My thoughts on the genre

I like fantasy as a genre. Regardless of whether it is sword & sorcery, macabre horror, or whatever, I have always enjoyed jaunts into fantasy settings and hearing of the grand odysseys the characters therein are involved with. That being said, I am not a fan of most fantasy literature. Browsing through a local Barnes & Noble it occurred to me that the genre suffers a lot in the same way that Mystery suffers.

I don’t think editors & publishers pay as much attention to fantasy. Just as fantasy and science fiction are snuffed at in movie awards they are met with the same distain among their literary peers. Please note that I am excluding the awards that specifically tailor towards these genres, like the Hugo awards. As such, it seems like people turn a blind eye to a lot of stuff. A lot of shit gets published that maybe shouldn’t.

When someone comes up with the idea of space-cowboys time travelling to an alternate reality middle ages and chooses to write a sprawling ‘epic’ their publisher doesn’t seem to bother to raise an eyebrow. Instead of questioning the innumerous plot holes, almost none-existent character development, or atrocious grammar, it seems the publishers must just smile and nod, assuming that there is just some joke they aren’t getting.

It’s almost like the companies involved just take a shotgun approach to publishing. If they churn out fifty or sixty third-rate novels maybe one or two will turn out to be successful. Even for those that don’t do too well, if you fill the shelves as readers wonder through the isles aimlessly, maybe the cover art or title will be catchy enough to cause a few copies to be picked up. As a result, when looking for something new to read, we face an ocean of selection, most of which will turn out to be complete rubbish. So when trying to find a book worth reading you REALLY have to dig sometimes to find the stuff worth the time.

I don’t really follow them too closely, but Mystery novels look like they suffer from the same problem. Every other week someone seems to put on the shelves which is pretty plainly a knock-off of the Davinci Code (I hated it myself, but have to acknowledge its success). There is so much just thrown out there that it must take a lot of work to dig through and find something that breaks outside the normal formulas of serial killer with a weird sex fetish or grand conspiracy cover-ups.

It all almost puts me in mind of the trashy grocery-store romance novels sold everywhere as a female masturbatory aid for middle aged women. All of them with almost identical covers of buff hunk ‘X’ dipping back idyllic damsel ‘Y’ as she swoons. Such cookie-cutter titles as “The Greek Tycoon’s Mistress”, “The Oil Baron’s Lover”, “and The Boss’ Secretary Affair”.

What alternative is there? In a way, the system KIND of works, it’s almost like literary Darwinism. The random innovations found weak flounder and the successful ones rise and propagate more of their kind. It’s in a lot of ways how the fantasy genre started. From the occasional children’s story or allegory like Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan to the dime-store magazines in the twenties, the Pulp magazines that brought people’s attention around to CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Then next thing you know people are reading the thrilling adventures of the Grey Mouser.

It still doesn’t seem like a good enough system. If only it was taken more seriously as a genre, perhaps a closer eye would be paid to good story telling and the social commentary that makes it shine. Perhaps it’s all a bit much to ask at this point, so for now I think I’ll just resign myself to grumbling as I flip past the stories about glittery vampires in hopes of finding a gem in the rough.

Question of the Day: What are you reading now?