Bonfire of the Vanities: Which Fantasies will Survive?

[Darth Richard II]

Actually Amber is one of the books I see in pretty much every store, though I agree it isn't really epic fantasy.

[maarsen]

18 hours ago, kuenjato said:

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).

The one thing I really liked about Zelazny was how he twisted the fantasy tropes and wove them into SF tropes to create something that defied being described as either. I have the Chronicles of Amber on my bookshelf and it is just as much a door stopper as LOTR, also on my bookshelf.I am not sure but I think Sam Delaney was doing fantasy in the mid to late 70's with his Neveryon series. 

[kuenjato]

18 hours ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

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.

 

 

This sort of surprises me (though it shouldn't), because for me, when an author fucks up, it takes a lot to win my confidence back. When Jordan put out Path o' Crappers in '98, I was done with Wheel of Time and never bought any of the following books -- all I had to do was read the first 50 pages of Perrin wandering around camp in Winter's Heart to realize the rot was permanent. But I guess fans really stand as fanatics, eh? Like, Fiest's core were complaining about the downturn on the Magician series at least since the early-mid 90's, but he ended up churning out 30 of them? I guess it's OK to get a lifetime gig like that, but I do think success can easily manipulate an author into just doing so-so work and not challenging themselves, because the core will always show up. Eddings is another example. I still have fond memories of the Belgariad, but by halfway through the Mallorean it was obvious he was just copying and he kept on going and going and going with his other series. 

 

 

[maarsen]

How the **** did I forget Fritz Leiber?  The man was writing literate fantasy since the 30's and didn't stop until he died. If anyone should be remembered for the time between Tolkien and GRRM, this is who we should look at.

[Darth Richard II]

25 minutes ago, maarsen said:

How the **** did I forget Fritz Leiber?  The man was writing literate fantasy since the 30's and didn't stop until he died. If anyone should be remembered for the time between Tolkien and GRRM, this is who we should look at.

It's not about who we SHOULD look at though, its about what is going to still be popular in the future.

[Darth Richard II]

The idea that older authors from the 80s aren't getting new fans is hilarious to me. You need to look up some sales numbers I think.

[maarsen]

2 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

The idea that older authors from the 80s aren't getting new fans is hilarious to me. You need to look up some sales numbers I think.

DR, I am a bit old fashioned. I go to book stores and see what is on the shelves for fantasy or SF. Then I shudder and run away. 

Seriously I am glad the old guys are getting new fans, and recommendations from people like you help me find the new ,good stuff.

[Darth Richard II]

1 hour ago, maarsen said:

DR, I am a bit old fashioned. I go to book stores and see what is on the shelves for fantasy or SF. Then I shudder and run away. 

Seriously I am glad the old guys are getting new fans, and recommendations from people like you help me find the new ,good stuff.

Oh that was not directed at you. There's just this weird idea a few people on this forum have that if something isn't popular here/they don't like it/they out grew it it must be so everywhere else. I'd say Salvatore's sales numbers pretty much disprove that completely. (Brooks still sells well too, I know every new book from him gets it's own display at the local B&N here).

[Lord of Rhinos]

The Path of Daggers was the first Wheel of Time book to hit number 1 on the New York Times bestseller lists.  I remember Tor reps popping up on the old WOTism message boards to thank us.  Every subsequent book was also number 1 (excluding New Spring, and Jordan was allegedly pissed off about that). The hardest thing for an author to do is get read in the first place.  Once people are invested in the story they'll come back. Obviously, one of the great things Jordan did from a publishers prospective was take popular fantasy series from being a series of interlocking trilogies into being just one long mega-series which makes it harder to disengage.

Most of the eighties authors are still popular when writing in their famous settings, but Sword of Shannara sold 125,000 copies in the first month.  Last time I saw numbers Brooks was selling 50,000ish copies of his new books in a year, which is a great number but it shows the numbers of his fans are a fraction of what he used to have. When writing outside their famous settings no one cares.  I'm guessing most people in this thread couldn't even tell me which eighties heavy weights wrote "Child of a Mad God", "Seventh Decimate", and "King of Ashes" which are all recently released first books in new series.

[Darth Richard II]

That's cause books don't sell nearly as much as they used to. You need an absurdly small amount to get on the NYT bestseller lists these days.

Also, R.A. Salvatore, Stephen Donaldson, and Raymond E Feist.  Didn't have to even look them up. 

