[Rant] Fantasy - beyond the "standard" paradigm

[I'm A Banana]

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

Well, if fatnasy is about what cannot be, then this totally works if you're magic-wielding elves in the dark times of the planet. Cuz it'll NEVER be.

I said I don't read fantasy because the majority of fantasy books that I looked into were simply boring.

I fall into this camp, too. Hell, I think MOST books I look into are disturbingly boring. It's part of why I play games instead.

There are exceptions, if you define fantasy broadly enough. I'm not even a big fan of the Tolkien/Lieber/Howard Holy Trinity myself. But Guy Gavriel Kay writes some nice stuff, and Jacqueline Carey has a knack for suffering. Susanna Clarke can make a thousand pages breeze by. Pratchett will NEVER go out of style. JK Rowling ain't half bad, simple as it may be in the earlier books. Phillip Pullman does some REALLY cool things. And Niel Gaiman is my new idol. If you are willing to expand into movies, we've got M. Night Shalyman, the Pixar films (yes, CARS is fantasy. Unless your porches can talk?)....lots of good stuff.

The most prolific authors generally ARE rather poor, thriving off of fanboys, fangirls, and clever genre stunts that attract 13 year olds to the idea of "Ooooooh, a WOMAN as a KNIGHT!" or "He's had a TRAGIC HISTORY so he's BADASS!"

But think about the books I mentioned above. Alternate history, religious issues out of Milton, hefty doses of humor, classic themes straight out of myth, a mixture of wonder and horror....nary an elf, ork, or farm-boy-turn-paladin among them. No cliched "dark," no real modern politics (despite, in some cases, involving fully modern characters)....

90% of everything is crap. But there's at least 10% that is done well, and, IMHO, some of the above do it real well. I still think they're ALL fantasy.

 

[Odhanan]

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!

Cool! Now, I just checked, it's in fact Steven Erikson. Not "Stephen".
What is the "Malazan Book of the Fallen"? The name's neat. *goes on with his search on amazon.ca*
Any particular title from Mr. Erikson I should be reading?

 

[Glyfair]

90% of everything is crap. But there's at least 10% that is done well, and, IMHO, some of the above do it real well. I still think they're ALL fantasy.

I wouldn't go that far. I'd say about 20% is crap, but only 20% is really good.

However, one thing I'm somewhat glad about is I've always been able to enjoy something for what it was. Sure, I can appreciate the quality of a Citizen Kane, but I can also enjoy Plan 9 From Outer Space or Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave for what it is. Indeed, we used to have regular movie nights where we'd be sure to have one schlocky movie and one classic movie.

As for fantasy, IMO it's such an ill-defined term that for all practical purposes it's an "I know it when I see it" sort of category. In the 50's it was looked down upon, but writers continued to get them published for good rates by setting it on other worlds and callling it science fiction.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

What is the "Malazan Book of the Fallen"? The name's neat. *goes on with his search on amazon.ca*
Any particular title from Mr. Erikson I should be reading?

The Malazan Book of the Fallen is the name of Erikson's ambitous eventual 10-volume series. Ambitious is in understatement for what is is trying to accomplish. The story is spanning continents across the planet and "dimensions", includes mortals and immortals, and covers hundreds of thousands of years of history.

Technically they should be read in order, but book 2 Deadhouse Gates ranks up there as among the finest pieces of military fantasy I have ever read and you could choose to read it before anything else. The ending truly got to me.

If I remember rightly, he is up to book 6 in the series (in Canada at least).

 

[Hussar]

Right, Stephen Donaldson, Steven Erikson. Sigh. Spelling will be the end of me.

I second what Eric Anondson said, with the addition of Chain of Dogs. To me its a tossup which is better military fantasy. Both are just bloody good though. Even the latest one, Bonehunters, is good. Not as good as others, but, certainly worth the read.

If they ever d20 this setting, I'll be in line to get it. It's bloody huge, but, wow, would this be a great setting to play in.

I'm a little different from Glyfair. I agree that schlock movie night is great. I have a pretty high tolerance (or just really low standards) for movies. Books, on the other hand, I'm a lot more picky about. But, you did hit on some of the better writers out there. GG Kay is good and Pratchett is my personal favourite.

I guess the law of averages pretty much states that not all books can be bad. There are just SO many published in the genre that sifting the chaff from the wheat can be really daunting.

 

[Graf]

This is a definitional issue.

If you say fantasy –most- people will think pre-modern technology level and magic.

While you –can- add in other elements while still maintaining that fantasy image (Eberron, Perdido Street Station… etc) there is a finite amount of stuff you can cram in before it ceases to be close to the image people have.

