On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 12:10:23 -0000, "The Apostate"
<apostate@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>Okay lets start a new thread.
>
>I've more or less stopped buying fantasy novels by new authors mainly
>because there seems to be little novelty about them. (ALthough a trip to
the
>local library can find me some new ones.) Is this because there is a
finite
>set of ideas that can be used? Is it that my local bookshop only sells
what
>will sell? Or is it that authors only write what will sell?
There are some very original fantasy books out there, they just happen
to be in the minority. I think in most genres the majority of books
published will be fairly generic and with little new to say, Fantasy
in particular suffers a bit (in terms of originality) from the
perception many people have that Fantasy books inevitably have to be
Tolkienesque Epic Fantasy Quest Series set in a quasi-Medieval
European landscape. A lot of the biggest selling Fantasy novels
conform to that stereotype to some extent so they tend to take up a
lot of shelf space in bookshops. It is slightly unfortunate that the
more original authors (say, Tim Powers or Steph Swainston or M John
Harrison) get a bit lost in the mountain of Epic Fantasys. There's
nothing wrong with a well-executed Epic Fantasy, even one that doesn't
really bring anything original to the genre, but I'd rather it didn't
take over the whole genre in the way that it has.
>What new ideas could be developed? (Blue stones are banned.)
>--
>The Apostate
--
William Marnoch
william@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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