Dwarves don't sell novels

[Illirion]

I don't know why everybody's gotten into fantasy literature/bicycle debate all of a sudden, but as for the original post: I'd totally buy a novel with a cool looking dwarf on the cover over one with another pansy elf !

Dwarves have generally a better sense of humor and have a cool accent. They have very clearly defined emotional boundries and you can count on every dwarf doing his best to uphold them, so a book about dwarves will generally focus more on adventuring and getting things done instead of all that emo-crap that you get with the elf and human races. Dwarves aren't exactly sexy, I'll give you that, but I don't think I've ever bought a book because it had a sexy picture on it (I think I've even chosen to not buy a book because of that). That would be like buying a car because it had a nice lady sliding over it in a commercial :\ .

So if I were to judge a book by it's cover, I'd give a novel with a cool dwarf more credit than a novel with a sexy elf.

Graphic novels would be the other way around probably .

EDIT: But honestly, could someone maybe please explain why this thread has come to be about bicyles ????

 

[Zander]

Physical incompatibility between science and magic within the context of a particular fantasy world is not the same thing as literary incompatibility between the concepts of science and fantasy. If it were, the novel could not have been written at all.

There is some merit to that argument. However, in the case of media where the audience's role is largely passive (books, films, plays), the author/director can manipulate the audience to distract them from asking the kinds of scientific or rational questions that would cause the fantasy to lose its plausibility. In an RPG, the GM has a lot less control over the audience and consequently fantasy in RPGs needs to be shielded more actively.

 

[Hussar]

So, Zander, it effectively comes down to a suspension of disbelief issue?

I can buy that as an arguement actually. However, since it's so subjective, I'm not really sure how you can make any claim that WOTC is "abandoning" fantasy for SF in fantasy clothing. One persons SF is another person's fantasy after all.

Heck, look at the discussions about Star Wars. Is it fantasy or SF? You can make a bloody good argument either way.

I think the real stumbling point here is any claim that in some sort of past, D&D was somehow less dependent on SF and more about fantasy. I'm sorry, while this may have been your experience, it is certainly not universal. The Monster Manual, the DMG and the PHB all argue against that, never mind setting material and modules.

You could maybe make that arguement during 2e days actually when Forgotten Realms was the most common setting. FR is very heavily steeped in heroic fantasy themes with much less reliance on pulp fantasy. Note, I'm painting with a very broad brush here, so, take what I'm saying with a large dash of salt. But, looking at the source books and whatnot for FR, I think you could make the "more fantasy, less SF" arguement.

The problem is, lots of people don't like FR. Lots of people do, that's true. And that's why FR continues to get lots of support. But, there are a number of gamers from all ages and experiences, who want to return to a more pulpy feel where the genre boundaries are a lot less clearly defined. I want to have alien spaceships crashing into my planet once in a while. I don't mind the idea of a bit of industrial magic.

In other words, some people are looking more for Hyperboria than Middle Earth.

 

[Zander]

Most literary students and their teachers would seperate mythology and
legend from modern fantasy because, despite having similar trappings,
the mythology of the ancients was not mere storytelling for
entertainment. Instead, much was considered reportage- basically
historical fact- as they saw it. It was used to teach both history and
morality.

Modern Fantasy is accepted as fiction and fiction only, even if it
contains morality tales or slices of history. While the genre depends in
large part upon the mythologies of the past, it is not correct to equate
them. Modern Fantasy is the child of mythology, they are not one in the
same.

When one ends and the next begins (if indeed there is such a point) or what function each played isn't terribly important. What is, is that WotC chooses to disregard fantasy's past. The reason that fantasy/mythology have "similar trappings" is that mythological (and later folkloric) tales over the centuries and millennia have had to satisfy each new generation. Through that screening process, current fantasy has incorporated the best of what the past has to offer. That's not to say that modern contributions can't be made to it, only that what is extant should not be discarded lightly.

Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be true.

If your research continuously shows that Phenomena Z violated the Laws
of Thermodynamics, and you can't prove that those Laws are wrong except
in the case of Phenomena Z, you're probably looking at magic, improbable
though that may be.

...The dragon who flies by means that violate the laws of thermodynamics,
then, is either evidence for magic or the fatal blow to at least one of
the 3 laws.

Magic (divine or spiritual) probably came about as an explanation of natural phenomena by primitive man to 'explain' the previously unexplained. In fact, it offers no explanation at all. Therefore, in your example, a fatal blow has indeed been dealt to one of the laws of thermodynamics. In a fantasy setting that tried to include science, the creator (DM in the case of D&D) would have to rewrite scientific principles to make them fit the magic and fabulous creatures of the fictional realm. That may not be a problem while the number of scientific principles that need to be rewritten remains small. But in a fantasy world with as much diverse magic and and many fabulous beasts as found in most D&D settings, it's probable that it will become impossible to keep the revised scientific principles consistent. They will very soon be logically impossible to reconcile.

