Friday, March 04, 2005

The Defensive Fantasist

I posted a link to the article by Charlie Stross on "Five rules for cold-bloodedly designing a fantasy series" (see previous post) to a Message Board I have been a member for a number of years. The Message Board is a busy one, and primarily frequented by readers and writers of Fantasy fiction.

I thought that posting the link might be useful to many of the aspiring writers on the list.

Instead, it seemed to be taken a totally different way!

There were comments such as:

...[I am] disturbed by someone writing fantasy who doesn't like it...

What a cynical person!...And how can you be so cold-blooded about Fantasy?

My god, a fantasy writer who doesn't like fantasy.... Now there’s a concept to restore one's faith in the genre.

My gut feeling is that it's a mistake to write in a genre that you have no personal enthusiasm for.

I don't believe he should be writing fantasy if he actually does not enjoy the genre.

if I was an agent I wouldn't go near something if the author presented himself to be unenthusiastic and just doing it because he believes he can - whether it's good fantasy or not.

Wow, I had no idea they would get so defensive! I personally think they took the article the wrong way, which leads me to a few observations:
  1. Charlie Stross never says that he doesn't like fantasy. In fact in a number of other posts on his blog he mentions his first fiction love being Fantasy and that all he ever read as a teenager was SF and Fantasy.
  2. He states "I've read a lot of extruded fantasy product in my time -- and I don't much like it" and "While there's nothing intrinsically wrong with Fantasy, the marketing mechanism applied to it tends to promote those aspects of it that I really don't like".
  3. He just finished the 'fantasy' novel he speaks of (The Family Trade) and it is getting some amazing reviews. Apparently it is great, original, and people are already looking forward to the sequels. Do you think you could write a novel at all if you were not enthusiastic about it?
To me, this also highlights a difference I have noticed between readers of Fantasy and readers of Science Fiction (and please take this as a gross generalisation of the circles I move in, not a caveat against all fantasy readers):

Go up to someone reading a Science Fiction book and say "I think Science Fiction is childish crap with little literary merit" and they are most likely to answer: "yeah, well, so what, I enjoy it".

Say the same thing about Fantasy reader and you will probably get an answer that is a lot more defensive of the genre (see the comments above).

I've seen lots of mentions (on the internet in blogs and message boards, at talks, and panels, and cons) that "Fantasy is a Dying Genre", despite the fact that our bookshop shelves are teeming with new titles and new authors.

"Fantasy is a Dying Genre" is probably a really bad way to put it because that is not what they really mean. They mean that it is dying because it is collapsing under its own marketing weight! There are so many generic-Tolkien-clone-multi-series-fantasy-epics (what Stross calls "extruded fantasy") filling the shelves that it is becoming tough to find something new, original AND well-written.

The fantasy genre has become like fast food - you know what it is going to taste like; you know it has the same ingredients no matter where you go; it is safe, comfort food. But who can eat McDonald's every night of the week without getting bored (or even sick) from it eventually?

That, I think, is the true fear of those who take the "Fantasy is dying" line.

For sure, there are some really amazing new fantasy authors out there really pushing the envelope and showing us that you don't need elves, dwarves and dragons to make a good Fantasy: China MiƩville, KJ Bishop, Jeff Vandermeer, Steven Erikson to name but a few. But to find the gold amongst the dross can be a daunting, and off-putting task. It is a shame that many become disillusioned with the genre before they find these authors.

I turned off Fantasy when the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms tie-ins started flooding the shelves. It took me a long time to get back into it again but the above authors all restored my faith in the originality of the fantastic.

Why then do Fantasy readers often seem so defensive about this line of reasoning? Why do they cry foul about this when in almost the same breath they can whinge about the time it is taking Robert Jordon to finish a series that should have ended volumes ago? I have no idea. It baffles me. If anyone has thoughts on this feel free to let me know (as I am sure you will).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Possibly because they have spent most of their life defending reading fantasy, even to those who read science fiction. Something about not living in the real world...

I personally thought the article was spot on, but then people have always told me I'm cynical ;)