Are we in the Golden Age of Fantasy?

[clockwirk]

Re what JohnH is saying, what you're really asking is whether category fantasy is in a Golden Age. (As opposed to the thousands of years of fantasy fiction that has come before and technically, in terms of historical dating, would be the Golden Age.)

Whether it is or not would depend on what sort of scale you are using for the term "Golden." If it's sales -- monetary gold, then yes, category fantasy has entered a Golden age, sort of. While some fantasy authors are selling more than ever before, placing higher and more consistently and in greater numbers on major mainstream bestseller lists, making inroads into new country territories, however, the vast bulk of fantasy writers are running into a number of problems. They have lower overall sales than their mid-list predecessors. Established authors have seen significant parts of their backlists go out of print. And paperback sales have seen the number of vendors reduced over the last twenty years, causing further sales pressure. So it's not really a Golden age for all on that scale.

We could instead use the system sf has used, which is again by date. In that case, the Golden Age of category fantasy would be its older works -- the period from the late sixties through the 1980's. This next period -- 1990's and the oughts -- would be the Silver Age, when fantasy authors built on what their predecessors originally founded.

We could go on quantity -- in which case, we're definitely Golden. Or quality, as in gold is high quality. This requires a subjective assessment from each person, with those who are under the age of 30 being given a handicap, and those who haven't read any fantasy written older than 1995 being given an additional handicap. We would have to officially discount all non-category fantasy -- titles that are not marketed to the category market, which in this day and age, could get a little tricky. (Plus, we'd have to decide whether to include Tolkein or not, as technically, he's non-category but did help start the category market.) Then we just have to tally up everyone's scores, and if the vote is high enough, the new generation gets the Golden nod.

Or we could just bag the whole thing.

Fair enough. My point was not necessarily to make the definitive statement of whether or not we were in the 'Golden Age.' It's probably true that it's not the sort of thing you can define until several years down the road. Nor was I trying to put down the decades and writers that have come before. Mainly, I was making an optimistic observation that the fantasy genre is healthy and growing, authors are allowed and even required to be creative and progressive in their writing, and there is a market of readers out there who will support somebody who wants to explore the possibilities of the genre. Every time I turn around it seems like there's another author who is breaking all of the rules, and it's great!
To sum up - The genre could get better, what came before is great, I'm loving where the fantasy/scifi world is right now.

 

[foolofgold]

So just as we are not looking a genre that has suddenly started shaving and needs to have a good heart-to-heart on why body cologne is not a deodorant; we aren't bouncing it on our knee and wondering what that dreadful smell is and where the hel its parents got off to either.

That is probably a much better way of putting my 'fantasy in its infancy' comment. I just think that fantasy fiction has yet to reach its fullest potential, and a lot of that has to do with not until just now and more recent years have fantasy books seriously started flooding bookshelves. I moved to my current residency almost ten years ago, my local Borders had only three counters devoted to fantasy/sci-fi, now that has doubled to six counters. Thats just under ten years, doubled. What does that mean about the ten years before it? Was the fantasy section only half a counter?? Granted twenty years ago I was a toddler, so I wouldn't know.

Maybe I'm too young to make a comment on this topic, plus I've only been reading fantasy for about eight years, but I still stand beside my opinion of it being incorrect to label our current time period as 'The Golden Age of SFF'. I believe that ten years from now it'll be ok to go ahead and say fantasy reached it's peak with Martin and Hobb and Bakker and the rest of what make up the pinnacle of current sff.

 

[KatG]

Mainly, I was making an optimistic observation that the fantasy genre is healthy and growing,

Growing, yes. Healthy? It depends on what aspects you are looking at. Certainly, it is healthy for fans, who have oodles and oodles of titles to chose from, but it may not be so healthy for authors and publishers, despite the small press movement, and this will eventually effect fans. Fantasy is the flavor of the month, but that could change and there are dangers in a glut and the decreasing sales a glut causes. And the paperback market collapse has had a tough effect, and increased the bestseller mentality of publishers.

authors are allowed and even required to be creative and progressive in their writing,

So you're saying they weren't allowed to do so before? I'm afraid that authors were probably freer to explore back in the earlier days of category fantasy when no one was scrutinizing them and assessing whether they could be made into films, than in some ways they are now. But, there are more venues for fantasy writing altogether, which allows for more voices. A lot of what gets called "progressive" in the category, though, existed all along before. It's just that a lot of the older stuff doing the same sort of thing got forgotten, and so now we think it's "new."

and there is a market of readers out there who will support somebody who wants to explore the possibilities of the genre.

