Do you like fantasy novels?

[Valka D'Ur]

First, I will have to say that I find many fantasy novels to be rather lacking in quality. But then, I will have to say that I find many novels to be rather lacking in quality. While some are out there which are - IMO - great. But most are only partially great, though in instances so great in those parts that it is worth all the flaws. And I have so far not read a fantasy novel which entirely convinced me.

But be it all as it may be - I still am in love with the genre of fantasy. I just love the vast possibilities of it as well as the kinda comfy mysticism of it, a welcome change to the sober soulless chaotic direction-less world we live in.

A pig part of it is probably that, after my mother tempted me to give Harry Potter a try, not high fantasy but still fantasy, the second novel I ever read was Lord of the Rings. And it just amazed me at the time (happened before the movies - not a hipster ), even though the writing is IMO rather bad.

Since some time now, I am ... well not obsessed, since I actually have little time to engage in it (also because I keep waisting time on OT), but rather fascinated by the idea of mine of writing a fantasy novel I actually would call great all-through out.

For that effort, I am continuously engaging in short story endeavors and contests and am reading a lot of books making notes of what I like or dislike, creating vast lists of ideas, writing guidelines etcetera.. Alright it is a bit of an obsession. But it gives me so much and takes actually very little. Not the least thanks to audio books. Just fantastic how much more literature one can enjoy thanks to those. I am only saying this so to not appear as the typical amateur writer not actually following through on the ambition, but now I feel I only seem even more weird.. Well so be it. I still find myself pretty cool

Anyway, I am also kind of embarrassed with my passion for fantasy. Truly good literature never is fantasy, I had to find out. And I enjoy truly good literature increasingly more than fantasy. Still, I love fantasy. And I dream of a fantasy novel that does not have to hide from anything, that combines high fantasy with high literature.

As a consequence of that insecurity, I wondered what the people of OT think about fantasy.

Fire away!

Other than the traditional Andersen and Grimm's fairy tales and the Disney stuff, my first real foray into fantasy literature that had no elements of SF was in 1985, when a friend loaned me her copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight. This is the novelization of the first several modules of the AD&D Dragonlance series, and to use the phrase "it blew me away" is not that much of an exaggeration. I must have read that book a half dozen times before I was able to get my own copy. Now I have... *goes away to count the Dragonlance books in the personal library*... well over 100, and that doesn't count the Forgotten Realms books, the Dark Sun books, and other novels based on AD&D settings.

I've got other fantasy books as well... novels, anthologies, even fanzines (Robin of Sherwood and Highlander). Many modern fantasy authors are proteges of Marion Zimmer Bradley, as their first published works appeared in her Darkover or Sword and Sorceress anthology series. And of course there are other noted fantasy authors such as Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, and many others.

BTW, folks, Terxpahseyton brings up writing competitions. So now I'm going to use this opportunity to advertise Iron Pen, which is CFC's own writing competition that goes on down in the A&E forum. Terxpahseyton and jackelgull have both participated as authors in this competition. I'm always looking for more people to join in, and anyone who is interested may PM me. If you're curious to see the sort of thing you'd be getting into, just follow the link in my sig (the one referring to Iron Pen; the other one leads to a Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri forum ).

Fantasy, ultimately, is about two simple words : What if?

What if elves existed? (Middle Earth)
What if there was a boarding school for wizards? (Potter)
What if the Greek Gods and Goddesses still existed and still had mortal children? (Riordan's universe)
What if there was a detective investigating crimes comitted by the folkloric underside of society? (Dresden files)
What if Napoleonic war had been fought with literal dragons? (Téméraire)

From that one question, you build a world. Elves had their language. Elves had their history. Elves had their world. What was it like?
IF there's a boarding school for wizard, doesn't that imply a government? A society that exist around it? What are they like? If there's a government, are there laws? You build the world around that central premise, and MUCH of the point of fantasy is exploring that world along with your readers.
Etc, etc.

