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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 985120" data-attributes="member: 1106">I think 20 years might be pushing it.  A lot of fantasy fiction still being sold was written in the 80s or earlier, as far as I can see.  Seems to have a long shelf life.Oh I know that.  I think it's long been passe for fantasy authors to allude to Tolkien stuff such as elves and dwarves as much as D&D does, so when one does, it stands out.  Add to that semi-gamist concepts like reading from scrolls only to have the writing disappear, or the division of arcane and divine magic for convenience, and there's your gamist huckleberry which we can smile knowingly at, perhaps even seeing the irony of the simulation driving the simulated. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I get the feeling that you think I'm demeaning the work, or attacking it, by pointing this out.  That's not the intention - S&S fantasy is absolutely overflowing with derivation, subtle and glaring.  The genre seems to be various riffs on the same old cliches, or recombination with sci-fi, horror, crime or other genres, (or, as seems to be in vogue at the moment, plonking down S&S fantasy material in a contemporary setting) in an attempt to put a new spin on them.  There's nothing wrong with this, IMO.</blockquote>