Hello everyone,
I'm new to this website but so far it looks like a good place to air ideas on. No-one I know personally would be interested in this sort of thing, so I wondered if I could bend your ears...?
In the UK at least, fantasy fiction seems to be acquiring a new respectablity. It's not just that sales of Tolkien are soaring, it's something else. Philip Pullman and Tolkien are being discussed by panels of literati on Radio 4, grown men and women read Harry Potter on public transport without embarrasment. They're officially o.k. now, when a few years ago this sort of thing was generally regarded as being... well, a bit nerdy, and certainly as purely escapist literature unworthy of serious attention.
Which, to me, is a bit funny, because I can't stand Tolkien, I tried reading Northern Lights but was turned off by Pullman's pompous prose style, and the Harry Potter books are - to me - disposable, forgettable stuff; certainly not the classic that some people have claimed it to be.
Also, I find it funny that back in the day, fantasy and sf literature was largely written as shorts. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Conan, Elric... Even the early Elric novels are so short they're only printed in omnibus editions now, and were originally published in instalments. Now, however, it seems to me that if you've got ambitions to become a published fantasy author you need not just a sequel ready but a whole seven Chronicles of Zarg in the pipeline if you want to see your work in print. I work in a pretty large bookshop, and I don't think that there's one fantasy author in stock who has just one book out. Compare that to the mainstream fiction, most of which is taken up with authors with only one or two books. And not only do current fantasy authors expect you to devote hours of your time reading their ten-part magnum opuses, they all share a pompous, cod-Tolkien style of po-faced seriousness.
Now that really does confuse me, because fantasy literature is inherently daft. It does, after all, involve people with unpronouncable names, unlikely cultures, and scientifically-impossible goings-on. The writers of the old school realised this; our own dear Mr Moorcock realises this. Fritz Lieber knew it, and it's his tone of playfulness that makes his stories such a pleasure. Even Robert E Howard had his tongue in his cheek (although it's easy to miss) and certainly never regarded his work as having pretensions to respectablity. At the end of the day, the writing of the old school is pulp, and it knows it - and that's not a drawback, it's a virtue. Moorcock and Lieber indulge themselves in the freeflow of creativity, they play around with ideas. Tolkien and his imitators, on the other hand, bog themselves down with a misguided attempt to keep their fictional worlds consistent and realistic when they should (to my taste) be riffing, making it up as they go along and striving not for realism but the very opposite. After all, didn't Moorcock once call his gods of Chaos the Lords of Unlikelihood?
Oh dear, I have gone on for a bit. Such impertinence for a newbie. But can I pose a question to you all? Is there a place left for short sword-and-sorcery fiction that eschews po-faced seriousness in favour of imagination and fun?
I've you've bothered to read my rantings this far, thank you very much.
I'm new to this website but so far it looks like a good place to air ideas on. No-one I know personally would be interested in this sort of thing, so I wondered if I could bend your ears...?
In the UK at least, fantasy fiction seems to be acquiring a new respectablity. It's not just that sales of Tolkien are soaring, it's something else. Philip Pullman and Tolkien are being discussed by panels of literati on Radio 4, grown men and women read Harry Potter on public transport without embarrasment. They're officially o.k. now, when a few years ago this sort of thing was generally regarded as being... well, a bit nerdy, and certainly as purely escapist literature unworthy of serious attention.
Which, to me, is a bit funny, because I can't stand Tolkien, I tried reading Northern Lights but was turned off by Pullman's pompous prose style, and the Harry Potter books are - to me - disposable, forgettable stuff; certainly not the classic that some people have claimed it to be.
Also, I find it funny that back in the day, fantasy and sf literature was largely written as shorts. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Conan, Elric... Even the early Elric novels are so short they're only printed in omnibus editions now, and were originally published in instalments. Now, however, it seems to me that if you've got ambitions to become a published fantasy author you need not just a sequel ready but a whole seven Chronicles of Zarg in the pipeline if you want to see your work in print. I work in a pretty large bookshop, and I don't think that there's one fantasy author in stock who has just one book out. Compare that to the mainstream fiction, most of which is taken up with authors with only one or two books. And not only do current fantasy authors expect you to devote hours of your time reading their ten-part magnum opuses, they all share a pompous, cod-Tolkien style of po-faced seriousness.
Now that really does confuse me, because fantasy literature is inherently daft. It does, after all, involve people with unpronouncable names, unlikely cultures, and scientifically-impossible goings-on. The writers of the old school realised this; our own dear Mr Moorcock realises this. Fritz Lieber knew it, and it's his tone of playfulness that makes his stories such a pleasure. Even Robert E Howard had his tongue in his cheek (although it's easy to miss) and certainly never regarded his work as having pretensions to respectablity. At the end of the day, the writing of the old school is pulp, and it knows it - and that's not a drawback, it's a virtue. Moorcock and Lieber indulge themselves in the freeflow of creativity, they play around with ideas. Tolkien and his imitators, on the other hand, bog themselves down with a misguided attempt to keep their fictional worlds consistent and realistic when they should (to my taste) be riffing, making it up as they go along and striving not for realism but the very opposite. After all, didn't Moorcock once call his gods of Chaos the Lords of Unlikelihood?
Oh dear, I have gone on for a bit. Such impertinence for a newbie. But can I pose a question to you all? Is there a place left for short sword-and-sorcery fiction that eschews po-faced seriousness in favour of imagination and fun?
I've you've bothered to read my rantings this far, thank you very much.
).
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