If you don't start like that, you just end up with story that's fantasy...for the sake of being fantasy. Fantasy that's fantasy not because it asks "What if?", but instead just use whatever fantastic element are there as an excuse for the plot and character to happen, or to fill a kitchen list of characters and tropes that need to appear (see pretty much all Tolkien-derivative works). Or sometime shove them to the edge of the map only appearing in this or that occasional subplot so they don't get in the way of the characters and the Serious Business plot.

None of these are really fantasy - they're more pale imitations of fantasy (that means Dungeons and Dragons), or political drama masquerading as fantasy. (Seriously, just because you put a dragon in the background of House of Cards doesn't suddenly make House of Cards a fantasy story*)

*This means Game of Thrones

"What if" also applies to science fiction, and the two genres can easily be mixed. For example, is Darkover a fantasy series or a science fiction series? It has elements of both. And there are subgenres of fantasy. For instance, D&D fantasy isn't remotely the same as the urban gothic fantasy of The Crow (whether the original graphic novel, the movies, or the TV series), or other supernatural-themed series. Robin of Sherwood is what I would consider "historical fantasy." It has supernatural themes running through it, but also uses some historical characters such as Prince John, King Richard, and one or two others who came up in one or two episodes.

This is such a good point that a lot of fantasy writers, etc. forget. Just because it's fantasy doesn't mean "you can do anything you want." I've heard people basically argue that because "you can do anything you want" that writers should insert things like LGBT relationships, or gender equality, or democratic ideals, and so on into their worlds. Certainly you can do that, but you have to do it in a way that doesn't seem like you just jarringly placed it just to placate modern sensibilities. Truly great fantasy, in my opinion, requires intimate knowledge of the humanities and social sciences, to know how to make all the elements of the imaginary societies work in a way that makes sense. Tolkien, after all, began - and was, indeed, for much of his life - a scholar specializing in linguistics and mythology.

For me, that's why a lot of my fantasy-ish writing draws heavy parallels with history, because I think it's easier to make it feel genuine that way.

One of the reasons it's jarring to find LGBT relationships in some fantasy works is because many people aren't aware that these relationships have occurred throughout human history, and it's only in recent decades that there has been so much open discussion of them. Plus, considering how many peoples' first exposure to fantasy is via Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, or Disney... and those works are strictly heterosexual when it comes to marriage or romance, same-sex relationships just aren't what people tend to expect of fantasy literature.

Or at least that's how it was. Nowadays it's really not that unusual to find same-sex relationships in fantasy literature, depending on what authors/series you read. As long as it makes sense in the context of the in-universe society and government and is handled in a mature way, there's no problem.


And I'm going out on a limb here and stating that I have never read Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.

 

[Evie]

With all due respect, Tim, that's bollocks, except by an incredibly broad definition of politics.

Political drama (not war - actual political scheming and whatnot, factions manipulating each other, etc) is nearly absent from the Lord of the Rings, and the few rare times it shows up, it's dealt with in a simplistic manner (the king/steward is being influenced by the evil councilor/stone and will be something of an obstacle ; and/or "The rightful king's return is being announced by signs and portents! Everyone bows!"). The core of the story deals with the journey of the Fellowship, and the quest of the ring.

Likewise for fantasy elements. The core conflict of GoT is the succession war provoked by the incestuous, murderous unfaithfulness of the queen. The core conflict of the Lord of the Rings is attempts by various groups to pocess a magical ring. The setting of GoT is all about the interaction between noble houses (a mundane topic) ; the setting of LotR is ultimately all about the Elves and their past mistakes.

Add in the issue of characters - if you remove the fantasy elements, you're left with a Fellowship of one. Maybe two if you're willing to forgive Aragorn's Magic Human status (see his lifespan). Do the same with GoT, and the entire main political plotline is left intact - you just lose the Jon stuff, the Daenerys stuff, and the Bran stuff. All stuff that's happening at the edge of the story. You're left with three-four speaking, named characters in the entirety of Fellowship of the Rings (Butterbur, Aragorn, Boromir and Bill Ferny). There,s more that survives in the later books (mostly the Rohan stuff), but even then...

Ultimately, the test for whether a story has fantasy thrown in or is fantasy, to me, is as follow: Remove the fantasy elements from the story (don't "remove and replace with something else", just plain remove them). What have you got left?

