Raven Crowking
First Post
Hobo said:
Right now, you'd pretty well have to go through the mainstream novel section, or "classics" (if you are so lucky) to find much of the older fantasy. How books were shelved by bookstores, of course, is a different consideration than how publishers viewed them. LotR and SoS, by selling so much, made putting the word "fantasy" on the spine far more common than it was before (if, indeed, such things even happened before).
In any event, once upon a time booksellers and publishers marketted differently than they do today.
Sample titles only of books that have lasted, gleaned by a quick Google search. If I was at home, I could pull many, many more books off my bookshelf. Do you really imagine that, if I wanted to spend the time doing so, I couldn't list hundreds of fantasy novels that predate 1980? I bet that I could list over 100 off my bookshelves today, and I have none of the actual books now that I had in 1980 (there is certainly overlap in what I have copies of).
You can certainly go to Amazon and determine what you think qualify out of the 501 titles they list for 1979 (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n...rs=25&keywords=1979-&rh=n:25,k:1979-,n:16190). Or take a look at the World Fantasy Awards for various years (http://www.awardannals.com/wiki/Annal:1979_World_Fantasy_Award_for_Novel). Being established in 1975, the existence of the World Fantasy Award might well demonstrate that there was a real fantasy presence before 1980.
Many of those listed titles are still in publication, and there is no reason that someone in the 70s couldn't go into a bookstore and pick up a copy. In fact, a great deal of older fantasy was re-released in the 70s and 80s due to the influence of LotR and SoS. Not so dissimilar, in fact, to the reprinting of many older fantasy and pulp works now, in light of recent Hollywood and popular appeal.
Of course, it is true that in the older tradition, sf and fantasy were almost interchangeable. There are still some folks who consider LotR to be sf (rather than fantasy) because it sets out strict rules as to what can happen, and then abides by them. Lovecraft's mythos was based on the idea that the "elder gods" were cosmic aliens, and could arguably be called sf. Some REH stories, like Conan's "The Tower of the Elephant", have clear sf leanings. Likewise, many nominally "sf" novels contain heavy elements of fantasy.
It used to be pretty common to use fantasy in sf and vice versa. There is a good bit in the introduction to Wilderlands about this "older" type of fantasy (of course, it is still with us, as is witnessed by Star Wars, for example).
As previously mentioned, The Dictionary of Imaginary Places and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy are great references, and I would recommend either to anyone. Black Water and Black Water 2 also belong on the shelf of any fantasy lover.
As I said before, if you couldn't find any fantasy before 1980, you were either not trying very hard, or you were really unlucky. It was definitely available.
RC
