Am I the only one who instinctively recoils from non sec-world fantasy?

[Contrarius]

The heroes of the one I'm presently shopping around are Becca, Stripmeat, Ed, Courtney, Weston and Fisheye

Iiiiiiiiiiii don't know. I might draw the line at Courtney. LOL.

 

[PeteMC]

I may be somewhat biased as I write Urban Fantasy, but I love this kind of stuff.

There's something so intrinsically creepy about old cities and their history and the things that may lie beneath them, and such a rich history of real-world occultism and magical orders that actually really exist today and just need a little bit of creative license to turn them into full blown demon-fighting fantasy that I can't leave alone.

I have to say I *don't* care for the "John was an ordinary office worker until he was whisked away to Marysuetopia to become the chosen hero" type of portal fantasy though, but that's just my opinion.

 

[KatG]

I think that's a bit of a generational thing. The majority of sec world fantasies in the 1970's and 1980's were multiverse and portal fantasies. Some of that was probably because some felt that readers needed an ordinary person entry point to a fantastical (usually pseudo-medieval) world or worlds to explore them, and also in part because the authors were following authors they liked -- Elric, Amber novels, Dark Tower, Xanth, Thomas Covenant, Narnia, Jack Chalker's bestselling series, etc. But epics that just took place in the sec world became more numerous in the late 1980's and the 1990's, partly due to RPG's, card and electronic fantasy games and their tie-in novels, so that was often the starting point for new fantasy readers then.

But fantasy authors cruise through different types of stories, so there are and will be more portal and multiverse fantasy stories as it comes at fantasy from a different angle. And sometimes authors are sneaky. Wheel of Time, for instance, is a bit of a multiverse series, as part of the structure of that universe.

 

[Contrarius]

The majority of sec world fantasies in the 1970's and 1980's were multiverse and portal fantasies.

You really think so?

Looking down the "best fantasy of the 70s" list on Goodreads ( https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1116.Best_Fantasy_of_the_70s ), I don't see that many portal or multiverse tales.

Silmarillion -- nope
Earthsea -- nope
Dragonsong -- nope (yeah, not technically fantasy, but it's on the list)
Sword of Shannara -- nope
A Spell for Chameleon -- nope
Dragonsinger -- nope (see Dragonsong above)
Lord Foul's Bane -- okay, here's the first one

That pattern more-or-less continues on down the list.

 

[Sean Flanders]

The most praised novels of a given era aren't necessarily a representative example of the average novel of the era. Imagine if you based your idea of what Hollywood movies are like by looking at a list of Oscar nominees; you'd probably think the average Hollywood film was a realistic, inspirational based-on-a-true-story story.

 

[Contrarius]

The most praised novels of a given era aren't necessarily a representative example of the average novel of the era. Imagine if you based your idea of what Hollywood movies are like by looking at a list of Oscar nominees; you'd probably think the average Hollywood film was a realistic, inspirational based-on-a-true-story story.

True -- but the more praised novels tend to be the more influential ones.

It may or may not be true that fantasies of the 70s and 80s were mostly portals or multiverses -- but my personal impression is that it isn't. Do you have a more representative list that might suggest otherwise?

 

[Bacchus]

Hmm, I'm not particularly into what 'urban fantasy' has started to mean these days, which seems (to me) to be mostly detective fiction with supernatural elements (vampires/werewolves/ghosts/etc.) set in out current world/timeline. I mean, I've read the first 5 instalments of Dresden Files and enjoyed them so far without loving them (I'll keep on going since everyone says it's supposed to get epic by around books 8-10).

But otherwise, I have no problems with fantasy that takes place in our real world.

I like the novels of Graham Joyce and M. John Harrison - they've written fantasy stories set in our world. Christopher Priest has written some excellent works set in our world (though some of these can be either sf or fantasy). I've yet to read Charles de Lint and Emma Bull (well, I read Bull's collaboration with Steven Brust a long time ago). A couple of years ago I read R. A. Macavoy's Damiano trilogy, a historical fantasy taking place in the 14th century, which I found unusual and quite excellent (which reminds me to pick up more of her works). I think if you move away from detective fiction with werewolves, vampires, ghosts, faeries, etc. (some of which can be great, I'm sure), there's quite a bit of scope and inventiveness that's available - Mieville's The City and the City comes to mind.

