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<blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 3886490" data-attributes="member: 32164">The &quot;why&quot; is pretty interesting, but I think it comes down to the counterculture aspect of fantasy. It was pretty corner-case as entertainment back then. It took the rise of &quot;geek culture&quot; to make fantasy &quot;mainstream&quot; in the eyes of the general public.Moorcock and LeGuin (and most of their contemporaries) were too &quot;fringe&quot; to make a splash with the mainstream. Truth to tell, what made fantasy mainstream wasn't The Sword of Shannara - it was Star Wars. The former just happened to be published at the right time to benefit from the latter's success. The Sword of Shannara was essentially a Tolkien pastiche with a couple elements that made it different. There were a lot of them at the time.On the other hand, Star Wars took fantasy and repackaged it with science fiction elements. But, unlike in most sci-fi, the fantasy elements of it were pretty overt. For example, it made liberal use of traditionally &quot;fantasy&quot; phrases and words like: &quot;A long time ago,&quot; knights, wizard, and princess, among others. And there was this little thing about magic (the Force) and magic swords (lightsabers) too...So, IMO, it was Star Wars that opened the door for fantasy to become mainstream. Everyone else just capitalized on it. That's why so many years passed between the publication of The Lord of the Rings and the next BIG fantasy hit.And it was years more before any really good &quot;pure&quot; fantasy movies got made.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JohnSnow, post: 3886490, member: 32164"] The "why" is pretty interesting, but I think it comes down to the counterculture aspect of fantasy. It was pretty corner-case as entertainment back then. It took the rise of "geek culture" to make fantasy "mainstream" in the eyes of the general public. Moorcock and LeGuin (and most of their contemporaries) were too "fringe" to make a splash with the mainstream. Truth to tell, what made fantasy mainstream wasn't [i]The Sword of Shannara[/i] - it was [i]Star Wars[/i]. The former just happened to be published at the right time to benefit from the latter's success. [i]The Sword of Shannara[/i] was essentially a Tolkien pastiche with a couple elements that made it different. There were a lot of them at the time. On the other hand, [i]Star Wars[/i] took fantasy and repackaged it with science fiction elements. But, unlike in most sci-fi, the fantasy elements of it were pretty overt. For example, it made liberal use of traditionally "fantasy" phrases and words like: "A long time ago," knights, wizard, and princess, among others. And there was this little thing about magic (the Force) and magic swords (lightsabers) too... So, IMO, it was [i]Star Wars[/i] that opened the door for fantasy to become mainstream. Everyone else just capitalized on it. That's why so many years passed between the publication of [i]The Lord of the Rings[/i] and the next BIG fantasy hit. And it was years more before any really good "pure" fantasy [i]movies[/i] got made. [/QUOTE]

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