What is your ideal concept of fantasy?

[Teresa Edgerton]

I've been told by someone who ought to know (an editor) that hardcore fans who go to conventions and post on websites like this one make up a very, very small percentage of the fantasy market. So naturally that larger percentage is who they have to go after in marketing a book, if it's not going to be a financial disaster.

Most of us here might prefer settings where there actually appears to be an economy and a government in place, where there are peasants and potters and candlemakers and wheelwrights all hard at work to keep things going and food on the table, but there are plenty of readers who don't want to know about that sort of thing, who put it all down as boring background information that slows down the story, and are perfectly happy reading about a society that seems to be made up entirely of heroes, magicians, thieves, and innkeepers. By the same token, some of us may know that historically speaking the belief and the practice of magic did not, in fact, end with the Middle Ages, but there are vast numbers of readers who feel that magic and technology are mutually exclusive (as though they didn't have any technology before the Industrial Revolution!) and they don't feel that anything qualifies as a fantasy without a wizard or a dragon on the cover. And I fear that as long as there are more of "them" than there are of "us" nothing is going to change very much very soon.

In writing my own epic (excuse the plug), I made sure to mention the starving peasants, as well as the traders, fishermen, sailors, craftsmen, midwives, et al. I wanted to make it clear that each new place where my characters found themselves had its own economy, customs, architecture, history, and traditions. But I put all those things in to please myself and for readers who like what I like, not because I thought they would sell more books. I don't think they will sell books. If "The Hidden Stars" does well, it will probably be because people like the story and the characters; if it does badly, it will probably be because of the story and the characters, too. A handful of readers may be attracted by those other things, but most people will just skip over them.

[BandSmurf]

Very much agreed. And that's interesting what the editor said. My dad's in advertising (not for books though) so that where my marketing comment came from.

Lucifer- that's cool, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something great! I love Charles de Lint (why I started a thread on him) he's great for the urban fantasy. Someone else that's good is Mercedes Lackey. She's got the slightly more typical stuff going in her Valdemar series, but she's also got Bedlam Bards and The Serrated Edge which are set in modern times. The Serrated Edge stuff is great about mixing tech and magic, and portraying the good and bad elves.

She's also got something else going on that I do like as well- She's retelling some of the old fairy tales, but from slightly more um, historical view, but at the same time, more fantastic. It's the Elemental Masters stuff, if anyone else has read it, I'd love to know.

~BandSmurf

[dwndrgn]

I read the Fairy Godmother one, very enjoyable light read.

[knivesout]

I really don't give two hoots for the financial-marketing-business-most readers-yada yada. I'm a reader, my money's as good as anyone else's and I'm not wasting any of it on anyone who plays it safe and merely gives me more of the same.

And for all that the obese fantasy stuff still dominates the market, there is a shift - just a shift, a broadening of the landscape, not a revolution, to be sure - taking place. I doubt that China Mieville's Perdido Street Station or Jeff VanderMeer's Veniss Underground would have found big-name publishers or notched up the solid sales they have about ten years back.

The faux-mediaeval doorstop stuff will never die for the same reason bublegum pop songs about adolescent infatuation will never die, but let's not restrict the genre and its readers to just that. I've almost stopped buying OCDs because shops here rarely stock the bands I want to hear. So I'm forced into being a criminal by taking part in piracy. If the influx of fantasy fiction was similarly dominated by pabulum, well, I wouldn't be reading so much and saying so much about it, would I?

Also, do the marketing mavens know that their bloody 'safe' marketing of trad fantasy attributes may actually be limitng the genre? I know several voracious readers who have an appreciation for the fantastic side of things, but stay away from most fantasy because:

a. It has such cheesy cover art - swords, knights, terrible gold-embossed fonts. Sheesh.

b. Everything is like Volume 76 of the 100-book Swords of Avallonia Series. Come on - either tell me one story in one book once in a while or leave me alone!

c. They didn't even like Tolkien that much in the first place and it all looks like more Tolkien.

I suppose the market surveys never really get to this particular focus group. Typical.

