does ASOIAF really belong in the fantasy genre?

[Errant Bard]

nevermind, it's useless.

[polishgenius]

Okay, okay, we get it. You really don't want aSoIaF to be a fantasy. But it is.

LotR was stunningly successful long before the movies ever existed. Harry Potter is children's/YA fantasy lit.


eta: emphasis.

[Myshkin]

So the elements of ASoIaf you most enjoy are the mundare elements? Big whoop. Doesn't mean ASoIaF isn't fantasy. Most fantasy and sci-fi use speculative aspects to explore stories and themes which resonate on a human, mundane, level. Why do you think Tolkien's work is still so popular today? It's not because of the hobbits, orcs, or wizards; it's because it tells the deeply resonant story of a common man making a difference. It's because Tolkien explored themes hugely relevant to the times. Your assertion seems to be that fantasy novels rely solely on the fantasy elements, and that those that don't rely solely on fantasy elements aren't fantasy. You couldn't be more wrong. Most fantasy and sci-fi novels rely on the mundane themes to carry them.

[Buckwheat]

Harry Potter is juvenile/young adult lit. Twilight is romance. (Twilight actually speaks to what I'm saying here I think, it's got vampires, but that's not what it's about.) LotR is LotR, and succeeded as a huge budget special effects movie. The box office charts are dominated by big budget special effects movies, cutting across genres. (And a few children's movies.)

Or let's put it this way. What swords and sorcery series is there that could succeed in capturing the kind of gigantic audience GoT on HBO has? Afaik until GoT, WoT is the biggest, best selling franchise around. No way folks who aren't already fans of the genre embrace WoT. Didn't they try to make a tv series out of Goodkind? I'm not a fan, but there was a time that series was huge, but the tv series flopped miserably. Consider RA Salvatore. Again, not a fan. But again, there was a time when he was huge. But never to folks who aren't fans of the genre.

So? Does that not mean it is either 1. fantasy or 2. insanely popular?

Just because it is romance, this does not mean it cannot be fantasy as well at the same time. It has vampires and whatnot, therefore it is fantasy, period.

GOT is GOT, and succeeded as a huge budget special effects series. Your point?

And the most important point, the popularity of a book series does not define its genre, because genres are not defined by popularity.

[Gertrude]

You asked what sword and sorcery series could do what GoT has? Hard to tell, but I can't wait to find out because one thing I know is that it will be a hellaciously good story first and foremost. Hopefully it will be something I haven't read yet or hasn't been written so I can discover something new. I will forget that you compared it with Goodkind - that's just not right, man. The source material has to be good to get a wider audience.

oh, I'd like to see LIes of Locke Lamorra get adapted, that has the potential. (this is all digression, of course and doesn't speak to your larger point, I'm just thinking out-loud)

[KalibakCruel]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that NOTHING is fantasy. There. Every story is about more than fantasy, therefore, the fantasy aspect should be excluded. LotR isn't fantasy, it's an adventure story. You fools, fantasy never existed! It was all a clever ruse to suck your wallets dry!

[Night's_King]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that NOTHING is fantasy. There. Every story is about more than fantasy, therefore, the fantasy aspect should be excluded. LotR isn't fantasy, it's an adventure story. You fools, fantasy never existed! It was all a clever ruse to suck your wallets dry!

Fantasy is a marketing invention of the big companies! Fantasy is a lie!

[polishgenius]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that NOTHING is fantasy.

Don't be absurd. Have you never seen The Wire?

[KalibakCruel]

Don't be absurd. Have you never seen The Wire?

It has HUMANS in it. And a clear story. Aren't you paying attention? Fantasy is dead, and worse still, it never lived!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Kalibak,

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that NOTHING is fantasy. There. Every story is about more than fantasy, therefore, the fantasy aspect should be excluded. LotR isn't fantasy, it's an adventure story. You fools, fantasy never existed! It was all a clever ruse to suck your wallets dry!

Well said. Genre is a pretty arbitrary catagorization. It is a story like other stories. You enjoy it or you don't. Whether it "fits" in an arbitrarily determined "genre" is unimportant at the end of the day.

[The Evil Queen]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that NOTHING is fantasy. There. Every story is about more than fantasy, therefore, the fantasy aspect should be excluded. LotR isn't fantasy, it's an adventure story. You fools, fantasy never existed! It was all a clever ruse to suck your wallets dry!

I stand on an opposite limb, everything fiction is actually fantasy, because fiction is not real, it is just stuff people have fantasised about and put in a book/movie.... Its ALL fantasy :D

[KalibakCruel]

I stand on an opposite limb, everything fiction is actually fantasy, because fiction is not real, it is just stuff people have fantasised about and put in a book/movie.... Its ALL fantasy :D

:O and in an instant i no longer believe in anything!

Edit: "go ahead and mock me! But it wasn't you who was laughing at me, it was GOD!"

