D&D 5E D&D and who it's aimed at

[Paul Farquhar]

During every age, the wheel is on its way up for some civilizations, and on its way down (or already all the way down) for others. Many of Conan's adventures are set amongst the ruins of the latter.

Even if that was correct, it doesn't make it dystopian. In a dystopia things are BAD, and can only get worse. It not a mixture of bad and good.

 

[Greg Benage]

Yeah part of the issue is simply that S&S as a genre has basically been erased by "epic fantasy" in the modern fantasy-reader's consciousness.

And this has really been true for 40+ years. S&S has tried to make a comeback at various times, but I don't think it's ever really been successful. More's the pity, IMO, but there it is.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In a dystopia things are BAD, and can only get worse. It not a mixture of bad and good.

This would disqualify The Hunger Games, classic dystopian novel series, from being dystopian. And also arguably The Handmaid's Tale as the framing story makes it clear things did eventually get better, so I'm not sure it's quite right. Also 1984 which IIRC has a similar framing story saying "Yo well that all ended in tears!" (unless I'm confusing it with Brave New World).

Nonetheless I wouldn't call Conan "dystopian", because dystopia tends to be about a particular civilization, and Conan is sort of outside that and traveling among various civilizations, some of which are in worse states than others.

 

[Greg Benage]

Even if that was correct, it doesn't make it dystopian. In a dystopia things are BAD, and can only get worse. It not a mixture of bad and good.

That's a really interesting take. Mockingjay, for example*, ends with a revolution that overthrows the old, corrupt order. Things have gotten better. Katniss battles and battles and ultimately makes the world a better place. For me, this is a dramatically different vibe than REH, where both Kull and Conan become kings and also don't change anything. In REH, that cyclical rise and fall are baked into human history.

* I'm assuming we'd all agree that The Hunger Games series counts as dystopian fiction.

EDIT: Ninja!

 

[Greg Benage]

Nonetheless I wouldn't call Conan "dystopian", because dystopia tends to be about a particular civilization, and Conan is sort of outside that and traveling among various civilizations, some of which are in worse states than others.

That's a good take. The oppressive, tyrannical order in dystopian fiction tends to be monolithic, and the Hyborian Age ain't that.

 

[Cadence]

Yeah part of the issue is simply that S&S as a genre has basically been erased by "epic fantasy" in the modern fantasy-reader's consciousness. If you're not publishing a trilogy or even better a series of dead-minimum 300, preferably 500-page plus novels, do you even write fantasy, bro? Certainly the average fantasy fan today will say "No". The idea of reading short stories (THE HORROR) is particularly repugnant, when they're used to immense rolling novels. I mean, I can't entirely blame them - a lot of fantasy works really well in that format, but it also means that older S&S doesn't stand a chance. Even amazing writers like Le Guin, who did write multi-book series are gradually getting forgotten because there aren't literally thousands of pages of blather about Sparrowhawk, only a few hundred, and it's insufficiently power-fantasy-ish. And it's becoming increasingly clear that quantity might be more important than quality though I will not name names re: the authors making this evident!

Is it too hard to make a movie out of a novelette or short story?

Anyway, it's amazing how slim some of the appendix N books, books I read in K-12, and classic detective stories are! (Or if they're thick, they're a collection or omnibus). Do you think those authors would have written that way if they didn't have to appeal to the magazines and/or papers that published or serialized them?

I have yet to find a fantasy short story anthology I didn't like -- I just need to start picking up more of them, and not just the ones that had a story by a favorite author in them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Is it too hard to make a movie out of a novelette or short story?

I think it's actually easier to make a movie out of a novelette or short story than 99% of fantasy novel series, which is why relatively few fantasy novel series have been made into movies (LotR being the main one, let's not talk about The Hobbit).

But the issue is that now, it's all about "the IP", not just an individual movie or TV series.

And whilst with lengthy fantasy novel series, you probably want to go with a TV series not a movie, that is more useful than S&S, generally. The closest we have to S&S on TV now is The Witcher (despite repeated threats of a Conan TV series), which is essentially S&S-adjacent at least, but had so much written that they were able to use it like a more conventional fantasy novel series. Marvel's continuing success with the MCU is only making this "IP-first" concept seem more appealing to the decision-makers behind movies and TV.

I'll be pretty surprised if it doesn't end up making Brandon Sanderson a lot of money at some point. His books are absolute bait for this and interconnected via the Cosmere stuff. The only things holding him back are that, by his own admission, he is not good at writing romances (and indeed his earlier books are actively staid-seeming, and not in a good way!), which weakens some of his stories, and that most of his novels would need a fairly big FX budget (but every year that is less of an issue).

 

[Umbran]

That's a good take. The oppressive, tyrannical order in dystopian fiction tends to be monolithic, and the Hyborian Age ain't that.

I don't know if that holds at all. YA dystopia tends to have monoliths, but they often have simplified settings to support the other YA tropes. But outside the YA space, things are different. A lot of cyberpunk dystopia doesn't have single monoliths, but instead has collections of extra-national corporate powers vying for control. A lot of post-apocalypse work can also be viewed as dystopian, and in such stories technology usually doesn't support large-scale monoliths any more.

 

[Minigiant]

You don't need a setting to do Sword and Sorcery. According to wikipedia

I never said you did.
My point is the people upset won't get what they want because it's handled by base D&D and old books.

Yeah part of the issue is simply that S&S as a genre has basically been erased by "epic fantasy" in the modern fantasy-reader's consciousness

It's more that Dark Fantast and Intrigue ate S&D's lunch and popularity.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A lot of post-apocalypse work can also be viewed as dystopian, and in such stories technology usually doesn't support large-scale monoliths any more.

That's true, but I think most of the post-apocalyptic novels I'd think of as also dystopian are, in fact, about a specific civilization/society, like the Wool series.

I don't think monolithic is necessarily right, but if it's not monolithic, to be dystopian generally means it's specifically about one -topia - i.e. civilization (I'm aware it originally meant "city").

Re: cyberpunk I think the issue is complicated by the fact that there tends to be one inescapable "world-culture" which the corporations essentially control.

It's more that Dark Fantast and Intrigue ate S&D's lunch and popularity.

I don't think so, because S&S starts being overrun long before those two things become particularly popular (indeed dark fantasy still isn't very popular, rather fantasy as a whole got a bit darker like pouring more coffee in milky coffee, and intrigue-based fantasy didn't get big until after ASoIaF), and the sort of reader who loves intrigue is not the same as the sort of reader who loves S&S tropes, I'd suggest. Indeed they may be opposites. S&S has more in common with shonen manga/anime than it does with, say, A Song of Ice and Fire (despite superficial use of S&S tropes in Essos).