What do you think of the Fantasy Novel Apparatus?

[nikolai]

I recently picked up the first books of a couple of multi-book fantasy series.

What struck me when I took my first glance at them was the ritualised apparatus that comes with each novel. At the beginning of the book you get a map of a continent. Sometimes you then get further maps of cities or sub-areas. You then get a list of characters and their job descriptions (Strider, a ranger). This is followed by quote which acts as a preface. The book is then divided into subsections and then chapters. Each chapter is headed by a fictional quote from some history book, often attached to dates from some fictional calendar. The book is then finished by an Appendix which give a comprehensive list of people, places, organisations and pronunciations.

I've stepped away from fantasy - and epic multi-book fantasy in particular - for a while. And coming back this struck me as strange. What do you think about it all, necessary? un-necessary? And why is it peculiar to fantasy?

 

[mmadsen]

And why is it peculiar to fantasy?

It's peculiar to fantasy because fantasy is about making up a fantasy world -- a fantasy world with a map. And if both Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien did it, it is a fantasy-genre requirement.

 

[Joshua Randall]

??? There are plenty of fantasy books that do not use this apparatus, and plenty of non-fantasy books that do. Shakespeare's plays have a list of dramatis personae, as do novels like War and Peace. Many history books open with a map. Etc.

 

[takyris]

I wouldn't say that it's exclusive to fantasy, or that it's in every multi-book fantasy series. But I agree with the person who said that at least part of its popularity comes from the worldbuilding nature of the epic fantasy series. I doubt you'd see many appendices in a tight mystery novel -- although you could see a map of a fictional city.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Personally, I'm just kinda sick of everything having to be a multi-book epic. I think there's a lot of stories out there that could be peared down quite a bit, but are fluffed up to make three or more books.

Heck, I'm not sure the first 600 or so pages of Robert Jordan's "Winter's Heart" really even needed to be in the book. It seemed like the whole thing was just not much really happened, leading up to 50 pages of cameo appearances and two actual plot points. It may be an extreme case, but I think it's a good example of a trend toward this kind of writing.

If you look at several of the great authors, few if any wrote series stories. One story, one book. Sure, sometimes it was a big book (War and Peace), but it was one book.

 

[barsoomcore]

If you look at several of the great authors, few if any wrote series stories.

Um, Charles Dickens, Edgar Rice Burroughs, William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, C.S. Lewis, Frank Herbert, Roddy Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (are they related?)... I mean, seriously. There are probably HUNDREDS of famous authors who wrote series.

I guess you could easily enough find "several" who didn't, but that doesn't prove awfully much..

Writing series is a long and well-respected tradition. It is by no means unique or even characteristic of modern fantasy.

 

[Greatwyrm]

But there's a difference between writing several stories that use the same characters and writing one story that spans 3 to a zillion books. The most recognized works of pretty much everyone you named are farily standalone stories.

I can pick up nearly any Sherlock Holmes story, read it, and have an introduction, story, and conclusion without having read any other Holmes story. Maybe I'd get more out of it if I'd read the previous ones, but I don't have to. I don't think I could say the same about picking up the third book in the Wheel of Time or the Dark Tower or Dune and figure out what the heck is going on.

Speaking of Dune, I read another book by Herbert called The Dosadi Experiment. I didn't even know the main character had appeared in another book, but I was able to pick it up, read it, and get a complete (and very good) story in just one book.

 

[barsoomcore]

What's your point? That many great stories stand alone? Sure they do. But many do not. And to say that one way or the other is just better is unsupportable. And to say that multi-volume stories are the exclusive hallmark of modern fantasy is likewise untrue.

If you'd read, say, Pickwick Papers as it was being published (or nearly any of Dickens' books -- they were pretty much all published as serials), and jumped in half-way through, you'd be just as lost as somebody who picked up volume six of Mr Jordan's series. The fact that nowadays his books are published as single, massive volumes hides the truth that they were written as series.

Try reading Henry IV Part Two without any knowledge of what happened in Part One. Doesn't work so great. Try reading Dune Messiah (which dates to 1969, and so can hardly be accused of being modern) without having read Dune. Or the later Mars books without knowing what Barsoom is.

Try reading the Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale -- if you didn't know this was a bunch of pilgrims telling stories on their way to Canterbury, would have a clue what was going on? Nope, you sure wouldn't.

It's not the case that the ability to stand alone without reference to other works is a literary virtue. Some books do, some don't, and that has always been the case. Probably always will be -- it's a consequence of simple market forces. Publishers want to sell more of what's already popular because the predictability of sales is higher. That's been true for as long as stories have been a commodity.

 

[s/LaSH]

I think the apparatus is largely necessary. I've read books without maps, or without quotes, or without dramatis personae indices, and I can say that maps are highly important. If I said "Then the followers split from the rest of the populace, and left Desolate Noon for Cathedra via the Shadow and Evening", you wouldn't have a clue what I was on about, would you? Not like if I said "Then the central Asian nomads made inroads into Hungary, quickly assimilating the local power structure" or "Then we adjourned for lunch, going first along Lambton Quay then returning to Willis Street". More to the point, you might not even know which of the two scales I was talking about without a great deal more exposition.

I could do without the quotes, if they're just blah, and dramatis personae, in most circumstances. DP is just character building, and that's what the story's for.

But worldbuilding is much more important in fantasy, especially with the unstated assumption that you have to journey to distant lands and experience adventure along the way...

The most interesting 'apparatus' I've noticed has to be in Raymond E. Feist's books, however. Every chapter begins, not with a quote or something, but with a strictly defined sentence. His early books don't always exhibit the brevity of form he's acquired over the years: "Wounded men groaned at sunrise." gives way to the four-word template "The breeze was cool." or the minimum possible "Jimmy coughed.". It's a fixture, and one most people haven't imitated.

 

[Greatwyrm]

And to say that one way or the other is just better is unsupportable. And to say that multi-volume stories are the exclusive hallmark of modern fantasy is likewise untrue.

I never said either of these. What I said was, "I'm just kinda sick of everything having to be a multi-book epic." I didn't say they weren't good, I'm just tired of them.

It just seems like I can find a complete story in one book in several other genres, just not stuff written in modern fantasy. The last one I can remember was Feist's "Magician" -- originally one book, but two paperbacks. Practically everything else I see on the shelf is book X of Y.

If you'd read, say, Pickwick Papers as it was being published (or nearly any of Dickens' books -- they were pretty much all published as serials), and jumped in half-way through, you'd be just as lost as somebody who picked up volume six of Mr Jordan's series. The fact that nowadays his books are published as single, massive volumes hides the truth that they were written as series.

Then I probably wouldn't have read "Pickwick Papers" as a serial. I didn't read Doyle's Holmes stories as a serial either, but they fit in one book.