The fantasy genre is chronically marginalised by its immature image by book critics and readers alike, fantasy author Janny Wurts has argued in a recent podcast interview.
“I don’t think I would have used the word ‘misunderstood,” Wurts said in an interview with fellow writer Gail Martin on the Ghost in the Machine podcast published in late July. In an argument she admitted was “inflammatory”, Wurts said she would instead describe attacks on fantasy as “chauvinistically slurred”.
American Wurts is one of the best-loved fantasy authors currently writing. She is best known for her epic series The Wars of Light and Shadow, but also for the Empire trilogy that she co-authored with Raymond E. Feist, and her previous Cycle of Fire trilogy.
In the interview, Wurts slammed the idea that fantasy books, with their central swords, magic and dragon archetypes, are fiction for children or immature adults:
“And one of the big complaints that these people who blog and sit on their fat butts and never write a word of fiction in their life but think they know it all, and yes, I’ll be inflammatory, what they forget is that the reason why certain of these books keep coming around, why you have the Belgariad, why you have Robert Jordan, why you have The Sword of Truth series, why you have Terry Brooks, is that those archetypes are an entry level point for certain people at a certain age in their life.”
Actually, said Wurts, as they grow older, readers grow beyond the simple archetypes. However, the image of fantasy as infantile remains:
“And so the fantasy that begins to outgrow those very basic, good and evil, world is black and white concepts, which is definitely a teenage mindset, are marginalised because the people who would appreciate them are taught very very severely, don’t touch that. It’s dangerous.”
Commentary
Wurts is right; with very few exceptions, fantasy in general is often considered to be material primarily suited to children or immature adults.
Personally, I’ve often been gently teased by other adults for my predeliction for fantasy books, especially epic series such as The Wars of Light and Shadow. Instead of reading fantasy, such armchair critics often suggest, I could be reading material which pertains more directly to every day life and less to imaginary worlds.
It’s an experience that I’m sure many fantasy fans share and one that extends to the science fiction genre. Despite the extremely adult themes and motifs explored in world such as Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, for example, such fiction is also often seen as less than adult.
Occasionally, stand-out works such as The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series or even Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books are able to break out of the genre, so to speak, and achieve the sort of mainstream success that many fantasy authors ultimately aim to achieve. However such successes are rare, and as Wurts notes, “the problem is that we don’t sell the massive numbers the further we depart from the archetype and the more we start looking at those archetypes with a more mature view”.
Janny Wurts
However, I would argue that Wurts perhaps ignores the reality that fantasy is becoming increasingly mainstream as time goes on, a trend driven especially by the new wave of urban and romantic fantasy books that are increasingly taking the market by storm. You have only, for example, to walk into any major bookstore these days to find massive displays of books claiming to be “the next Twilight”.
Sure, many of these books are not case in the traditional dye of swords, magic, dragons and so on. But many of them do contain such archetypes below the surface if you’re prepared to look. I would argue many of these books are acting as so-called “gateway drugs” to draw readers into the more traditional fantasy universes envisaged by Wurts and compatriots like Robin Hobb, George R. R. Martin and more.
Secondly, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the more adult fantasy books which Wurts discusses in the podcast (which her books are certainly examples of) are drawing their own large audiences.
Nobody could accuse the books of George R. R. Martin, for example, of being aimed at children … they blur all lines between black (evil) and white (good) and frequently rely on sex, drugs, alcohol, murder, even incest, to push their plots forward. Giant US television studio HBO is even producing a series based on his A Song of Ice and Fire epic … you can only imagine how his shades of grey character Tyrion Lannister will come across on the small screen.
Wurts’ own Wars of Light and Shadow is considered a must-read and a masterwork among fantasy fans of any ilk. Personally I can only regard it as one of the best fantasy series ever written. The books are currently being re-issued with new, and I would say improved, covers.
What do you think? Is the fantasy genre chronically misunderstood, or do its authors simply misunderstand their own influence?
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Fantasy is one of the best literary media for examining some of the great philosophical and psychological concepts of the world. Good and Evil can be real things, monsters can escape the dreams they were formed in, alternative points of view can be presented as they are, would be, could be, actually lived. LOTR is a fantasy novel, yes, but it’s also a comparison of the values of two competing ways of life, as represented by the Shire and by Saruman, among others. We all know where the monster came from in Forbidden Planet. How many science fiction stories bog down in sermons about the importance of reason over emotion? Even Rand and Goodkind are trying to do something meaningful, whatever one may think of their philosophies.
The main reason fantasy gets associated with childhood is that it’s a literary form most readily understood by children, with more vivid imagery than a textbook, and less subtlety. Which doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. But the ability to combine thoughtfulness, insight, and imagery in this way is rare. Most of the icons have been made already. Making new ones is hard work, while the old ones rapidly degenerate into caricature, broad brush strokes suitable for comic books and little else.
J. R. R. Tolkien’s work is definitely fantasy, but who has read his books and thrilled to the movies based on his novels would class them as infantile or for young or immature people has merely skimmed the surface. That is the problem with labels, people tend to get stuck with them and have no idea what they mean. No wonder artists and writers prefer to be called graphic novelists instead of writers of comic books. Until readers stop accepting labels and simply jump into literature with no regard for genre, willing to accept books and authors on a book by book basis, we will be stuck with labels. Haven’t we grown past this yet?