[Darth Richard II]

I mean Brooks has written 23 NYT bestsellers, has 21 million copies if his books in print, and is considered one of the biggest selling antasy writers still living, but naw that's all fake cause you don't like them personally!

[Darth Richard II]

I think @Werthead and @Jussi actually know a lot about sales numbers, so I'll let them spank you.

[Lord of Rhinos]

They're both smart enough to know that this discussion isn't about whether or not Brooks once sold a lot of books.

[Darth Richard II]

[Darth Richard II]

Probably should not have made your first post in this thread about popularity of said authors then, huh?

[kuenjato]

Do you think those three authors will survive beyond their deaths? I doubt it, personally, all three are fairly cookie-cutter.

You do make the point that they are surviving based on legacy readership. I work in a school, and kids are not reading these authors. They do still read Paolinin, Riordan, and (sometimes) Jordan.

It's funny how Path of Daggers was the first #1 bestseller, because it was released around the time that internet usage and fantasy online communities were really taking off, and there was a HUGE backlash against its plodding bullshit. Heightened by the terrible art/world book released a few months earlier. I still remember that the amazon reviews of PoD were much more entertaining than the actual book itself. The real, sustained backlash came with book 10, though. It was obvious to all but the hardcore that Jordan was having some serious problems pulling it all together.

[Jussi]

12 hours ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

When writing outside their famous settings no one cares.

This might be true. One of the "Key Selling Points" from an old Edelweiss catalog entry (2007) for Eddings' The Younger Gods:

- THE ONLY ONES TO SWITCH WORLDS SUCCESSFULLY: The Eddings are the only fantasy writers of bestselling caliber that have successfully started a new series in a new world (and have done so multiple times). Jordan and Martin have yet to try, and Terry Brooks's second series was never as successful as the Shannara books.

I believe that Brooks's "second series" means The Magic Kingdom of Landover.

[kuenjato]

There is also significantly more content than ever before crowding the shelves. There are so many fantasy books being released that it is difficult to keep track of even the noteworthy, critically acclaimed ones, much less the bog standard tossed up every month. 

Perhaps this increasing volume in itself yields return investment of tried-n-true authors? Fantasy is often a genre of comfort food, escapism. Brooks & co. don't rock the boat, they release what their fans want. 

I always wonder if we're missing out on some major work, buried in the avalanche. Say what we will about Bakker, Erikson, but they did make a splash by offering ambitious takes on the epic genre, attempting to changes things up and challenge the conventions. But they emerged in the wave of the mid aughts; doesn't seem like much has followed in their mold.

[Darth Richard II]

Self publishing certainly has not helped. All though I have found self published books that get picked up by real publishers tend to be really good. I mean you HAVE to be good to stand out amid all that, uh, "other" work.

 

[Lord of Rhinos]

On 5/2/2018 at 6:29 AM, Jussi said:

This might be true. One of the "Key Selling Points" from an old Edelweiss catalog entry (2007) for Eddings' The Younger Gods:

 

 

I believe that Brooks's "second series" means The Magic Kingdom of Landover.

That no one cares line was about old author's who are no longer popular except for their legacy series.  I mean the Beachboys are still touring.  People show up for the old hits. Authors that are very popular now will have a lot of interest in their other work. I'm sure back in the eighties when Brooks's was one of the top dogs in the field their was a lot of interest in Landover and similarly when Eddings switched to Sparhawk people came along. 

21 hours ago, kuenjato said:

There is also significantly more content than ever before crowding the shelves. There are so many fantasy books being released that it is difficult to keep track of even the noteworthy, critically acclaimed ones, much less the bog standard tossed up every month. 

Perhaps this increasing volume in itself yields return investment of tried-n-true authors? Fantasy is often a genre of comfort food, escapism. Brooks & co. don't rock the boat, they release what their fans want. 

I always wonder if we're missing out on some major work, buried in the avalanche. Say what we will about Bakker, Erikson, but they did make a splash by offering ambitious takes on the epic genre, attempting to changes things up and challenge the conventions. But they emerged in the wave of the mid aughts; doesn't seem like much has followed in their mold.

I'm sure of it.  Everyone has their hidden gems they've found.

I think Bakker and Erikson are going to stick around longer than most.  Just because of their more ambitious take on the field.  There's always going to be some young reader who is wondering what the else is out their and some veteran of the genre that cocks an eyebrow and says "Have you tried the hard stuff, man?"