Bittercon panel: Thieves Guilds and Other Criminal Societies

[kate_nepveu]

Last one; I really hadn't meant to spend my night doing this.

Thieves Guilds and Other Criminal Societies

The Thieves Guild is a common staple in fantasy novels. Terry Pratchett's Discworld books parody it; Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora critiques it; and Steven Brust's Taltos novels examine a more modern Mafia-style version. What's good, bad, interesting, boring, otherwise worth talking about when it comes to this idea?

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the Lynch yet, I'm waiting for a decent sized paperback -- all I've seen is the ghastly UK C-format thing. (Why does anyone buy them? Less durable than a mmpb, harder to hold than a hardback, and ridiculously expensive?)

Anyway, I think there's a boring D&D way of doing it, which does indeed derive from Lankhmar, and Brust does it brilliantly, and so does Tim Powers in The Anubis Gates.

The thing most worth talking about would be why this thing that never really existed in the form it typically exists in fantasy novels, and certainly not in a medieval world, is so common as to be a cliche. Why did Leiber's little bit of invention and extrapolation from C.18 London to Lankhmar become this standard piece of fantasy furniture?

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I find myself thinking of "benefit of clergy", and privilege in the original sense of private law, and the semi-myths of Prohibition-era gangsters.

Of course, the last also matches pretty well the legends of English smugglers: "Brandy for the parson, 'baccy for the clerk".

And that suggests a mechanism by people can be outside the law, but still within society. It's the socially acceptable face of the Barbarian. It's a way to gain respect without the dreary day-to-day monotony of the shopkeeper.

And, of course, it's just like Lord Veterinari to trap the Thieves' Guild with thweir own desire for respectability.

[kate_nepveu]

Yes, Vetinari knows just how to give you what you think you want, doesn't he?

So, the Thieves' Guild is a formalized expression of the tendency for illegal parts of the economy to be integrated in the legal?

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Something like Las Vegas, yes.

[kate_nepveu]

Which suggests that the Thieves' Guild needs an ad campaign a la Vegas's . . .

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

So, the Thieves' Guild is a formalized expression of the tendency for illegal parts of the economy to be integrated in the legal?

With House Jhereg as a more explicit examination of this than most ? Given a reasonable balance of power, I mean; the extralegal who has enough influence and power to be genuinely outside the law is a different trope - I was thinking Johnny Marcone when I started that sentence, but it's also a spookily close fit for Bruce Wayne.

[kate_nepveu]

Seems like an interesting hypothesis to me, anyway. Suddenly I wish I could remember the plot of _Orca_ in a lot more detail.

[kate_nepveu]

I don't remember a thing about _The Anubis Gates_ except "time travel that I found really confusing," so I'll have to put this down on the side of "reasons to re-read."

Well, the boring answer to your question is "lack of critical thought in worldbuilding," but from a story POV, I'm wondering if it's a way of creating tension but having an intrinsic limit on the level of it?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The thieves and beggar's guild stuff in it is historical. Well, except for the magic bit.

I wonder if it's a way of having rules to break. So there's a guild and there are rules and it gives you a real dilemma if you have to go over those lines -- I was thinking about this in the context of Vlad, but it's more widely true. If you're a criminal character, then what limits have you, and how can you be sympathetic? Maybe.

[kate_nepveu]

If you have characters who are members of the guild, and law enforcement isn't a realistic threat, sure, why not?

[richboye.livejournal.com]

_The Anubis Gates_ is one of my favorite books of all time! I'd think - judging how congruent our tastes seem to be - you'd love it. It has it all - Dickensian thieves guilds, "reverse hospitals" in subterranean London, girls masquerading as boys, spoon-sized boys, time travel, rakish, scoundrels and evil clowns, Egyptian gods, and Lord Byron. Fire demons too. It's delirious, entertaining nonsense. I re-read it every time I fly.

[kate_nepveu]

delirious, entertaining nonsense

See, I do kinda like things _making sense_ . . .

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Powers' novels, like Joan Aiken's, tend to be rigorously logical within their own frameworks despite containing extremely disparate and weird elements.

[richboye.livejournal.com]

That's sorta what I meant. It does all gel at the end, but man does that book careen from thing to thing.

[kate_nepveu]

_Last Call_, the related books, and _Declare_ all made sense to me, so maybe it was just me WRT _Anubis Gates_. It's very possible.

[(Anonymous)]

It's perfectly true that the thieves' guild never existed in the highly developed form in which it turns up in fantasy novels. However, it is the case that there is a text of 1552 that refers to the London cutpurses' having a 'corporation', or guild: it is one of the more reliable accounts of the early modern underworld, so I think we can assume that they had some kind of organisation, though probably a fairly loose one. And it is also the case that from the early seventeenth century fantasy elaborations of the idea of fraternities of beggars and thieves became extremely popular for a while. This is an old, old fantasy, not solely a modern one.

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that comment about the 1552 reference to a real cutpurse guild, etc, was me. I hadn't noticed that I wasn't logged in.

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks for the information--I'm learning so much from this, it's great.

Somehow I'm not surprised that there's a long tradition of this sort of fantasy, either.