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| SFReader Forums > Book, Magazine, and eZine Publishers > Flashing Swords > Women readers influence the fantasy of today? | Forum Quick Jump
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Supr
Neophyte
      
Date Joined Apr 2005
Total Posts : 107
| Posted 1/16/2007 9:37 AM (GMT -4) |   | My question is: because nowadays the women are buying the most of the books so is this the same with fantasy? I mean: if this is truth, so there is no wonder, that S&S or Heroic Fantasy is not so popular by publishers because of marketing causes. The „male” literature isn’t loved by women and they don’t buy it.
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 1/16/2007 3:48 PM (GMT -4) | | While generalising by gender is a good way to get bit, I pretty much think you have the brass ring. Though I think its a bit more complicated than that.
Women do buy most of the books today, both in general and in genre. They also hold most of the editorial seats in genre and have a lot more influence in publishing in general than in times past. This is inevitable with the changes to our culture over the last fifty years, as they couldn't very well have _less_ influence than they did before. But this has had some unfortunate side effects in certain areas and fantasy, especially fantasy that appeals to men, is a big one of them.
I've commented extensivly about this in other threads over the last year but I'll give it one more go.
Women buy most of the books therefore, the current non-logic says, you should publish books that appeal to women. More importantly, you better not publish anything that offends women. And there are quite a few women who are very easily offended. Sword and Sorcery has been particularly singled out in a viscous logic chain that goes something like:
John Norman's Gor was S&S
Gor is evil and offensive to women and
it fed unhealth adolescent sex fantasies
therefore;
all S&S is evil and reenforces negative stereotypes about women, and is unwelcome in the marketplace.
So in a very few years most S&S series disappeared (Norman's did, even while it was selling very well). And publishers quit useing the term S&S to describe what they were selling, quit using the props of S&S on their covers and started calling everything that might have been S&S something else (heroic fantasy is a favorite).
Of course, along the way adolescent boys have become the largest demographic which are not targeted, along with the similar taste blue collar men. So no longer are the likes of John Norman and Sharon Green fueling depraved adolescent sex fantasies with their fiction, and the modern, non-rading teenage guy has to settle with fueling his wet-dreams with images from video games like Grand Theft Auto-San Andreas and Doom. Much better, no doubt, than the bondage-and-whipping found in Norman.<append sarcasm here>
Since I meet people all the time who are looking for good S&S to read, along with books that weigh less than a kilo, I know there are large segments of the market that are not being served, but publishers don't really care. Those people can (and do) go watch television for their light entertainment.
Thats all over genralised but not entirely wrong. The wheel keeps turning and what you sew you reap three times over. There have been long periods of no or little S&S before, followed by a resurgance. We are now due that resurgance. But these things always start small, in this case small press. Pitch-Black is in the forefront of the next wave of S&S, along with Carnifex Press, Hole-in-the-wall press, Fantasist Enterprises and others. Some come and go quickly, as is the nature of small press, but more are coming our way every year, and sooner or later I feel the trend will break out in the mass market again.
Yes, women do have a lot of influence in the market and the appeal of old S&S to women is limited. But S&S isn't bound by the works of its earlier practitioners, neither Howard, Smith and Lieber nor Carter, DeCamp or <thank gods> Norman and Green. At its core it is niether pure adolescent fantasy or misoginistic, it can be written and enjoyed by women as well as men, teens as well as old XXXX like me, and has too much potential to be kept on the wayside much longer.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
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TRtheJ
Neophyte
Date Joined Apr 2005
Total Posts : 137
| Posted 1/16/2007 10:41 PM (GMT -4) | |
Supr said...
My question is: because nowadays the women are buying the most of the books so is this the same with fantasy? I mean: if this is truth, so there is no wonder, that S&S or Heroic Fantasy is not so popular by publishers because of marketing causes. The „male” literature isn’t loved by women and they don’t buy it.
What do you think? I wanted to reply to this earlier, but a forced trip out of town stopped me. Be that as it may...
