The history leading to this fictional society? What would explain this strange combination of cultural influences? Oh, I don't know, let's play around with that question. Not that we'd be likely to use any of this, but it's interesting to see what one can come up with. Having done so, I think you'll see why I would hesitate to use any of this.

My first impulse is to picture a story a bit harsher than the Xaran premise. Migrations usually, historically, have come in response to bad things - hunger, persecution, war. Good things, people have more often either tried to imitate and bring back home with them (eg. artistic golden ages such as the Renaissance, which ended up spreading to Northern Europe) or made do without (eg. nicer weather). Normally, human beings are loathe to move away from friends and loved ones, and when they cease to be, it's usually a sign of something really unfortunate (eg. the widespread disintegration of the social fabric in the present day US). And, let's face it - no matter where we imagine ourselves being, we're still sitting in the early 21st century. As a source of literary inspiration, our era leaves us far better suited to imagine the worst that is in man, than to imagine the best.

At the fiction writing phase, then perhaps we might write the story of the culture that arose as people overcame those hardships? For example, one might extrapolate a few unpleasant late 20th / early 21st century trends into the future. What might those be? Here are a few :

1. The continuing displacement of indigenous peoples, which has lead to the concept of a "fourth world".



2. In the West, a move away from traditional ethical principles, toward cynicism, opportunism and cavalier indifference toward the rights and needs of others. A denial that such things as rights even exist, in some extreme cases.



3. A tendency toward short-sightedness, combined with a "don't worry, be happy" attitude that leads many to refuse to think about problems until they reach crisis proportions, and sometimes not even then.



4. The introduction of new diseases into the global population, as formerly isolated regions are opened up to the world, and diseases which we once relatively confined become globe spanning epidemics. (Eg. AIDS). Given the biological reality that the longer a species has dwelt in a place the more natural enemies it will have there, and the fact that many of the places where man has lived the longest have been relatively isolated over the last few millenia, it is not unreasonable to expect that many more unpleasant surprises await us, as the rain forests are opened up to commercial expansion.

Cultures will sometimes turn themselves around, and those who help them do so are the people we call heroes. Gorbachev's quiet democratic revolution in the old Soviet Union comes to mind. But let's say we go the route of satire, in conceiving our hypothetical future. The hero never shows up. Society keeps going down the bad road that it is already on. The fashionability of postmodernism actually makes this future easier to imagine, because in the absence of accepted standards of good and evil, any would-be hero trying to turn the course of history is left with no philosophical ground to stand on, no way of convincing people that change is needed. And so, change never comes.

Let's follow that theme into the future that might be, and see where it leads us. The rainforests continue to be cleared, because Chip and Muffy just have to find their mahogany end table at Homemakers. While compassion would call for the West to help the Third World to develop and escape its poverty, history tells us that this is unlikely to occur. So, imagine an Africa that, like today, lacks the resources needed to take care of its many medical problems. Prudence, if nothing else, would tell the densely populated West, with its even more densely populated Eastern Asian partners, that it would do well to provide timely assistance. But remember, we're writing satire, so we're going to assume that the historical refusal to deal with potential dangers proactively, continues. The Center for Disease Control never takes action.

Global warming sets in. Temperate zone forests retreat in many places, as rainfall diminishes. They retreat even more after US troops defoliate Mindanao in an attempt to help crush the rebellion there, and a generally irritated Islamic World retaliates by letting loose a few genetically engineered blights. Speculation creates a sudden spike in the price of many finer woods, and the tropical forests are entered and logged with an unheard of rapacity, opening up isolated areas with unprecedented speed. Every new plague that would have come out of the region in a millenium of two under normal circumstances, hits a very careless world at once.

We end up with a hypothetical 22nd century world in which the most strategic natural resources are no longer oil and gas, but pharmaceuticals, needed to control the epidemics. Those countries that have them get by, after a fashion. Those that don't are left too weakened to defend themselves. Ironically, most of those pharmaceuticals are to be found growing in the very same rainforests whose clearing released the aforementioned plagues, and what is left of them is at a premium.

