Have fantasy novels gotten "better" since D&D?

[Theron]

Having spent much of my fantasy reading in the past year devoting myself to pre-fat fantasy series stuff, my bias is towards a loud and resounding No.

Taking a slightly less biased approach, I'll stick to Sturgeon's Law. Just because we've got more doesn't change the percentage that's not worth my time. I don't blame D&D for this, in and of itself. I do think that DragonLance taught the publishing industry a thing or two about branding, but to my mind (as someone who was working full time selling books at the time) the biggest change came with the ascent of Jordan and the interminable fat fantasy series (this includes A Song of Ice and Fire, which is easily my favorite work of fantasy committed to print.) I think that's one reason I've come to enjoy Wagner's Kane novels so much. They're lean and to the point. If Wagner was going to take you on an aside and slow things down, you knew it would be over in a few pages, not an entire volume. But as long as bloat sells, bloat will be printed. 'Tis the nature of the beastie.

 

[Raven Crowking]

LotR (1974) is the one true fantasy novel. All other novels are just poor imitations of the real thing.

That schlock?!?

I think you mean "The Wood Beyond the World (William Morris, 1894) is the one true fantasy novel. All others are just poor imitations of the real thing."

LotR is the Holmes Blue Box to Morris' OD&D.

RC

 

[Mark CMG]

I suspect on average, the answer is "no". However, because there are so many more fantasy novels out there now, the gems are more numerous (. . .)

That's a fair argument, I must admit.

(. . .) (and, arguably, the pinnacle of achievement is now higher).

I'd be interested in hearing any arguments for this assertion as I do not feel inclined to believe it on its face, though I admit to not having read everything and therefore could not flat out dispute it.

How much D&D has influenced this, I don't know. However, several of the fantasy authors out there are, or have at some point been, gamers, so I suspect it has had some influence, at least indirectly.

Undoubtedly.

 

[T. Foster]

I agree with what seems to be the building consensus: the explosion in popularity of fantasy post-LotR, post-Star Wars (which may have spaceships and ray-guns but is fantasy at heart) and post-D&D led to a lot more stuff being published, which resulted in perhaps a greater number of good fantasy novels, but as a proportion of the whole I'd say the quality at best stayed the same and maybe even decreased. There were tons of fantasy novels published in the mid-80s through mid-90s and I'd be hard-pressed to think of a single good one. There's seemingly been more good fantasy published in the last few years, but I'd be very hesitant to give D&D any credit there, since what I would consider the good books also tend to be the least obviously/directly influenced by D&D, and those that are the most obvious are generally among the worst.

My bookshelf certainly contains a LOT more fantasy published before 1974 than it does fantasy published since.

 

[WayneLigon]

My bookshelf certainly contains a LOT more fantasy published before 1974 than it does fantasy published since.

I would think you must have a pretty darn small bookshelf then...

 

[Raven Crowking]

I would think you must have a pretty darn small bookshelf then...

I think you are simply unaware of how much fantasy was published prior to 1974.

 

[WayneLigon]

I think you are simply unaware of how much fantasy was published prior to 1974.

I am. That's why I say it. I guess it also depends on what you term 'fantasy'. I would not be including Burroughs, for instance, or Lovecraft, or Bradbury or early Stephen King, Anne McAffery, etc etc. The World Fantasy Awards don't start until 1975, unfortunately, but even some of the stuff they list, I would lump into Horror rather than fantasy (though Dark Fantasy like Gormenghast or Worm Ourobourous is a fence straddler). Stuff like Flashing Swords! or The Traveler in Black, yes.

 

[Storm Raven]

I am. That's why I say it. I guess it also depends on what you term 'fantasy'. I would not be including Burroughs, for instance, or Lovecraft, or Bradbury or early Stephen King, Anne McAffery, etc etc. The World Fantasy Awards don't start until 1975, unfortunately, but even some of the stuff they list, I would lump into Horror rather than fantasy (though Dark Fantasy like Gormenghast or Worm Ourobourous is a fence straddler). Stuff like Flashing Swords! or

You don't think that much of Bradbury's work such as Something Wicked This Way Comes is fantasy? You think that Burroughs Pelludicar series isn't fantasy?

Even if you leave them out, there is a wide array of works of fantasy that predate 1974 - the Earthsea books, Andre Norton's Witch World books, Lieber's stories featuring Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and, of course Howard's various stories featuring Conan. The Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander is clearly fantasy, as is Bellairs Face in the Frost. Several of Bradley's fantasy novels predate 1974.

And then you have literally dozens of books by Carter, de Camp, Moorcock, Zelazny, Anderson, Munn, Smith, Silverberg, Vance, and on and on. One could easily have several hundred good fantasy novels published prior to 1974.

 

[T. Foster]

I've got almost all of the titles mentioned by Gygax in the 1E DMG Appendix (90% of which were published prior to 1974), plus lots more books by those same authors, plus lots of books from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (which stopped publication in 1974), plus assorted other miscellany (I think at least 1 or 2 of Karl Edward Wagner's "Kane" books were published by 1974, for instance). All in all, a pretty good-sized (and pretty comprehensive, I daresay) collection of pre-1974 fantasy and s&s fiction. My post-1974 array is much spottier, both because I just haven't read a lot of it (multi-volume epics a la Eddings, Feist, Donaldson, Goodkind, Jordan, etc. don't appeal to me and never have) and a lot of what I did read back in the day (Terry Brooks, Dragonlance, etc.) I haven't bothered to keep. As a rough guess I'd say I've got perhaps 200 fantasy books on my shelf, of which 150 or so were published in 1974 or earlier.

 

[Mallus]

Has D&D been a positive influence on --a particular subset of-- fantasy fiction?

D&D has left it's mark, that's for sure. I sure enjoy finding trace elements of D&D in unlikely places, like the "Prince of Nothing" series by R. Scott Bakker, which, for all its smarty-pants philosophizing stars a 20th level monk (who thinks he's Nietzsche and pretends to be Jesus), and has a deep backstory that sounds suspiciously like something out of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor.

But has D&D made for a better literature of the fantastic? Hell no.