I think, overall, I'm a little averse to the current perception of urban fantasy, but otherwise I'm fine with non-secondary world fantasy. I'm also fine with portal fantasy. One of my favourites used to be Greg Bear's duology The Songs of Earth and Power - like MacAvoy's Damiano trilogy, it's music themed. Guess I just liked music themed works.

 

[intensityxx]

I get the gist, but am still trying to figure out what "non sec-world" means...

eta: d'oh!

 

[KatG]

You really think so?

Looking down the "best fantasy of the 70s" list on Goodreads ( https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1116.Best_Fantasy_of_the_70s ), I don't see that many portal or multiverse tales.

Silmarillion -- nope
Earthsea -- nope
Dragonsong -- nope (yeah, not technically fantasy, but it's on the list)
Sword of Shannara -- nope
A Spell for Chameleon -- nope
Dragonsinger -- nope (see Dragonsong above)
Lord Foul's Bane -- okay, here's the first one

That pattern more-or-less continues on down the list.

Well, as you note, they list SF novels as fantasy, so I'm not sure how useful a list it is; (it includes A Wrinkle in Time which is a multiverse SF novel.) A Spell for Chameleon, the first Xanth novel, is a portal series. Piers Anthony did quite a lot of them, the main big ones being Xanth and his Apprentice Adept series, which was a (small) multiverse series. Xanth was one of the biggest fantasy series going in the 1980's, breaking records on the bestseller lists for fantasy fiction. The Thomas Covenant books were one of the biggest things going 1970's, 1980's, and one of the books in the series was the best-selling novel of all kinds of fiction for the entire year in the U.S., and his best-selling Mordant's Need series was also a portal series. And then there was:

Guy Gavriel Kay's bestselling Finnovar trilogy
Michael Moorcock's bestselling Elric (on your list), and Eternal Champions series (on your list)
Stephen King's mega-bestselling Dark Tower series, The Stand (on your list,) The Eye of the Dragon and others
Jack Chalker, bestselling Well of Souls series (on your list,) Dancing Gods series
Joel Rosenberg's bestselling Guardians of the Flame series
Raymond E. Feist's bestselling Riftwar series
Terry Brooks' bestselling Magic Kingdom of Landover series and The Word and the Void series
Andre Norton's iconic bestselling Witch World series
Gordon R. Dickson's famous The Dragon and the George novel, later turned into an on-going series (on your list)
Roger Zelazny's bestselling Chronicles of Amber series (on your list)
John Norman's bestselling Gor series
Michael Ende's classic bestselling children's novel The Never-Ending Story (on your list)
Mary Stewart's classic bestselling Arthurian Saga series (though nominal on that front, and on your list)
Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time series (though nominal on that front)
Stephen Brust's bestselling Taltos series (though nominal)
Diane Wynne Jones' bestselling YA series Chrestomanci
Harry Turtledove -- various bestselling alt history multiverse portal series where he used fantasy elements instead of just SF
Alan Dean Foster's bestselling Spellsinger series
C.J. Cherryh's well known Morgaine series (on your list)
Robert Holdstock's bestselling Mythago Wood
Tim Powers' bestselling novels which include multiverse and time travel (including Drawing of the Dark, on your list)
Poul Anderson's bestselling Operation Chaos series
George Alec Effinger's well known Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson stories that were later put into a collection, followed by sequels
Rick Cook's well known Wizardry series
Esther Friesner's bestselling New York trilogy
Terry Pratchett's mega-bestselling Discworld series
Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp's beloved Harold Shea series
John Crowley's iconic bestselling novel Little, Big
Susan Cooper's iconic bestselling series The Dark is Rising (though nominal, on your list)
Charles de Lint -- multiple bestselling series including his Newford series
Christopher Stasheff's bestselling Her Majesty's Wizard series
Clive Barker's bestselling novel Weaveworld
Barbara Hambly's bestselling Darwath series
Stephen King and Peter Straub's bestselling iconic novel The Talisman
Robert Asprin's bestselling M.Y.T.H. Inc. series

