[Rant] Fantasy - beyond the "standard" paradigm

[Odhanan]

Barsoomcore makes excellent points. I wouldn't limit his comments to fantasy either. There are large steaming piles of crap on the market and, because publishing books has become a much more lucrative business than it was 50 years ago, books that wouldn't have seen print before are being packaged up and sold. Any yahoo with a sword indeed.

Interesting points.

Agreed.

I think Barsoomcore's spot on, actually.

 

[Turjan]

It has always seemed one way to show how smart you are by looking down your nose at something. After all most fantasy is just to plebian for such refined taste.

If this was also directed at me, I'd like to add that I don't argue from an elitist point of view here. I said I don't read fantasy because the majority of fantasy books that I looked into were simply boring. What I actually read in huge amounts were science fiction books, which hardly raise the suspicion of being elitist. In sci fi, you also find your good amount of crap, but time and time again, I found inspiring or simply surprising books I enjoyed very much. That's why most of my ideas for fantasy RPGs are actually inspired by sci fi books (and RL stuff, of course).

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

If this was also directed at me

Naw, it was aimed at me, because everyone knows that Zippo Packing Chimps are arrogant.

 

[Hussar]

I'm in the same boat as Turjan. Other than a very few, I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore. Not because I think fantasy is good or bad, just that my tastes run more to SF. I think I've fairly well established that I dislike anyone looking down their noses at a particular book just because they don't like it.

I try very hard not to confuse my personal tastes for any sort of objective view of good or bad.

 

[Odhanan]

Well, I'm a huge fan of fantasy personally, but not the fantasy you find covering the shelves of book stores right now. I'm a fan of Howard, Lovecraft, Leiber, Moorcock, Tolkien. These I read and read again. And the last author that I really found genuinely good was GRR Martin. Aside of this? My memories of reading fantasy novels only remain as a sort of blur for the past decade or so. There have been a few I liked (like say... Cormyr: A Novel by Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb, or the Harry Potter series that one can put or not in the Fantasy genre), but very, very few of them.

 

[FireLance]

It really seems counter-intuitive to say that fantasy cannot be something....it's friggin' FANTASY man, it's all about what cannot be.

"It's a great new fantasy role-playing game. We pretend we're workers and students in an industrialized and technological society."

 

[Hussar]

Odhanan, I highly recommend Stephen Erikson. If you liked Moorcock, you likely would like him.

Then again, I just read Robin Hobb's Liveship Trader's series. Gave me a hankering for digging out my naval campaign again. Very well done.

 

[Odhanan]

Odhanan, I highly recommend Stephen Erikson. If you liked Moorcock, you likely would like him.

I'll check that out. Thanks for the suggestion.

Oh and for SF, I also am a huge fan of Dan Simmons writings (The Hyperion/Endymion series, particularly, but pretty much everything he writes). And I like some Tim Powers too (The Anubis Gates is really good).

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Odhanan, I highly recommend Stephen Erikson. If you liked Moorcock, you likely would like him.

I second this recommendation. And being you're up in Canada (British Columbia) you'll be able to get his latest books before they are out in the States!

 

[Hussar]

SF wise, I'm in the harder the better camp. Which is why I prefer short stories to novels. It's easier to do good Hard SF in short story form than in novels. Not impossible in novels, just more difficult. Greg Egan, Robert Reed, Steven Baxter. I'm very happy that the Gardner Dozois newest Best of is out. Heh. Gotta head over to Amazon after payday.