Fantasy Game Changers

[SkynJay]

From the back of a Glen Cook book i picked up today.

"With the Black Company series Glen Cook single-handedly changed the face of fantasy—something a lot of people didn’t notice and maybe still don’t. He brought the story down to a human level, dispensing with the cliché archetypes of princes, kings, and evil sorcerers" Steven Erikson

So I ask today two questions.

1. Is he right?

2. Who are the major game changers in fantasy? The people who took it different directions. Who left LotR behind and went a way that was not only new, but that others felt compelled to follow.

[Bronn is God]

Dare I say, Joe Abercrombie?

[SkynJay]

Dare I say, Joe Abercrombie?

He is a favorite of mine for sure, and I think the way he handled PoV in First law was very unique (where you could FEEL Gloka's personality).

But I know some would say he is following in Martin's footsteps of a gritty, war filled world, where no character is safe.

[kcf]

I really doubt Joe should be included in this - his stuff is good, but I'd say it's part of a trend rather than the initiator of it.

A few potential game changers that come to mind

Anne Rice - Interview With the Vampire totally changed vampires in fantasy, horror and pop culure.

People like Charles de Lint and Emma Bull defined urban fantasy.

Patricia McKillips brought poetic style into fantasy and wrote epic fantasy that doesn't feel so epic

Michael Swanwick - he was writing 'new weird' years before anyone coined the term

Tolkien of course.

Many writeres cite people like - Mervyn Peake, Borges, Bulgakov, etc. I think they may also count as game changers, though probably not in the way the post is getting at.

In the same sentence that Erikson praises Cook, he also praises Donaldson. Since I haven't read much of either I can't comment on how right or wrong Erikson is in this.

Of the newer fantasy writers I'd say that Bakker and VanderMeer may end up being game changers, but it's too early to tell.

[Grack21]

The problem with fantasy game changers is that when it does happen most people don't notice til decades later. The authors doing stuff like this right now we've all probably never heard of, and don't sell worth squat. I had no idea who Glen Cook was until around 2006 :(

[emberling]

People like Charles de Lint and Emma Bull defined urban fantasy.

And Laurell K. Hamilton redefined it in Guilty Pleasures, essentially co-opting the term, the basic idea of modern fantasy, and little else while combining it with a kitchen sinkful of other genres in order to create the absurdly popular yet pulpy version we have today.

I've seen Donaldson, along with Terry Brooks and the Del Reys (editors) credited as the biggest game-changers in fantasy since Tolkien, because apparently before then, fantasy was just Not Done. Which would explain all the 'it's really sci fi' stuff from around then, like Pern. I don't know, before my time.

Robert Jordan (possibly by way of Tad Williams?) turned the 1000-page doorstop from a publishing impossibility into a cliche.

Harry Potter turned YA (and YA fantasy) into a visible market, and after Twilight the YA shelves are so full of paranormal romance (and plenty of fantasy romance and urban fantasy non-romance slipping in alongside) that it's gotten its own section at my local bookstore as large as the rest of the YA fiction and nonfiction combined.

It's kind of amazing how few of the authors mentioned in my post I like at all.

Glen Cook is a different sort of 'game-changer' than these, though. If Glen Cook is a game-changer - I'm not sure if that's really true - it's not because he changed the market, it's because some of his ideas were appropriated by more well-known authors. The Black Company didn't usher in a flood of gritty military fantasy, and I don't really see much of its influence propagating until after Martin made gritty cool. Even then, it's mostly visible in Erikson. It's clear that Cook greatly influenced how Erikson viewed fantasy, and what could be done in fantasy, and what should be done in fantasy, but influencing one person doesn't change the game. Not unless that one person influences a new horde of authors to follow.

[Datepalm]

Glen Cook is a different sort of 'game-changer' than these, though. If Glen Cook is a game-changer - I'm not sure if that's really true - it's not because he changed the market, it's because some of his ideas were appropriated by more well-known authors. The Black Company didn't usher in a flood of gritty military fantasy, and I don't really see much of its influence propagating until after Martin made gritty cool. Even then, it's mostly visible in Erikson. It's clear that Cook greatly influenced how Erikson viewed fantasy, and what could be done in fantasy, and what should be done in fantasy, but influencing one person doesn't change the game. Not unless that one person influences a new horde of authors to follow.

Malazan is pretty influential in itself though, and there is quite a bit of 'military-fantasy' around now, that focuses strongly on war and battle.

How about Meiville? I'm not sure the new-weird is that huge, in and of itself, but Perdido shifted about the cultural geography of secondary worlds. Probably did a lot for steampunk too.

[Gigei]

I would say Robert Jordan is a game-changer because before he got his publishing contract for WoT, no one would have thought that a writer could write something so long and ambitious.