[Foxbat]

a. It has such cheesy cover art - swords, knights, terrible gold-embossed fonts. Sheesh.

b. Everything is like Volume 76 of the 100-book Swords of Avallonia Series. Come on - either tell me one story in one book once in a while or leave me alone!

c. They didn't even like Tolkien that much in the first place and it all looks like more Tolkien.

Well, apart from c. I think you've got me pretty well sussed (I quite liked LOTR)

[polymorphikos]

To bring this back around to the original point of the topic, in fantasy I like anything that is using a hell of a lot of imagination and doing it well. This is why I love Burroughs, Howard, Mieville, and many other authors. This is why I prefer Victorian and Golden Age sf, and try to avoid the self-satirising cynicism sneaking into a lot of authors' work. This is why I mostly read short stories and often read adventure novels, which are just sword and sorcery without the sorcery. That said, I am currently writing (inevitable reference, but sorry) a trawl through the lives of two criminals in a quasi-industrialised world, focussed upon trying to pump as much interesting stuff into it as possible, and there isn't a single noble or unconquerable hero in sight, and numerous whores and thieves and gangsters and individuals with substance-abuse problems float past. Mary Gentle's Grunts! and Rats and Gargoyles taught me that fantasy can be ugly, cruel and completely lacking a conscience, and I'm trying at it to express, in a sense, exactly what I want in fantasy (or at least one part of it).

Note that this is not a plug, as this book probably won't be finished, and almost certainly will never be published.

If you understood what the hell I was on about, please tell me. I'd like to know.

[Teresa Edgerton]

I would imagine that the market surveys do get to that particular focus group -- and have decided there aren't enough of them to go after their business.

And Knivesout, of course your money is as good as anyone's -- but by the same token, the folks who like what you don't like or I don't like, their money is as good as ours. And there are more of them.

Anyway, no one is telling you to buy books that you don't like. In fact, I've been saying just the opposite. If we were all wiser consumers, we might have a bigger and better impact on the market.

[knivesout]

Faith in market surveys is a bit misplaced. I've been in on some of these things - their methodologies are mostly a sham. May as well read chicken entrails.

Still, I do believe things are looking better than ever, and we really do have a genre scene today where there's something for everyone, even the marginal sorts like me who want something different. That's a good thing, and I won't deny that it's partly because of the big franchises that have grown the whole market to this point.

[Teresa Edgerton]

A couple of people have mentioned cheesy cover art, so I might as well share something rather shocking that I learned about cover art (well, it was shocking to me -- the rest of you may already know it). It's not really meant to appeal to the consumer; first and foremost it's supposed to appeal to the distributors and the buyers at the bookstores. Because if they won't take the book, the rest of us are unlikely to get the chance to be either attracted or repulsed by the cover.

In spite of knowing this, even though I'm well aware that the cover may be totally unrepresentative of the contents, I have to admit that whether or not I pick up a book and look inside is still largely influenced by the cover art.

[Morning Star]

Of course, that's one of the key elements in marketing. Package design...you have to attract the customers attention. I love cover art on books, I hope to be a freelancer one day who will get the pleasure of illustrating covers.

[Leto]

Originally Posted by knivesout

Still, I do believe things are looking better than ever, and we really do have a genre scene today where there's something for everyone, even the marginal sorts like me who want something different. That's a good thing, and I won't deny that it's partly because of the big franchises that have grown the whole market to this point.

From my side ot the Channel, there's a small change currently, in the 90s you couldn't find new sci-fi novels anymore except reedition. All you had was swashbuckling medevial type of fantasy (either macho or hyper-feminist) and the market was saturated (mostly because out of 150 new books you can't have 150 good books). Now the tide goes back to sci-fi and other types of fantasy start to appears : urban, asian, egyptian or greek mythology, humor for example. Why this ? Because we nearly had an overdose of "classical" type of fantasy. And also because someone had the idea to translate Prachett's works (finishing by the Discworld novels instead of starting by them). His success has opened the door to others (both international and french)

[littlemissattitude]

Well, there are a lot of people who can't afford to go out and buy new books, especially new hardbacks. That leaves only the library as an option. And it usually isn't that difficult to get a library card. Even once when I was living in a motel with my parents in a different state from my permanent residence for a month and a half because my dad's job took us away from home, all I needed to do to get a library card was to get a letter vouching for me from the motel manager to get a temporary card.

