But what is shelved in fantasy is based on what fans of fantasy are likely to want to read. It's not based on what someone else doesn't want to read. Fantasy fans aren't going to reject a book purely because it happens to be of interest to scholars. Just because a book is shelved in fantasy doesn't mean it can't be shelved elsewhere too if it's genuinely going to sell to two sorts of market. There are plenty of sub genres within fantasy for people who are interested in something specific, but many fantasy fans have broad tastes across fantasy, so the broader category is useful.
The whole point is I don't believe there are that many "fantasy" fans, if we apply the broadest definition possible to fantasy.
As one who operated on the shady fringes of the second wave of D&D, I can speak from experience. There comes a time in every boys' and some girls' lives when they really can be a twelve foot Viking with horns. He duels the wizard slug. It is a rite, a revelation and I don't think we'd want to sneer at that, perhaps merely a gentle tickle, and a wistful reflection for those days of mathematics exercise books. I do not possess the powers to intellectualise beyond this point, realising only that the word 'fantasy' becomes almost interchangeable with 'escapism' if we debate it to its limitlessness. If the genre that is indefinable has become a little stale, be assured that a new queen of pen shall surely ride only an horizon away to re-invigorate our folios of the future.
Out of interest I've just looked up Gormenghast trilogy on Amazon and quickly scrolled through "Customers who bought this item also bought." I'm seeing they mostly bought fantasy novels. Admittedly Robert Jordan himself doesn't appear till page 16 out 17, but there's only six products per page, so that's still in the top 100
Gorgmenghast trilogy is like that one pearl someone found once while eating oysters at a $10 all you can eat buffet.
Eh I gave up trying to think about how genres should be organized and which genre I wanted to write in. Just decided to do everything.... I write fantastical but also write crime, romance, normal daily life fiction, comedy, drama, sci fi and just a mixture of everything a lot of the time, I actually think its a lot more beneficial to read and write every genre. As for stuff like Inferno and stuff like Wheel of Time being in the same genre Well They kinda are but kinda aren't Does that make sense? I mean mythology and the stuff like Beowolf and Inferno....is fantasy XD its a bit ridiculous to not call it fantasy in my opinion. But they belong in different categories then say Wheel of Time though, why? I believe it has to do with all old they are, their influence much vaster and they are important pieces of work. Now I do personally believe every genre can provoke thoughts, emotions and make you think about things and tell beautiful stories or be written beautifully (hopefully all of that) But A lot of this stuff really does build one each other. Without things like The Bible and classic myths we wouldn't get Infero or Paradise Lost and then those go on to inspire other things And The Song of Roland and King Arthur mythos inspired a piece of work and then that piece of work went on to inspire another piece of work Things that kinda shape genre and in turn when you shape a genre you really do shape history in a way (if you weren't already shaping it before hand) And at the end of the day We are living in a new time period from when those classics were written and things are always changing and how things are written changes. Still though We are living by inspiration ....a lot of fantasy is just that, as for as that 'classic' fantasy vibe that's all been build up over the massive amounts of years from religious sources, myths, poems and authors who were the ground breakers for it. Now I think there is a lot of original fantasy to and I think plenty of good stories can still be told with the old stuff but that was just a little along my lines of thinking. Also though I don't think all fantasy on market is as bad as people make it out to be or at least not compared to that of any other genre but at the end of the day that's all subjective. Though I wouldn't be so quick to write off fantasy. I'm not a fan of WoT, that....that series Far to big and looks kinda boring and I'm not an 'epic' fantasy writer when I do write fantasy(tend to go more urban or supeheroey or just totally as original as I can get) But ya know for all we know a book similar (tons of them) WoT or a book on the market right now or one that's gonna come out tomorrow could be viewed as a great literary work when we are all dead and get moved into the more scholar section due to something maybe people of our time can't see but the people of the future will. or maybe that book that comes out tomorrow will be a big ground breaking thing and free fantasy of the cliched devices but then what? Then eventually that will become the common ideal for the next thousand years.... jk on the last but there but I'm kinda just rambling at this point.
