Terry Pratchett doesn't like JK Rowling

[wingsandsword]

(And be honest – how many fantasy fiction stories are set is some pseudo-Middle Ages setting, with some order of knights or warriors, some order of wizards or magic users and pretty people imperiled by dark powers?)

How many science fiction stories are set in the far future, with interstellar FTL spacecraft and huge space fleets, a return to some form of nobility and royalty, with rugged colonists and settlers on distant worlds?

How many crime/mystery stories are set in a big city, with a highly experienced protagonist who has seen it all and is an expert in his field, and typically has a younger and less experienced ally who serves as a literary device to explain everything or provide another generation's perspective?

How many love stories are about a young couple who meets and falls in love at first sight even though they are from completely different backgrounds, even if they don't realize it immediately, but they come to quickly enough, and have to overcome disapproving parents or friends?

Every genre has it's standard forms, the things the audience generally expects. The pseudo-medieval concept is pretty standard to fantasy, just like space opera is standard to sci-fi. You can have other types, but it's a well acknowledged main form.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Something that hasn't been addressed is why this is a bad thing. If people like these sorts of books, why shouldn't people write them? Why is there a need to change things?

I did not assert it was bad, in either a technical nor moral sense. However, the Harry Potter books are set in contemporary times and, in so far as I can tell, the only individual who goes around in armor is one of the ghosts. On that level at least the books are at least breaking with conventions, even if they are not “innovative.”

And obviously enough people like this particular break with convention enough to make the book commercially viable.

That said, this conversation has obviously well passed the point when anyone is remotely listening to each other and everyone is well into the territory of preaching at each other. There is no defensible point to a discussion where everyone only ever talks past each other, no one listens to anyone else and nothing is accomplished and people save vendetta stamps for future use.

 

[takyris]

However, the Harry Potter books are set in contemporary times and, in so far as I can tell, the only individual who goes around in armor is one of the ghosts. On that level at least the books are at least breaking with conventions, even if they are not “innovative.”

Like Emma Bull, Laura Ann Gillman, Charlaine Harris, Tanya Huff... okay, I looked through Amazon for authors I might be forgetting, and there's a "Contemporary" subsetting for fantasy, along with "General", "Alternate History", "Anthologies", "Arthurian", "Epic", "Historical", and "History and Criticism". If it has a subgenre right there on Amazon, it can't be considered innovative in that respect.

So... no. No, she really isn't doing something new, at least in terms of her conventions. What she is doing is writing something good enough and engaging enough to pull in people who weren't terribly informed about the contemporary subgenre beforehand. And that's no mean feat, and I thank her for it, because I'd like to see Charlaine Harris get more space on the fantasy shelf than three inches squeezed out between the end of Goodkind's six-shelf deluge, the brief half-shelf of Hobb, and then the juggernaut of Jordan.

(And like I said: I loved Rowling. Lots of fun to read. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a hater. I think she deserves all the hype she gets. That said, if she got less hype, I wouldn't say she was getting too little. Her stuff is good and engaging and came along at the right time to fit a good niche, and that's a combination of skill and fortune.)

EDIT: Neil Gaiman, Roger Zelazny, Charles de Lint, Jane Lindskold...

 

[bodhi]

I forget specifics, but there was a science fiction writer who once said that 90 percent of science fiction was bad, but then 90 percent of everything (including fantasy fiction) is bad.

Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.

It is not so much that fantasy fiction is full of “knights and ladies morris-dancing to Greensleeves,*” (snip)
* This image strikes me as so funny I hope some comic or humorist does a parody of it.

How about the dancing in "A Knight's Tale"?

 

[jasper]

I have six of harry potter books and trying to remember any of Terry books I read. Hmmm.

 

[Desdichado]

That said, this conversation has obviously well passed the point when anyone is remotely listening to each other and everyone is well into the territory of preaching at each other. There is no defensible point to a discussion where everyone only ever talks past each other, no one listens to anyone else and nothing is accomplished and people save vendetta stamps for future use.

It seems a bit more like people are arguing with each other, yet oddly they're all saying the same thing.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I have six of harry potter books and trying to remember any of Terry books I read. Hmmm.

Do you have a point?

 

[takyris]

In retrospect, I should just ditch my thoughtful and considered responses and just shout out that things suck, since that's what people respond to.

Terry Pratchett? More like Terry Hatchet! Because he does a hatchet job on his fiction, because he sucks! Suuuuuuuuuuuucks! Or more like Teri Hatcher, because he's so desperate, because he sucks! Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks!

JK Rowling's fiction is ass! Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? More like Harry Ass and the Ass of Ass! Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks!

IMNSHO, the only people who don't suck at fantasy are Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, and whoever wrote the first season of Dark Angel, which wasn't fantasy, but if it was, he totally wouldn't suck at it. Everybody else? Suuuuu....ucks!

Seriously, I don't know about the Celt, but I'm having an interesting discussion of how fantasy is categorized and what's happening the various subgenres these days. Apparently, though, I'm having that conversation with myself.

 

[Desdichado]

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks!

Tak, you're never going to have any street cred as an Internet ranter if you can't learn to spell suXX0rz!!!!!!!11

 

[Staffan]

I have six of harry potter books and trying to remember any of Terry books I read. Hmmm.

If you haven't read any Terry Pratchett, you're so missing out. I'd recommend starting with "Guards! Guards!" or "Wyrd Sisters".