[peterbound]

Harry Potter is juvenile/young adult lit. Twilight is romance. (Twilight actually speaks to what I'm saying here I think, it's got vampires, but that's not what it's about.) LotR is LotR, and succeeded as a huge budget special effects movie. The box office charts are dominated by big budget special effects movies, cutting across genres. (And a few children's movies.)

Or let's put it this way. What swords and sorcery series is there that could succeed in capturing the kind of gigantic audience GoT on HBO has? Afaik until GoT, WoT is the biggest, best selling franchise around. No way folks who aren't already fans of the genre embrace WoT. Didn't they try to make a tv series out of Goodkind? I'm not a fan, but there was a time that series was huge, but the tv series flopped miserably. Consider RA Salvatore. Again, not a fan. But again, there was a time when he was huge. But never to folks who aren't fans of the genre.

Consider Rand al Thor. He is the reincarnation of a dread figure from myth, destined to go mad and break the world. There is no real world historical parallel to that, it does not speak to the motivations and concerns that everyday people have or are familiar with. Yes you're going to have universal themes like love, and friendship, and betrayal. But with Rand it all revolves around his fantastic destiny. How does he embrace a romantic relationship, when he knows he is the reincarnation of the man who went mad and slaughtered his own wife and children? So that theme of being the Dragon Reborn drives Rand throughout, his motivations, his actions.

But consider Dany. Yes she has dragons and yes she has magical immunity to fire (to some degree). But what is she? She is the exiled last scion of a toppled dynasty who seeks to raise an army so she can sail across the sea to reclaim her family's throne. If you want to read about the motivations and actions of someone in that position, just go get a bio of Henry Tudor.

To raise a slightly different issue, political intrigue exists in WoT. Take Daes Daemar in Cairhien. The Game of Houses never plays a big role in WoT. It exists, is mentioned, as a means to enrich the world. That's very different from GoT where the Game of Thrones is explored so thoroughly and is a large part (the great part, so far) of the story.

I think you're very misinformed about pop culture, and the genre as a whole. You're making some blanket statements (as you did in the OP), that have no basis in reality.

Twilight=About vampires and werewolves

HP=About wizards

You're also really stretching the 'based on reality' bit. Sure there's a little bit of the war of the roses drama in there, but once a shadow monster that was birthed from a fire witches blessed vagina killed one of the rebels, it veered far off from the realm of 'based in reality'.

ETA: Also, star wars... star wars is a sword and sorcery that has exceeded AGOT.

[KalibakCruel]

ETA: Also, star wars... star wars is a sword and sorcery that has exceeded AGOT.

I'm going to try and call it.

"It's in SPACE so it doesn't count and they fight with militaries! Totes different!"

[maarsen]

Kalibak,

Well said. Genre is a pretty arbitrary catagorization. It is a story like other stories. You enjoy it or you don't. Whether it "fits" in an arbitrarily determined "genre" is unimportant at the end of the day.

That being said, there are writers out there who play with the commonly accepted definitions of SF, fantasy, and mainstream literature and mix them up so that you cannot definitively pin it down to a particular genre. One that comes to mind is The Cold Commands by Richard Morgan. I was most of the way through it before I realized what was happening with the setting and I thought it was too cool for words. Roger Zelazny also did something similar with his Amber series and Steven King's The Gunslinger series does it well too. Don't try to hard to pin down what is or is not fantasy, just enjoy a great read.

[taem]

I just thought of another series that's like what I'm saying about ASOIAF: the Deryni books. It's been forever since I read those, so maybe I'm misremembering, but while the books have a lot of magic, the dominant themes I associate with the books are court intrigues, ecclesiastical politics, conventional warfare.

About Tolkien, that success was achieved over time and it was never at any point in its history a hot cultural phenomenon like HBO's GoT is today. (Talking about the books, not the movies.) And I'm not sure it ever went beyond its identity as a high fantasy to reach a broader audience; I think the sales figures have more to do with the fact that every fan of fantasy will have these books. Even in a niche genre, if every fan buys your books, you will enjoy good sales. But maybe I'm wrong, it's not like I was alive in the 60s. Maybe back then folks chatted about LotR at the water cooler the way folks do with GoT today. I wouldn't imagine that was ever the case though. Let me put it this way -- I don't know anyone who isn't a fan of fantasy that likes, or has even read, LotR. I know a metric ton of people who don't like fantasy who love GoT, even the books. Oh and edit to add, Jackson was not the first to bring LotR to the screen. Bakshi tried, and that effort failed.

About Harry Potter, juvenile/young adult is an odd thing. I have nieces in that age group and I buy a lot of books for them so I'm somewhat familiar with the industry. It's like pony league soccer; it's almost as if these kids have some sort of collective consciousness and out of the blue they all glom onto one thing. I think the HP books are brilliant, I think Rowling really achieved something special there. But I couldn't place a meaning on how huge that series was, not when it's completely unfathomable to me why millions of kids decide they all like this one thing, and could not care less about another thing, and then the next week what they loved so much it made them sit on the floor and cry is just crap, they've moved on. And they all do it at the same time without even talking to each other beforehand. It's a baffling, almost magical thing these kids do.

