Hmm, maybe it is, but I've seen people class it as low fantasy as well due to the overall tone of it and general lack of fate of the world stakes (until the late books and final game). I think the best thing to do would be to decouple setting and genre. E.g instead of having fantasy adventure novels, have adventure novels in a fantasy setting. This lets us separate Lord of The Rings and The Witcher, which are tonally different in a large way, into a high adventure novel in a mid-fantasy setting (as magic is very literally leaving the world and it is growing more real world like, as @The Dapper Hooligan pointed it, it was intended more as historical fantasy), and a series of dark adventure novels in a high fantasy setting respectively.
I consider The Witcher sword and sorcery, a fantasy sub-genre that allows for smaller stakes and more complex tones and themes. But the Lord of the Rings is for all intents and purposes the grandfather of high fantasy.
It's probably better that you don't have clear definitions for sub-genres as sometimes clearer definitions create formats like gothic romances, bodice rippers, time travel. It might be easier to reach your audience with a label but you get locked into reader expectations.
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that lord of the rings has less fantastical elements than The Witcher books, or that the Lord of The Rings was intended more as historical fantasy.
I always thought high fantasy meant that a reasonable common person would make decisions expecting to use some kind of magic. So a king talking to an ent after summoning a dragon on the full moon might still be low fantasy, while a soldier with an iron sword and scurvy, saving money to invest in an aqueduct being built by slaves, is high fantasy if he goes to work on a teleport pad or uses a magic wand as a flashlight on patrol. Alternately, high fantasy is a book with any fantastical element at all where a Kingdom (or more) is at stake, while low fantasy is a book with fantastical elements that do not benefit common people, and the stakes are smaller and more personal.
1. Authorial intent doesn't determine a book's genre. Even if Tolkien had intended for The Hobbit to be a horror story, the public wouldn't consider it a horror story. The Lord of the Rings is considered high fantasy (by and large) by the public, and not historical fantasy. 2. In terms of fantastical/supernatural elements, the Lord of the Rings has more than enough to be considered high fantasy. Just as importantly, its primary conflict is epic in scale and largely good versus evil.
1. Authorial intent should at least be included in the discussion of genre, mostly as certain genres begin to break down without it and as time passes. See Frankenstein, a novel which, during its day, was very interested in using electricity to bring things back to life, and largely inspired by the real experiments where electricity was used to cause a dead frogs muscles to move. In other words, it would have been a science fiction story of the time, but as our knowledge of science has moved forward, that angle gets dropped and it's just moved to horror. But the book is also very much about "things man was not meant to know". Beyond that, just because something is considered to be one genre by the majority, that doesn't mean the text fits in it as written. See the Conan novels which is the progenitor of the sword and sorcery subgenre, but are also explicitly set in Ancient Sumeria, making it hard to argue they aren't historical. Just because the public at large is aware of the work, but not certain details, does not stop those details from being relevant to the discussion of said work. 2. It has enough for you to consider it high fantasy. Harry Potter has many more wizards, a primary conflict with the same fate of the world scale about good versus evil, but is classed as YA fantasy. And both of these are why I argue that separating genre from level of magic present in the setting is more useful for accurately representing the fantasy genre. YA fantasy is a much more accurate and useful term than high fantasy, in that it tells you who the book is aimed for, and as such gives a rough idea of things like tone. As bayview pointed out, both Lord of The Rings and Witcher are classed as High Fantasy on Wikipedia, but their plots and tones are massively different.
Come on BV, it's clearly New Zealand... You don't recall the War for the One fought in 6k/BC.... Also, why bother setting LoTR on Earth, when it's much more fun to create ones own world for their stories.
I was tough in school that High-Fantasy was a world that wasn't earth. I have my own world for my stories but very little in way of magic... though there is some here and there. Though my story does have some Sci-Fi elements to it as well.
