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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 2269970" data-attributes="member: 463">Celebrim:>>setting them in setting were good and bad are tangible things<<Good & bad are _not_ tangible things in Fafhrd/Mouser, or Conan, or even Moorcock's fantasy.>>are no more or no less instructional morality plays than the Illiad and the Oddyssey.  <<"instructional morality play" just isn't a definition of fantasy IMO.  >>Why?  Leiber is very much a 'boy's' writer in his style.  Have you read his works other than his 'Swords' stuff, for example 'The Wanderer'?  <<Not that, but I've read a bunch of his short stories.>>Writing in pseudonym about his own works, Leiber wrote: "What seems to make the Fafhrd Mouser stories stand out is that the two heroes are cut down to a plausible size without loss of romance and a believed in eerie, sorcerous atmosphere and with a welcome departure from forumla. They are neither physical supermen the caliber of Conan and John Carter, nor moral or metaphysical giants like Tolkien's Strider, etc., and Morcock's Elrich. They win out by one quarter brains, another quarter braun, and at least fifty percent sheer luck. They have an engaging self interest, blind spots and vices, a gallantry of sorts, and an ability to laugh at themselves - even if the Mouser occasionally quite galling. One's first impression may be that the Mouser is the darkly clever comedian and Fafhrd the somewhat stupid straight man, or Fafhrd the hero and Mouser the comic relief, but a little reading reveals the self infatuation underlying and sometimes tripping the Mouser's cunning, and also the amiable wisdom that now and then shows through Fafhrd's lazy complacency."<<To me this supports my position, to you it supports yours.  *shrug*>>To me that smacks of a conscious or at least emotional desire to say something about the nature of heroism and life in general. <<"A desire to say something about life in general" is a good definition of all literature (as opposed to pure hack-work), I'd say.  A desire to say something about the nature of heroism is something that literary fantasy very commonly displays, but it shares this with many other genres.  And it's a long long way from "incarnated good and evil" which is very much a hallmark of 'high fantasy' written primarily in the JudaeoChristian/Zoroastrian tradition with "dark lords" vs "forces of light".>>It's been more than 15 years since I've read the Swords series, but if I must I'll go back into them.  But as long as we are going to argue this, let's drag up a few more stories which are difficult to characterize and see what we can make of them.  Neil Stephenson's 'Snow Crash'; fantasy or science fiction?  Anne Mcaffrey's 'Dragon Rider of Pern'; fantasy or science fiction?  Neil Stephenson's 'Baroque Cycle'; fantasy, science fiction, or merely historical romance?<<I'm not actually having the argument with you that you seem to think I'm having.  I was merely objecting to your initial definition of fantasy; which was too narrow and only fits high fantasy (IMO).  Since you then broadened it to include pretty much _everything_... *shrug*I am on the side of "genre = trappings", but I don't regard genre as a very important label. Good authors are not constrained by genre.  Genre is an aid to publishers, to the buying public looking for books they'll enjoy, and I guess to hack writers cashing in for a quick buck.  Good authors play with it but are never constrained by it.</blockquote>

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