Bonfire of the Vanities: Which Fantasies will Survive?

[Spring Bass]

I think the authors that get remembered will be those who had the biggest influences on visual media in the late 20th/early 21st century.  When I think of media that is emblematic of our time, I don't think of any book stories. I think of visual media, particularly movies and television shows.

As much as I hate to say it, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Martin's books are remembered decades from now mostly for creating a fantasy aesthetic that games and television/movies/streaming heavily imitated going forward, and for helping to drive an explosion of SF & Fantasy series on television paralleling their rise to dominance in movies (especially if we count comic books movies as SF and/or fantasy). If we get periodic adaptations of the books into visual media like with Dracula, then they could survive that way as well (although that's a two-edged sword - a lot of the Dracula media leans more of stuff added by earlier adaptations rather than the source material).

 

[Errant Bard]

5 hours ago, Fall Bass said:

I think the authors that get remembered will be those who had the biggest influences on visual media in the late 20th/early 21st century. 

I don't think so. We consume visual media like consume cheap sandwiches, we may like the taste when we consume it, but we do not remember what we had the day before last, much less the cookbook that contained the recipe.

 

If something stands the test of time in the literary field, it will be because of its impact on the literary field. If Harry Potter or LOTR or Batman endure, it will be because everyone read them, not because some movies were made when marketers noticed that everyone read them.

[Werthead]

On 5/5/2018 at 4:32 AM, Myshkin said:

Lord Foul’s Bane came out 41 years ago. Shouldn’t we be considering it a “cannon classic” already?

It's certainly sold very well - Donaldson once claimed that Lord Foul's Bane sold 10 million copies by itself, although I do wonder if he meant the entire first trilogy - but you never see it talked about much these days. Brooks is a legacy author, who's produced a new Shannara book at least every 4-5 years since 1977, whilst Donaldson went very long gaps between books and has written other stuff (none of which have sold remotely as well) and he doesn't have anything like Brooks' PR or media team, so he's naturally fallen off the radar.

I think he's well-regarded and certainly many would list his work as a classic, but a lot of modern fantasy readers don't even know he exists. That's one of the reasons why I embarked on the History of Fantasy project in the first place (which I need to get back to, actually).

[Lord Patrek]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

It's certainly sold very well - Donaldson once claimed that Lord Foul's Bane sold 10 million copies by itself, although I do wonder if he meant the entire first trilogy - but you never see it talked about much these days. Brooks is a legacy author, who's produced a new Shannara book at least every 4-5 years since 1977, whilst Donaldson went very long gaps between books and has written other stuff (none of which have sold remotely as well) and he doesn't have anything like Brooks' PR or media team, so he's naturally fallen off the radar.

Hence his now infamous quote: I thought there were a million Stephen R. Donaldson fans. Turns out there are a million Thomas Covenant fan. Or something to that effect.

[red snow]

5 hours ago, Errant Bard said:

I don't think so. We consume visual media like consume cheap sandwiches, we may like the taste when we consume it, but we do not remember what we had the day before last, much less the cookbook that contained the recipe.

 

If something stands the test of time in the literary field, it will be because of its impact on the literary field. If Harry Potter or LOTR or Batman endure, it will be because everyone read them, not because some movies were made when marketers noticed that everyone read them.

I'm not so sure about that. I think GOT doubled it's sales in the space of 1 season of the show and generally a film or TV show results in a massive increase in book sales. Something is more likely to stand the test of time if people are continually reading it and film/TV does that - massively increasing the chance of it still being known in 50-100 years time.

But chances are for a film or TV show adaptation to be made requires the book in question to be successful in its own right. So it's not that the adaptation is soley responsible. Plus - people still tend to fall on the "the book's so much better" when discussing a particular story. Most people credit the books for why Harry Potter or LOTR is successful - not the films.

