The "New" Fantasy

[Scott H. Andrews]

The Agony Column at bookotron.com (http://www.bookotron.com/agony/index.html) recently podcasted an interview (http://www.bookotron.com/agony/news/2009/01-05-09-podcast.htm#podcast010909) (streaming player below) with Lou Anders, editor at Pyr Books, about the "New Fantasy"--recent epic fantasy that's grittier and darker than the 80s epic fantasy of authors like Raymond E. Feist and Tad Williams. He mentions British authors Joe Abercrombie and Mark Chadbourne, who I've heard about but haven't read yet.
http://www.bookotron.com/agony/audio/2009/2009-news/010909-anders.mp3

I've seen bloggers musing if this New Fantasy is a reaction to the post-9/11 era, but I see too many examples predating that period (and predating the label "New Fantasy") for that to hold water. George R. R. Martin's Ice and Fire novels, beginning in the mid-90s, featured a whole new level of grit and brutality. I think their commercial success, more than anything else, is what has spawned this wave of grittier epic fantasy. Steven Erikson's Malazan saga, first published in Europe also in the mid-90s, also featured more grit. And going back to the less-grit era of 80s epic fantasy, Glen Cook's Black Company novels (which Erikson cites as a major influence on his Malazan books) were unheralded pioneers of grit and brutality in epic fantasy.

I do like the trend toward realism and vividness in epic fantasy, and I agree that it's the grit of classic-style swords & sorcery creeping into epic fantasy. But I don't think this New Fantasy is actually so new.

[BrandonMarkham]

Highly agree with you. If you think about it, Wheel of Time could be considered gritty. Who knows what sparked it, but I'm glad that we are getting out of elves and dwarves.

[Saladin]

I actually just posted briefly about this on my livejournal -- really, I was just asking for reading suggestions, but the commentary others made was all pretty interesting:

http://saladinahmed.livejournal.com/7692.html

In general, I find that these titles are not as 'grown up' as they get credit for. Gore and rape and an absence of evil orcs does not sophistication make. Which is not to say I don't greatly enjoy these books -- just to say that they tend to get credit for the wrong things.

The 'post-9/11' thing is interesting on the face of it, but kind of silly on a certain level. Silly because of the privelging of very recent history and American pride. Lots of peoples in lots of places and times ahave experienced things just as horrific, if not more horrific, than what happened that day. I mean, people have heard of WWI, right? So why isn't Tolkien full of deep moral ambiguity and torture porn?

Which is not to say that historical context isn't important or interesting to consider, just that it shouldn't be done sloppily. One could certainly make and argument, for instance, that Robert Jordan's early novels evoke the experiences of a young man coming of age in the jungle warscape of Vietnam. But I think we should probably stick to soft words like 'evoke' when making such observations...

[BrandonMarkham]

Well Saladin, in a way, I disagree. Sure, what you say about gore and rape and the abscence of evil orcs is true, but if done properly, can add a human touch, more realistic. For example, I was shocked when (spoilers) Thomas Covenant raped that woman in the first book of The Unbeliever. If it is for political reason within those books, then it is justified in my opinion. It makes sense, but at the same time, scary.

[mbrennan]

I think the key words in your disagreement, Brandon, are "if done properly." I take Saladin's point to mean that some authors toss in blood 'n guts 'n rape improperly, i.e. shallowly, without much consideration of what that stuff means. And conversely, it's possible to have an extremely sophisticated story in which nobody ever sheds blood. But lots of times, these discussions assume that a story in which everybody's a self-centered bloodthirsty jerk is automatically more "grown-up" than one without those obvious markers of "grit."

I also have to agree that I rolled my eyes a bit at the notion that this all has to do with 9/11. It's a) disprovable, thanks to Martin et al, b) very U.S.-centric, and c) if anything, stating the exact opposite effect of what I see. In my experience, people whose worldview was strongly affected by 9/11 are more likely to polarize the world, to separate it into the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. The tactics used in fiction might shift -- fewer giant armies of orcs, more terrorism-style evil -- but I don't think it did much for people's awareness or acceptance of moral nuance.

[Scott H. Andrews]

Lots of peoples in lots of places and times ahave experienced things just as horrific, if not more horrific, than what happened that day. I mean, people have heard of WWI, right? So why isn't Tolkien full of deep moral ambiguity and torture porn?
I think it may relate to a bit of a desensitization I see in popular media. Elvis shakes his hips in the 50s and it's scandalous; these days it takes a wardrobe malfunction to draw that attention. TV shows used to not be able to say "sucks," let alone "crap," and now standard cable channels even say "sh!t."

That 70s epic F tone that was pretty "clean" and noble and black-and-white, I don't think would appeal to current readers or get the notice and attention that publishers and writers want. So some writers have gone "darker" and "grittier" and more graphic.

As for Tolkien not having deep moral ambiguity, I think that might relate to the fact that wars like WWI and WWII were seen as justified crusades against dire evil. Which I think does come through well in the black-and-white evil-vs-good of things like LOTR.

