I’m reminded of the dedication and sense of responsibility to their creations that the previous generations of fantasy writers seemed to instill in their books. Tolkien’s writing comes to mind. If a writer is less willing to feel “responsible” to the world created, it will be a lackluster read.

I also agree with Gav that a lot of fantasy is simply too long. I like it to be long enough to be detailed and deep, but I dislike it when a series is unnecessarily lengthy. The Wheel of Time is a perfect example — a story done in 12 books that could have been done in 8, if not less. I tend to prefer trilogies.

The old guard, Jordan, Brooks, Eddings, Goodkind, Williams probably mistakenly represent something traditional. And the new guard like Ruckley, Ruthfoss, Abercrombie, Lynch are trying to shake things up a bit.

But then again it’s not a corner I’ve lingered in as I’m always put off my the number of pages the stories seem to take. Epic for me will always conjure up book 9 of 200. I like second world fantasy as description and it fits a lot more the books I’ve read.

But from this outsiders point of view it doesn’t seem that high fantasy is dead and fantasy as a whole is an exciting place to be.

I do think that Urban Fantasy is appealing to female readers, hence the romantic edge to a lot of titles. And for the most part it has to be a trend but when all that falls away I’d guess it’s still going to have a strong impact when you look at the diversity of writers in the sub-genre and the quality of what they are writing.

Why can’t you make it a nice 300 page, three book series and leave it at that? And have each book a self-contained section of the whole? Children’s fantasy seems to manage to be epic in theme without having to put so many words in!

Don’t get me wrong I will read and have read stories that last a few thousand pages but you’re unlikely to see me committing to the never-ending story.

My biggest problem, well my two biggest problems are that I’m just not that committed as a reader. If your story starts to wander, along with your characters without a quick payoff and I can safely put it down without needing to know what happens next you’ve lost me. Swapping genre’s I read Hamilton’s The Dreaming Void last year and it’s probably the longest book I’ve read in a while but it didn’t feel long. And kept me as a reader to the end and then I wanted to read the next one.

The other problem is my memory would never live up to it. I have enough problems knowing what happened a few pages back never three books back. Maybe I’ve got a bias against it but epic fantasy just scares me.

I’m sounding like I don’t like fantasy but I do. Garth Nix, Dave Duncan, James Stoddard, Tolkien’s Hobbit, Mark Chadbourn, amongst many others have all held my attention and given me a wonderful experience but I can’t bring myself to tackle the epics of Jordan, Erickson,. I’m just to scared that I’ll get bored and disappointed and then wasted all that time and effort.

I am an episodic reader and I love Urban Fantasy as it does come in episodic form. I think it helps that it has a touch of reality as the world building takes less effort on the part of the reader. It’s not that far a leap. I guess that fantasy can be accused of being narrow because it’s helping its readers stay grounded by sticking with familiar creatures, societies and stories.

Somehow I feel safer with new writers like Ruckley, Ruthfoss, Abercrombie, as I’m starting at the beginning and the weight of what I’m committing to isn’t going to hit me quick so much as I’m hoping that they’re not really 200 book epics in disguise.

The time lags involved in the business can somewhat confuse things, as well, of course: debut novels being published this month may well, in a lot of cases, have been first landing on publisher’s desks for consideration something like 18 months, possibly even more, ago. So what’s on the bookshelves now shows what publishers were buying back then; it’s possible they have, in the intervening period, gone a bit cool on ‘epic’ fantasy, and become much harder to please in that genre, in which case a decrease in the number of such books would become steadily more apparent over coming months and years. We’ll have to wait and see.

Real-world history is something that has begun to appeal to me more and more as I’ve grown older, and is certainly an area which I plan to explore heavily at some time in the future (maybe when I go back to school next fall?) I think part of my drifting away from ‘Secondary World’ Fantasy, or whatever label we want to put on it, is that I’m finding stories grounded in our world much more interesting. Whether they’re Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Mainstream Literature, History or whatever is of less importance.