In any event, I walked into another digression lol.

So the elements of ASoIaf you most enjoy are the mundare elements? Big whoop. Doesn't mean ASoIaF isn't fantasy. Most fantasy and sci-fi use speculative aspects to explore stories and themes which resonate on a human, mundane, level. Why do you think Tolkien's work is still so popular today? It's not because of the hobbits, orcs, or wizards; it's because it tells the deeply resonant story of a common man making a difference. It's because Tolkien explored themes hugely relevant to the times. Your assertion seems to be that fantasy novels rely solely on the fantasy elements, and that those that don't rely solely on fantasy elements aren't fantasy. You couldn't be more wrong. Most fantasy and sci-fi novels rely on the mundane themes to carry them.

I'm not saying universal themes render a book not a fantasy, not at all. In fact for any book or story to really resonate it must contain universal themes. Pride and Prejudice and Romeo and Juliet are not timeless because of the way they were plotted, or clever dialogue, but because they speak to universal themes. But, where fantasy is concerned, those themes have to play out in reference to the fantastic. That is what you get in WoT, where Rand is a young man in love, but his destiny as the reincarnation of a man who went mad and slaughtered his own wife and children drives how he relates to the women who love him.

But in ASOIAF? (Again, what we have so far.) The political intrigues have nothing to do with the fantastic. The only real example is Renly's death. But he could have been killed off in another way without affecting the political intrigues. It doesn't take magic to bump Joffrey off for example. The vast majority of the characters, the vast majority of the plot, plays out with no reference whatsoever to the fantastic: House Lannister, Robb, House Tyrell, Martell, the Freys' betrayal, Varys and Littlefinger, Sansa, Sandor Clegane, what happens to Theon. Take out all the magic and and replace them with plot point substitutions, or hell just leave them out altogether, and we still have all that. and what we have is the heart of the story.

You guys telling me you would not enjoy this series on those terms?

[Snowborn]

but it would be a completely different series, not asoiaf, not at all, tearing up a story doesn't prove your point

and it would still be fantasy, alternate world fantasy

[KalibakCruel]

The hypotheticals are becoming baffling at this moment. If The Wire took place in London it wouldn't be about the American city top to bottom. If Breaking Bad took place in Canada he'd have free health care and wouldn't sell meth. IF IF IF IF IF IF IF.

The point isn't "if you changed this" the point is the story DOES HAVE THOSE THINGS. Plain and simple. You can change a thousand things from a thousand places and change anything, but it's arbitrary and useless. One of my favorite things about the books it's the whole northern storyline, the wargging, the giants, and threat of the others, so no, I wouldn't enjoy it as much, same as I wouldn't enjoy The Wire as much if it was in a different country or off it switched out Omar Little with a lesser character to "achieve the same thing".

Also I don't know where you grew up but LotR was HUGE in my school when I was growing up and everyone and their mothers went about reading the books after the movies.

And fuck, the main political intrigue to start the series dealt entirely with fictional fantastical genes! It's how Ned figured out the children were bastards to begin with. Going bank further, the present day plot only exists because if dragons uniting the kingdoms.

Stop with the hypothetical, it means nothing and again, it's arbitrary. I'd enjoy many things if they were different, but I enjoy then AS THEY ARE because I like the fantasy elements as well.

[Sparrowyn]

That being said, there are writers out there who play with the commonly accepted definitions of SF, fantasy, and mainstream literature and mix them up so that you cannot definitively pin it down to a particular genre. One that comes to mind is The Cold Commands by Richard Morgan. I was most of the way through it before I realized what was happening with the setting and I thought it was too cool for words. Roger Zelazny also did something similar with his Amber series and Steven King's The Gunslinger series does it well too. Don't try to hard to pin down what is or is not fantasy, just enjoy a great read.

A while back I read The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan, and it definitely casts fantasy in a harsher light. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I guess if I had to call it anything it would be Hardcore Fantasy.

But we're still left with the question... where to put A Song of Ice and Fire within the Fantasy Genre.

[polishgenius]

If you're seriously trying to argue that aSoIaF/GoT is a bigger cultural phenomenon than the Lord of the Rings then I honestly don't know what to say to you. You appear to be living in a whole different universe and who of us knows if aSoIaF is a fantasy there?

A while back I read The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan, and it definitely casts fantasy in a harsher light. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I guess if I had to call it anything it would be Hardcore Fantasy.

That's a crap name, but much, much better than bloody GrimDark... :P

But you seriously need to read Abercombie, Stover, Bakker and KJ Parker if you think The Steel Remains was harsh.