To quote Tolkien: I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of midden-erd > middel-erd, an ancient name for the oikoumenē, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven or Hell). In another letter, he further goes on to say: All I can say is that, if it were ‘history’, it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or ‘cultures’) into such evidence as we possess, archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire, for instance, is expressly stated to have been in this region (I p. 12).6 I could have fitted things in with greater versimilitude, if the story had not become too far developed, before the question ever occurred to me. I doubt if there would have been much gain; and I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap* in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for ‘literary credibility’, even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised of ‘pre-history’. So LotR could technically be Historical Fiction.
Yes, that's correct. You're providing evidence for my position. Stories get moved into genres by popular vote. It's the public vote that determines genre—because genres are designed to help the public find what they're looking for, not what the author hopes to communicate. If you have a burning desire to argue against the logic of the public vote, that's perfectly fine. I'm not sure what it will accomplish, but I'm not against the conversation. YA is determined by the likely age of the audience. Are you confused as to why Harry Potter is considered YA, or do you feel the Lord of the Rings is YA? I don't know what you're trying to say with this point.
I am saying that popular consensus is not always accurate because a large amount of people with said vote haven't engaged with the media, but still have get put into a box anyway which doesn't accurately fit it. If you're a big fan of star trek for its engagement with philosophical and ethical questions, then you might not like the moral simplicity of star wars. Yet under popular consensus, both are under the label of science fiction, instead of star wars being science fantasy. This label is more accurate, but not well known enough to be within the popular consciousness to have been agreed upon, and the only way to get it to be popular vote is to argue against the current popular vote. My point is that relying on thematic concepts as broad the ones you listed puts stories that shouldn't be in the same genre muddled and that a better way to do would be to separate the genre from the setting for a more accurate representation of it. E.G Harry Potter is a YA book in a fantasy setting, Lord of The Rings is a high adventure novel in a fantasy setting.
You do realize that the huge overarching theme of Star Wars is that simplifying morality into a dichotomy is terrible and destructive, right?
Nah man, the sith are the straight up bad guys in Star Wars. The Prophecy more or less ruins that argument by saying explicitly that Vader was supposed to "destroy the sith and bring balance to the force" as in one after the other. There's a reason only those who side with the "light side" before death get to be force ghosts.
Most people with a solid understanding of genres consider Star Wars science fantasy. Star Trek is a bit more debatable as to where it falls. Regardless, it's the public who gets to decide a story's genre, not the author or filmmaker. Otherwise the publishers and film studios won't be able to reach the right readership with their products. And make no mistake, that is the function of genres. I'm not trying to be difficult, but I can't follow your point here. Harry Potter is a YA fantasy book. The Lord of the Rings is a "high adventure" novel that takes place in a fantasy setting, which is commonly referred to as high fantasy. And?
off the current topic, but to address the original question.... Fantasy can be anything you want it to be, so, there are no "rules" that need to be followed. Being a philosophical writer, I have to make sure all my writings add up and make sense, but, that is much easier for me because that is how my mind works. I envy those that can be imaginative in writing.
Yes, Tolkien's the LotR series is considered by many to be the standard for high fantasy: magic, elves, the hero journey, and a quest to save the world. He was inspired by such writers a Robert E. Howard, and Lord Dunsany. Robert's world of Hyboria, like Tolkien's Middle Earth, is set somewhere in earth's past. While they are now classified as 'worlds', both Hyboria and Middle Earth were considered 'ages' by the authors. While the LotR has limited spell casters, it is a world rich in magic. Tolkien's wizards were an actual race of beings. Many the elements of high fantasy also come from D&D. D&D was developed from a table top medieval war game. Spell casters were developed as a form of artillery with limited munitions. Their spell casters can be found in the writings of Jack Vance. Jack Vance wrote about wizards who had to memorized spells,and could only 'hold' a limited amount of spells at any given time. So, the spell casters had to be creative, and equip spells according to their perceived needs. I see fantasy as more of a setting that almost any kind of story can occur. Harry Turtle, in his Darkness series, literally retold WW2 in a fantasy setting. Robert E. Howard's Beyond the Black River features a story, and characters straight out of a James Fenimore Cooper's novel. It truely showed the potential of a fantasy setting by a capable writer. You have, in one story, a western frontier and settlers, the Roman Empire, the Lone Stranger archetype, and a hord of evil baddies who bring along a Lovecraftian god. This has turned out to be a wonderful thread. I want to congratulate all the posters who turned it around. Godspeed!
