Is Fantasy changing?

[afreed]

I also think that a change in the nature of the publishing industry has helped to drive a change in the nature of fantasy fiction. The growth of large chain stores such as Borders or Barnes & Noble has killed off most of the small publishers who used to release Swords & Sorcery fiction in limited print runs.

I know this is just a minor point, but this being the Internet, I'm obliged to nitpick. You can argue that the chain bookstores have done a lot of damage in certain ways, but I strongly dispute that they've harmed the small press. You're much more likely to find books from a small press in a big chain bookstore than in a small shop, simply because they can afford it; a small shop can't afford to buy something from every small press out there, because they have much less shelf space and much less cash. They have to stock primarily what sells simply to stay solvent. The big chains can have shelves and shelves of bestsellers, but they also draw an audience by stocking a little of everything. I've found plenty of small press books at my local Borders.
(It's probably worth pointing out that you don't have to be a big chain to make this work; you can be a gigantic independant, like Powell's in Portland, OR.)
To stay on topic, my thoughts on fantasy: Nah, it's not changing much. It's got a bigger audience than ever--not just in prose (though I'd bet sales of fantasy novels are higher than they've ever been), but in video games, RPGs, movies, and so on. Off the top of my head, I'd say the two major fantasy trends over the last few decades have been the growth of slipstream / magical realism / whatever you want to call it, and inbreeding--that is, fantasy derived from fantasy, rather than from real world sources.

 

[diaglo]

...although I do think it's a lot more intelligent than it once was.

i find the opposite to be true.

 

[Wombat]

Literary tastes change constantly. Individual tastes vary. Is fantasy, as a genre, changing? I'm not sure that it is, per se, but we have a very wide range of authors out there, so I think it is easy to see this as change.

Where once our games were inspired by works of specific authors, we are now getting authors inspired by the conventions of our games. Fantasy is not a set genre, although it is more "set" than science fiction. Some fantasy authors use lots of magic, multiple sentient species, and a pseudo-medieval setting; others drop all of these, yet still make it feel like a fantasy book. Some are "gritty" or "realistic"; others are practically wire-fu. In other words not all the works are sword & sorcery, but you can still find that genre out there. Whether the specific books are good or not is a matter of personal taste. The one major change I have noticed in my lifetime is that sci fi/fantasy books have moved from a small, neglected, back-of-the-store-and-hide-it section to a regularly maintained and accepted section. That is a major advance.

Look at your local bookstore. Check out the fantasy books that were published in the last 4 years. I think you will see a very wide range of what is considered "acceptable fantasy".

As a friend of mine once said, in a slightly earthier version of this phrase, 90% of everything is junk. That includes specific genres of fiction. The thing is, thought, that one person's junk is another person's Holy Grail.

And thus it has ever been

 

[Mystery Man]

I think fantasy is changing, as it has always been changing. I don't see it as losing any particular genre, but as a broadening of what it covers.

I think pulp Sword & Sorcery is no longer the force it once was - I definitely think Leiber, Burroughs and Howard are on the way out - but the genre still exists, although I do think it's a lot more intelligent than it once was.

Cheers!

Quite the contrary I think that once someone's underdeveloped (edit)tastes(the hat's still on ) has had its fill of quick and easy peasy lemon squeasy pulpy cheap assed dime store novels filled with the same trite over the counter recycled spoon fed plot lines....

Well, then it's time for the ageless, never goes bad, can read it over and over and still be fresh authors like Leiber. They're not on the way out, just waiting until your ready.

BTW I'm not singling anyone out, I've got my opinionated (edit)hat on today so I hope I didn't offend.

 

[Umbran]

Literary tastes change constantly. Individual tastes vary. Is fantasy, as a genre, changing? I'm not sure that it is, per se, but we have a very wide range of authors out there, so I think it is easy to see this as change.

If fantasy changing? Of course it is. Even in the simples of analyses...

Imagine how many fantasy stories had been published in the heyday of Howard, Lieber, et al. We now have that many, plus untold multitudes. Unless those untold multitudes were exactly the same as Howard, Lieber, et al, then the genre must have changed.

Since new authors are in competition with both their contemoraries and with the classics, there is a strong push for them to try something different in order to catch the audience's eye. That alone will gradually change the genre. There's nothing wrong, or unnatural about it.