Actually, as it turns out, RJ wasn't able to finish his work after all so I think publishers should rethink this one. It's pretty damned hard to stay focused on one extremely lengthy series.

I'm reading Sheri Tepper's True Game series and she has 9 books in it but they are three trilogies (3x3 series). I like this approach. The writer could write the standard three books every now and then so that readers could get an ending every few years as each trilogy ends instead of waiting 20+ years for everything. :love:

[Werthead]

Erikson's comment is wrong. You can't change fantasy and be a gamechanger if no-one notices. Cook gets cool kudos now, but at the time he was only moderately successful. Gemmell has a better claim to being a game-changer in Britain, but he was never big in the USA so the same claim cannot be made there.

I think in terms of epic fantasy the game-changers would be:

Terry Brooks: Created the modern category fantasy market in 1977 with The Sword of Shannara.

Stephen Donaldson: Near-simultaneously published with Brooks, Lord Foul's Bane showed that epic fantasy could be intelligent, written for adults and still very successful.

Terry Pratchett: Used secondary-world fantasy as a successful vehicle for satire and went on to become one of the biggest-selling authors in the world.

Robert Jordan: Proved that longer-than-trilogy fantasy works could be immensely successful.

George R.R. Martin: Consolidated and popularised the 'gritty fantasy' explosion, though he didn't start it (building on what Gemmell and Cook had already achieved).

Patrick Rothfuss: Brought epic fantasy back into vogue with his immensely huge-selling first novel.

Some other authors are arguable: Tad Williams sold very well, influenced GRRM and arguably played a major role in stepping up epic fantasy from the Brooks/Feist/Eddings level of the 1980s, which had been dominant. A lot of other authors might be claimed, but I think they're more evolutionary rather than game-changers. Erikson's relative obscurity amongst general readers and Bakker being even moreso probably rule them out of being gamechangers at present.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Wert,

One quibble. Are TNOTW and TWMF really "epic" fantasy? No big battles, no world shattering crises (so far), a serious focus on one character who's sole purpose is to get through school with some side interests who we know doesn't end up as a king or a prince. How is that "epic"?

[Werthead]

Wert,

One quibble. Are TNOTW and TWMF really "epic" fantasy? No big battles, no world shattering crises (so far), a serious focus on one character who's sole purpose is to get through school with some side interests who we know doesn't end up as a king or a prince. How is that "epic"?

Probably 'secondary world' fantasy is a better description (Discworld isn't epic fantasy either). Rothfuss also has some of the trappings of epic fantasy - secondary world, nonhuman races, politics (even if mostly inferred in the second book) and magic - without some of the specific elements like battles (so far). That in itself could be seen as a gamechanger of sorts: it's not an epic fantasy but not a sword-'n'-sorcery heroic thing either.

[Stego]

The big game changers in fantasy of the past 100 years:

-Robert E. Howard: Invented sword and sorcery.

-J.R.R. Tolkien: The most obvious.

-Jack Vance: His fantasy was the basis for role playing games.

-T.H. White: Made fantasy profitable before Tolkien. (Also wrote the best Arthurian book of all time, and one of the greatest fantasies ever written.)

-Ursula K. LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea brought us the first wizard school.

-Michael Moorcock: He turned s+s on it's head with Elric.

-Robert Jordan: Love it or hate it, The Wheel of Time changes everything.

-George R.R. Martin: The face of fantasy is changed. There would be no Abercrombie, Bakker, Abraham, Lynch, Rothfuss, etc in the current form without him. IMO.

-J.K. Rowling: There is no escaping the waves she brought to fantasy.

I believe those are the big ones. I don't think Glen Cook even made waves.

ETA: Terry Brooks also made waves, but in a negative manner. He and his fanfic are responsible for the garbage that came after him. Eddings, Weis & Hickman, Salvatore -- all these can be laid at his feet. Profitable, simple minded fantasy. Ick.

[Nukelavee]

I think some of you are seriously underestimating Cook.

Part of that I base on the other writers you compare him to - to be honest, been reading sci-fi and fantasy for, oh, 32 years now, and I've never bothered to even pick up most of the writers you cite, like Abercrombie. Erickson, Brookes, Goodkind? I avoid them like the plague - just a taste thing, but it means there's a whole "sub genre" or style i'm not into, aware of, or in a position to judge.

Cook is like that. If you were't reading his stuff as it was released, you likely weren't reading much fantasy, and therefore didn't see what was the norm back then, and so don't realize what he did.

Erickson might be overstating the case, but not entirely; Cook added to fantasy what Haldeman and Drake did for military sci-fi.

Btw - I wouldn't call Brooks anything but somebody who cashed in on the LotR, and wrote a weak knockoff at a time when fantasy was mostly stuck in either Conan (and, yes, I still have my Conans that Jordan wrote), very adult stuff like Donaldson, or the classic Moorcock and Leiber type stuff.

