Bonfire of the Vanities: Which Fantasies will Survive?

[Macadangdang Jr.]

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

It will benefit from having been a complete departure from the mainstream norm in fantasy at the time of its release. 

A titanic standalone novel written in a style that was already over a century and a half out of date when it was published. It has already started to influence a new wave of writers (e.g. Novik's Uprooted, Morgenstern's The Night Circus, Arden's Winternight Trilogy, Palmer's Too Like The Lightning) and I suspect we have seen only the barest beginnings of its eventual impact on the genre.

It's already such an idiosyncrasy in modern fantasy that I don't think it will suffer nearly so much from the changing tastes of readership over the next few decades.

[Darth Richard II]

Really, you think Too Like The Lightening fits in with the rest of those?

[polishgenius]

57 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Really, you think Too Like The Lightening fits in with the rest of those?

Yeah, it's nowhere near as good as The Night Circus.

[Darth Richard II]

33 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Yeah, it's nowhere near as good as The Night Circus.

We must now fight to the death.

[Darth Richard II]

Also something can be hugely influential and still be forgotten later.

[polishgenius]

11 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

We must now fight to the death.

 

 

polishgenius casts Round Spheres. It's super effective!

[williamjm]

17 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

H.P. Lovecraft died in obscurity in 1937 - and is now a cult author. Abraham Merritt was a leading fantasy author a century ago, and is now forgotten.

To switch genres, I suspect if we went back in time 40 years and asked Science Fiction fans to say which contemporary author would be popular in 2018, I doubt many people would pick Philip K. Dick but he's had by far the most adaptations and in terms of shelf space in local bookshops I think he probably beats any of the authors of that era.

[Darth Richard II]

Trying to remember what a SFF shelf was like in the 80s. I'd say the major difference now is all the D&D tie ins are gone. My God, there was a LOT of that stuff back then. I mean, at least 1/3 of the section, if not more.

I'm curious to see how much shelf space Eddings has now, I'll have to check it out next time I'm in the bookstore.

[kuenjato]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Trying to remember what a SFF shelf was like in the 80s. I'd say the major difference now is all the D&D tie ins are gone. My God, there was a LOT of that stuff back then. I mean, at least 1/3 of the section, if not more.

I'm curious to see how much shelf space Eddings has now, I'll have to check it out next time I'm in the bookstore.

If any.

And yes, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms would consume yuge amounts of shelf space. I must have read around 20 or so of the former, just because my friends kept buying it. And almost all of them hated MS&T because it was "slow" and "boring". It was my favorite, along with Covenant (another not-popular choice in the late 80's) because it simply felt more authentic in setting and better written. But most of my friends (and ergo, the standard fantasy audience?) were not reading for prose, but for content, and difficult / slow-moving prose made the escapism more difficult to attain.

[Darth Richard II]

Never liked Covenant, tried three times, though I don't necessary think of it as bad.

It's interesting, most of the authors mentioned above(Brooks, Salvatore etc) are still putting out books and still have huge fan bases, thus still have shelf space. Eddings is the only one from that time period I can think of that isn't around anymore, well, Jordan, but it hasn't been that long since the final WoT book and Sanderson is fucking huge.

I wonder how much certain publishers going under affects things too.

Man I would kill for some old screenshots of a SFF shelf from the 80s. I should check google.

 

[kuenjato]

2 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Never liked Covenant, tried three times, though I don't necessary think of it as bad.

It's interesting, most of the authors mentioned above(Brooks, Salvatore etc) are still putting out books and still have huge fan bases, thus still have shelf space. Eddings is the only one from that time period I can think of that isn't around anymore, well, Jordan, but it hasn't been that long since the final WoT book and Sanderson is fucking huge.

I wonder how much certain publishers going under affects things too.

Man I would kill for some old screenshots of a SFF shelf from the 80s. I should check google.

 

Covenant has issues -- which are augmented in the second series, and make the third almost unreadable IMO -- but that first series is really unique for the time it came out in, displaying a vivid imagination and commitment to its themes. It was one of the first attempts at an intellectual take on the "epic fantasy" genre, and GrimDark as all hell while still maintaining a sophistication. Also, it was extremely popular when it came out, perhaps because there wasn't much in the way of competition -- same with Eddings, he began publishing the Belgariad in the early 80's, and was probably one of the primary Gateway authors for many, many readers.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh yeah I would never underplay how influential Covenant was.

[HexMachina]

8 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Trying to remember what a SFF shelf was like in the 80s. I'd say the major difference now is all the D&D tie ins are gone. My God, there was a LOT of that stuff back then. I mean, at least 1/3 of the section, if not more.