As the holder of a Phi Sigma Tau National Philosophy Honors Society key,
I'm a little familiar with Popper's work.

That's good. It will save me from making unnecessary oversimplifications.

While a great thinker, his
work isn't even close to universal acceptance. The reason for this is
that some of his theories follow the reasoning of other philosophical
theories that are somewhat discounted or discredited, like Cartesian
Dualism.

(Don't get me wrong- he's brilliant. He's just not an undisputed authority.)

Nonetheless, you could have all the mathematics you liked in a fantasy setting for the reason that by itself, i.e. in the absence of science, mathematics doesn't falsify anything whether fantastic or not.

In what way is Twain's work a parody of fantasy?

Knights on bicycles? Twain is more than a little mocking Le Morte D'Arture and the Faerie Queene.

I don't believe any such thing, and I still consider your view of
fantasy very narrow. I easily distinguish between genres like sci-fi,
horror, fantasy, mystery and so forth...

But I also understand if you plot out the genres of fiction using Venn
diagrams, you'll see that genres are not mutually exclusive- they
overlap. You can have a horror story that is also a science fiction
story. You can have a mystery that is also a fantasy.

There are indeed overlaps between the genres. I've never doubted that. The trouble is that fantasy, though old, is also fragile. What defines fantasy is in large part visual. If you cross it with other genres, you tend to get a hybrid that more closely resembles that other genre. Mix science fiction and fantasy as in Star Wars and you get what most people would describe as science fiction.

Large numbers of unhappy people ≠ Correct people.

In a free market, that's de facto not true. If large numbers of people are unhappy about something, say D&D gamers about gnomes, that thing will have to be corrected, not the people.

 

[Zander]

So, Zander, it effectively comes down to a suspension of disbelief issue?

I can buy that as an arguement actually. However, since it's so subjective, I'm not really sure how you can make any claim that WOTC is "abandoning" fantasy for SF in fantasy clothing. One persons SF is another person's fantasy after all.

Heck, look at the discussions about Star Wars. Is it fantasy or SF? You can make a bloody good argument either way.

I think the real stumbling point here is any claim that in some sort of past, D&D was somehow less dependent on SF and more about fantasy. I'm sorry, while this may have been your experience, it is certainly not universal. The Monster Manual, the DMG and the PHB all argue against that, never mind setting material and modules.

You could maybe make that arguement during 2e days actually when Forgotten Realms was the most common setting. FR is very heavily steeped in heroic fantasy themes with much less reliance on pulp fantasy. Note, I'm painting with a very broad brush here, so, take what I'm saying with a large dash of salt. But, looking at the source books and whatnot for FR, I think you could make the "more fantasy, less SF" arguement.

The problem is, lots of people don't like FR. Lots of people do, that's true. And that's why FR continues to get lots of support. But, there are a number of gamers from all ages and experiences, who want to return to a more pulpy feel where the genre boundaries are a lot less clearly defined. I want to have alien spaceships crashing into my planet once in a while. I don't mind the idea of a bit of industrial magic.

In other words, some people are looking more for Hyperboria than Middle Earth.

As I've said in this thread and elsewhere, I don't want to police other people's fun. If WotC want to have a setting (or even several) with robots and spaceships, I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is when they abandon fantasy across the board.

 

[Hussar]

There are indeed overlaps between the genres. I've never doubted that. The trouble is that fantasy, though old, is also fragile. What defines fantasy is in large part visual. If you cross it with other genres, you tend to get a hybrid that more closely resembles that other genre. Mix science fiction and fantasy as in Star Wars and you get what most people would describe as science fiction.

Fantasy as a genre is old? WHAT? Fantasy as a genre is a construct of the 20th century. You can try to include 15th century French Romance stories into Fantasy, but that doesn't make it so. Le Morte d'Arthur is not fantasy literature.

Also, where does this idea that fantasy is "fragile" come from? Good grief, it's a genre spawned from science fiction that has exploded into quite possibly the most lucrative novel genre on the market today. You can fold, twist, spindle and maul fantasy and it's still fantasy. Fantasy is a HUGE genre. It encompasses a surprisingly large number of works.

Quite probably because it covers so much that there are a number of efforts to chop it up a bit to make it a little more useful as a genre. I mean, if you can include stories like John Carter of Mars beside The Hobbit, it makes the genre a bit unwieldy. But, that's a somewhat different issue.