Into this world, place a West gone entirely cynical and more than slightly fascist. The Ibo, already on the defensive in the 20th and 21st centuries, find themselves uprooted by Ashanti expansionism, carried out with the support of a West which wants the drugs which can be made using those pharmaceuticals, and foolishly decides to back the stronger side, forgetting that they have some tens of millions of indigenous species to look through, and the uprooted natives are the ones who know the most about how to use them. The Ibo join the Mayans and a throng of other dispossessed peoples streaming southward, toward sanctuaries in countries such as Brazil and South Africa, which have been strong enough to hold their own against the rising tide of a new Western expansionism, one that continues until finally the West is undone by its own cynicism, unable to find enough survivors who know enough about those badly needed pharmaceuticals quickly enough to prevent its own rapid depopulation, and falls as a civilization. Had the West but remembered and lived by its own stated traditional values ... but it is too late, and the new dark age begins, those in the sanctuaries finally getting some relief, but not for long.

Now, write the story of those sanctuaries, and then pursue it a few centuries into the future. What kind of world do you find yourself describing? There's one possible fictive culture. You don't get the warm feeling that a "higher intelligences sharing their wisdom with us" scenario will leave you with, but I'd suggest that something like this has more the flavor of real history, especially the history out of which new societies arise. The imperfections of this harsh fictive world are exactly what make it come alive for the reader, or the listener, and give the characters something meaningful to do.

No denying it, though - this is a nasty fictional future, and its likely to get nastier, if you develop it honestly. Some people won't mind that, but let's say that you want a fictional history that is a little more upbeat. Is it possible to come up with one?

Perhaps it is, but I would suggest that one will have greater luck getting the reader to suspend his disbelief in the time line that follows if you have the fictional history diverge from the real one in our past, instead of our future. West Africa, before the Western colonial powers had arrived, was developing with remarkable speed. Postulate an alternate history in which, for example, the British Empire is too busy with internal dissension and attacks from the outside to invade, especially after it has decided that the best way of keeping its homeland safe is to expand its empire closer to home. ("Lebensraum", to use the 20th century term for the idea). In the history that actually occured, this was attempted at the expense of most of the Celtic countries. Let's say that the Empire decides to consolidate its position some more by adding the Scandinavian countries as well, and then the German states in the name of "restoring order". When? Maybe put this scenario back during the Wars of the Reformation, in a still Catholic Britain in which Henry VIII got his heir, and decides to end the suppression of his church in the Northern German states. The Wars of the Reformation blow up into a centuries-long, theatre-level conflict.

France watches an expansionist Britain gobble up Denmark and Northern Germany, and concludes that it may be next, especially considering the fact that such a conquest was attempted before, under the Anglevin Empire (This much is real history : the Hundred Years war). The French government seeks as many allies as it can find, as quickly as it can find them. It comes across the countries on already densely populated and rapidly developing West African coast, in what is now Nigeria and its neighbors : some city-states and a small empire or two.

Lots and lots of warm bodies for the battlefield. They parley. The leadership on the other side senses a weakened negotiating position, and demands, in exchange for providing mercenaries, a few tidbits like the knowledge of how to make gunpowder, improved ironworking techniques, etc. Think Meiji restoration period in Japan : a government, sensing a potential threat, decides that it is going to learn as much from its potential adversaries as possible, so that it will be able to defend itself and not become the next colonial acquisition. By the time Europe is at peace, and an over-expanded British Empire collapses, a now developed and armed West Africa is more than able to defend itself. It's still badly overpopulated, though. (In real life, Nigeria has presently has well over 100 million people, and a standard of living reminiscent of that of India). Your fictive culture arises as West African immigrants seek a better life in the New World, just as European immigrants did in our time line.

