[horribleman]

Hi everyone, I'm new and have been reading this forum for a while. Seems cool and all that with no crap and newbie bashing.

I was looking through a couple of old posts where Crytonomicon was said to be critically lauded, but a few couldn't get into it. I find that when a good F/SF author becomes popular and then releases an inferior piece of work, it tends to be idolised by the mainstream press.

Does anyone have thoughts on this?

[jfclark]

Can you think of other examples? I haven't yet read Cryptonomicron, so I can't measure my judgment against the critics'. It seems to me that relatively few SF/F works get noticed at all by the mainstream press, and certainly not many epic fantasies.

I think (unless the topic has been dealt with recently here) that the issue of critical response to fantasy is a good topic for discussion here.

[horribleman]

Matt Stover's Blade of Tyshalle (which I haven't read) got a pasting in the Publishers weekly and Kirkus, despite being well received by fans.

Also, Have noticed praise from the Guardian for a Game of Thrones, and I'd be interested to see the review.

Generally though, I think that mainstream press is generally loathe to recommend fantasy to the Stephen King (no offence to any of his fans, I'm using him as a blanket example) reading public. It correlates to the mainstream music press and it's attitude to giving poor popular albums and singles decent reviews, but any other genre generally is not taken seriously.

Also, most fantasy IS a bit impregnable by the average readership and recommending a book that the majority of your readership will turn their noses up at (it's not _clever_ like Grisham etc etc) can alienate your readership and affect advertising receipts - newspapers and magazines make money on advertising, not the cover price.

Any other thoughts???

[jfclark]

I guess the words "mainstream press" trigger something different in my mind, more like New York Times Book Review and New York Review of Books (both of which I read). Book review outlets like those seldom do any kind of review of science fiction or fantasy. (The NYT occasionally gives a blurb about what's new in sci-fi, and the Washington Post does give regular reviews even of fantasy).

In fact, those outlets rarely even review Stephen King or John Grisham or Tom Clancy. From their perspective, those authors are on a par with fantasy authors for mediocrity and lack of literary merit.

But for all their condescencion towards fantasy and sci-fi, maybe those rags have a point. Their purpose is to review books they feel have literary merit or (in the case of non-fiction), or offer something new and valuable in the way of historical/social truth. Sometimes they review books that they expected to have merit, but didn't. They've made judgments that fantasy/sci-fi novels typically don't offer any merit worth praising. Are they right? Are they wrong? I don't mean to be too provocative (I read as much fantasy as everyone else on this board), but generally speaking, I haven't found much literary value in most of the fantasy novels I've read. Most pseudo-medieval epics these days, let's face it, don't deserve to be placed on university reading lists.

Unfortunately, that probably means that the exceptions--the books that really are valuable in a literary sense--might slip through the cracks and go relatively unnoticed by the "mainstream press." Think Gene Wolfe, etc.

[Rob B]

I wouldn't say that Blade of Tyshalle got a pasting in the Publishers weekly and Kirkus" Well maybe not PW, which compared the book to Tad Williams and Michael Moorcock.

However, often the reviewers for these publications are not as in tune with the good stuff in the genre. I think Kirkus favorite statement for nearly every fantasy is "another doorstopper." Kirkus just plainly does not "get it."

King doesn't always get the best of reviews
either.

purpose is to review books they feel have literary merit That's the point, they are not taking the genre seriously. For as much inferior work that is published in the genre, there is truly a good deal of quality literature being published. Some names: Matthew Stover. China Mieville. Tad Williams. Gene Wolfe. Jonathan Carroll. Michael Moorcock. Philip Pullman. Neil Gaiman. Mary Gentle. I could go on..

[jfclark]

<<"doorstopper">>

Well, in my experience, most "doorstoppers" are exactly the books that should get mediocre reviews from mainstream critics. I love Martin and Jordan (and, to a lesser extent, Williams) as much as the next fan, but their enormous books typically don't pack much of a literary punch. I don't think "fat fantasy" is where the literary merit usually lies.

Which isn't to say that there aren't exceptions, Tolkien being the obvious one. But the other authors FitzFlagg mentions, for the most part, aren't writing 8- or 9-volume epics at 800 pages per volume. Less is more?