For the record DnD is fairly stero-typical fantasy because it is easier to understand. Someone can make up their own special blend of different elements but it gets increasingly difficult for people who are used to standard fantasy to adapt to.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, let's put that to the test Graf.

Is The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe fantasy? Would most people recognize it as such?

Is Harry Potter fantasy? It contains much of the same themes and tropes as Narnia. The fish out of water, young adult fiction, magic, lots of critters, sword fights. Looks pretty much the same to me.

Yet, if I were to compare a campaign on Narnia, some here would see that as a good thing. But, if I were to call it Potterish, then it would be seen as bad. Despite the fact that both series are pretty much the same thematically.

 

[Odhanan]

Ok, let's put that to the test Graf.

Is The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe fantasy? Would most people recognize it as such?

Is Harry Potter fantasy? It contains much of the same themes and tropes as Narnia. The fish out of water, young adult fiction, magic, lots of critters, sword fights. Looks pretty much the same to me.

Yes on both counts, as far as I'm concerned.

Yet, if I were to compare a campaign on Narnia, some here would see that as a good thing. But, if I were to call it Potterish, then it would be seen as bad. Despite the fact that both series are pretty much the same thematically

I wouldn't frown at a D&D campaign based off Potter. I mean, I did that myself when I started the Seven Spires. Then, the campaign sort of shifted back to AE and D&D's core story but the seeds were there and obviously I didn't think "ewww".

 

[Desdichado]

I don't like Brust or Erikson. I quit the first book of both of their series halfway through. Brust I might have been able to stick with if I'd had more patience, but I didn't like Erikson's style at all.

It does seem elitist to only point to the pioneers of the genre as the ones worth reading. Frankly, I'm not that hot on them either. I've never liked Moorcock; his writing always came across as either pretentious and whiny or pretentious and preachy, and always clunky and awkward. Howard has some brilliant moments, and I like a lot of what he wrote, but he also fails just as often and gets a big eye-roll, especially when he's on his big preachy "culture and civilization are teh suXX0rz" rants, or in his more transparent wish-fulfilment fantasies about Conan being the ultimate man's man. Burroughs is another writer I dearly love, but let's face it; he only had one plot line and a handful of characters that he re-used over, and over, and over, and over again.

I can't find anything to complain about about Leiber.

There's some good authors out there. Although his style turns me off, I really like everything else about Glen Cook, for example. GRRM is doing some good stuff, although he seems to be dragging his stories out longer than they need to be. I've read plenty of others that I thought were admirable, but which aren't coming to mind at the moment.

Heck, even the derivative guys can be good. I quite enjoy some of Feist's books. I recently read the first few novels of Lin Carter's Callisto series, which is so unabashedly, openly and admittedly imitative of Barsoom that I wonder if the editor of Ace Books (I think that's where they were first printed) had a wary eye over his shoulder about a lawsuit from the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Even so, I liked it quite a bit; better than many of the later novels in the actual Barsoom series, for that matter.

I'm also of the opinion that there's not a 80%, or 90% (or whatever it's been inflated to) of everything is crap either. Maybe 15% of everything is crap. 15% of everything is also great. The other 70% is neither; it's servicable, it does the job, but ten minutes after you finish reading it, you're kinda ready to move on the next thing, and what you just read is forgotten.

 

[barsoomcore]

I always enjoy when the conversations turns to how almost all of its is crap and its stated as if its a fact that can't be disputed.

Feel free to dispute.

The problem is that Sturgeon's Revelation doesn't scale very well. That 90% of fantasy is crap is okay when there's only X amount of fantasy being produced, where X is some amount that you can easily keep track of. When the amount of fantasy being produced increases to X + Y, where Y is some amount you can no longer keep track of, your ability to find that worthwhile 10% decreases. It takes longer to find the good material.

I really feel that that people who engange in this kind of doom and gloom talk are coming off just a little pretentious. After all most fantasy is just to plebian for such refined taste.

A LITTLE pretentious? Jeez, I'm slipping.

I hold the fantasy I read to the same standards I hold everything else I read: I compare it to the truly great literature of civilization and decide if it's worth reading, and if so, why (or if not, why not). Fantasy novels need to live up to the examples set by Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Calvino, Homer yada yada yada.

And for the most part, they don't. Which doesn't distinguish fantasy from any other genre, nor does it distinguish modern fantasy from "good ol' days" fantasy. It's really really really hard to write great novels. Most novels of any description are crap (see Sturgeon, again). And reading crap hurts your brain and makes you dumb. So you shouldn't do it.

You're right, most fantasy IS too plebian for such refined taste. Exactly.

But I happen to really like reading about swords and swinging on ropes and monsters, so I'm always looking for GREAT books that feature those subjects. I just don't find them very often. But it's so very sweet when I do.