Your claim that if you mix the genre you somehow dilute it is spurious. Anne McCaffery's Pern is solidly fantasy despite having a few trappings of SF. It is on an alien world and the threat comes from space. However, you have teleporting, telepathic dragons saving the world. It's fantasy.

 

[Gez]

Knights on bicycles? Twain is more than a little mocking Le Morte D'Arture and the Faerie Queene.

That's the reason we're arguing with you. Most people here (from what I've seen) wouldn't consider these two titles to be fantasy. A bit later, you say fantasy is old; while again, most disagree. Many have said, to the contrary, that fantasy is a very young genre, one that until recently was just a subset of science-fiction.

You seem to confuse fantasy with one part of its inspiration, mythology. D&D is a fantasy game, not a mythology game. Fantasy can be used to parody myths and folktales, and as often been used for that purpose.

There are several specific genre: fantastique (also known as fantastic), horror, mythology (as well as epics, legends and fairy tales), science-fiction and its many overlapping subgenres (hard and soft, pulp, space opera, political fiction, speculative fiction, etc.).

And in all that, fantasy is the genre that grabs bits from everyone and can't be catalogued neatly. High fantasy such as Tolkien's tries to be mythology. Sword & sorcery heavily leans toward pulp sci-fi. Sometimes, fantasy is treading on horror's lawn, othertime it's mugging fairy tales in a back alley. Jack Vance's Dying Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, James P. Blaylock's Balumnia, R.E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, and Joann K. Rowling's Harry Potter are all works of fantasy, and they're all very different and follow different conventions.

 

[MarkB]

When one ends and the next begins (if indeed there is such a point) or what function each played isn't terribly important. What is, is that WotC chooses to disregard fantasy's past. The reason that fantasy/mythology have "similar trappings" is that mythological (and later folkloric) tales over the centuries and millennia have had to satisfy each new generation. Through that screening process, current fantasy has incorporated the best of what the past has to offer. That's not to say that modern contributions can't be made to it, only that what is extant should not be discarded lightly.

WotC hasn't abandoned anything. D&D is inclusive, not exclusive, and its adaptability to almost any aspect of the broad fantasy genre allows it to be whatever you want it to be. Limiting its scope neither purifies nor strengthens it.

Magic (divine or spiritual) probably came about as an explanation of natural phenomena by primitive man to 'explain' the previously unexplained. In fact, it offers no explanation at all. Therefore, in your example, a fatal blow has indeed been dealt to one of the laws of thermodynamics. In a fantasy setting that tried to include science, the creator (DM in the case of D&D) would have to rewrite scientific principles to make them fit the magic and fabulous creatures of the fictional realm. That may not be a problem while the number of scientific principles that need to be rewritten remains small. But in a fantasy world with as much diverse magic and and many fabulous beasts as found in most D&D settings, it's probable that it will become impossible to keep the revised scientific principles consistent. They will very soon be logically impossible to reconcile.

Magic has no explanation in this world for the simple reason that magic does not exist in this world. There is no reason to assume that magic must and will remain similarly inexplicable and undefinable in a world in which it actually exists. Nor is there any reason to assume that a world in which magic is quantifiable and well understood is any less valid as a fantasy world than one in which magic has no rational explanation.

 

[Zander]

Fantasy as a genre is old? WHAT? Fantasy as a genre is a construct of the 20th century. You can try to include 15th century French Romance stories into Fantasy, but that doesn't make it so. Le Morte d'Arthur is not fantasy literature.

...Your claim that if you mix the genre you somehow dilute it is spurious. Anne McCaffery's Pern is solidly fantasy despite having a few trappings of SF. It is on an alien world and the threat comes from space. However, you have teleporting, telepathic dragons saving the world. It's fantasy.

Let me see if I understand you correctly: Knights battling giants, hydras, talking trees and polymorhping wizards (The Faerie Queene, 1596) isn't fantasy. But people from earth getting into spaceships, colonising another planet and genetically modifying the fauna they find there to make it psychic (Pern), that is fantasy. You'll forgive me if I conclude that your understanding of fantasy is different from mine.

 

[MarkB]

Let me see if I understand you correctly: Knights battling giants, hydras, talking trees and polymorhping wizards (The Faerie Queene, 1596) isn't fantasy. But people from earth getting into spaceships, colonising another planet and genetically modifying the fauna they find there to make it psychic (Pern), that is fantasy. You'll forgive me if I conclude that your understanding of fantasy is different from mine.

Everyone else seems to have already reached that conclusion.