Well this is where it gets tricky. It seems that there isn't quite as reliably now a market of readers who will support authors. And a lot of fans have very definite ideas of what they want their fantasy to be. They want it to be dark and violent and not have much fantasy in it, or they want it to be literary in style and use magic realism, or they want it to be comic or political or....And they won't support authors who are exploring other types of ideas. So in many ways, the market of a small core of fans who would read anything thrown at them has turned into a giant market of fans who are highly segmented in their preferences.

Every time I turn around it seems like there's another author who is breaking all of the rules, and it's great!

That's because you think there are rules for fantasy writing that these authors are breaking. Again, older fantasy writers did the same sort of stuff the newer ones are doing. And much of the material now considered cliched or conformist was considered "progressive" and breaking rules when it first came out. But fantasy writers aren't breaking rules; they're just expanding the tableau. And that is, I agree, great. If we were less hung up with trying to identify "rules" that aren't really rules but just common storytelling elements, and with vaunting authors for supposedly breaking the imaginary rules, perhaps authors would feel less restricted about trying out their ideas.

I just think that fantasy fiction has yet to reach its fullest potential, and a lot of that has to do with not until just now and more recent years have fantasy books seriously started flooding bookshelves.

It's not quite so recent. The sf section of the bookstore was hale and hearty when the publishers decided to officially launch a fantasy category market. From its beginning, the fantasy category then grew exponentially. We had an initial burst of growth, followed by another wave in the 1980's, followed by a wave in the 1990's mostly buyoued by epic fantasy and children's fantasy, and another wave spearheaded by contemporary fantasy at the turn of the century. So you could say that since they started the official category in the 1970's or so, there's never been a time when fantasy titles have not been flooding the bookshelves. And that flood has helped grow the sff sections of bookstores.

 

[JohnH]

Maybe I'm too young to make a comment on this topic, plus I've only been reading fantasy for about eight years, but I still stand beside my opinion of it being incorrect to label our current time period as 'The Golden Age of SFF'. I believe that ten years from now it'll be ok to go ahead and say fantasy reached it's peak with Martin and Hobb and Bakker and the rest of what make up the pinnacle of current sff.

I'm at a loss as to how to say this without being insulting. So I'm just going to say what comes to mind immediately on reading this type of statement. And on the second read. And third read.

First I think you need to step back and try to figure out if you are trying to address whether you are answering the question wholly on a personal level or whether you are tying to answer it on a general level that applies to the genre and its readership as a whole. Because if the latter? You're comment makes no sense. If the former, it really has no bearing. Nothing personal. What I consider to be the current apex of fantasy and its nadir mean nothing in the long run either. Or to the particular question at hand.

Mainly because I do not in any way think that Martin and Hobb and Bakker are necessarily in that category. Not to mention not knowing who "the rest" might be. Who is to say that any or all have not already peaked? Who is to say that better authors aren't coming down the pike in five years. Or twenty? I have no idea where this ten year plan pops into the equation.

Again. I hardly see a golden age as a single moment of glory. Nor is it really a span that can be defined specifically by a single moment necessarily. And if you adopt the philiosophy that it is impossible to know if a golden age is occuring until it is in hindsight and retrospect, you can hardly argue that we aren't in one either.

Fantasy will never reach it's peak. There is no peak unless you count the moment the last human floating in the Global Warmed Sea with No Land mutters deleriously a tale to him or herself before sinking under the waves of human extinction. There is always the potential and possibility to do as well, but in a different way, or do better. I don't believe, unless we evolve into something beyond the condition we currently enjoy and deplore and despair and disdain all at the same time, that fantasy will stop being a part of what makes us human. It is an important facet of the imagintion. An integral one. No matter what the publishing market does, it is not going away. There might be a bubble in terms of mainstream influx that could pop and could diminish, but I don't see that as a bad thing.

But whatever happens in the future, I don't see anything in the present that says "nope, we aren't there yet". Not to mention how silly it seems to me to adopt an attitude that any individual could say "we aren't there yet" because, again, how can you know that? You can't possibly know that certain writers will maintain. Let alone get better. Or in a certain timeframe. Heck you don't even know if any or all will even still believe alive in ten years. Have you seen pictures of George R. R.? Sweet man, Decent author. But not exactly poster boy for a healthy lifestyle. Dude likes his danish. A lot. No one knows what the future will bring. Let alone when.

And by your logic, you are ascribing that pinnacle of fantay perfection to be acheived by a certain set of writers. Writers who are writing now. Being published. Their greatness already recognized by you? Pretty much puts the glitter in the literature doesn't it?