Besides, libraries promote book sales. Many times, I've read a book out of the library and then gone out and bought a copy because I wanted it for my personal library.

And, let me just vent on this one topic - I hate it when books in the bookstore come wrapped in cellophane so that you can't even browse it before you buy it, which seems to be happening more and more. It's like movies that reviewers aren't allowed to see before they are released - they're usually so bad that the production company doesn't want word of how bad they really are until after they are actually in the theatres. I suspect that it's the same with books wrapped in cellophane - the publishers are afraid that if you can sneak a peek, you won't want to buy it.

And I think all of this is on topic - because how does one know if a book is the type of fantasy that they like if they can't see at least a representative sample before they buy. Or have we in the West turned into such a capitalist society that even a peek is going to cost money? Honestly, I won't buy anything that I can't examine first - even and especially books. I mean, how would you like to be required to buy clothing sight unseen - not able to try it on to see if it fits and not able to examine the seams and the fabric to make sure that it is of good quality? This is not such an outlandish example, by the way - I once went into a clothing store that would not allow the clothes to be tried on before they were purchased. Needless to say I never bought anything there.

Goodness. Maybe I should have put this post in the Vent and Rant Thread over in the Lounge.

[Sirathiel]

To get once more back to the original question...

I, too, prefer books that are original. I am sure most of you have heard of 'The Orcs'. Some German writer picked up the idea and wrote a book who's title translates to 'The Dwarves'. I'm currently trying to read it, but it just doesn't hold my interest. It's (I think) to much like Tolkien. Just another world full of humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, wizards, etc. Each race has a dark counterpart, yadayadayada.

Since I'm a hobby writer, this thread made me think about what kind of fantasy I write myself. I think I try to be as original as possible. But I have this obsession with dragons... No, seriously, I'm working on a story that's in a medieval setting, but without magic. The most magical it gets are some legendary creatures (one dragon, one unicorn, one cerberus...) But they're not the main characters. Another story of mine has nuclear desaster on Earth, some survivors (genetically slightly altered) flee planet Earth and start a new life on another planet with an indigenous species. The technnology of both races is limited, and the ex-humans have some latent magical abilities.

To make long things short: I think I try to be original. For examples, see above. It's sad that many authors just rehash old plots, even plots that were once original.

[Space Monkey]

I'm way more into urban and dark fantasy/sci-fi that blends with horror and the supernatural. Can't stand the singing hobbit sh1t.
Event Horizon - sci-fi from Hell. Great story, with so much of the Clive Barker-esque cenobite style imagery that who cares what genre they tag it as. I think there's far too much 'this genre' and 'that genre' going on, that people become elitist and snobbish towards anything outside the genre often without even giving it a chance. A great story is a great story full stop.

I like characters that I can identify with too, so that when they speak/act/react, you understand and empathize completely.

Ideal story for me is something written in such a down-to-earth style that no matter what happens, you believe it. The characters take craps and wipe their ass; they stink like salted beef when they've been running, they trip over shoes in the middle of the floor, throw them at the wall and scream at them when no-ones around. They swear too much, drink milk from the carton, sometimes forget to brush their teeth until four in the afternoon, and then feel grubby and ashamed because of it.

lol this isn't me though (ahem) its just somebody I know.

[Princess Ivy]

Originally Posted by littlemissattitude

As I've probably said ad nauseum around here, I really like urban fantasy. I love the idea of our industrialized, computerized, nuclear age/space age world still being a place where magick can live and wondrous things can happen. I especially like the idea that normal, common folks can get caught up in all of that.

Try beauty by Sherri S Tepper. is fantastic, detailing the decline of magic through the ages as religion and commercialism start to steal its power