Slightly off topic but what's interesting to me is whether the visual medium is better than books at long term survival. Books clearly trumped verbal storytelling in terms of long term survival when we look at history and which ancient stories we still have access to. On the one hand I think a book will survive sitting in cave for longer than a blu-ray/digital storage will - just because there's a chance someone can read the book whereas the digital info is useful without a way of interpreting the data. Although a visual story can be translated to some extent irrespective of whether you can understand the words being spoken. Maybe comic books have the advantage?

[Errant Bard]

24 minutes ago, red snow said:

 Most people credit the books for why Harry Potter or LOTR is successful - not the films.

Slightly off topic but what's interesting to me is whether the visual medium is better than books at long term survival. Books clearly trumped verbal storytelling in terms of long term survival when we look at history and which ancient stories we still have access to. On the one hand I think a book will survive sitting in cave for longer than a blu-ray/digital storage will - just because there's a chance someone can read the book whereas the digital info is useful without a way of interpreting the data. Although a visual story can be translated to some extent irrespective of whether you can understand the words being spoken. Maybe comic books have the advantage?

Hmm, I think we only need to look at Blade Runner, 2001: Space Odyssey, fight club or Planet of the Apes to know that even though the story is the same, the difference in media make it an entirely different object in people's mind. The movies I mentioned are classics, but the books they are based on? Cult classics at best, they are actually already gone except for a handful of obsessive genre fans.

 

I foresee the reverse of this for LOTR or Harry Potter, the movies were nice PR, but will be forgotten in time. For ASOIAF, I will reserve my judgment until the books are all written, for the moment I would bet on both books and series being forgotten in a few decades.

 

I think our problem nowadays is not survival but remembrance, there is just too much stuff produced and hurled at the public, faster and faster. That's how we enter the new world, Orwell was wrong: not by erasing info but by producing more and confusing what's right, wrong, good, bad or worthy of staying in our mind. On the end nothing does except surprise smash hits

[red snow]

3 hours ago, Errant Bard said:

Hmm, I think we only need to look at Blade Runner, 2001: Space Odyssey, fight club or Planet of the Apes to know that even though the story is the same, the difference in media make it an entirely different object in people's mind. The movies I mentioned are classics, but the books they are based on? Cult classics at best, they are actually already gone except for a handful of obsessive genre fans.

 

I foresee the reverse of this for LOTR or Harry Potter, the movies were nice PR, but will be forgotten in time. For ASOIAF, I will reserve my judgment until the books are all written, for the moment I would bet on both books and series being forgotten in a few decades.

 

I think our problem nowadays is not survival but remembrance, there is just too much stuff produced and hurled at the public, faster and faster. That's how we enter the new world, Orwell was wrong: not by erasing info but by producing more and confusing what's right, wrong, good, bad or worthy of staying in our mind. On the end nothing does except surprise smash hits

Yeah the films you mentioned are great exceptions to the general rule. Athough I concede that I haven't read any of them - although that's partly because I enjoyed the films and heard they were loose adaptions/superior to the source material.

Great point about things being hurled at us so that we live in a world of white noise.

Another thing I just considered was that movies/tv shows are more likely to be remade on a regular basis with each creator wanting to put their own spin on it. Just look at LOTR and planet of the apes for examples of remakes in TV, Film (radio and games). But novels tend to remain as they are - at least withing the timeframe of modern fantasy which I guess started with Tolkien. Although I don't know how much longer that will remain the case - I'm pretty sure there have been remakes of HG Wells work and there are pseudo remakes/re-interpretions of Dracula and Frankenstein in fiction. So maybe it's only a matter of time (or disintegration of legal rights) for remakes of fantasy works to occur. But still the rate is much greater in film/tv

[felice]

11 hours ago, red snow said:

But novels tend to remain as they are - at least withing the timeframe of modern fantasy which I guess started with Tolkien. Although I don't know how much longer that will remain the case - I'm pretty sure there have been remakes of HG Wells work and there are pseudo remakes/re-interpretions of Dracula and Frankenstein in fiction. So maybe it's only a matter of time (or disintegration of legal rights) for remakes of fantasy works to occur.

For them to be legally publishable in book form, anyway. Re-interpretations of novels are already common in fanfic (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality being a high-profile example).