Later 20th C wars that were not viewed as crusades, the best example being Vietnam, I think are where moral ambiguity regarding war and politics really start to influence society and fiction. Glen Cook was in the service, I don't remember if it was Korea or Vietnam, but I totally feel that authentic grit and moral ambiguity in the Black Company books.

[Saladin]

As for Tolkien not having deep moral ambiguity, I think that might relate to the fact that wars like WWI and WWII were seen as justified crusades against dire evil. Which I think does come through well in the black-and-white evil-vs-good of things like LOTR.

Later 20th C wars that were not viewed as crusades, the best example being Vietnam, I think are where moral ambiguity regarding war and politics really start to influence society and fiction. Glen Cook was in the service, I don't remember if it was Korea or Vietnam, but I totally feel that authentic grit and moral ambiguity in the Black Company books.

Yeah, Cook writes Vietnam-era style ficiton, just in a fantasy world. I love that stuff. Jordan was also in 'Nam, and to my mind it shows in his work even though it's become fashionable to diss him as simle-minded when compared to writers like Martin.

As fatr as wwi&ii go, though I think the 'crusade' mentality is probably more true of our recollection of those wars than the contemporary popular opinion of the wars themselves. wwi, especially, was hugely unpopular in the us and england, and the mass slaughter that ensued once things like warplanes and mustard gas were introduced made a lot of people question 19th c. notions of 'noble' war and 'dying for one's country.' One only needs to look at the war poetry of the era or 'johnny got his gun' to see that there was plenty of misgiving out there -- although Tolkien, with his strict Catholic worldview, was probably not in line with that. On the other hand, I think Americans post-Vietnam are in fact often simple-mindedly patriotic about war. I think about desert storm I and what a pseudo-patrotic cluster**** of bloodthirsty jingoism that was and I still cringe... But I think the sad difference is that these days we only get uncomplicatedly chauvanistic about wars where very few americans die...

[Michael R. Fletcher]

He mentions British authors Joe Abercrombie and Mark Chadbourne, who I've heard about but haven't read yet.

You haven't read Joe Abercrombie yet? Seriously, go get some. His First Law series was excellent. I just picked up (but haven't read) Best Served Cold.

No doubt, for some writers the "new" gritty realism is a reaction to world events. I think, however, for most it is simply a sign of the genre growing up. We've gone from a time when the only people reading Fantasy and Science Fiction were teenage boys to today, where men and women in their thirties (and, ahem, beyond) are regular readers. You gotta grow with your market.

And speaking of (not) gritty...I just tried to read David B. Coe's Rules of Ascension. Sigh. Stupid people doing stupid things for stupid reasons.

[mbrennan]

Speaking in broad generalities, I could imagine that WWI and WWII tarnished the notion that doing the right thing is a noble experience, while Vietnam tarnished the notion of doing the right thing in the first place. But I freely admit my pig-ignorance of twentieth-century history (one place where my education resoundingly failed me), so that sense is based entirely on post-facto attitudes as mostly seen through fiction. In other words, I could be completely wrong.

Michael -- And yet, one of the things that frustrated me when I tried to read Abercrombie was the near-total absence of women from the narrative. I was something like two hundred pages into the first book and there had been three speaking roles for women: The Evil One, The Pretty One, and The One Who's There to Show You How Pretty the Pretty One Is. All of them extremely minor, at least as of where I stopped reading. I know a female pov character comes in shortly thereafter, but it doesn't change that a part of me looks at the text and says, okay, you're gritty, but are you realistic? I don't demand that my fantasy stories exhibit perfect gender equality, but I've spent a lot of time lately reading history*; if an author presents me with (say) aristocratic politicking that's all lords and no ladies, then I do cry foul, because to my eye that shows an unsophisticated understanding of how those things usually worked.

Martin, I will note, does a much better job on that point: if you look past the "exceptional" female characters, who step outside the gender roles of that society, the narrative still has women in it. Because he understands that the female/domestic side of aristocratic life -- family and raising kids and negotiating marriages and all the rest of it -- was part of the politicking, too. And some women were very, very good at it.

I don't mind grit, as long as it doesn't hit a point where it's just so bleak and depressing that it starts grinding my spirit down. But I'd love to see a recognition that mud and cynicism and anti-heroes are not contiguous with "sophistication;" they can be just as juvenile as unicorns and shallowly archetypal Dark Lords. Real sophistication, to me, is about nuance: nuanced subtlety of narrative, nuanced understanding of how things really work, nuanced exploration of ideas, etc.



*Just not the twentieth-century part of it. I'll get there eventually -- I hope.

[Michael R. Fletcher]

And yet, one of the things that frustrated me when I tried to read Abercrombie was the near-total absence of women from the narrative. I was something like two hundred pages into the first book and there had been three speaking roles for women.

Hmn. Yeah, good point. All the best character's were male. And now, searching what's left of my brain, I can't remember much of what female characters there were.
I don't think Abercrombie's books were realistic or sophisticated, just dark and gritty. Nuance and subtly didn't seem to be his main goals, but the characters did grow and change over the course of the series.

How much realism and sophistication do we really want in our escapist literature?