And so on, plus thousands more put out that didn't get well known. It was a long tradition in fantasy, back from Narnia, Lud-in-the-Mist, etc. They weren't the only sec world going, but a majority of sec world series put out in that time period were portal/multiverse, usually involving Earth or versions of Earth, though not always, from comic fantasies to dark ones. (Multiverse/alt history obviously also had some popularity in SF during that time as well.) That started to change in the late 1980's and the games had a lot to do with it. Some of the games also had multiverse set-ups but then a lot of the following ones did not and had straight imaginary lands. We still have had a lot of portal/multiverse fantasy, but the bigger series in the 1990's tended to be straight sec world, which became the majority.

We've had growth in portal/multiverse fantasy in the late 1990's on, and it is likely to continue. It's often used in contemporary fantasy series like Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, Les Grossman's The Magicians, etc., and of course the Marvel folk are using it as well for their movies. But also the more traditional person crossing into a sec world thing is going to get used because it's a different approach and some series like that, like L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s Spellsinger series that he started in the 1990's, are still going on. But it's easy to avoid if you don't like that set-up.

 

[Luke_B]

I have to admit that I find it hard to swallow UF where magic has just been layed over the top of our own society and I balk at the idea that the discovery of magic wouldn't skew all facets of our world in different ways -- culture, technology, religion, etc. Some non-sec world fantasy does this really well -- in The Mechanical Ian Tregellis convincingly reimagines the last few hundred years of history after the discovery of magically powered automatons. On the other hand, I found the worldbuilding in Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz pretty hand wavy, and the presence of magic has had almost no affect on history or culture.

A slightly related beef o' mine -- I've recently had another run at Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence -- a book I've bounced off multiple times (but I figure that all reddit/fantasy and a whole heap of forum members here can't be wrong). One of the things that doesn't work for me in the book is that the world is, in many ways, presented as a secondary fantasy world but is actually a post-apocalyptic version of our own world with magic. The mention of Classicist philosophers and place names spelt incorrectly keeps throwing me out of the world. What's gained by making this a post-apocalyptic version of our world? It's not convincingly constructed, so why not just put a bit more effort into nomenclature and make it a secondary fantasy world?

 

[Namanari]

I get the gist, but am still trying to figure out what "non sec-world" means...

eta: d'oh!

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had to google it!

 

[Namanari]

What's gained by making this a post-apocalyptic version of our world? It's not convincingly constructed, so why not just put a bit more effort into nomenclature and make it a secondary fantasy world?

I thought the same thing about the Shannara novels at a certain point, it threw me in particular with a scene where a group on a quest seems to stumble across what is clearly a rusting skyscraper / cityscape.

I guess in Brooks' case it allowed him to write a few urban fantasy books (I think they qualify urban fantasy?) and tie them directly to Shannara.

The post-apocalyptic world idea works well in the case of stuff like David Gemmell's Shannow novels, where they have a bit of a Mad Max vibe anyway. Brooks' Shannara confused me because he'd established this whole world that looked so much like Middle Earth... Elves, rangers, a Mordor-like location... It just didn't compute for me that it was the same world as ours long after a nuclear holocaust.

 

[PeteMC]

A slightly related beef o' mine -- I've recently had another run at Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence -- a book I've bounced off multiple times (but I figure that all reddit/fantasy and a whole heap of forum members here can't be wrong). One of the things that doesn't work for me in the book is that the world is, in many ways, presented as a secondary fantasy world but is actually a post-apocalyptic version of our own world with magic. The mention of Classicist philosophers and place names spelt incorrectly keeps throwing me out of the world. What's gained by making this a post-apocalyptic version of our world? It's not convincingly constructed, so why not just put a bit more effort into nomenclature and make it a secondary fantasy world?