"Dude, that's still kinda nasty", somebody will say. Probably somebody from California, where the level of historical literacy doesn't tend to be very high. The sad fact is that what I just described is not markedly more unpleasant than the history that actually did end up occuring, and it is incomparably more pleasant than the history of the 9th century in the same region, to take an infamous example. This is the reality that Utopian California never seems to have come to terms with : The history of mankind is a history of sorrow, and what makes a good era good is not that negativity does not arise during it, but that the solutions that are found to the problems that arise are principled and sound ones. Any cycle of stories that ignores that reality is going to ring false.

What, if anything, does any of this have to do with starting a camp? Ever been to a fiction reading? Part of what this hypothetical camp might do, if anybody is interested, would be to tell the stories of this fictional culture, and invite vistors to participate by writing and telling their own set in this story cycle. Literature is a part of any culture, right? And a culture is the product of its history, so I would argue that if you want to create a believable fictive culture, the first step should be to create a believable fictive history.

What is realistic, though, is another question. If a group were to do this at all, creating a story cycle and then imagining the culture that such a fictional history would give rise to, such an effort would most likely remain a sketchy one : lay out the broad outlines of the timeline and leave it at that. Who has time to do more than that?

A bigger question is : what will the audience be willing to sit through. A burn is not a literary society meeting, and attention spans tend to be short. ("But, dude, no way did Togo have all that technology" "The story is set in an alternate history, PlayaBoy" "Yeah, but Togo didn't have alternate technology, either"). If one does put such a history together, one would probably be better off putting the story cycle on one's group's homepage. Maybe, one's group would end up doing most of the readings at decidedly non-burning man fiction reading events, limiting readings at burns to brief pieces in which one holds onto the literary style of the fictive culture, but the fictional history doesn't become an issue. As others will point out, presented with a complicated theme, most won't get it, and just walk off.

A point which I would expect that the reader would have picked up on by now is that paradoxically enough, one of my criticisms of the concept of the Xara Project is the very thing that fascinates me about it : the whole idea of creating an entire culture or even of pretending to. "Dude, this is a lot of seriousness for just a camp", some will say, to which my response is "exactly". One can talk very blithely about creating a fictional civilization without appreciating the full magnitude of what it is, that one has just said. If one thinks that the above story lines were complicated (and a little dark), one should take a good look at real history. A PhD-ed historian will spend his entire career studying one small aspect of a single regional subculture and yet we're going to put together a believable fictional civilization in an afternoon? I don't think so.

One has to ask oneself, "am I willing to put this much work into writing stories which my intended audience won't end up hearing, just to keep my vision of this fictional culture a coherent one". Most people would answer that question with a firm "no", I think, which is why I'm reluctant to pursue this approach any further, as interesting as the possibilities it presents are : one won't find partners. At least, one won't until one has spent some serious time at a fiction reading event, and such a fictional culture arises as a byproduct of a story cycle that one and one's partners were working on anyway, for reasons completely unrelated to Burning.

Am I suggesting then, that something like the Xara Camp Project is not worth pursuing as am idea? No. But what I am suggesting is that one might do well, when pursuing such ideas, to scale back one's ambitions a bit. Don't do an entire civilization. Do a village. In the case of this hypothetical camp, instead of trying to imagine the history that would lead to an entire Afro-Euro-Latin American culture of the sort we're idly talking about, I would suggest the far more modest goal of creating a fictional village with such a blended culture. The Carribean has produced a multitude of those, with a variety of cultures, and all one needs to postulate is the coming together of a collection of immigrant communities that have to learn how to live together. No need to imagine redesigning Civilization from the foundation on up, this way. In a dusty surreal setting where Ionesco is likely to play better than Shakespeare and Vasarely tends to outshine Rembrandt, that's probably a good thing to avoid in general.

For the time being, then, I'm putting the fictional civilization concept on the back burner, and considering other approaches.