Mike brings up some good points, though I must say I never heard John Norman's Gor series referred to as Sword & Sorcery before. It was said to be a Burrough's Mars style series, but much sexier. And Mike may be ahead of me on the business end of it, but what...well, killed the Gor series to me and other fans I talked to was Norman's ever expending of the stories with way overdone back stories about such things as in Dancer of Gor, I believe it was, where he got carried away describing a chess-like game's history and strategies as two played said game. It was so overdone the story would literally stop for pages on pages 'cause of it, making it obviously dull to read.
I do remember in the early 80's reading that women started reading Fantasy which led to a boom in the genre, leading to zillions of Tolkien style trilogy tomes wherein there were/are strong women characters. And most of this Fantasy fiction was being written by women. So unless a male fan of Sword & Sorcery hung out in used book shops the genre was hard to find but for a series of mediocre Conan the... books by a stable of writers. Oh, I have read and enjoyed a number of these books, but really, they are a poor representation of not only the genre but Robert E. Howard's Conan. And speaking further of Conan and the disappearance of Sword & Sorcery, let us not forget the horrid b movie Conan the Barbarian which, with its even worse sequel, Conan the Destroyer, hammered a nail or two in the genre's coffin, so to speak.
Then, as Mike mentioned, there was the advent of vid games which drew away much of Sword & Sorcery's fan base -- and, in my eye, earlier there was the Tolkien based Dungeons & Dragons which pulled away even more fans and possible fans. Television and movies as well.
And there's one more thing that helped lead to Sword & Sorcery's downfall. Lack of worthy writers. I mean, in the 60's and early 70's, when Sword & Sorcery hit it big -- Thanks to Robert E. Howard's Conan -- you had writers such as Moorcock, Leiber, Wagner bringing forth worthy Sword & Sorcery tales, but you also had an endless series of "In the tradition of Conan" books pouring out that were far from in the tradion of... and, in my eye, stepped into areas never dreamed of by the genre's creator, such as magic swords wielded by heroes, flying lizards, magical flying ships and the like, which in some ways cheapened the genre. Plus, there was the sudden and oft repeated "hero must have a quest" added -- a touch of Tolkien -- which cheapened it more. Again, I have read many of these and enjoyed them, but even so...
Oh, and when Howard's Conan went out of print... All was lost!
Um... Back to your question: Yes, women's involvement as readers and writers in Fantasy had an effect, but as mentioned above, so did many other factors. | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 1/17/2007 5:37 AM (GMT -4) | | Look, despite the burroughesque trappings of Tarl Cabot's arrival on Gor, the books themselves are definitly sword and sorcery. In fact the early ones were actually pretty good S&S novellas, padded out with loads of S&M crap and amazingly detailed descriptions of how everything could be worked out. Later Norman cut out the hard work of plotting a descent story to wrap him masturbatory fantasies around and the quality degraded greatly, but the sales never actually sunk to a level of non-profitabilty. I cite as an example of the quality and S&Sness of the stories _The Nomads of Gor_ in which Tarl and a tuchuck warrior are captured and fed to a hideous gelitinous monster-- the "yellow pool". The two chapters in which this happens, if read seperatly from the rest of the bondage laden book, stand alone as a descent short story that compares well to any S&S published in the sixties and seventies.
Of coarse, if you stripped the crap out of the series and left only the stories, they would only add up to about one good paperback. I'm not defending the series as it stands or really bemoaning its demise, just mentioning it at a telling factor in the publishing trends of that time and since.
I missed the eighties in America, spending most of the decade in Japan and out in the Aluetians, so I can't recall fannish reactions to the change in fantasy books of the time. That made the changes all the more apparent when I returned. Not only were books all much, much longer but the heros in general were a bunch of angst ridden panzies. Nobody was clear of purpose and deft of hand anymore, they moped about there relationship problems and were befuddled by their female companions. Except the women heros, of course. They were allowed to be manly. But a male hero kicking the evil wizards butt and celebrating with a jug of rot-gut and a tavern whore? Not anymore! Now they made like a looser no adolescent male would want to emulate, waiting patently while the female characters planned out a proper wedding.