[mbrennan]

Well, it depends on what you mean by "realism" and "sophistication." Obviously if we all wanted full-bore realism, we wouldn't be reading fantasy. But what kind of unreality kicks you out of a story? It varies from person to person. One reader doesn't notice that a story treats horses like four-legged motorcycles for the characters to zip around on; another reader, herself a rider, is deeply annoyed by how the author clearly doesn't understand horses. Etc.

Which could be its own whole tangent, and one I'm happy to discuss, but I wanted to clarify that the reason I brought this up in the first place was Saladin's point: there's a broad tendency to declare that the gritty stuff is, by virtue of its grit, more realistic and more grown-up. But if people want to lay claim to those qualities for this not-so-new-fantasy, then it's worth discussing the ways in which the exemplars still fall short.

Especially since I do think there's a place in the world for both the really down-in-the-mud gritty fantasy and the up-in-the-clouds mythic kind. As far as I'm concerned, one is not inherently superior to the other. But I know not everyone agrees with me.

[Scott H. Andrews]

As fatr as wwi&ii go, though I think the 'crusade' mentality is probably more true of our recollection of those wars than the contemporary popular opinion of the wars themselves. wwi, especially .... On the other hand, I think Americans post-Vietnam are in fact often simple-mindedly patriotic about war. I think about desert storm I and what a pseudo-patrotic cluster**** of bloodthirsty jingoism that was and I still cringe...
I know less about WWI, but WWII was definitely a crusade--day that will live in infamy, tons of people from all walks of life enlisting, ladies working the factories and Boy Scouts recycling metals.

I don't think the post-Vietnam patriotism comes in until the 80s. There was a sort of popular re-evaluation then, not of the politics or the military morass but of the people who had served, viewing them as heroes rather than spitting on them. Rambo, etc. In the mid-80s, many fictional characters who were meant to be sympathetic badasses were given a background in Vietnam--even Sonny Crockett. :) The gulf wars were cast as crusades, back to that WWII style, so the popular patriotism that accompanies that was/is back in full force.

Although I never noticed in post-80s F much reflection of that vibe, the way I think the black-and-white older epic F reflects that crusade attitude. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's that the general populace now gets the majority of their entertainment from movies and video games, so fiction is no longer so representative or related to societal feelings like that.

[Scott H. Andrews]

I don't mind grit, as long as it doesn't hit a point where it's just so bleak and depressing that it starts grinding my spirit down. But I'd love to see a recognition that mud and cynicism and anti-heroes are not contiguous with "sophistication;" they can be just as juvenile as unicorns and shallowly archetypal Dark Lords. Real sophistication, to me, is about nuance: nuanced subtlety of narrative, nuanced understanding of how things really work, nuanced exploration of ideas, etc.
I agree with all of this. Some of the brutality against the protagonists in a recent famous F novel was so omnipresent that it put me off.

I think a big reason for the recent trend of grit is that GRRM is selling so well. :) The possible philosophical and societal reasons are more interesting to talk about, but of course this is commercial fiction.

And all this grit is, in cases, starting to feel juvenile to me, especially when it's senselessly brutal or unaccompanied by nuance in the sort of aspects you mention.

And it does have to be not full "realism." Especially in F, readers do want some sense of escapism, more IMO than in other subgenres like SF or H. Maybe that's why the relentless brutality in that recent F novel I read was too much--it started to feel to senselessly real to me.

[DgB]

I am late to the party, but I will chime in. :D

Writers as a rule are also readers. I think we are seeing the result of a generation of readers that grew bored of reading fantasy where, regardless of whether the journey was fraught with danger, the end result was never REALLY in doubt. You know, happily ever after and all that. Too much of a good thing.

I think it will go back and forth, as it has for a long time. Readers will tire of dark and gritty and some of them will become writers and write what they want to read.

J.D. Salinger wrote in Seymour: An Introduction -- "If only you'd remember before ever you sit down to write that you've been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart's choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself."

That pretty much sums up my opinion of what we are seeing.

[Miriel]

Tolkien, before WWI, was part of a tight writing group -- four people. Two died in the war. He himself was injured. If anything, I'd say LORT rejected what he'd faced in war and returned to the ancient epics like Beowulf he knows so well.

As to everything being good in the end, all the best old fantasies don't have that. LORT ends with victory, but at a price. The Shire, as the hobbits knew it, is gone forever. Elves and magic leave. Frodo's never better. Lots of old fantasy (Chronicles of Narnia, the Prydain Chronicles) have this motif: you can win, but you can't go home. The world has changed.

A lot of grit feels superficial. I'm especially tired of books where whichever female character is present is raped/assaulted to show how bad the world is and/or advance some romance plot. Even Twilight does that -- some group almost attacks the girl, the guy saves her, and instead of saying "That was really scary and I'm going to be shaken up about the world for a little bit and get some pepper spray for my keychain," it's purely a romance device, where she falls all over the dude because he saved her. Trite? I think so. Used similarly in "gritty" fantasies? All the time. To me, it feels like cheating in many books. Need an emotionally charged word? Situation? Abuse does that instantly, without any work or context. I've rarely read a book where the aftermath of abuse was a significant -- or realistic -- part of the plot.