Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 3027482" data-attributes="member: 3649">Psychic powers have been with us as long as modern fantasy has; Howard (coming, as he was, just after the greatest upticks of interest in psychic powers - the Spiritualism craze of the late Victorian period and the similar interest in the US during the 1920's - not to mention that his own father used hypnotism in his practice and heavily annotated books on Eastern mysticism - psychic abilities were tremendously influential in his writing) uses them as extensively as he does actual magic and ritual sorcery: mesmerism, hypnotism, astral projection, 'force of will'  and various other psychic powers are all intermixed with magic in his writing. Most early modern fantasy writers had to cloak their work in science fiction terms just to make a sale, even after the success of Tolkien in the US in the later 60's, so much early Fantasy has a definate SF edge to it.As fantasy came into it's own in the 80's and early 90's, I think you have to remember the artificially large imprint Tolkien left on the American fantasy scene thanks to greed and shortsightedness. Publishers, smelling money much like sharks scent blood in the water, started telling authors 'write more stuff like this' and for many years stopped buying anything that wasn't a Tolkien rip-off. Fantasy went through the same artifically stunting experience that science fiction earlier endured under the shadow of John W. Campbell. Things have gotten better since the mid-90's, with fantasy once more becoming more experimental and publisher willing to look at material that it's elf/dwarf/disquised halfling. Genre mixing is something you're going to see more of, not less.</blockquote>

Verification