Now this is one of the things I really *did* like about Mark Lawrence's world, although admittedly the presence of magic does take a bit of a stretch once we've established this is a future Earth. However, without the future-Earth setting you wouldn't have the truly blood-chilling impact of lines like "binary weapons leakage is now endemic", which is still my favourite line from POT.

I agree about Shannara though, I don't think you can really have a post-apocalypse Earth *and* Elves, that's a stretch too far for me.

 

[Sean Flanders]

Post-apocalyptic fantasy really is its own little sub-genre. Often the idea with these stories is that magic existed openly some time in our past, but it either vanished, was sealed up somewhere, or it went into hiding, urban fantasy style, but the end of the world has caused it all to come back. Or, alternatively, the magic coming back causes the end of the world (as in Steven R. Boyett's Ariel, where the sudden appearance of magical creatures coincides with all advanced technology spontaneously failing).

The best illustration of this is probably in Stephen King's The Stand, where supernatural powers only seem to work while cut-off from civilization. Mystical events become startingly common after most of humanity is killed by a virus, but when the scattered survivors come together and start rebuilding a city, the mystical events stop happening unless they go back out into the new wilderness.

The idea seems to be that tales of magic are something that comes to us from back in the pre-industrial age, so when humanity enters a post-industrial age, magic will appear again.

 

[budgie]

I'm turned off by sort of a tangent to this: the book that shows warriors and swords and wizards on the cover, but when you read the blurb, it's "Main Character is a student/office worker/parent/whatever living a mundane life only to be whisked away to...." and I'm putting the book back down. Because I know what's coming. Boring daily life. Disorienting journey to fantasy world. Period of doubt/questioning/learning about said fantasy world. THEN the story finally starting. Unless it's in some really skilled hands (like Donaldson with Thomas Covenant), I just find those kind of stories tedious.

Me too. Donaldson got away with it once and that one about the woman with tinnitis (forgot the author and title, sorry), but for the most part, it's either this world or another. I don't like the 'wake up in another world' trope much.

 

[Contrarius]

Well, as you note, they list SF novels as fantasy, so I'm not sure how useful a list it is

Ehh. They're technically sf, but both the Pern novels and A Wrinkle in Time are perceived as fantasy by most readers (check the shelving over at GR for examples in addition to lists like this one), so I think they count. I mean, heck -- Jennifer Fallon's Lion of Senet books are *technically* sf as well -- technicalities don't necessarily mean much in terms of real-world influence.

"And then there was:"

You provide a nice list -- but remember, you're talking about a 20-year timespan here. There were a LOT more books published in those 20 years than the ones you have listed.

Now, you may end up being right -- I don't know, and I haven't done research into it. But I'm still skeptical.

 

[kempster]

I'll have to keep an eye out for that one.

Which reminds me...

A Warrior's Knowledge is sitting unread on my Kindle. I should remedy that.

As someone who has read that book...... READ IT!

 

[Ryan Mueller]

I agree about Shannara though, I don't think you can really have a post-apocalypse Earth *and* Elves, that's a stretch too far for me.

I don't know if you've read the Genesis of Shannara trilogy. It explains how we have Elves. Basically, they've always been there, but they've remained hidden. It's a lot like most urban fantasy in that regard. I'd also recommend Brooks's earliest two trilogies chronologically over anything else he's written. The Word/Void trilogy and the Genesis of Shannara trilogy are, IMO, his strongest work.

 

[PeteMC]

Oh okay, no I only ever read the first three and that was maybe 30 years ago.

 

[AlexIsNotARobot]

I'm turned off by sort of a tangent to this: the book that shows warriors and swords and wizards on the cover, but when you read the blurb, it's "Main Character is a student/office worker/parent/whatever living a mundane life only to be whisked away to...." and I'm putting the book back down. Because I know what's coming. Boring daily life. Disorienting journey to fantasy world. Period of doubt/questioning/learning about said fantasy world. THEN the story finally starting. Unless it's in some really skilled hands (like Donaldson with Thomas Covenant), I just find those kind of stories tedious.

I'm with you on this. Like the OP, I like anything set on Earth to have some difference, whether it's magic, a hidden magical place, or whatever. Boring mundane life is just... boring.