I'm curious to see how much shelf space Eddings has now, I'll have to check it out next time I'm in the bookstore.

When I first read eddings I remember that I bought the five book series in the Belgariad series over a fairly lengthy span of time simply because my local Ottakers (now Waterstones) didn’t always have them in. From memory they usually stocked three titles at any one time. The fourth book the actually ordered in specifically for me when I asked. And they certainly did it stock any other of his works, including the Malloreon. I had to order that online some years later.

this was in the 00s, though granted it was only a small bookstore

[The Marquis de Leech]

6 hours ago, kuenjato said:

Covenant has issues -- which are augmented in the second series, and make the third almost unreadable IMO -- but that first series is really unique for the time it came out in, displaying a vivid imagination and commitment to its themes. It was one of the first attempts at an intellectual take on the "epic fantasy" genre, and GrimDark as all hell while still maintaining a sophistication. Also, it was extremely popular when it came out, perhaps because there wasn't much in the way of competition -- same with Eddings, he began publishing the Belgariad in the early 80's, and was probably one of the primary Gateway authors for many, many readers.

Modern epic fantasy as we know it was born in 1977, between Covenant and The Sword of Shannara.

[Jo498]

The comparisons to the early 20th century are difficult because the genre was in a rather different stage, far more niche than in the last ca. 30 years. But it is also difficult to predict if one looks into genres that already had a broad appeal more than 100 years ago. Ngaio Marsh and many others of the Golden Age of Crime Mystery are not quite as forgotten as Merritt but no other author from the 20s-40s comes even close to Agatha Christie in popularity today, I believe.

Fantasy became huge in the 70s/80s and then has developed into something far more diverse in the last ca. 20 years (Potter, Urban Fantasy, alternative history Fantasy (like Strange/Norrell), more daring SF-Fantasy fusions (although some of the best not so recent stuff like LeGuin or Wolfe already did similar fusions) etc.). It may be wishful thinking but I would also expect that the more original contributions have a better chance to survive than the LotR clones and RPG scripts of the 70s/80s. (Although that RA Salvatore is still writing and his stuff seems to be selling well does not make one optimistic... ;))

[Darth Richard II]

Eddings had about 1/4th of a shelf, more then I was expecting.

Speaking of huge in the 80s, fucking Piers Anthony still has about as much too.

Looking around I think the thing that struck me was how much the publishers have changed. Del Rey and Ballatine were so fucking huge back then and now they don't seem to have much shelf space.

Oh, and no Katherine Kurtz! I remember she almost had her own section

OH THE RAVAGES OF TIME

[maarsen]

12 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Modern epic fantasy as we know it was born in 1977, between Covenant and The Sword of Shannara.

Nine Princes in Amber. Copyrighted in 1970, by Roger Zelazny. How soon people forget.

[Darth Richard II]

Eh, I dunno, isn't the first Shannara credited with being the first big epic fantasy best seller since LotR, or something to that effect?

[kuenjato]

2 hours ago, maarsen said:

Nine Princes in Amber. Copyrighted in 1970, by Roger Zelazny. How soon people forget.

Amber is more of a sci-fi fantasy hybrid, and cool as it is (at least the first series), I have a hard time equating it to the doorstopper epic branch of fantasy. Shannara and Belgariad were very much aping the quest narrative of Tolkien, while Amber was more of a mix of detective story/world-hopping whodunnit. Also never gained the critical cache like Earthsea. Do these still reside on bookshelves? In the competition with shelfspace hogs like Sanderson and Jordan, I wonder (and will check out -- I suspect at least one of his best known books, like Lord of Light, might be represented).

[Lord of Rhinos]

On 4/28/2018 at 9:49 PM, kuenjato said:

They are all still producing books, as well. And active in self-promotion. I saw Salvatore's recent release on the new books at my local library. Williams did a joint interview with Christopher Paolini (!). Feist finished up Magician and went to work on something else, I think. And Brooks? Still stripmining his formula from 40 years ago.

Did Eddings popularity start to really wane after he died, or before? He didn't release anything for a number of years. I recall seeing Omnibus editions for the Belgariad and Mallorean a few years back, which means the publisher could no longer rely on the original five volume sets.

The popular authors of the eighties are running on fumes.  They have sections of their fan bases still buying their work, but they aren't getting new blood. The fans still sticking around are the fans these authors are going to die with.  New fantasy fans are not being steered towards their work.  They are being recommended stuff that the current popular authors are putting out.

Eddings used to be the internet's whipping boy back around 2000.  People hated his books. Back when there were people that actually thought his books were good stuff and they belonged to be in the conversation when discussing the "good stuff".  The push back against that was very heated. Everyone hated the Dreamers, though.  That series had no fans.