Does Setting Drive Plot?

As I mentioned before, I’m working on a sci-fi/fantasy mashup story, and it got me thinking about how much a setting drives the plot.  Take The Martian, for instance.  Yes, we get a close up look at Mark Watney, but if he wasn’t on Mars, it’d just be a story about a farmer.  It’s similar with everything from Treasure Island to Robinson Crusoe to Guns of the South – in each one, where/when it takes place is what sets the mood and drives the plot.

Does this mean the setting is paramount?  I don’t think it’s paramount, but it’s really, really high on the order condescendi.  Characters come and go, but outside of one or two main ones, they don’t have the influence the setting does.  Even in a story like Harry Potter, where Harry and Voldemort drive the action, the setting is what creates the world.  After all, would you care as much if the story was set in a cornfield in Nebraska rather than a castle in England?

And maybe that’s the key to creating a good story, to figure out first where it happens.  The worlds my mind creates always drive the focus of the tale.  Fantastical worlds need people to drive them, but those people are meaningless if the setting is random and ordinary.  So it takes extraordinary settings to create extraordinary stories.

Or maybe I’m off my rocker and stuff can happen anywhere.  Who knows?