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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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erazmus
Master
      
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4475
| Posted 3/19/2007 4:38 PM (GMT -4) |   | | | |
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crystalwizard
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 4607
| Posted 3/19/2007 5:06 PM (GMT -4) | | erazmus said...
And since my main character in my (soon to finished oh God I hope) novel is female, not particularly brutish or hulking, but manages to smash adequetly when appropriate (even of she does prefer to slice, stab, or even shoot), I suppose I should say that its all a matter of perspective. To a two hundred pound man, a hundred pound woman may lack smashing potential, but to a six year old . . .? Or from the POV of a sprite, we're all huge apes capable of pulling apart whole dandelions!
Mike
And given the right equipment, say a nice wrecking ball, even a very small delicate lady can smash quite effectively.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4475
| Posted 3/20/2007 3:49 AM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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cussedness
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Apr 2005
Total Posts : 799
| Posted 3/20/2007 5:13 PM (GMT -4) | | It does not take as much strength as you might expect to crack a skull. Adrenaline is addictive.
I read and loved the early gor books. Judging from fan mail, most of the people reading my novels are male.
The reason that DAW books cancelled the Gor series had nothing to do with sales. When Don Wolheim died, his daughter Betsy took over the business and she hated the Gor novels. So she canceled them.
I know a lot of women who read S&S. I've always enjoyed it. However, part of what killed the S&S market was women readers. Jessica Amanda Salmonson has a very good article on her website about it. A lot of the trouble started when romance readers shifted over to fantasy.
There is some good, solid writing being done by both male and female writers out there. I like GRRM and I like Lynn Flewelling. I also like Anne Bishop's Blood series.
While the overlap from the romance readers has done a lot of harm to fantasy, it has not extinguished good gorey smash in the head fiction. There's still some out there.
Janrae Frank
I have no skeletons in my closet, they are all hanging from the yardarm.
Once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called the Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa’necari. Isranon defied his brothers and was destroyed, his descendants forced into the darkness.
Blood Rites
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cussedness
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Apr 2005
Total Posts : 799
| Posted 3/21/2007 8:55 AM (GMT -4) | | Historically, there have been a large number of women who did the smashing also. The weight differential between a nice big sword and the farming implements used by women of the times is not much.
However, that still doesn't alter the fact that the readership changed for fantasy at a certain point that corresponds with two factors: the rise of the New Age readership (many of them read fantasy) and the cross over point between women who bought harlequin novels and also read fantasy.
In 1980 the S&S anthology Amazons won the World Fantasy Award and votes on that came from both genders. There was a brief flourishing of amazonian S&S. At one time there were a great many women readers and writers who enjoyed Howard, Wagner, et al. But they seem to have fallen into the minority at this point.
In my opinion, there are a lot of factors involved and this is not just women readers (although I think that is a component of it) I fully agree with the effect that the movement toward "literary" quality has adversely affected things also. But that is as much a trend from male writers and editors as it is the female ones. For instance, take a look at some of the interviews with Terry Goodkind that are available on the web. I think that his quest for literary quality has adversely affected the readability of his work.
The simple joys of telling a rousing adventure story have been lost.
I have no problem with having a strong theme so long as it does not overwhelm the adventure/plot aspects.
Maybe there is a component of puritan thought here also "if it's fun, it must be bad."
Janrae Frank
I have no skeletons in my closet, they are all hanging from the yardarm.
Once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called the Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa’necari. Isranon defied his brothers and was destroyed, his descendants forced into the darkness.
Blood Rites
www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook29989.htm
website
www.janraefrank.com
Darkzone
www.janraefrank.com/Vanilla.1.0.1/ | | Back to Top | | |
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cussedness
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Apr 2005
Total Posts : 799
| Posted 3/21/2007 12:18 PM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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glutton
Neophyte
Date Joined Mar 2007
Total Posts : 108
| Posted 3/21/2007 12:36 PM (GMT -4) | | | I also think that the appeal of a character (for men as well as women, actually) has a lot to do with the motivations for that character's actions, perhaps moreso than whether or not they "smash". A lot of the traditional S&S protagonists have tended towards rather simple motivations, and I'm not saying this as a slight towards S&S. I love Conan, and have enjoyed many of his stories a lot (both the original Howard's and later pastiches), but when it comes down to it a lot of his actions are motivated by things like money and pure survival. A lot of time, an S&S hero is simply riding the storm of life, reacting and trying to keep his head above water in a harsh world. Think also about the classic revenge tale, where the hero's goal is simply to pay his enemy back for some past sin... Or the outcast warrior wanders into town and is recruited to defeat the local evil monster... I think many readers with modern sensibilities, would not relate as readily to these kinds of characters.