The modern fantasy seems to be typlified by R. Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Women have all the power and all the sense, men haven't got a clue and are afraid of the idea of sex. Plus a story that goes on and on without conclusion. I know there are plenty of contrary examples and I'm over simplifying, and I admit I haven't read a lot of the fantasy series that dominated the market over the last twenty years but I noticed the change in 1989, and just cut back on my fantasy reading then. I bet a lot of men did.
And its not just women writers, or even mostly women writers. Women get a pass on their male heros, a bit. Its men writing for women editors. In publishing more than any industry I know, the fallout from the gender-wars has had its greatest impact. S&S is not the only casaulty, mens adventure series, westerns, and pulp-hero reprints have suffered greatly as well. "Low Brow" writing, appealing to the male has withered across the board while its equivalent for women-- catagory romance, has florished beyond all other genres. I refuse to believe that Joe Sixpack has stopped reading on his own, niether football nor TV have improved that much (or at all) in the last forty years.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
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BethS
Adept
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 750
| Posted 1/17/2007 2:06 PM (GMT -4) | | | Mike,
I agree on your assessment of Jordan's WoT series (the women having all the power and men (mostly) acting like wimps).
However, I find it interesting that one of the best selling fantasy series today is edgy, gritty, compelling, and describes a world where (largely) men rule.
I speak, of course, of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. This is NOT feminized fiction. And it is a huge hit, with both sexes.
~Beth
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James Enge
Maker
Date Joined Jan 2006
Total Posts : 208
| Posted 1/17/2007 7:31 PM (GMT -4) | | Lots of Elric and Leiber fans are women (not to mention Gor fans; you may think I kid but I do not), and then there's Jirel right at the genre's beginning. I guess I don't see that sword and sorcery is necessarily male fiction, or that the rise of women to prominence in publishing was necessarily bad for it.
The toughest blow S&S had to take was the death of fiction magazines that would publish it (since S&S has typically appeared in shorter lengths). When the old Fantastic went down for the count, there were no prozines that would publish S&S (unless it was an indulgence to an established author). Only a lunatic would write something no one is going to publish. (I raise my hand to be counted.) But since this is the golden age of the little magazine, and since the former prozines are all becoming little magazines, I think the playing field is levelling out some.
Finally, in pragmatic terms, if we're trying to build an audience for S&S I don't think it makes sense to shut the door on half the potential readers (or writers, for that matter).
Stop me if you've heard this one (a story Harold Lamb tells about Genghis Khan). The Mongol emperor was getting older and his sons were on the outs with each other, each planning their power grab after the Khan's death. So he calls his sons together and gives each one an arrow, and tells them to break it. They all do it easily. Then he gives the same number of arrows tied into a bundle and challenges each one of them to break it. None of them can. The lesson is clear: they can survive together or be destroyed separately.
I think we need all the arrows we can get.
James Enge
http://jamesenge.livejournal.com/
"Turn Up This Crooked Way" (selected by Rich Horton for his "Virtual Best" of 2005) in Black Gate 8
"Payment Deferred" in Black Gate 9
"A Covenant with Death" in Flashing Swords 6
"The Red Worm's Way" in Flashing Swords E-Zine Annual
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 1/18/2007 4:01 PM (GMT -4) | | Well, I've not considered how the game tie-ins might have affected things. And I'm not saying women didn't like any particular offering of the genre. Really, the demise of S&S was probably more due to the big push to get SF and F to be viewed as being more literary, more "mature", than it had been.