 

[Umbran]

Quite the contrary I think that once someone's underdeveloped brain has had its fill ....
[snip...]
BTW I'm not singling anyone out, I've got my opinionated hate on today so I hope I didn't offend.

Yes, you have your hate on today, that is clear.

I point to a flaw in your logic (and I do note that it is your logic, and not my own)- if the brain is truly underdeveloped, it will never get it's fill of the cheap stuff.

In my own logic - what one likes in literature is a matter of taste. There are some highly intelligent (and normally intelligent) folks who prefer their reading to be simple escapism without a whole lot of thinking. They do enough thinking in their daily lives so that they prefer to stop doing it during recreation. You do them a disservice by claiming that their preference in liesure activities makes them somehow of lesser brain power.

I am not offended, but your arguments will hold much more water if you don't try to derive personal characteristics from leisure tastes.

 

[francisca]

I have noticed a definite shift in the expectations that new players have of the fantasy genre. When I started playing around 1980, most of the people that I was playing with were dedicated readers of fantasy fiction long before they became D&D players. These guys had read most of the classic works of Sword & Sorcery -- Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore et al. I think that between us, we had read just about every single book on the Recommended Reading list at the back of the 1st edition DMG. Curiously, the people that I played with back then tended to prefer this type of pulp fantasy to the high fantasy represented by Tolkien's numerous imitators.

Interesting. I started in 81 (I turn 35 soon). I had never heard of Leiber, nor most of the list in the back of the 1980 Basic rulebook, at that point. I read Leiber as a result of playing D&D and saw the Conan movies waaay before I read any of it (started 3 years ago).

Really the only exposure to fantasy I had up until the mid-80s was visual media: Wizard of Oz, the Hobbit movie on TV, Starwars (maybe fantasy, maybe not), and of course, D&D. In addition, I was certainly exposed to computer gaming way before I read a lot of fantasy. Of course I played alot of Zork, Temple of Aphshai, Telengard, etc.., some of which were fantasy and/or D&D inspired.

Today, I find Leiber is my favorite author, followed by Howard, then Tolkien., and prefer pulp fantasy style roleplay. I don't play FRPG computer games....no time.

But to the point: yes fantasy is changing. Like every other entertainment form, producers will try to provide product which will sell. Will it be Pokemon the RPG? Maybe. But the fact that Mongoose published the Conan RPG says to me that the old warhorse ain't dead yet. But like was pointed out earlier, everything in american society (at least, can't comment on others) is being fractured and demographed all in the name of driving sales margins higher. RPGs are no different. Is it sad? Maybe. Shared experiences and common ground can be nice for building new friendships.

 

[Mystery Man]

I am not offended, but your arguments will hold much more water if you don't try to derive personal characteristics from leisure tastes.

Fair enough. Edited my post a bit..

 

[Mystery Man]

If fantasy changing? Of course it is. Even in the simples of analyses...

Imagine how many fantasy stories had been published in the heyday of Howard, Lieber, et al. We now have that many, plus untold multitudes. QUOTE]

Yet, at the same time the contemporary authors of note, that manage to be different stand out, and offer that simple escapism and still maintain the integrity of the genre are still as few and as far between.

 

[Umbran]

Yet, at the same time the contemporary authors of note, that manage to be different stand out, and offer that simple escapism and still maintain the integrity of the genre are still as few and as far between.

First of all, I think that's not the case. Having become bigger business, the publishing houses have had the resources to go farther afield, and so have dug up a great many fine authors. YMMV.

Second - the genre does not have "integrity". The genre is merely a collection of stories that share in a very vaguely defined set of thematic elements. There is no promise of any integrity in that.

This is even more clear when you look at the history of the genre. These days we only read Howard and Leiber, but they had a great many shlock contemporaries, who just don't get reprinted today. The end result is a skewed perception that of old the genre was a fine body of work, and today it is crud. But instead, the reality is that the genre was always crud, on the whole. In any age, if one picked a book at random, oen was liely to be disappointed. That's the integrity of the genre - a promise of mediocrity.

Third, if you want to turn things around, is the fact that the old saw, "90% of everything is crud," is self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever 10% of the work out there best fits your personal tastes will raise the bar of your personal estimation so that everything else looks weak by comparison. So long as you have personal tastes at all, some large portion of the genre will not meet those tastes. From this perspective, the "integrity of the genre" is merely a confabulation of what aspects of the stories you personally prefer. It has no existence outside your own head. What you find maintains integrity others may find incredibly dull.