Now, I'm not saying these kinds of motives don't have their place in fiction, but could other motivations be perhaps more sympathetic for readers who are not diehard fans of the genre? Think a retired war hero, who happens to be a woman and a single mother, who has lost her husband and must take on the challenge of raising her two kids alone. An evil wizard visits her and tries to persuade her to go back to war for him - she refuses, but he threatens her kids' lives and she is forced to fight for him, yet knows in her soul that once her children are safe, nothing in the world will prevent her from tearing out his black heart... Done well, would this not be a character to root for, big smashing brute or not? | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4475
| Posted 3/21/2007 4:54 PM (GMT -4) | | Janrae,
That whorehouse story sounds like a real interesting one. 
I think the contention is that women have had a disproportional effect on the change in fantasy, which is pretty much inevitable as the effect of women readers on the fantasy genre pre 1960's was pretty disproportionate the other way. Its probably disingenuous to say "Women killed the Gor series in the seventies" when what really happened is "Betsy W. Killed the Gor series, as soon as she took over."
I've seen that cited as an example of how women set right in to change things when they get in position to do so, reguardless of the immeadiate financial consequences (Gor was still making money). I don't think the point is as valid as some make it to be, The series was winding down and had developed a seriously bad reputation that was impacting DAW's reputation as a publisher. Very few arguments about it have extended to how the series effected things like DAW's slush-pile-- can you imagine wading through dozens of Gor wanna-be's looking for some real fantasy/science fiction?
I myself feel the desire of writers, editors and publishers to bring "literary" quality to fantasy (and SF ingneral) is an outgrowth of the isolation and ridicule the early members of fandom encountered in the 30's and 40's. The John Cambell/Astounding school of science fiction which did bring stories filled with ideas rating literary consideration, and eventually authors of literary merit, conpletely displaced the older, broader school of high-impact science fantasies. When SF managed to move from magazines to books, the move was made by those writers first, and the others never really caught up.
Likewise, fantasy publications didn't grow out of an appreciation of Farnsworth Wright's Weird Tales, but rather from the scribblings of an Oxford Don who carried an instant credibility over on this side of the pound. Lieber, Howard, Smith, Moore and DeCamp sort of hitched onto Tolkien's wagon, tied on with the rope of Lin Carters editing and salesmanship skills. The public wanted something, anything, that resembled the professors sweeping epic, and the old pulp sorcerers were tapped to fill the gap.
But just temporarily. As Tolkien's s popularity continued to soar through the seventies, the rest of fantasy trailed along, and writers capable of producing door stop size volumes of psuedo epic fantasy soon came to dominate the market. They still dominate the market. I'm not sure I could tolerate a huge, multitome series of tens of thousands of pags done in the sparce, brutally elegant style of a REH. I know I have little trouble wading through the epics that come out today, many of who's plots could be handled in a much lighter volume.
Fantasy and Romance are the two catagories that come to mind when I think of huge paperback books. The packaging isn't that different, except that Romances seldom have dragons on the cover, and never dwarves. I can see why a marketing weenie would try to sell the two as one. That isn't any gender's fault, as marketing weenies aren't known for literary tastes of any sort, but for spotting and exploiting macro-trends.
I do think the literary shift is the fault of the fans who would not stand up for what they loved to read in the first place. I like action oriented science fantasies, and I'm enough of a rugged individualist (read aging crank) that I don't feel the need to apologise for doing so. I never have, but I've often found myself alone in that opinion in fandom, where people only talked about how much they loved Brackett and Ray Cummings when safely enscounced in hotel lobbies surrounded by like-minded folk. I never felt shame at the ridcule I would get as a young man for my choice of reading material, as anyone who would ridicule someone for what they read probably hadn't read a book since the tenth grade anyways.