This was a real concern as far back as fandom had existed. In the sixties the idea started to make some meaningful headway with writers like Ellison getting some serious consideration on college campuses, and others gaining an impact on society as a whole far exceeding anything genre fiction had ever recieved before. Heinlien's _Stranger in a Strange Land_ nipped infront of the sexual revolution making him a reluctant new-age guru of sorts (a rather befuddled one at that). Tolkien came along with his instant-literary creibility (Oxford Don's carried that automaticly, at least on this side of the pond) and other fantasy writers sort of streatched out their work to draw the same-- Michael Moorcock probably reaping the greatest benifit from that. He tied all his fantasy characters into a huge arc that was supposed to mean something and fantasy fans got to sit around and debate what that was endlessly.
While all this was going on, the standards changed. It got harder to find a market for straigt forward works, editors wanted to be the guys bringing out deep, meaningful, literary SF and F.
Not that the genre ever left its pulpish roots entirely behind. But much of the staples of the genre magazine moved to the exploding mass of the genre paperback. When that expanding field inevitably stabaized, certain things starte to loose ground. S&S was one of them.
It never entirely disappeared and we're doing our best around here to bring it back fully into the fold. It shouldn't be that hard, S&S is fun-- to read, to write-- and there are plenty of folks out there in the world who could use some fun.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php | | Back to Top | | |
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2113
| Posted 1/18/2007 4:19 PM (GMT -4) | | | I struggle with this. It is indisputable that women have risen up both in terms of buying power and to obtain not just positions as editors but (perhaps more importantly) as slush readers and agents. This isn't a bad thing in general but it isn't a good thing for 'traditional' S&S. Rightly or wrongly (and often rightly if seen outside of direct context) the trophes of S&S spefic fantasy are seen as mysognistic and not harmless escapism.
But it isn't just females. Young males are coming up through the ranks with a lot of apologistic baggage when it comes to stories and trophes and norms. Gor is acctually the best sample you could find for this point (as a general statement on 'acceptable' if you don't like S&S confused with S&P). That successful series was killed WHILE IT WAS STILL SUCCESSFUL by editors and publishers.( I don't know why, Laura K. Hamilton and Anne Rice showed how a little S&M kink is appealing to girls.) Despite making money no one wanted that series in their name. The first novel was pretty good, IMO, try slipping that through TOR or Baen or DAW, now. Never mind an agent who could get it in with the Big Boys.
Yet change the trophes too much to be 'inclosuive' and you have something else. That something else doesn't have to be bad (may be excellant in fact) but it won't be what I think of as pure S&S as oppossed to Heroic Fantasy.
The outlet for male fantasy reading has morphed into Warhammer and RPG-esque books in the field of fantasy. I used to think it would 'come back around' as all that was old becomes new again but I think the gatekeepers of Bestsellers are against this. Pure S&S as it was written before the deluge that killed it much as horror was killed could be considered 'successful' if it could rise to, say, the level that the western has currently fallen too. Hopefully it won't become extinct. When was the last you say a short novel or story in the Spicy Boxing Tales that used to rules sales from the 20's to the 50's? Some subgenres go and they don't come back.
I think males and young males are still reading but have switched to the action-thriller/action-SF genres which still hold to pace and external conflict in the tradition of REH.
I think you'd like Game of Thrones, btw. I loved it. It just isn't S&S.
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John Hocking
The Olde Prospector
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 144
| Posted 1/18/2007 6:30 PM (GMT -4) | | | The brute fact is that genre fiction, so long dominated by men, has come to be dominated by women. The SF, Fantasy, and Mystery genres just don't have anywhere near as much material aimed guys as they used to.
The pendulum had to swing away from the macho paperback era of Spillane/Fleming/Burroughs/Howard, didn't it?
Of course it did.
I only wish it hadn't swung so far as to make old school "manly adventure" pulp almost extinct.
The temptation to cry 'conspiracy' can be seen creeping around in the background here.
And that's just plain absurd.
Anybody who lived and read through the 1970's will remember an era when the paperback stands were literally covered with dozens, maybe hundreds, of "men's action-adventure" series.
All of a sudden they were gone.
They disappeared exactly when the VCR hit big.
