D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

[Belen]

"Romantic fantasy" was basically just a euphemism for fantasy aimed more at a female readership than a male one. Again there was always stuff on the borderlines too. Robin Hobb's very successful and long-running Assassin series, for example, had an awful lot of tropes associated with "romantic fantasy", but had a darker spin to it that maybe gave it a wider audience.

Romantic fantasy is fine. I love Valdemar, Green Rider, and Rhapsody books.

Maas's Throne of Glass was good, but her subsequent romantasy romance novels....no. Those are romance novels.

 

[Umbran]

The net effect, I feel, is that traditional sf&f suffers and folks who want it find it much more difficult at a discovery level.

Your feelings are what they are. But the bookstore has sales numbers, which should trump your feelings in their decision making process.

And "traditional" is not, in and of itself, a distinction of much value. There was a time when fantasy was frowned upon for not being "traditional" literature. Everyone will have a different idea of what is "traditional". Like, the Tolkienistas and Conanerds would say only their styles are "traditional" and leave folks who like Jim Butcher's noir urban fantasy and N.K. Jemisin's works addressing structural racism through allegory out in the cold.

Purism itself gets in the way of discovery.

I draw a distinction with romantasy versus romantic fantasy. Romantic fantasy, imo, are books like Lackey's Valdemar series. They are clearly fantasy books versus novels that are intended for romance with a fantasy twist.

So, when you own a bookstore, arrange them the way you want.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Again I couldn't really get into the books but I like GRR Martin as a concept lol. He seems like a very intelligent and interesting person in interviews. His writing is very good. The shows entertained me a lot (not sure how much they align with the books). But the overall impression I have, and people can correct me if I am wrong, is he is very interested in history and a lot of the stories play out as history might play out, rather than how fiction often does

One of the reasons I've always been fond of his work.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There was a time when fantasy was frowned upon for not being "traditional" literature.

Like barely 15 years ago even that idea was still going, yeah, people might want to remember that.

Like, the Tolkienistas and Conanerds would say only their styles are "traditional" and leave folks who like Jim Butcher's noir urban fantasy and N.K. Jemisin's works addressing structural racism through allegory out in the cold.

I mean, maybe it's just me, but Jemisin's Broken Earth series felt very "traditional" to me - a lot of fantasy (even Tolkien, with the hobbits and the scouring of the Shire and so on) addresses social, philosophical or psychological issues that the author cares about, and the allegorical elements in Broken Earth were extremely well-handled imho. I genuinely felt like this could have been written 40+ years ago, even the polycule that appears at one point isn't something exactly absent from older SF/F novels.

 

[Umbran]

But the overall impression I have, and people can correct me if I am wrong, is he is very interested in history and a lot of the stories play out as history might play out, rather than how fiction often does

He has specifically noted that the real history of the War of the Roses was a major inspiration/influence on the work.

 

[Umbran]

I genuinely felt like this could have been written 40+ years ago, even the polycule that appears at one point isn't something exactly absent from older SF/F novels.

Sure, but 40 years ago was the mid-80s. And Heinlein was starting to address such stuff back in 1961...

 

[Bedrockgames]

I doubt we can get into the whole messaging thing without crossing the no politics rule. But I will just say, I do think there has always been messaging, exploration of philosophical, moral and social issues in the genre (and it wasn't all conservative, there were plenty of writers who obviously were informed by things like the counter culture). I do feel like there is a narrow set of sensibilities catered to these days in publishing on that front. At the same time, I think people react to that narrowing by wanting a past that never existed (either they want it to all another very narrow set of ideas, or no ideas). So am very cautious about throwing out the baby with the bath water, simply because things have gone down a path I find a little too restrictive (i.e. I don't want a more restrictive path, but in a different direction). Also I think how artfully one handles messaging is important. A lot of my reaction to that in newer media isn't so much the message itself but how organically it fits into the story

Just as an example of what I am talking about with the backlash I see (one I don't think is especially in danger of veering into the political) is how I see a lot of folks talk about GRR Martin. He is sort of used as an argument for fantasy moving away from morally gray or more nihilistic themes and returning to more aspirational and traditional ones. To me that is an overreaction. I don't have a problem with the themes Martin was tackling. And I don't think it is healthy any end of the political spectrum to have a monopoly on what themes get addressed

 

[Paul Farquhar]

overall impression I have, and people can correct me if I am wrong, is he is very interested in history and a lot of the stories play out as history might play out, rather than how fiction often does

You are not wrong. He talked about this in the same interview if memory serves. He said that it wasn’t so much the Wars of the Roses, but other (obscure to me) European wars of succession that he used as reference material.

So clearly, GRRM belongs in the “historical fiction” section!

 

[Bedrockgames]

You are not wrong. He talked about this in the same interview if memory serves. He said that it wasn’t so much the Wars of the Roses, but other (obscure to me) European wars of succession that he used as reference material.

So clearly, GRRM belongs in the “historical fiction” section!

I am thinking less about specific history (though I am sure he was drawing on it), and more about how the beats flow. In history, a person dies, often anticlimactically because it is real life. The bad guys often win. It is messy

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I doubt we can get into the whole messaging thing without crossing the no politics rule

You could probably get away with mentioning that C S Lewis has Christian messaging!

writers who obviously were informed by things like the counter culture

Moorcock. Le Guin. Ed Greenwood.