Mulluane – Hah! Kind of ironic after what I just told Larry. I used to feel the same way (Why would I want to read about our world when I can just go outside and experience it for myself?), but lately I’ve become more fascinated with watching the world I know so well being twisted and played with by the author – seeing our world in a new, exciting light, if you will.

It seems to me that you’re rather jaded by the clinical, science driven world we live in. Have you done much travelling in your life? I find that nothing helps reaffirm my worldview more than travelling and seeing how much there is out there. Even the most diverse and intensely drawn Fantasy world has little on the depth, realism and magic found in our own.

You just have to look for it!

Tia – I left that part out of my article, but growing up is certainly a big factor in the shifting of my tastes.

James – I’ve gone through the same thing before, also. A few years ago I was in a big slump, picking up a couple of dozen novels, reading the first chapter, and just finding that nothing was working for me. Eventually, however, I picked up Ender’s Game and was instantly hooked. That novel helped me rediscover my lust for reading and I realized that all it took was one good novel to end the slump.

I expect the same thing will happen with Epic Fantasy for me.
Rob B – Even now, I’ve never really been attracted to the Jim Butcher style Urban Fantasy. I’m much more attracted to the magical realism written by people like Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jonathan Carroll, Tim Powers etc….

Sean – Erm… yer makin’ me blush!

Raul, Gabriele (and everyone else who feels ire towards ‘Urban Fantasy’) – It seems like a lot of people are referring to Urban Fantasy as just the sub-(sub-)genre revolving around detective’s fighting against a magical underworld that the public doesn’t know about. For those of you who keep mentioning that you dislike or hate Urban Fantasy, give some of the folk I mentioned earlier (Gaiman, de Lint, Carroll, Powers) a try.

Also remember that Urban Fantasy and Contemporary Fantasy aren’t necessarily the same thing. Like Tia mentioned, she’s writing a fantasy that’s not set in contemporary times, but still easily qualifies as an Urban Fantasy. Even novels like Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora could qualify as Urban Fantasy, considering they take place (mostly) in an urban environment.

There’s a lot of good stuff out there that falls outside of the Butcher/Hamilton/Armstrong style of story telling.

Mark – I was hoping you’d drop by. We can theorize as much as we want about how publishers feel towards Epic/Secondary World Fantasy’s decline and Urban/Contemporary Fantasy’s rise, but to have some actual insight from the other side of the fence is important.

I’m curious to know if you have a theory about why there’s such a shortage of ‘well written’ Epic Fantasy? Are aspiring writers attempting less of it? Are ideas running dry and execution of those ideas just not fresh enough to make it stand out?

What kind of factors gets Solaris interested in an Epic Fantasy manuscript?

You’re right that it’s sometimes hard to remember that we (those obsessed enough with the genre and industry to post online voraciously) are only a small minority of actual readers. Our opinions may be loud, but not necessarily completely accurate to the industry.

What I find interesting is that most of the authors who you mention should be read if someone thinks the industry is stale, all write outside of ‘Epic Fantasy’ (Let’s let this refer to The Lord of the Rings and its derivaties, rather than all fantasy set in a world other than our own). I’m certainly not burnt out on Fantasy, but rather certain sub-genres that have ruled the industry for decades.

As someone who works for a publisher, would you say an aspiring writer (of above average skill) writing an Urban Fantasy would have a better shot at being published (in the current publishing climate) over someone of similar skill writing an Epic/Secondary World Fantasy?

J. Cormier – Your response gave me a lot to think about. I’m glad I could, more or less, satisfy with my own ponderings on the subject!

As for your giddiness… I can’t help but feel it’s unfounded! I’m nothing more than a hack. A hack, I tell ya!
JT – When I was reading The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney (the novel that started all this thinking), I couldn’t help but remember how much else there was out there that I could be spending my time reading. Since then I’ve been exploring the genre and stepping outside of my comfort zone and it’s reminding me of that old cliche:
‘Variety is the spice of life.’

