Fantasy Game Changers

[AverageGuy]

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

I think she's the first one to use a person of color as a protagonist in fantasy, too. Though as it hasn't been done much since, maybe not a game changer.

[SkynJay]

Hmm. Internet search is failing me. Anyone know any sites that have some of the history of fantasy, along with notable "firsts?"

Not sure if its been done well, but could be interesting.

[Grack21]

Heh. Command and Conquer trumps Warcraft any day for me, but the who started/kicked off the whole RTS thing is one of those questions you can find hundred and hundreds of discussions about. It's like trying to find the first PC RPG. It's all about definitions.

I forgot what the argument was....game changers? All the ones I can think of have been mentioned already. And as someone else mentioned, its really to early to know if anything being published now is actually "changing the game". Go into a used book store someday and look at the scifi/fantasy. 99 percent f the stuff there will be "from famous author" so-and-so and have a bunch of blurbs from more authors you;ve never heard of. Fantasy readers have short memories.

[Ahimsa]

I think she's the first one to use a person of color as a protagonist in fantasy, too. Though as it hasn't been done much since, maybe not a game changer.

David Anthony Durham's Acacia, I think. But, yeah, it's not a major sub-genre at this point.

[Werthead]

David Anthony Durham's Acacia, I think. But, yeah, it's not a major sub-genre at this point.

Malazan, Garry Kilworth's Navigator Kings trilogy (set in a fantasy world based on Polynesian mythology and history rather than European), maybe a few others.

[Peadar]

We could also mention Charles R. Saunders here who writes a kind of person of colour Swords and Sorcery blend. First publication was 1981, I think...

[Eurytus]

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

At what point was he in a wizard's school? You must have read a different version of LotR.

[Gargantuanjon Old Chap]

If I was to choose three, I'd go with

Conan Series by Howard and few others who followed up with quality work.

Weren't the first, but they popularized the genre, and that's what mattered.

Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

Took fantasy to another level, popularizing epic fantasy as opposed to S&S

ASOIAF

Pure quality writing. You can tell these books had been brewing in Martin's mind for years and years, instead of being written on a whim like so many others. ASOIAF has lasting value unlike its countless contemporaries.

There are tons of great fantasy writers emerging in 2000s, but I don't think any of them were true game changers. I know a lot of people love Malazan and Name of the Wind, and I loved them too, but I don't think those books have any true lasting power. One is too niche, the other's too cliche. Others like Abercrombie, Bakker, Hobb etc, are popular, but not popular enough to be justified as game-changers. Being amazing isn't enough. You have to be amazing and be loved by a shit ton of people.

[AverageGuy]

So "military fantasy" does mean something different, which is the in-the-trenches, Full Metal Jacket kind of military setting

I don't know. IIRC The Forever War and Starship Troopers, two of the big name military sf books, both focus on characters who are enlisted infantry.

Hmm. Internet search is failing me. Anyone know any sites that have some of the history of fantasy, along with notable "firsts?"

I'd be interested in a timeline of publication of notable works at least.

1932: The Phoenix on the Sword

1937: The Hobbit

1939: Two Sought Adventure

1946: Titus Groan

1950: The Dying Earth

1954: The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia finished

1958: The Once and Future King (parts published earlier)

1961: The Dreaming City

1968: A Wizard of Earthsea, Dragonflight

1977: The Sword of Shannara, Lord Foul's Bane

1983: The Book of the New Sun finished, The Colour of Magic published

1984: The Black Company, Legend

1990: The Eye of the World

1996: A Game of Thrones (okay, I don't know how notable it is outside a Martin forum, but we're on one dammit)

1997: Harry Potter

1999: Gardens of the Moon

...Others?

Okay, I'm done. I don't know to what extent fantasy existed as a genre before the mid-late 70's, or at least pre-LOTR, but I'm listing some anyway. If I've missed books, it's either due to ignorance or laziness, neither of which is a good excuse for anything. If I've added works which people don't think belong, it's because they were mentioned a few times in the thread, I happened to remember them while googling publication dates, and I threw them in on a whim.

[Cuchulain]

Wolfe and Peake are too "unique" to really count as game-changers.

Though Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy did heavily influence Michael Moorcock and M John Harrison (both of whom became influential themselves) and more recently the so-called new weird writers such as Miéville, Vandermeer, and K J Bishop.

[emberling]

I don't know. IIRC The Forever War and Starship Troopers, two of the big name military sf books, both focus on characters who are enlisted infantry.

Are these considered 'military SF'? When you hear the term 'military SF' do you think of the outliers (that are undeniably SF set in the military) like Ender's Game, Starship Troopers and its two 'updates' (the other being Old Man's War)? For me it just conjures up images of capital ships firing broadsides, and series like Dread Empire's Fall and Honor Harrington.

(I'm asking this question genuinely, not rhetorically. I'm not well read in the genre.)