But an awful lot of fandom went to college, where some people do read books occasionally, and they carried the shame of not being literary home with them, never figuring out that what the college set was reading was pretty much an affectation of campus life and that damn few people of any sort continued to read much of it after they left campus and got a real life, unless they lived in New York.
I personally do not crave literary acclaimation for what I prefer to read, or for what I write. But an awful lot of writers and fans do. They seek affirmation through irrelevant authority-- something that seems to be happening a lot in all aspects of our society. Along the way they've lost the readers who just want a good read, something fun and fast that doesn't take analysis to enjoy. They lost the teenage boys, and mostly the middle-class men they grow up to be.
Mike
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cussedness
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Apr 2005
Total Posts : 799
| Posted 3/21/2007 5:19 PM (GMT -4) | | I think that you've nailed it on the head, Mike.
But then a lot of what we now consider "literature" was considered simplistic adventure in it's own time frame.
I'm a strong believer in the pendulum swing theory, especially as it applies to publishing. As such, I think that it will swing back to the enjoyment of pure adventure fiction again. The interest in space opera demonstrates a craving for something more.
It will never be exactly the same as it was, because modern readers are not the same people who were reading sword and sorcery at the time of its birth. Always something comes along and re-interprets and re-creates, but it is never precisely the same.
I am of the opinion that if the majors began to embrace more adventure style fantasy, we might bring the young male readers back to the fold. But I also think that a lot of women readers are still out there who want the same thing to one degree or another.
Janrae Frank
I have no skeletons in my closet, they are all hanging from the yardarm.
Once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called the Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa’necari. Isranon defied his brothers and was destroyed, his descendants forced into the darkness.
Blood Rites
www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook29989.htm
website
www.janraefrank.com
Darkzone
www.janraefrank.com/Vanilla.1.0.1/ | | Back to Top | | |
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Dan Nelson
Hermit Troll
Date Joined May 2006
Total Posts : 136
| Posted 3/21/2007 7:06 PM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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Melkor
Acolyte
Date Joined Jan 2006
Total Posts : 324
| Posted 3/22/2007 12:24 AM (GMT -4) | | The pendulum theory is true. Is all about the times, and times change. Because of this, trying to find certain objectiveness is somewhat possible. I think REH is as literary as any other "literary" author. The term literary applied that way, to mean "real" literature as opposed to pure "adventure, adrenaline drivel", is a term we should modify, because, like I said, the themes in the REH stories Ive read are so universal! If you are a history buff, or like things like anthropology or comparative religion, these stories are incredibly interesting, and probably more universal than the themes touched in some classics and modern "literary" fiction. The thing is that people are so complacent in the modern world, being an age in time when people somehow think we have solved everything and people before us were a bunch of idiots, you miss the sensibility to appreaciate tales that talk about magic, and heroes, and exploring some distant land, whatever the cause. But to be fair, I also think many authors treat things like magic in such a vague and superficial way, the wonder wears off before its even started. Though I guess thats just me and my reading needs.
I have noticed fantasy to be a little New Age, or postmodern, mostly. I can definitely see female influence, and the modern sensibilities. But these sensibilities can sometimes close our eyes, making us look at the world through our own little peep hole, and because of that, it affects what people read.
The story I call my masterpiece (even if it ends up to be a huge flop, Ill still call it that) has a female co-protagonist, who comes from a culture highly inspired by germanic cultures. Because of the harsh life they lead, she is a product of her culture: a harsh warrior, dedicated to smash anything and anyone to protect what she has sworn to protect. Yet, she also has the sensibilities of the female existence, like the resistence women have, and her dealing with having to endure a real lot. Maybe not as much as the male protagonist, who is basically screwed, but since they are linked in the story, they sort of have to fight for each other. A thing Ill swear to do, not try, but do, is never, ever, in any way or form link them romantically, in any way. It wouldnt be even something people could interpret anywhere!
"By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers:.... For neither do men live nor die in vain" - H.G.Wells - The War of the Worlds | | Back to Top | | |
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