Pamela – It’s interesting to hear from someone who was able to break into the Epic Fantasy field, despite all the supposed difficulties. I never really thought about it before, but I think you’re too right about the formula found in too many Epic Fantasies out there. I’m usually a big fan of the first novel, when all the fun exploration gets to happen, but that sense of wonder is often lost as the reader gets more comfortable with the rules of the world by the second and third book. I think maybe this is one of the reasons I’m such a big fan of standalone Fantasy novels.

I think the really successful Epic Fantasies (George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Joe Abercrombie) do a good job of constantly holding things back through the early novels and allowing the world to grow with the story. It’ll be interesting to see how Patrick Rothfuss’ world grows in the second and third volumes of his trilogy.

Regardless, I think I’ve got a review copy of your novel somewhere at home. Your comments here alone are more than enough to get me interested in taking a look at your work and (hopefully) seeing how you manage to make Epic Fantasy feel fresh. I’ll probably add it to the pile of novels I’m taking to Europe in a couple of weeks.

Brian – Glad to see you stop by, also. As I mentioned earlier, it’s always nice to see opinions from the other side of the glass. What’s interesting, however, is that each of you, Mark and Pamela are not from North America. I’d be curious to know if Canadian/American authors and publishers might have a different perspective on things.

Did you find any resistance to the fact that your novel’s were Epic Fantasy when trying to sell them to publishers?

In regards to horror, I expect R. Scott Bakker’s recent Neuropath is a good example of the kind of novel you’re talking about. I can certainly see that kind of novel catching on, if one were trying to predict market trends.
ediFanoB – Very good points! Getting over that saturation can sometimes just be like getting outside and stretching your legs. It goes away after a while!

I also recognised the rise of urban fantasy (my wife is really keen on vampires, werewolves and so on).
I don’t like it. As far as I can see a lot of women like it.
But there are still a lot of people like me who request epic fantasy. And to be honest, in case the story is good , people will by these stories.

As far as the contrasting fortunes of epic fantasy (like Mark, I think the term ‘secondary world fantasy’ is actually much more useful) and urban fantasy: it may well be a bit harder to sell an epic fantasy manuscript nowadays than it was even just a few years ago. But they’re self-evidently still being acquired and produced by publishers, even if in slightly reduced numbers, so it’s by no means a terminally contracted market for the aspiring novelist. As James points out above, when folk like Patrick Rothfuss and others are notching up the kinds of sales they’re getting, the idea that publishers would be turning away manuscripts in that exact same genre solely because they were in that same genre seems a little improbable.

Urban fantasy is, I suspect, here to stay as a major sub-genre. Its current enormously high commercial profile may lose some of its glitter in the nearish future, but my guess is its actually got more legs than most trends in sf/f. The only reason I think that is my (largely uninformed) suspicion that what urban fantasy has done is draw in, at least in part, a new – and largely female – audience that was previously not actually buying much in the way of traditional fantasy.

If I was trying to get ahead of potential future trends, I’d probably be trying my hand at horror. Intelligent, energetic horror that’s disturbing and unsettling without wildly overdoing the blatant gore is showing some signs of a tentative recovery after years in the wilderness for the entire horror genre. Might not ever reach the giddy sales peaks of urban fantasy now, and epic fantasy a few years ago, but it’s got potential, I reckon. Of course, I’m probably completely wrong. If any of us could really predict these things in advance, we’d probably all be making rather more money than is generally the case …

Incidentally, I share Sean’s giddiness at being quoted on A Dribble of Ink.

Mark — Gene Wolfe, for one, definitely realigned my perceptions. I’m fascinated by the whole concept of science fantasy (an admittedly constructed moniker under which his work is sometimes categorized, and which I’d love someone to define for me).