Far too much “fantasy” is contracted claptrap that plays out like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign with one person playing all the characters. Thieves, fighters, druids, wizards, clerics etc. acting like well-worn characters in a pseudo-medieval setting using simple coinage that needs no explanation and is pretty much universal in usage, and if political systems are mentioned at all they are contrived so that a fourth grader with a spattering of DnD games and perhaps a couple of viewings of “Princess Bride” could easily grasp what is going on.
For me the best fantasy takes me to someplace else. I feel like that’s the true purpose of fantasy.
Thank you all for contributing. A lot to think about.
Interesting. I wouldn’t consider my prose florid, but it’s not perfunctory either. It’s more like trying to provide key details that create a mental impression. And in earlier drafts there was a lot less description, because I was so focused on what was going on with the characters, I didn’t care much about the details of their environment. I had to go back and flesh it out. When I envision things in my head I can usually only see one or a few details at a time. I consider myself to have a vivid imagination, but it’s more experiential than visual. In my writing I tend to focus more on the sensory experience of my characters than most writers. I’ve had to tone that down, too.
I’ve never thought about this before.
There is certainly a firehose of this in modern publishing. But I guess it contines to sell, so they keep pumping it out.
It is rare for a really new voice to be heard. Jack Vance, quite a while ago. Peter Beagle (who I admire for his restraint in not repeating himself). Greg Bear actually did a rather nice re-imagining with The Infinity Concerto. But mostly it’s just ‘second verse, same as the first.’.
It’s a close line to walk. At the moment I am busy with two books: one diamond-hard near-future SF, the other starting in a 1950s English village (where a Threat will emerge, like John Wyndham).
One has to establish setting and atmosphere… but it has to be done carefully. Too much and it starts to be cozy Miss Read or Wodehouse in the one hand, or a technical manual on the other.
Arthur C Clarke’s later books sometimes suffer from the latter: they almost read like a sketch for a book rather than the book itself?
You have to have characters that people care about. I’m trying to write people who I would like to have as friends, mostly.
Perhaps we should establish a writers’ workshop?
I am currently reading a fantasy set in Hell, titled “For Whom The Belle Tolls” by Jaysea Lynn that breaks a lot of the typical fantasy molds, without getting so contrived with strangeness in both places and names that it is impossible to understand.
For some reason I really like stories that deal with afterlife mythology. I’ll check it out.
Niven and Pournell have perhaps done that already with ‘Escape from Hell’.
But I’ll see if I can find it.
It is based on, and is a prequel to, the Hell’s Belles internet videos.
Maybe. I just need a project to contribute first. I’m done with my first novel, minus the whole map thing, and I’ve arrived at the point of “now what?” without any clear next project. I’ve dabbled with two different sequels, and a science fiction book, but I haven’t found my “in” yet, which is how I describe the moment where I get hooked on a story and just have to write it.
I was thinking for the science fiction of trying something totally different. Create the world first, and then see if any obvious stories emerge.
This is just like good songwriters working together.
Here: I’ve got a good bit. Not quite sure what to do with it yet though? Any ideas?
Oh, I have something that would fit perfectly with that! And the song is born….
“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
Otherwise quotes are from Tolkien - fantasy is quite capable of offering a true glimpse into humanity.
Try to imagine a world where the use of weapons is seen as an unspeakable weakness in character.
I’m not that fond of most fantasy, although I do like Tolkien, Le Guin and some G R R Martin. I prefer hard(ish) science fiction. However it seems very likely to me that the future of fiction, and indeed the future of most of humanity, will eventually be deeply enmeshed in fantasy of various kinds. If we assume that the future holds seamless virtual reality, automated procedural generation of fictional landscapes, automated but coherent and imaginative worldbuilding and storyboarding, brain-computer interfaces and reliable life support, then some, many or most citizens a thousand years from now will spend some, most, or all of their lifetime in virtual reality fantasies.
Arthur Clarke predicted this dreaming lifestyle in The Lion of Comarre, and I’m sure he was not the first. I’m almost certain that the worlds of fantasy will be preferable to the worlds of hard science fiction for most virtual dreamscapes. Who would want to spend years of their lives travelling between the stars in a realistic scenario when they could travel instantly by magical teleportation?
Asimov: “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
On the other hand… “A good Big one will still beat a good Small one…”?
I think that fantasy is what introduces non-mundane elements into the story world. Science fiction might postulate highly exotic locales and technologies, but are still ultimately mundane in outlook and setting. This is most evident in the borderline case of science fantasies ala’ Star Wars: imagine if instead of postulating a virtually magical Force whose wielders are sorcerer-warriors, the SW stories had simply called it “psionics” and that a vanishing fraction of the galaxy’s sentients just happened to possess the genetic trait for it. None of this mumbo-jumbo about destiny for example.
Or the example of Urban Fantasy can be cited: in a setting otherwise identical to our world to the naked eye, it turns out that there are magical, even spiritual forces at work.
In a typical medievalesque fantasy setting, most of the trivial mundanities of life can be handwaved. Gold is valuable simply because it’s gold, not because of trade networks, banking, markets, etc. Evil creatures can be killed by the good guys simply because they are evil, no moral handwringing. Magic exists and can be used without having any broader implications of what it means for there to be such a thing as real magic. Strong brave warriors don’t need to worry about their position in society; kings simply rule and politics doesn’t exist beyond the occasional traitorous vassal or vizier or pretender to the throne. In short, it’s fantasy simply because it depicts a world that works at a grade school child’s level of understanding.
Not necessarily. IME science fiction tends to focus on dystopias. Other than Star Trek (and even then, it’s limited to Enterprise and earlier series) and the original trilogy of Star Wars, science fiction seems to focus almost exclusively on dystopian themes. With fantasy, there are plenty of stories where the focus is on the fantasy world becoming a better place if only the heroes can defeat the villains.
Given the current state of the world, IMHO what that means is that fantasy is much more suited to being escapist in comparison to sci-fi. I don’t always want to read a reflection of our current society, sometimes I just want to escape to a place that’s, to borrow a famous line, “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away” that doesn’t relate directly to our current place and time. That might be Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or Yujii Hori’s Alefgard (Dragon Quest), or the various worlds in Final Fantasy created by Hironobu Sakaguchi (with FF VII and VIII the exceptions that prove that rule that sci-fi is a lot more dystopian than fantasy). That, IMHO, is the main difference between sci-fi and fantasy.
Another point to ponder. Science fiction often, but not always, postulates conditions that could be true. Theoretically.
Fantasy postulates conditions that could never be true.
I wonder how this affects a reader’s experience of it.
I don’t have anything useful to contribute, but I wanted to quote this:
Come with us, O readers, to a world where gleaming cities raise silver spires against the stars, sorcerers cast spells from subterranean lairs, baleful spirits stalk crumbling ruins, primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets, and the fate of kingdoms is balanced on the blades of broadswords brandished by heroes of preternatural might and valor. In this world men are mighty, women are beautiful, problems are simple, and life is adventurous, and nobody has even heard of inflation, the petroleum shortage, or atmospheric pollution!
By L. Sprague de Camp, in the forward for the novelization of Conan the Barbarian. (Yes, the Schwartzenegger flick)
See, there is something wrong with my brain because I found all that imagery hard to follow. I wonder if it is a problem with working memory.