For recent examples, Dragon Age, Warcraft, and D&D itself are pushing further and further in this direction lately.
https://www.amazon.com/Legends-Lattes-Novel-Fantasy-Stakes-e...
I haven't read it myself, but apparently it is big on TikTok. Perhaps for some HN readers this is the sort of thing they are looking for ;-)
There's a huge retrojection problem going in a lot of fantasy right now.
I really wish authors would write books that authentically described an alien society, rather than wish casting "vague liberal fantasy with different clothes"(usually liberal, but libertarian authors do it too, same problem, different lumps under the clothes).
Now, I wonder: would that sell? I dunno.
But I might scream the next time I read or see an "other" society dumping duty for individualism as per European upper crust romanticism. Again.
Art, inclucing fantasy, always has been a mirror to reality (not 100%, of course). Otherwise, nobody would understand it, it wouldn't move them, and they wouldn't care.
Also, it would be very hard to write well. People write well about what they know. Hemingway famously advised that you need to know the entire iceberg to write convincingly about the tip.
It tells a story of deeply alien societies ruled by mysterious and grand powers. Unsettling, strange, and defined by extremes. But those extremes have roots in the deepest parts of the human psyche and immediately resonate when uncovered. Ideology, faith, rebellion, hierarchy, immortality, death. All of its characters, motifs, and locations are so clearly derived from classical myth and tragedy, even carrying many of the same metaphorical lessons. But taken at its face, it bears no resemblance to anything that has ever existed in human history. It is not immediately relatable and confuses most people until things start to click into place.
I'm convinced of two things by my experience digging through Elden Ring: 1) Most people are not creative enough to imagine something uncomfortably alien but which still has something timeless to say, and 2) as you said, it's astoundingly difficult to write such a thing well. For example, I regularly read Year's Best Sci-Fi compendiums, and many of those short stories miss the mark. They reach too far and are unable to connect. But each book has at least one story nails what good sci-fi should: Saying something resonant in the context of a human or alien society with technology and practices that are uncomfortably different, but where that difference elevates the central thesis.
We agree; we are just misunderstanding each other: Deeper metaphysical truths fit in what I intended by "mirror". I wasn't restricting it to "contemporary society and its ills", though those also fit.
I meant that it's hard to write something that is not a reflection of our experiences, perceptions, emotions, etc. It's hard to write from a bat's actual perspective, for example, or from the perspetive of a fictional alien with no connection to human perception or experience.
Its my long standing observation that people with a varied and interesting life history make the best fiction authors, rather than those who loved books and went straight into writing fiction.
which probably is the problem.
How does one "authentically" describe something no human has ever encountered?
there's a whole light genre of cracked-esque material "10 things you had no idea about from back when" that exists, just dial that up to 11. Get _deep_, and you will put the player / reader into someplace most will never have dreamed of. ( https://writerthereseoneill.com/ makes a specialty of doing pop history in that genre - I recommend her books)
imo when you dig hard enough into a very different human society, you start getting into the heavy questions of "what makes us human", and that is _interesting_.
D20 rules applied, usually, to "slice of life" situations and mixing in four strong personalities, with zero production values, just talking heads around a table, rolling dice.