WI no sucessful fantasy genre?
- Thread starter Straha
- Start date
No mythologies in greek times can do this. The fantasy genre was active far before Tolkien, or else we wouldn't have seen Pounce de Leon looking for the fountain of Youth, the guys search for the northwest passage looking for mythical kingdoms in the islands north of canada, Cortez naming pennsylias after pagan queens and Sir Thomas Moore writing of an American Island called Utopia. Of corse their fantasy is tempered with reality...thus making it myth. But fantasy is the natural product of the human imagination, if anything the way to aviod it becoming popular is to make the human imagination turn to a different tide. Historical Fantasy....
Straha
Banned
Oth- you're 100% correct I was thinking for this TL to have the cultural tide move towards science fiction and AH as the major modern expressions of people's imaginiations instead of the pervasive fantasy genre. Its not completely gone(there's still tolkien and CS lewis) but its not a pervasive genre like how it is in OTL.
Gygax doesn't invent D&D.
Fantasy, from what I remember, existed in limited form before that, both in the high fantasy (C.S. Lewis) and Sword and Sorcery (Michael Moorcock) forms. But it didn't get tremendously popular commercially till D&D broke into the mainstream in the 70s and 80s. Without D&D it would remain a small second fiddle to Science fiction, with an audience of 8-13 year olds who like to daydream and not much else.
Fantasy, from what I remember, existed in limited form before that, both in the high fantasy (C.S. Lewis) and Sword and Sorcery (Michael Moorcock) forms. But it didn't get tremendously popular commercially till D&D broke into the mainstream in the 70s and 80s. Without D&D it would remain a small second fiddle to Science fiction, with an audience of 8-13 year olds who like to daydream and not much else.
David S Poepoe
Banned
Straha said:
I think Gygax tapped into a preexisting large fantasy base to begin with and D&D only increased it tremendously. Given the writings of Mallory about King Arthur and its continued influence in literature and the arts I doubt you could really discount the fantasy genre.
Once an RPG is created in a sci-fi setting there is very little that must be done to convert it into a fantasy RPG. The best example is the GURPS system by Steven Jackson Games.
D&D came along at a time when fantasy was on an upswing, due to renewed interest in both LOTR and the Conan stories in the 70's. Say that LOTR isn't as focused as it was, with too many divergences into poetry, songs, and previous lore, to the neglect of the central story, so it is a failure as a set of novels. Say that Conan never emerged from the pulp magazines, being forgotten when that era ended. Stop LOTR, and you stop Shannara and all the other copycat fantasy writers. Stop Conan and you stop a whole lot of other copycat writers. That'd do the trick...
David S Poepoe
Banned
Literary genres and public interest in them ebb and flow like the tide, which is one reason there is no way to predict what will be popular one year til the next. When one looks at both the works of R.L. Stine and J.K. Rowling I think one would see that the authors are excellent writers and would have succeeded in whatever genre they would have emerged into. The Harry Potter books clearly show that a well written story can appeal to all ages.
The fantasy genre is directly related to the science fiction genre, tho in recent years this genre has been divided, or perhaps more dominated by 'hard science' fiction. The two bodies of fiction are virtually intertwined. I doubt that you can have one without the other. Just consider Clarke's observation on technology and magic.
The fantasy genre is directly related to the science fiction genre, tho in recent years this genre has been divided, or perhaps more dominated by 'hard science' fiction. The two bodies of fiction are virtually intertwined. I doubt that you can have one without the other. Just consider Clarke's observation on technology and magic.
Dave Howery said:
Straha's question wasn't how to eliminate fantasy, but how to marginalize it.
Look at what's on the shelves. Most fantasy, especially the lowbrow, R.A. Salvatore type, wouldn't exist without the market of RPG players who lap up anything within the tolkien-esque mythos. Without a D&D universe there would surely be fantasy, but nowhere near as much, and probably a lot more creative in terms of the 'worlds' considered.
Malory was actually virtually unknown until relatively recently. Spenser (on whom Malory is the great unacknowledged influence) was the main Arthurian reference for the 17th Century, and he fell out of favour quite quickly after the Civil War (when they all became terribly interested in religion).David S Poepoe said:
It wasn't until the 19th Century, really, that Malory (like Shakespeare) was rediscovered and fetishised by Victorians (eg Tennyson) in search of a founding myth. A similar search starts Wagner on his Ring Cycle, which is the other big Modern influence on Tolkien.
So break any of those links and you could delay/marginalise the influence of fantasy writing. Sci-fi still takes off when people like HG Wells and Olaf Stapleton start writing (I see it as a Modernist rather than a neo-Gothic genre, at least initially).
After publication of LOTR, it's a lot harder, obviously. It wouldn't have taken much to dissuade Tolkien from publishing it, though - he saw the whole thing as a private hobby, and was by all accounts very resistant to wider circulation.
Have the counterculture in the US not become obsessed with "The Lord of the Rings" (POD 1960s). Perhaps it gets out earlier that the hobbits' "pipe-weed" is NOT marijuana.
LOTR will remain well-known in Britain and perhaps moderately in the USA, but it (and the "high fantasy" it inspires) will be a niche market.
No D&D works too.
LOTR will remain well-known in Britain and perhaps moderately in the USA, but it (and the "high fantasy" it inspires) will be a niche market.
No D&D works too.