I feel that in another thread you yourself provided evidence that the problem isn't a problem. You pointed out three books that are relatively modern (2015 for Last Year's River, 2002 for Hy Brasil, 2001 for The Heartsong of Charging Elk), that you said are "non-genre". Those books are published and being sold on Amazon and by other sellers. So "non-genre" doesn't seem to stop a book from being sold. I realize that 2001 and 2002 are less "relatively modern" than 2015, but they're not ancient, and they are being sold, and successfully categorized, right now. And I'm confident that we could find plenty of more modern books that don't precisely fit a single genre. Jannert....do you realize that this is pretty insulting? The fact that I find the existence of additional information about a book to be useful does not mean that I am a mindless, brainless automaton who can't choose my own books. It really doesn't.
@halisme Here's something to chew on: on page six of this thread Laurin Kelly explained how many Romance publishers make it clear that they only publish love stories which end "happily ever after." They do this because that's what their readership (the public vote) want and expect. With that in mind, do you imagine those publishers would publish a novel which they suspect their readership won't accept as having an HEA ending, but which whose author could explain (defend?) that "technically" his or her book does have a happy ending? I doubt it. As far as I see it, like it or not, the public vote trumps abstract arguments when it comes to genre.
And so were the Jedi, who, if you recall commanded a huge army of slave clones. Which it did by destroying both the Jedi and the Sith. Vague prophecies are vague, and it was only the Jedi that believed that's what it meant. Not actually true, in Knights of the Old Republic you visit an ancient Sith temple where there are several dark side force ghosts. And by that reasoning, the Sith would be the good guys because only Darth Plagueis was able to use the force to bring people back to actual life.
Yes, but not everyone has a solid understanding of genre, so to get a more accurate reading, you're having to filter people out anyway. And I didn't say that the creator should be given total authority over their work, that would be dumb, but their original intentions should be taken into account when discussing the work, and that includes aspects of genre. Beyond that, public consensus is always an awkward thing to work by. If you were in a room with five people and could convince four of them that frogs were actually a breed of dog, then that would be public consensus within that area. I am saying that the earlier concepts you originally listed that mark high fantasy (an adventure, a battle of good and evil, epic stakes) are too broad. For example people have classed The Witcher as High Fantasy before, despite it being massively different from The Lord of The Rings in terms of tone, characters, and theme. Both still feature large amounts of adventure, travel, monsters, and a non-human dark lord searching for a Maggufin possed by the main character, and the dark lord have spikey hats. If the dark lords get what they want, they will conquer the known world(s). Yet a person who likes Lord of The Rings might find the tone of The Witcher series as offputting and vice versa. Instead of separating these two works, as the labels of High Fantasy and Sword&Sorcery do, I am stating that a better system would be to use existing terminology to make a more accurate system of labelling where a second term is added denoting tone.
Congratulations on being more intelligent than Lucas in thinking this through. Here's Lucas explicitly stating it. It's not vague. It's a before and after, like saying "I'm going to the shop and will get some eggs". That stuff is currently non-cannon, and they explicitly have to bind themselves there, because otherwise, they go to fire and brimstone style hell.
I don't think using existing terminology to mean something new is going to be a great plan - too much room for confusion about whether people are using the terms in the "new" way or the "old" way. In general, I think it's pretty common to have books with different tones included in the same genre... there are romance novels that are fluffy and fun and light, romance novels that are quite dark, but both are classed as romance, or even put in the same sub-genre or sub-sub-genre. I really don't think "tone" is generally reflected in genres at all. And, honestly, I don't think I shop for books by tone, not nearly as much as I shop for them by genre. That's a small sample size, obviously... does anyone know of a bookstore that's tried different classifications? (rather than the 'no classifications' approach).