[Grack21]

I wonder what book is considered to have the first gay/bi fantasy/scifi hero. I'm not to informed about old scifi but I don't remember gay heroes/heroines showing up til the early 80s at least. *ducks stones thrown by OSC*

[polishgenius]

No love for Lovecraft? Sure, he's generally more regarded as a horror writer himself, but his influence on fantasy was huge- even Tolkien threw in homages to him in LotR, and Howard was outright writing in the Cthulhu Mythos. In particular any time someone writes about an eldritch abomination beyond the ken of mortal man, you can be sure the influence is around there somewhere.

More recently, I'd defo regard China Mieville as a gamechanger. Sure, the less-traditional fantasy (I hesitate to use the term New Weird because it's a label so indiscriminately applied- why are Mieville or Hal Duncan New Weird when Neil Gaiman or Alan Campbell apparently aren't?) may not be that big a portion of the market at the moment, but how big was it before Mieville (and Gaiman) started up? There's definitely been a change in the fantasy shelf makeup at my local bookshop in the last decade, for sure.

[Liadin]

David Anthony Durham's Acacia, I think. But, yeah, it's not a major sub-genre at this point.

Kate Elliott's last and current trilogies have been full of characters of color, including the protagonists. Also, there's Octavia Butler (not sure about the publication dates of her books vs Le Guin's?), and more recently Nnedi Okorafor and N.K. Jemisin. And Neil Gaiman. And that's just off the top of my head.

That said, I don't think books with non-white protagonists are a separate "sub-genre." They're not necessarily substantively different in any way from books with white protagonists, the characters just look different. African and Asian fantasy might count as separate subgenres, but since fantasy is still overwhelmingly quasi-European, I don't think we've had a "game-changer" that heads the genre off in non-Western directions (as far as mythology borrowed from, cultural milieu etc.) yet.

Edit: missing word

[Myshkin]

You have to take anything Erikson says about Cook with a grain of salt.

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.

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 think you both missed the point Wert was making about Brooks. Brooks is a no talent hack, but that does not matter in the least. Brooks most definitely "changed the game", he proved to publishers that fantasy as a genre could be profitable. Without Brooks the entire genre as we know it probably does not exist. The guy sucks, no doubt about it, but don't let your dislike for his writing blind you to the facts of his enormous influence on the genre.

[emberling]

Grack: OSC's squicky (and how else would a novel about a homosexual written by a raging homophobe be?) Songmaster was published in 1979. There's a wiki article about homosexuality in science fiction but it doesn't seem to answer the exact question you ask (it's not clear whether the gay in question involves the main character). Looks like early to mid 70s for males and much earlier for lesbians (man-hating amazon cliche, etc).

polishgenius: Doesn't that make Gaiman the game-changer, rather than Mieville? (Definitely agree regarding the arbitrary-seeming categorization, but then, I dislike Mieville and Duncan and am ambivalent-leaning-positive towards Gaiman and Campbell, so maybe there's a distinction I don't notice.)

Re: non-white people: Am I the only person who has trouble determining someone's race in fiction? I'll be like 3/4 of the way through and then something will make me do a double take and think "Oh, when the author said she had dark skin, that meant she's black." I definitely remember doing this with Anansi Boys, thinking midway through "Wait a second, Anansi is an African legend, shouldn't these people be black? *checks book* Oh, they are. Duh."

Not very admirable, but it is what it is.

[Grack21]

Brooks is a really nice guy in real life too! Unlike a certain....other Terry.

[Starkess]

That said, I don't think books with non-white protagonists are a separate "sub-genre." They're not necessarily substantively different in any way from books with white protagonists, the characters just look different. African and Asian fantasy might count as separate subgenres, but since fantasy is still overwhelmingly quasi-European, I don't think we've had a "game-changer" that heads the genre off in non-Western directions (as far as mythology borrowed from, cultural milieu etc.) yet.

I think there is a fair amount of the non-European fantasy these days. Daniel Abraham and Guy Gavriel Kay come to mind immediately and I'm far from the most well-read fantasy fan. Dunno who would be considered the "game-changer" but I figure there must be one because the game has changed!

[polishgenius]

polishgenius: Doesn't that make Gaiman the game-changer, rather than Mieville? (Definitely agree regarding the arbitrary-seeming categorization, but then, I dislike Mieville and Duncan and am ambivalent-leaning-positive towards Gaiman and Campbell, so maybe there's a distinction I don't notice.)

Possibly, but I'm not sure how much Gaiman changed the game and how much he simply generated his own niche that no-one else is really getting a grip in. A bit like how Terry Pratchett exists as virtually his own genre.

That said, what with both Un-Lun-Dun and Kraken Gaiman is a definite influence on Mieville himself.

[SkynJay]

I wonder what book is considered to have the first gay/bi fantasy/scifi hero. I'm not to informed about old scifi but I don't remember gay heroes/heroines showing up til the early 80s at least. *ducks stones thrown by OSC*

I know Pern had some gay relationships, presented as nothing more than relationships. Not overly sexualized or pointed out specifically. But I cant remember at which point they showed up, in the early books or later.