasonable amount of in-universe time.
So when portraying such regimes your options are having competent heroes to antagonize them, which should lead to a relatively easy victory for good with not so much in the way of stakes, or the more realistic but depressing alternative of portraying both sides as incompetent, which can easily lead to the Eight Deadly Words– after all, in a conflict between an incompetent despotic regime and a mostly useless gang of heroes who can’t get the work done against a no-good government that isn’t good at ruling, why should you invest emotionally on either side?
@12 J. Bencomo
Joe Abercrombie’s works set in the circle of the world, nevertheless do a pretty good job of making us care. Having said that, your points are well taken.
Personally I’ve never been sure how incompetent the Earl of Emsworth was. He seems quite good at surrounding himself with competent people. He struck me as more disinterested than anything else. Or maybe he’s as entertained by the shenanigans around him as the reader?
The Earl of Emsworth is incompetent because he’s never had to actually do any work. Blandings is run, very competently indeed, by Lady Constance Keeble (“more or less a fiend in human form”) and the Efficient Baxter (even his spectacles gleam efficiently). And also, by the true power behind the scenes, that “dignified procession of one,” Beach the butler.
Sympathetic young lovers aside, the revolution never stood a chance.
“the Habsburgs, humanity’s pugs,” is the best line I’ve ever read on this site.
The Eternal Emperor, in the Sten series by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch, is an engaging and likeable character. At first, he looks a lot like the benevolent despots you see in so many SFF stories. But as the series progresses, you realize that the system of government he has created is hideously flawed, and that even despots that mean to be benevolent are doomed to fail.
Libertarian author L. Neil Smith also does a good job making despots look terrible. In fact, he goes on to make those with even the mildest tendencies toward governmental control of society look like despots.
The Earl of Emsworth is incompetent because he’s never had to actually do any work.
Counter argument: Clarence is highly competent at the only thing he’s actually interested in, i.e. raising prize pigs. He has a considerable level of knowledge himself, and he chooses very competent (if somewhat venal) staff for the purpose. He has no other interests in life, and he’s somewhat socially incompetent, but when it comes to pigs, he is Hot Stuff.
… And now I’m having thoughts about head-cannoning him as autistic.
@12 J. Bencomo, there’s another option: the Colonel Klink version(1). The local autocrat is an incompetent idiot but the competent heroes who are the antagonists and who the autocrat knows are enemies–unlike some of the examples previous where they think of the competent heroes as friends or loyal subordinates–are far better served strategically keeping said autocrat in their position and will actively (and obviously secretly) help them to do so if a third party starts to threaten them.
1. Leaving aside the Alternate Character Interpretation where Klink was well aware of what was going on and allowed it as his own form of resistance against the Nazis, as Schultz did.
@9: You beat me to the Niven reference.
In Foundation and Empire, the Indburs are described thus: Indbur I was brutal and capable, Indbur II merely brutal, and Indbur III neither brutal nor cruel.
@18: Clarence has a couple of other narrowly-defined interests: Gardening and income tax.
I’m reasonably confident that Mr Jeeves wouldn’t touch Parliament with a broom stretching from the Palace of Westminster to Threadneedle street; he prefers his idiots to be good-hearted!
does autocrat have a second meaning that i’m unfamiliar with?
Louise @10: Oh, how I agree with that wish! Wouldn’t it be loverly….
Amaryllis @15 and tree_and_leaf @18: You’re absolutely right.
I do think that Timothy Spall was miscast, though. The 1967 BBC version with the great Ralph Richardson as Lord Emsworth and Stanley Holloway as Beach — now, THAT was something I wish I could have seen.
Walter Jon Williams’s space-operatic comedy of manners, the Drake Maijstral series, has this in spades. While it owes a lot to Wilde and E.W. Hornung, it definitely shows some Wodehouse influence as well. The great emperor of (most of) the galaxy is an ineffectual scholarly type who is absolutely obsessed with some small species of animal, and who would probably recognize the Earl of Emsworth as a spiritual cousin. For that matter, Maijstral’s own mother bears more than a passing resemblance to certain aunts in some well-known Wodehouse stories.
A partial example from Walter Jon Williams’s Praxis series. This differs from James’s article in that there isn’t one autocrat in charge – rather, it’s the nonentities who are left in control when the last autocrat snuffs it.
The Empire has been operating without a war for 8000+ years. So their government is a haven for the well-bred (who are often incompetent, but don’t know that they’re incompetent). The navy is far more interested in spit-and-polish than with actual war-fighting.
Then a war happens and, <i>quelle horreur</i>, it allows people who are actually competent to rise – even if they’re nouveau riche arrivistes. Monstrous, I know!
Williams is starting a second trilogy in this universe. Not too many spoilers to say that the incompetents who are still in charge are trying to find a final solution to what they perceive to be one of their problems….
Louise @10:
Charles Stross wrote an SF-nal P.G. Wodehouse pastiche “Trunk and Disorderly” which can be found in his collection Wireless. Charlie mentioned that he thought that writing such a pastiche would be simplicity itself – he quickly found out otherwise. What Wodehouse made look effortlessly easy was in fact quite difficult to accomplish.
