From a Diary I posted the other night on Daily Kos, also known as the Orange Satan, or to Bill O'Reilly as that Hate Speech site.

 

I took a few of the ideas we have been kicking around here and presented them to a different audience. Fun to see what the folks in that particular ghetto are reading.

 

New Fantasy-- what are you reading now? *Poll

by IsraelHand [Unsubscribe] [Edit Diary]

Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 02:47:33 PM PST

In the 1980’s science fiction went through one of its periodic transformations when cyberpunk burst onto the scene. Writers like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and later Neal Stephenson brought us a less than bold new world based on then current trends in technology, social breakdown and economics, and the dystopian style changed entirely the direction that Science Fiction was going. Gone was the sterile utopia of the Star Trek Universe, with everyone trim and dressed in form-fitting lycra walking hospital-clean decks of the far future. The world of cyberpunk was just around the next graffiti-covered corner, waiting only the next mega-corp merger to unfold its high-tech with broken windows visions.

Dystopias were not new, hard-boiled fiction wasn’t either, and Science Fiction had been dealing with the possible impact of computers for decades. What changed then? Perhaps it was a generational thing, perhaps just a realization that if things continued the way they were the outcome might not be so terribly desirable.

Cyberpunk breathed life into Sci-fi, made it respectable outside its little genre-ghetto for a while. A great deal of the SF movies made in recent years are colored by the changes in the form, Bladerunner and The Matrix most obvious.

Cyberpunk may have led indirectly into the current popularity of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance, with many of the noirish themes of cyberpunk seeping into the traditionally more upbeat Romance, and some of the noir backwashing from the detective fiction that is the basis for most Urban Fantasy.

What we have now is a giant, pulpy mess, with nobody certain where the next breakthrough thing will come from. In particular, Epic and Heroic Fantasy is overdue for a revolution. Robert Jordan recently passed away, and with him perhaps the fashion of the mega-tome doorstop euro-centric fantasy. There are still plenty of folks writing in that genre, with George R. R. Martin leading the pack, but readerships are aging and declining. Just as cyberpunk toughened and sharpened Science Fiction, perhaps something similar will soon appear to put the edge back on fantasy. Chances are that style, whatever it turns out to be, is sitting right now on the bookstore shelves, just waiting to be discovered by the reading public.

I am a Fantasy writer, and I know that I am not alone in my blind groping for the next thing, not as a make-an-instant-Dan-Brown-million thing (well, not entirely!) but as an honest search for better, fresher ways to tell my stories, and for better stories to tell. Already writers like David Gemmel are breathing a more realistic and day-to-day realism into the fantasy they write, where characters are less interested in the big goings on in the great world and more interested in what it takes to get through their lives, whatever form that may take.

There are seeds of new things all around--- Howard Jones, then editor of Flashing Swords Magazine, now an editor at Black Gate, wrote in the July 2005 issue of that magazine of a "New Edge" for Sword and Sorcery, that red-headed stepchild of heroic fantasy. He set out these four rules:

1. A hardboiled tone - as in terse and unsentimental

2. Exotic settings and/or settings that live - as in NOT faux Tolkien (if the settings echo Tolkien or other writers then they must be twisted or seen from some new perspective)

3. Evoking a sense of wonder - magic is never banal or easy, the fantastic should not be mundane

4. High energy storytelling - as in fast and without padding

While he only partially achieved those goals in Flashing Swords while he was there (FS has recently been revived under new ownership but with the same ideals, so perhaps that dream isn’t entirely lost) it was a good starting place to recognize the changes that are coming for Fantasy. Will it be as revolutionary a change as that brought to SF by Cyberpunk? Time will tell.

Full story and the 74 comments here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/26/173315/389/720/443703

Play nice there! It is an unabashedly pro-Democrat progressive political site, one of the biggest on the web.

 

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Buy my book!

The Servant of the Manthycore available Nov. 17th from DEP

Illustrated by Rachel Marks, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock

Read me in 2007!

"The View From the Shotglass Floor" Ray Gun Revival, Feb 2007

"Voice of the Spoiler" The Sword Review, June 2007

"Servant of the Manthycore" The Sword Review, July 2007

"Darkling I Listen; and for Many a Time" Fear and Trembling, coming soon!

"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" The Sword Review, August 2007

"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, Summer 2007

"Nothing But Our Tears" The Sword Review, September 2007

"Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" Magic and Mechanica, Fall 2007

"The Scarlet Colored Beast" The Sword Review, October 2007

"The Stars by Law, Forbidden" Unparalleled Journeys II, November 2007

"Who Comes for the Mother's Fruit" Every Day Fiction, November 2007

"Stand, Stand, Shall They Cry" Flashing Swords, November 2007

 

The Servant of the Manthycore available Nov. 17th from DEP

Illustrated by Rachel Marks, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock

Read me in 2007!

"The View From the Shotglass Floor" Ray Gun Revival, Feb 2007

"Voice of the Spoiler" The Sword Review, June 2007

"Servant of the Manthycore" The Sword Review, July 2007

"Darkling I Listen; and for Many a Time" Fear and Trembling, coming soon!

"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" The Sword Review, August 2007

"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, Summer 2007

"Nothing But Our Tears" The Sword Review, September 2007

"Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" Magic and Mechanica, Fall 2007

"The Scarlet Colored Beast" The Sword Review, October 2007

"The Stars by Law, Forbidden" Unparalleled Journeys II, November 2007

"Who Comes for the Mother's Fruit" Every Day Fiction, November 2007

"Stand, Stand, Shall They Cry" Flashing Swords, November 2007