If you still have a working story that preserve the essential character of the original, then you are dealing with fantasy throw-ins. If you don't, then you aren't.

Remove Dany and her dragons, Jon, the wildling and the white walkers, and Bran and his weird stuff from GoT, and you're still left with the entire Succession war plotline intact, and that's what occupies the bulk of the books to date. They're throw-ins.

Remove the One Ring - just that - from the Lord of the Rings, and, well...the story is reduced to a few parts of book III. Maybe.

"What if" also applies to science fiction, and the two genres can easily be mixed.

Well, yeah. Horror, Sci Fi and Fantasy are the three main genres that together form speculative fiction.

 

[Kyriakos]

I can stand sci-fi (or even be interested when it fuses with horror, eg in Lovecraft) and like horror, but fantasy usually is less interesting in my view...

Of course there are exceptions. I regard Lord Dunsany as a very good writer

 

[Evie]

I wouldn't describe Lovecraft's work as having anything I'd really qualify as sci-fi.

It takes more than tossing aliens into a story for it to be sci-fi.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Well he isn't 'hard scifi', but his mythos ultimately ties to alien beings having colonised earth

At the mountains of Madness and Whisperer in Darkness have most such fleshed-out connections i think.

 

[abradley]

Tired of Conan try
https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject:"jirel+of+joiry"
QUEST OF THE STARSTONE

C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner

Jirel of Joiry is riding down with a score of men at her back,
For none is safe in the outer lands from Jirel's outlaw pack;
The vaults of the wizard are over-full, and locked with golden key,
And Jirel says, "If he bath so much, then he shall share with me!"
And fires flame high on the altar fare in the lair of the wizard folk,
And magic crackles and Jirel's name goes whispering through the smoke.
But magic fails in the stronger spell that the Joiry outlaws own:
The splintering crash of a broadsword blade that shivers against the bone,
And blood that bursts through a warlock's teeth can strangle a half-voiced spell
Though it rises hot from the blistering coals on the red-hot floor of Hell!

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Since it seems people are happily counting things like Harry Potter and The Dresden Files as fantasy, then I voted for loving it. I love both of those series, I love the Wheel of Time, I love Brandon Sanderson's cosmere books. I just read his latest Mistborn book and was blown away by how good it was.

So yes, I'm a fan.

 

[Arakhor]

I read loads of them when I was growing up, but I've rather migrated to historical fiction now that I'm older, particularly people getting murdered in interesting ways against various historical backdrops.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Since it seems people are happily counting things like Harry Potter and The Dresden Files as fantasy, then I voted for loving it. I love both of those series, I love the Wheel of Time, I love Brandon Sanderson's cosmere books. I just read his latest Mistborn book and was blown away by how good it was.

So yes, I'm a fan.

Why wouldn't you call Harry Potter fantasy?

I read loads of them when I was growing up, but I've rather migrated to historical fiction now that I'm older, particularly people getting murdered in interesting ways against various historical backdrops.

Which historical eras, and which authors?

I tried to get through a trilogy about Cleopatra's daughter, Selene, but it veered off into some kind of bizarre mysticism about a goddess talking to her by engraving words in her arms in blood (funny how she never seemed to need much medical attention and always had a servant around to clean up the blood) and her being able to banish a storm at sea by some other mystical ritual. So I don't consider that to be real historical fiction, but actually historical fantasy.

 

[Arakhor]

Recently, Christian Jacq and his Egyptian stories, Kevin Crossley-Holland's Arthur trilogy (set in the Welsh Marshes in 1200) and Bernard Knight's Crowner John series, set in 1190s' Devon. (I do of course have the classics - Ellis Peters' Cadfael and Lindsey Davis' Falco novels.)

 

[Snerk]

Love it, I guess. Haven't read tonnes of it though. Of the ones I've read LotR and GoT are the series that hooked me the most. Guess that makes me a fantasy mainstreamer but I'm fine with that. I also enjoy The Stormlight Archive.