[The Marquis de Leech]

-Robert E. Howard: Invented sword and sorcery.

The ghost of Lord Dunsany wants to have a word with you. ;)

[Ouroboros]

Who was the guy that invented post-apocalytic Earth/Far Future as a setting? I'm going to recieve some flak for not knowing this, but I can't remember the guy's name. I think it was Jack Vance.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Who was the guy that invented post-apocalytic Earth/Far Future as a setting? I'm going to recieve some flak for not knowing this, but I can't remember the guy's name. I think it was Jack Vance.

Jack Vance made the Dying Earth setting famous, but he didn't invent it (the likes of The Night Land (1912) by William Hope Hodgson predates Vance by forty years or so. There's also Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories).

[Madness]

-Ursula K. LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea brought us the first wizard school.

Is this right? Saurumon is living in a hut, is he?

I think this, regardless, is missing the point. What Cook seemingly adds is introspection, which may have not existed in Fantasy before Cook started writing?

Whether this is actually his contribution to "Game-Changers," is also irregardless. Adding something new can be defined between us and sought out in examples, which hasn't really been done with the Cook example. But I don't think a particular plot point, type of character, or fictive device, like LeGuin's School is necessarily whats being talked about. Aren't we discussing more pervasive and prevalent examples?

I would highlight two: one general and one more specific.

For a long time, science fiction especially, seemed dominated by dialogue driven fiction. Herbert and Asimov are two I can immediately suggest. The scene is established with minimal description and then from then on the chapters seem to flow by spoken contributions from the characters.

At the beginning and end of the Sci-Fi era are changers to be established.

Also, for my second point, I'm not sure how many authors have been doing this, nor if any will pull it off as well as Bakker but I would suggest that Bakker is in the process of concretizing another "Game-Changer". That of Layers of Revelation. It is my theory that with each book released in the Second Apocalypse Saga, he includes and defines a new dimension of metaphysics within his world. That is that every new novel with is read from beginning to end, adds a metaphysical fundament, which while at work within the world, was not known to the reader. In this way, every new release reveals a new dimension of understanding with which to begin a new and see the whole story in anew light.

[SkynJay]

I think some of you are seriously underestimating Cook.

Part of that I base on the other writers you compare him to - to be honest, been reading sci-fi and fantasy for, oh, 32 years now, and I've never bothered to even pick up most of the writers you cite, like Abercrombie. Erickson, Brookes, Goodkind? I avoid them like the plague - just a taste thing, but it means there's a whole "sub genre" or style i'm not into, aware of, or in a position to judge.

Cook is like that. If you were't reading his stuff as it was released, you likely weren't reading much fantasy, and therefore didn't see what was the norm back then, and so don't realize what he did.

Erickson might be overstating the case, but not entirely; Cook added to fantasy what Haldeman and Drake did for military sci-fi.

Btw - I wouldn't call Brooks anything but somebody who cashed in on the LotR, and wrote a weak knockoff at a time when fantasy was mostly stuck in either Conan (and, yes, I still have my Conans that Jordan wrote), very adult stuff like Donaldson, or the classic Moorcock and Leiber type stuff.

I see no mention of Goodkind at all (though a quick internet search shows that he was the highest paid author for a first novel at the time, so maybe he is responsible for larger cash for all? May take away some of his sins if that is true).

And as for not reading Abercrombie and Erikson, that is understandable. They are not for everyone. But to tag them with Brooks and Goodkind? That makes no sense. Completely different ballgames.

So far i completely agree with Donaldson, Jordan, and Martin as more recent game changers. I also think in short term the Harry Potter series gets a nod, love or hate it YA reading has been changed by it (though I will wait on giving Twilight ANY due, it has spawned a lot of clones but that is normal, will the Urban Fantasy Teen craze continue long term?)

[Galactus]

Btw - I wouldn't call Brooks anything but somebody who cashed in on the LotR, and wrote a weak knockoff at a time when fantasy was mostly stuck in either Conan (and, yes, I still have my Conans that Jordan wrote), very adult stuff like Donaldson, or the classic Moorcock and Leiber type stuff.

Oh, i don't disagree.

The thing is, Brooks made a shitload of money. Which spawned another wave of "wannabee LOTR's" (Eddings, Feist, Williams, Jordan are all arguably the result of Brooks wanting to get paid) which, debate their qualities or not, were certainly influential.

In a very real sense Brooks created the fantasy market as we know it, or at least brought it back from the dead.

[Galactus]

I think this, regardless, is missing the point. What Cook seemingly adds is introspection, which may have not existed in Fantasy before Cook started writing?

This is also blatantly false: Lord Foul's Bane came out seven years before The Black Company.