TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

[Cadence]

These are still somewhat aspirational, especially when we're talking about YA dystopian fiction. The idea is to crystallize the unease younger readers feel within our modern world and magnify it to literal apocalyptic proportions, then present reader-insert heroes and heroines who go about fighting for and then building a better world.

Whereas Sword & Sorcery is sort of primarily about the power fantasy; a larger-than-life powerful figure who can exist in and dominate a dying and unforgiving world. There's an exploration-of-the-unknown feel there also which I imagine garners less demand among today's readers (what with the constant barrage of cable and internet history & travel series taking the mystery out of "exotic" locales the world over). It's more about survival than building a better world.

But then that basically just describes one of the primary differences between heroic fantasy and S&S.

That sounds like its almost all about the heroes being heroic than the "readers today want to live in the setting the authors create".

I can buy that heroes that do hero things are more popular with more people than simply having protagonists that do awesome but meaningless things.

In detective/crime/police fiction, it almost feels like what is popular now are reasonably-goodish-but-with-definite-dark sides going after monsters. (The crimes in the Prey series, for example are horrific and the protagonist probably doesn't look nearly as good after the past summer).

 

[Gradine]

The move away from fiction about exploring exotic realms is strange to me. Even Star Trek - whose entire premise was about exploring 'strange new worlds' - has abandoned exploration. For reasons I don't quite understand, it doesn't appeal to younger audiences.

There's not really any terrestrial unknowns to explore any more. All the "exotic" wilds have been demystified (for the better, imo). The real unknown is shrinking and increasingly inaccessible. Exploration is no longer romanticized nor aspirational.

 

[Mercurius]

There's not really any terrestrial unknowns to explore any more. All the "exotic" wilds have been demystified (for the better, imo). The real unknown is shrinking and increasingly inaccessible. Exploration is no longer romanticized nor aspirational.

I know you specified "terrestrial" but this isn't exactly true, except geographically. The "exotic wilds" are always beyond the edges of what is known, whether terrestrial, extra-terrestrial, or internal. Even as the known expands outward, we live in a vast universe. So there are the "outer wilds" beyond the world, but there are also the "inner wilds" of the mind - the depths of human consciousness which we still do not understand, and may never understand fully. And of course there are plenty of unknowns about our world, and new secrets to discover: the depths of the oceans, both in terms of unknown forms of life and the many likely ruins of lost settlements, even civilizations, that were flooded as sea levels rose 10-50,000 years ago. There's underneath the antarctic ice, and all that we don't know about our past. We are constantly discovering new things and prehistory is still largely unknown, except in broad sketches.

 

[Eltab]

There's not really any terrestrial unknowns to explore any more. All the "exotic" wilds have been demystified (for the better, imo). The real unknown is shrinking and increasingly inaccessible. Exploration is no longer romanticized nor aspirational.

Writing a story inspired by the Voyager / Galileo discoveries at Jupiter gets classified as sci-fi - outside the scope of the list.

 

[Gradine]

That's kind of my point... the last great frontiers for exploration are outer space and deep under the oceans, both of which are very very inaccessible compared to, say, that "uncharted" jungle or island. That and, by the nature of their accessibility, they tend to get lumped into science fiction.

 

[Lanefan]

That Scott Lynch isn't on either of those lists is a rather severe disappointment. That The Hobbit isn't on the TIME list is a travesty.

I love Eddings' books but agree he (or they; most of the books were co-written by David and Leigh though Leigh didn't start getting credit until later) doesn't belong on a top-100 list.

Katherine Kurtz, however, might; for the Deryni series as a whole. Ditto Jack Whyte for the whole 'A Dream of Eagles' saga.

The TIME list would have done better to batch trilogies/series together (e.g. treat Lord of the Rings as one work, the Harry Potter series as one work, etc.), both to allow for greater variety and to avoid having to rank different books within the same series.

 

[Mercurius]

That's kind of my point... the last great frontiers for exploration are outer space and deep under the oceans, both of which are very very inaccessible compared to, say, that "uncharted" jungle or island. That and, by the nature of their accessibility, they tend to get lumped into science fiction.

I agree, although would add "inner space." Human consciousness and the imaginal realm has been explored by shamans and mystics for thousands of years, but not in a widespread way.

 

[Mercurius]

That Scott Lynch isn't on either of those lists is a rather severe disappointment. That The Hobbit isn't on the TIME list is a travesty.

I love Eddings' books but agree he (or they; most of the books were co-written by David and Leigh though Leigh didn't start getting credit until later) doesn't belong on a top-100 list.

Katherine Kurtz, however, might; for the Deryni series as a whole. Ditto Jack Whyte for the whole 'A Dream of Eagles' saga.

The TIME list would have done better to batch trilogies/series together (e.g. treat Lord of the Rings as one work, the Harry Potter series as one work, etc.), both to allow for greater variety and to avoid having to rank different books within the same series.

The way I look at it is that the TIME list is so bad that it shouldn't be taken seriously, and thus no need for disappointment.