 

[brennan]

Some fantasy is terriffic, a lot is drivel, as with most forms of literature and art. Fantasy seems to suffer more from being written extremely derivatively with no other purpose than its own publication, which leaves me unimpressed at the end. I love writing that has something to say.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Does stuff like Metamorphoses, Divine Comedy, and Gulliver's Travels count as fantasy?

Fantasy, ultimately, is about two simple words : What if?

Doesn't that mean a lot of sci-fi is fantasy then? Even alt history would be fantasy.

 

[brennan]

This is why the two are usually in the same section in the book shops. At least in the UK. Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le'Guin, Jack Vance and many others wrote as though there was no dividing line between Fantasy and Sci-Fi. Goblet of Fire won the Hugo one year.

 

[Evie]

Sci-fi and fantasy are two sides of the same coin, yes. The difference TEND to be along the line of what they ask "What if?" about.

SF tends to ask "What if?" about science, technology and discovery of the unknown.
F tends to ask "What if?" about things humans used to believe - about folklore, gods and magic.
AH likewise ask "What if?" about history.

Horror doesn't really ask a different What if? than other genres, but rather tend to emphasize the helplessness of humans faced by the creations of our technology (SF-Horror) or the things we've imagined (F-Horror). It asks "What if?" And then follow it with "...and we couldn't do a thing about it!"

(In that vein, despite them being nominally aliens, I'd still put Lovecraft firmly on the F-Horror side : "They're aliens" is just an origin story for his elder gods and monsters, whose role in the story is firmly that of fantastic creatures, not scientific works)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Recently, Christian Jacq and his Egyptian stories, Kevin Crossley-Holland's Arthur trilogy (set in the Welsh Marshes in 1200) and Bernard Knight's Crowner John series, set in 1190s' Devon. (I do of course have the classics - Ellis Peters' Cadfael and Lindsey Davis' Falco novels.)

I have some Christian Jacq books but haven't read them yet. I've got most of the Lindsey Davis books, but am many years behind in reading them (and have discovered that there's one of them I don't have, so I'm going to have to remedy that). She's doing a Falco spinoff series now, though, apparently about their adopted daughter... (as I said I'm years behind and didn't know they adopted any children).

My own favorite Egyptian historical novelist is Pauline Gedge.

Does stuff like Metamorphoses, Divine Comedy, and Gulliver's Travels count as fantasy?

Gulliver's Travels is social satire. On one level you could consider it fantasy, but it's the same kind of dystopian fantasy that Orwell's Animal Farm is. Kids see it as a straightforward story, but adults know there's a whole other sociopolitical theme behind it.

Doesn't that mean a lot of sci-fi is fantasy then? Even alt history would be fantasy.

Well, you could say that if the alt-history is like a fantasy world... such as the S.M. Stirling novels in which modern society breaks down and the people who pick up the pieces and create a new society happen to be from the Society for Creative Anachronism (and other medievalists) and so the new society is run along medieval lines. Or so I've heard; I haven't actually read any of those.

 

[Perfection]

Nope. To engrossed in too many non-fic books for time.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I strongly dislike pretty much the entire fantasy genre. Star Wars is about as close to fantasy as I get.

 

[Borachio]

I can't say fantasy is my favourite genre. But it's not the one I dislike the most, either. I suppose that place is firmly occupied by "romance", and then whodunnits.

I guess Pratchett was my favourite fantasy writer.

Also, my local library seems incapable of distinguishing between fantasy and science fiction.

 

[Flying Pig]

I can't say fantasy is my favourite genre. But it's not the one I dislike the most, either. I suppose that place is firmly occupied by "romance", and then whodunnits.

I guess Pratchett was my favourite fantasy writer.

Also, my local library seems incapable of distinguishing between fantasy and science fiction.

I'm a Terry Pratchett fan, too - Night Watch is one of my favourite books of any kind. In fact, I picked up The Fifth Elephant from the charity shop only a few days ago, and just finished it today.

As for why fantasy and science fiction are often shelved together (apart from the general snootiness of literary types who don't consider them 'proper' literature, in the same vein that crime and romance usually find themselves with their own shelves), see Oda above.