Come on now, get off the fence! I happen to enjoy WoT regardless of it's literary value and I could talk you to death about Harry Potter. To respond to the OP. What I'm writing at the moment would be considered a fantasy as it is all set in a make believe world but it does not feature magic, prophecy, eternal struggle between good and evil etc. Far from being a very broad genre I believe fantasy is in its infancy and will be subject to change as authors build original worlds without trying to imitate Middle Earth, Narnia or 'something like medieval England thats not medieval England.'
Careful. Admitting you enjoy entertaining reads over literary ones will get you into trouble around here. "Fun read" is like a curse word in these parts.
I've summed up my feelings about the Wheel of Time series in another thread, but I'll crosspost it here: It's a tiring string of fantasy tropes and cliches, one after another, after another; held together by the most baffling plot construction; populated by weak, one dimensional cut outs. Every book is a lesson in unresolved conflict and disappointment. If Joseph Campbell's monomyth is the objectively "good" story, then the Wheel of Time series is objectively bad. Events happen at random, characters wander in and out of scenes and situations with no clear motivation or goal. The only unifying story arc is intangible to any of the events of the story, and there is no sense of completion or progression in relation to it.
People who feel that way should be ignored, particularly on a writing forum where such a limited understanding of fiction is sure to be a handicap that colors any advice they might give. As for Wheel of Time, I found it interesting enough though the first few books. The middle was boring, in my view. Once Sanderson took over and decided to get things done, it became more interesting again. Of course, it's not in the same category as Gormenghast. Recently, we read Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun (or at least Shadow of the Torturer) in a book club, and the consensus seemed to be that it was too much akin to literary fiction to be interesting. That seemed odd to me. I like literary fiction. At any given time, I have at least one such work that I'm reading, along with a few SF/F, horror, or whatever else catches my eye.
Gene Wolfe and Mervybe Peake (genius) were smart folks. Robert Jordan was definitely, definitely, definitely writing Wheel of Time with one hand on the keyboard. I swear to god I lost ten percent of my testosterone after reading the nth book.
I could not disagree more. Reading fiction is first and foremost a means of entertainment. A story that captures your attention will remain in your mind far longer than something that is technically proficient but boring despite the disparity in the author's capabilities.
I enjoyed the first two books of the wheel of time series. I haven't read any further though. Just as @Steerpike describes, I'd heard that it gets dull and slow mid series before picking up at the Brandon Sanderson part. I suspect that people who have a seething hate for the series but still seem to have read several of the books, must have liked the start on some level to even get that far. A relationship that starts off well and then goes sour later, hurts a lot more than a disappointing first date.
Maybe to some extent. It's also possible that some of his readers matured. The great thing about Wheel of Time is its pretty exemplary of what I'll call "bad fantasy" (I am aware some above me basically said the same thing.) What specifically does WoT exemplify in? 1. Cliches: Orphan farm boy becomes hero. Antagonist is dark lord. Protagonists are all special. 2. Convenient anti realism : People die and come back when needed. Cities are described like a medieval version of NYC. There's not much, if any, cost to anything. 3. Wish fulfillment: All protagonists are loved. Every person is more attractive than the last. The main protagonist develops three romantic relationships with three beautiful women and all three are down. 4. Trite: Even the Bunnicula series (for children) has left a mark on my memory. There is literally nothing in WoT that stands out in my mind except for how lame it was. edit: I know why some people are probably mad. WoT is basically ONE BIG ROMANCE. Take away the swords and the magic, and you have beautiful people in ultimately nonthreatening situations engaged in a soap opera.
Apart from the WIP, which is sci-fi, me and my writing partner in crime have only written fantasy stuff. Two hack and slash manuscripts (low fantasy, I guess), and the rest of manuscripts have all had fantastical elements. Must be some kind of escapist thing...
