As this blog’s subtitle implies, I write speculative fiction. So far my works include hard SF, mil-SF, weird fiction, SF/horror, and space opera.
Perhaps you noticed the absence of fantasy from that list. The omission seems even stranger when you consider that I’m an incorrigible Tolkien fan. The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and especially The Silmarillion had a strong influence on my formation as a writer. Yet I haven’t published any epic fantasy, nor do I read it anymore, except for revisiting Tolkien.
It’s not for lack of trying. I made good faith attempts at reading many of the more popular epic fantasy series: The Belgariad, The Wheel of Time, The Kingkiller Chronicle, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc. In fact, I’ve almost certainly read more fantasy books than sci-fi books.
Yet the pattern is always the same. A new series is recommended. I dive in with enthusiasm. The story sets its meticulously crafted hook. Enjoyment is had–largely derived from the wonder of exploring a new world that never was. At some point (it could be upon finishing the fifth book, or the third, or the first, or halfway through the first), the spell fades. I put the series aside, and increasingly, the genre as a whole.
Why this strange, almost total dissatisfaction with fantasy? If something’s not working, considering what the thing was designed for can help identify the fault. As John C. Wright has said, fantasy is meant to satisfy–if only partially and temporarily–the intrinsic human thirst for a world that’s simpler and less disordered than ours; a lost golden age or paradise.
Epic fantasy pioneers like J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard understood the purpose of the genre they invented. As Cimmerian blog editor Leo Grin pointed out in a 2011 article that’s only grown more relevant with time, this understanding has largely escaped Tolkien and Howard’s heirs.
The mere trappings of the genre do nothing for me when wedded to the now-ubiquitous interminable soap-opera plots (a conservative friend of mine once accurately derided “fat fantasy” cycles such as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time as “Lord of the Rings 90210″). Nor do they impress me in the least when placed into the hands of writers clearly bored with the classic mythic undertones of the genre, and who try to shake things up with what can best be described as postmodern blasphemies against our mythic heritage.
Here, Grin crystallizes the source of my displeasure with contemporary epic fantasy–a sentiment I’m far from alone in holding, if the precarious financial standing of those works’ publishers is any indication.
The truth is that little if any real fantasy–heroic tales grounded in myth that feed our longing for ages undreamed of–has been published (or pushed) by the Big Five in quite some time. Instead we’re given aimless soap operas that read like prime time cable scripts with a hollow veneer of fantasy trappings airbrushed onto a core of pure nihilism.
Note that “nihilistic” isn’t synonymous with “dark”. The former describes a particular philosophy underlying a story. The latter is a description of mood. You can have an upbeat yet fundamentally nihilistic story, or a dark and eerie story that’s ultimately grounded in hope. The key is to ask what type of actions bring the characters victory. Do they project their will into a moral vacuum or persevere in virtue despite impossible odds?
Congratulations are due to Leo Grin, both for shedding light on the sad state of contemporary fantasy, and for his well-deserved induction into the Evil Legion of Evil. May he receive what is best in life.