I mean, and don't take this as an attack, you're not actually suggesting that when you read these great authors that you have such trust will raise us to new heights in ten years. That Hobb and Martin and Bakker and such don't quite reach the brilliance you suspect. No know. Is present. Waiting to come out. You truly believe will surface with a decade of focus and honing. But it's just not there yet. You read them and think "in ten years time, they could turn out something really great". Because if you do? Even in the smallest way? Well. Wow.

 

[algernoninc]

i think the whole controversy arised from the fact that terms like "golden age" or "silver age" are usually applied retroactively and not to events happening in the present. For example - the golden age of classical music was in the 18-19 centuries [can you name a great symphony or piano concerto written in the last 50 years?], or the golden age of opera was around the time of Verdi, or the golden age of rock'n roll was in the fifties. This type of affirmation always seems to imply that we are past that golden age, with the eventual possibility of a renaissance period. We simply don't know how future generations will judge the period we are discussing now, in the same way mr. Bush has no influence on what the history books will write about him 50 years from now.
My point : the topic is really about whether we think we are going through a boom period for fantasy - and the answer is yes. How each of us translates "golden age" is another topic. To me it is more disturbing the trend of giving up on books in favor of B-movies and fashion magazines. In my city I think 3 quarters of the libraries have closed their gates, and library attendance is reduced each year.

 

[KatG]

Library closings are not because people are running off to films. People have been running off to films for decades. Libraries are closing for the same reason that arts programs are shutting down in schools -- because it's very easy for those in authority to do when they need to slash budgets, as opposed to say slashing administrative salaries and positions. And because while the libraries are an essential part of the Internet and research communities, futurists who think the world will one day be all digital files (powered by who knows what energy source,) don't see much use in a building full of paper books. And because of the privatizing of information and entertainment that is happening on the Internet and in places of public information such as libraries. Who really cares if poor people have Internet access through libraries when you can make a profit selling the same stuff and filling the world with Blackberries? These sort of battles -- illegal downloading, etc., are going on right now and libraries are caught in the middle of all of them.

That's my take on it, anyway. I expect libraries to survive in various forms in the future, which would be good because category sff is finally getting a real working relationship going with libraries.

JohnH -- I'm not sure I entirely followed all that. I did get the part about not knowing whether we're in a Golden Age or not, which is along the lines that some other folk have brought up, and not searching for a non-existent peak. At least, I think I did.

 

[Wayne Batson]

Holy biscuits and gravy! Boy did this topic go all over the place. Golden Age of Fantasy…not sure anyone ever meant to scientifically study the minute details of such a phrase, and I'm quite sure the original query wasn't meant to stir up the ire of fantasy purists!

I interpreted the phrase simply to mean a warm and fuzzy time for fantasy readers. A time when the shelves are stocked with good fantasy stuff to read--maybe not on an eternal scale, but I know my TBR fantasy pile is threatening to collapse my desk and headboard! We are also living in a time when fantasy is more broadly accepted as quality entertainment and literature. Movies and the internet give us fantasy--even cool sites like SFF. For the fan of fantasy...IMHO, it's all good! Viva Fantasia! Rock on!

And may the Golden Age (in all of its possible permutations) last beyond my lifetime for my children and theirs...

 

[foolofgold]

If authors stopped writing fantasy right now, then yes, we're in the golden age of fantasy, and it just ended. But they're not stopping, so who knows?

 

[ganon0]

It has been mentioned already, but I think you can't really call a time span a "Golden Age" until you've past it. You only know something was at its peak once it goes downhill. I also think, like some others here, that I will not consider sci-fi or fantasy on the road of public success until those two categories are split in the bookstores. I hate going to a Borders to find them mixed. I want my SF in one section and my fantasy in another!

Liberate the genres! *Crowd screams wildly*

 

[zakhrin]

Well, i must admit that it is a lot easier to find good Fantasy now than a few years ago. But does it mean there are more good authors? I don't think so. there are just more known.
I'm still discovering some authors now, i don't have time to read new ones!!

Leiber, Zelazny, Vance, Moorcock, Lovecraft, Herbert, Leguin, Aldeman, K dick etc...
Who can say there are less talented than Martin, Hobb, Williams ?

The genre has been so much put in front of the light that authors are now being talked about. The good thing is that it pushes the writer to be really good in order to get into the light.

I must admit as well that this genre is less put aside now than a ten years ago. I remember people asking me if i was reading. when i said i was reading fantasy, they laughed, saying it was not literature!
Now people see that sci fi/fantasy can be inteligent and well written.

As some of you said earlier, we cannot tell if we are in the golden age as we don't know what will come next.