At one point in the Wheel of Time series, I stopped reading them because they were just dull. I only stayed with the series because I was traveling and the library had them all on audio CD. The series did make number 12 on an all-time list of SF/F as voted on by NPR listeners: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books Funny that Jordan came out ahead of authors like Vonnegut.
I'd say both Dante and J.R.R Tolkien have something in common. I'm not familiar with Jordan at all - I have a friend who is going through the WoT series at the minute though and he enjoys it. His opinion I can generally trust if I'm looking for the opinion of a fan of high fantasy, whatever that opinion is actually worth. Tolkien's The Hobbit is at heart Beowulf for kids but with a load of extra, extraneous stories thrown in to entertain Tolkien's children. That mostly comes out of the way The Hobbit was formed (rather than written) though. On the surface there is nothing to separate something like The Hobbit from Beowulf, The Hobbit even uses Anglo-Saxon runes. It also shares a lot of Wagner. Just as there isn't a lot to separate The Golden Compass from Paradise Lost. It's nothing new, in fact Dante is just Virgil fanfiction for Christians, Virgil is just Homer fanfiction for Romans. I'm not sure exactly where I'd draw the line between 'Fantasy' and 'Classic literature', as a lot of the Classics could aptly be called Fantasy. I don't want to say the distinction between the two is about quality, because that seems a little lazy and arbitrary, and I suppose the distinction could be made because the Classics were poetry and 'Fantasy' is prose, but that I don't think would be right either. Mostly because things like the Epic was the way stories were told in geardagum. The time it was written, and just how much imagination is required for composition, seems to be the only distinguishing feature. I imagine less imagination is required to conceptualize an epic. If not, we must accept that Homer is Fantasy, however we might feel about that.
The novella I'm working on right now is set in a fantasy world with a little bit of soft sci-fi flavoring. And coal-powered trains. I also write stories about a fictional Floridian town called Telford, which is an ordinary fiction setting aside from the fact that ghosts and psychics exist in it.
@Lemex isn't a lot of Tolkien similar to inspired by Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung? I think time is an important factor in what is considered classic literature. It seems to me that the oldest stories humans told were fantasy, and that fantasy has held an attraction to human beings for as long as we've been on the planet. The problem with many opinions about Fantasy on writing forums is that they come from people who have no familiarity with fantasy fiction (or very little familiarity), and speaking from a position of ignorance is never a good thing. When you see posts criticizing the genre as a whole, you know you're dealing with someone who has a limited understanding of the genre. That's a problem even among some fantasy writers, who will ask things like "Why does all fantasy have X," which tells me that they're not well enough read in their genre of choice to be writing in it.
Yeah it is, enough to make you think one copied off the other. I'm on a literature forum that used to have a joke people thought Wagner ripped off Tolkien. In Wagner the Nibelung were dwarfs whose main source of income was through smithing, the hero Siegfried earned fame by killing the dragon Fafner, the series is set in a Norse-like world with Wotan and Fredda, and the entire opera cycle revolves around the quest for and fight for a magical ring of power that will grant immense power to the wielder so long as they surrender the ability to love. Really, though, they are similar because they took from the same stories. Tolkien once said apparently in irritation that he hated Wagner and had never watched the Ring Cycle in its entirety, and I can find it in my heart to believe him. The stories Tolkien knew, and the ones Wagner used so liberally, were the Elder Norse Edda, and the Nibelungenlied, a Germanic saga. Tolkien did this a lot, The Hobbit is basically Beowulf with some other Edda-derived stories thrown in, and written for children. 'Misty Mountains' is actually a description found in the Elder Edda, as is 'Murkwood'.
According to the internet: "High fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy fiction, defined either by its setting in an imaginary world or by the epic stature of its characters, themes and plot.[1]The term "high fantasy" was coined by Lloyd Alexander in a 1971 essay, "High Fantasy and Heroic Romance"" I loved it as a kid, hated it as an adult, and may be back to loving it again as my son has been pestering me to read The Hobbit to him which I began with a heavy heart but am really enjoying.
