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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jester47" data-source="post: 1410184" data-attributes="member: 2238">Fresh in fantasy?hrm tough question.  The trilogy is tired.  It takes a lot to get me to pick up a book with the words "Book X of the X saga" on it.  Contemporary fantasy seems to be one of the big trends right now.  American Gods, Harry Potter, d20 Modern, buffy and the whole rest of the bunch.  The other big trend seems to be a Swords and Sorcery revival.  Hence the return to Howard, Vance, Moorcock, LeGuin, and Leiber.  Satire brings out originality.  In that case I would say Pratchett.  What all of these trends seem to be seeking and attempting to present here is a sort of Otherworldliness.  Oddly enough, some of the most innovative stuff in fantasy is found in video games (Final Fantasy 9, 10, and 10-2 for example) and anime (Escaflowne, Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky).  However the big trend that all these smaller trends seem to be pointing to is believable reactions in the midst of weirdness.  Hence the revival in swords and sorcery- a weirder subgenre (if you will) of fantasy where the reactions are basicly more human.  As a whole, fantasy is slipping more and more from the historical to the alternate in the same way science fiction is slipping more towards fantasy in an effort to stay ahead of the progress of science.  Some ideas seem to be connected - strange machinery, strange life forms, other worlds.  We also see alternate social, technological, and spiritual development in the face of the animal-impossible and as a result of the ability to bring it about.  It is interesting to see that most speculative fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, horror) is filled with non-humans (aliens essentially) of some sort.  All three also deal with other worlds quite regularly.  Similarly, all three have the theme of dealing with a kind of applied knowledge to achieve some sort of result (magic, science).  So I think what we are seeing right now is a fusion of the three.  To achieve this, you drop science in favor of scientific looking magic.  You drop the real world and make your setting what might as well be another planet.  You have humanity rubbing elbows with other lifeforms.  Forget real world history.  Make the consequences of magic more drastic than those of  technology leading to limited use by an intellectual elite.  Apply social, spiritual and technological reactions to the said situations, and I think you might have the state of speculative/weird/science/fantasy/horror fiction say 50 to 200 years from now.Aaron.</blockquote>

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