The thrills that guys used to read books for can now be obtained by popping in a DVD or flippping on a video game. Plenty of raw action and no need to decipher that egg-headed prose crap.
I've worked in the book industry for more than 20 years and I'm here to tell you that the kind of old school thrilling fiction we love is out of style because far fewer people are interested in reading it.
My company did a survey that I'm not supposed to talk about. Trade secret stuff.
In it we found that 80% of the books we sold were being sold to women.
That's no typo. Eighty Per Cent. 8 out of 10. Four out of Five.
Wanna keep Sword & Sorcery alive?
Give some young guy a book to read.
They're just not doing it themselves. | | Back to Top | | |
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Captain Atlantis
Stablehand
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 25
| Posted 1/18/2007 8:36 PM (GMT -4) | | I'm going to vote with Gabby Hayes on this one.
I crept down this thread thinking, "television... television..." I think most men will go with any combination of titillation and convenience they can find. TV is pretty convenient. Since World of Warcraft has now signed 8 million customers, and LotR is on cable rotation like it was Gilligan's Island, I'd say that more people today are informed about the symbols and traditions of S&S than in years past. In spite of that 70's boom, most people I knew back then had no idea what was going on with Conan until Arnold and Marvel repackaged it for them.
The imagery and thematic traditions of this genre are much more prevalent in our culture than during the so-called Golden Age. But their commercial application is robust in visual media, where, possibly, they best belong.
Uh, anyone ever been to this site: www.swordandsorcery.org? I open that page and see 3 rather fetching and self-empowered women, with a couple guys in the background. If the artwork on these covers was chosen to appeal to men, the women would be doing the Frazetta submission thing, on the ground, cowering wantonly behind the Hulking Man. Since they are images of women standing front and center, holding the weapons, and looking in charge, I would say the covers are designed to appeal to women. (and guys like me: who cheer when women start swinging swords.)
In spite of my basic 'ok, the women are the readers, so write for them' point of view, I have to lament, with John, the passing of "manly adventure." "Manly" gives away a lot, old timer. Not a very modern word.
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Supr
Neophyte
Date Joined Apr 2005
Total Posts : 107
| Posted 1/21/2007 11:19 AM (GMT -4) | | It's easy to say, erazmus. I do think that the dominating fantasy of today like the stories about women and "weak" men - so called right now "sensitive men" - are for men just boring. That's why they don't buy it.
And books where there is much blood, whores etc. are - cause of political correctness or a f*ck knows why - not published. | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 1/22/2007 2:31 AM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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Captain Atlantis
Stablehand
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 25
| Posted 1/22/2007 9:05 AM (GMT -4) | | Steve:
We used to read to our kids nightly, many years past the golden book stage, and after they were good readers themselves. They still loved it too. We even read the whole Lord of the Rings aloud. So, for a 10 year old: The Redwall Series by Brian Jacques - entertaining to any adult, and there are quite a few now; anything by Lloyd Alexander; the Alanna books by Tamora Pierce; and don't forget that a 10 year old can understand everything in the Earthsea books and and 100 year old can still be moved by them.
Hmm, OK, this might be a list for 12 year olds. But I think you can get that kid something similar, with a little keyword searching or wandering around a B&N. There are a lot of kid lit supporting organizations that publish recommended lists.
My personal experience is exactly down the lines of this gender "stereotype" we're identifying. My oldest son wouldn't read anything but a comic book until he was 20 and started going out with a girl who read Raymond Feist. He read all of them, suggesting that a reluctant male reader will dive in enthusiasticly if it enhances or improves his sex life. Both of my daughters read voraciously, and both taught themselves to read ahead of their class progress. Then another boy came along. Verbally he is incredibly acute, due to all the stories he listened to at a young age, and by growing up in a conversational household, but reading causes sweat and physical pain. So last fall I gave him an Elmore Leonard book and he read it cover to cover in a few days. He had read his first novel (not skimmed, cheated, or copied for a report) at age 17! So girls are buying books? I guess!
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