@26, interestingly that attitude, commoners rising out of their place, ew! Was a real aristocratic reaction to the Napoleonic wars. I wonder if Williams had read Jane Austen’s Persuasion, in which the foolish and vain Sir William Elliot expresses exactly that opinion.
@27, Dying is easy. Comedy is hard
@22 and in general: British series “Yes Minister” and (spoiler?) “Yes Prime Minister” come to mind. Generally not SF, but they portray the British state actually controlled by career civil servants theoretically commanded by elected representatives of the public. This avoids most risk of any serious good being done. However, if that makes the civil servants the autocrats, then uh oh.
I gather that U.S. civil servants and diplomats are appointed by each president, which seems pretty silly to me, why not use experienced people who are doing the job already? A more recent look at parts of the British and U.S. systems is included in triptych “The Thick of It”, “In the Loop”, and “Veep”. A Doctor Who is in one series and swears a lot, but reportedly not as much as a real one of what he is in this does.
Not all are presidential appointments. And some are kept on, possibly the majority. That can cause problems when the wrong party wins.
This is when you get mutterings about the “deep state.”
@8: I was thinking of the Paraguayan War of the Triple Alliance.
@29, “Yes (Prime) Minister”, however, demonstrated more nuance. While Humphrey was generally the obstacle to improving things, there was more than one episode where Humphrey was the only thing standing between Hacker and an incredibly stupid decision that was going to result in complete disaster, either for himself, government, or the country.
Are we limiting this to humor? Cersei was a remarkably incompetent autocrat. So was Robert.
I’m currently in the middle of Walter Jon Williams’ The Accidental War, and there’s a whole incompetent aristocracy.
A smart autocrat knows how to delegate and pick his battles. Conscientious but dimmer ones try to do it all themselves and get tangled up in paperwork. Really incompetent ones believe their own publicity, ignore the need for support and fight the wrong battles.
In one of the Blandings Castle stories, Lord Emsworth mentions, wistfully and almost in passing, that his brother had originally been the heir. However, the brother and the brother’s infant son both got seriously ill and died in a short space of time.
Before this, Lord Emsworth had been planning to go to Canada (I think) and farm. He’d never wanted to inherit at all. And now this series of books makes me feel inexpressibly sad.
@34: Robert at least knew enough to delegate to his Hands. Though I guess he still made trouble.
@36: That sounds like Lord Marshmoreton in A Damsel In Distress, not Lord Emsworth.
In real life and in SFF, there are competent and incompetent autocrats.
The tendency for SFF works to be set in times of conflict naturally lends itself to the competent end of the spectrum.
I see no need to conciously change this. If the concern is that the reader starts to romanticise autocratic government, then clearly the author does not trust the reader, and should give them more credit.
I think a lot of sf/f authors are strong believers in meritocratic hierarchies, possibly from an unrealistic and romanticized view of how corporate and military hierarchies actually work. Advancement is just as likely to be by petty politicking, personal contacts, nepotism, and self-aggrandizement as by competence, with a lot of effort to make sure the Not Our Sort doesn’t advance
Coming in late, but @Robert_Carnegie: US civil servants have extremely stable jobs and cannot easily be removed. There are political appointees running agencies with titles like “Secretary” and “Director” who serve at the President’s pleasure, but they don’t do actual work.
@26, of course, quite a lot can go wrong in peacetime: plague, famine, natural disasters, and these can be more difficult to deal with than the neighborhood equivalent of the Vikings — those can be bought off.
One of the issues that destroyed quite a few autocratic dynasties was an inability to deal with those natural disasters; except for the few people directly beholden to the autocrat, they would tend to have no loyalty to [usually] him. We can see how less-than-competent autocrats, frequently those whose only priority was the military, failed due to natural disasters breaking the somewhat tenuous bonds that bind the people.
@41 Carl
And it’s a good thing too, or the U.S. would have ground to a halt in the last three years.
I disagree, zdrakec. Unaccountable power, and that’s what career bureaucrats have, is potentially dangerous to democracy.
@44
I was not altogether serious; I imagine that a balance must be struck somewhere…
Yes, that’s true. Continuity is necessary but so is accountability to the electorate. A difficult balance to strike and harder to maintain.
@44,
Competence is also an issue. While political connections (or nepotism) aren’t bars to competence, per se, they frequently will trump ability. (Mindy Kaling had a great line about that in The Late Show) See, for example, Michael Brown of FEMA notoriety. It’s also a problem where personal loyalties are taken to be more valuable than the law. Of course, the law doesn’t really exist in autocracies: the law is exactly what the autocrat says it is, and personal loyalty is the only concern.
@28,
Occasionally, autocrats join together to keep democracy from rearing its magnificent head: the alliance between Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Prussia, sometimes joined by the U.K. and France that existed to promote suppression, autocracy, and privilege. Without it, quite a few countries wouldn’t have needed losing a two world wars (one them cold) to get away from autocracy (but one seems to be moving back that way