I'm not sure why a golden age has to be finite. At least in terms of a recognizable ending while experiencing it. I think a goldn age of fantasy can last generations, if not eras. Everything eventually ends, but the notion that because the hypothetical golden Age has begun means somehow a clock is ticking and this is all we get seems really such a zoloft "My glass is half empty with a crack because my dog knocked it over while it died" approach. And I'm not a bubbling little Pollyanna by any regard.
I see it as a Golden Age because it seems like Fantasy has grown up overall. It's past the adolescent decades of the 80s and 90s and is now really coming into it's own.
I think this is way too much of a subjective approach. And a bit too pat-yourself-on-the-back as it seems to imply that what you currently like and currently read is more mature and better than what was produced prior. That your own tastes as they have evolved are somehow indicative of market quality.
Just because the market has expanded and allowed for more variety and, at least in my view, more quality. It does not mean quality did not exist. Or that somehow the works of prior years are somehow less because a shiny new book is out by such-and-such. No matter how much I love Bakker, it hardly makes Donaldson's work less stunning or brilliant to me. Same for Erikson compared to Jordan. Or the vast trove of works by Cherryh, Asimov, McKillip, Tanith Lee and scads of other authors who did and in many cases still are writing wonderful stuff.
I think it borders on the smug on any of our part to think that somehow what we are reading is more mature and more meaningful than what was written ten and twenty years ago as a whole. There might be more of it. And there might be a greater recognition of efforts and a greater demand. But it hardly makes the current crop so much better and wonderful on an individual case-by-case basis. I hardly think that Martin or Erikson or some of the new guys on the block like Lynch or Ruckley or Abraham suddenly consign Stephen R. Donaldson, Tad Williams, Robert Jordan or even Melanie Rawn to adolesence in any way shape or form.
Prefering what seems new is not a flaw. It is even a good thing for the genre as a whole as initial sales tend to bottom line the approach to another work by that author. Reading a new author's first work and being stunned by its brilliance is a hard act to follow. But to try and subjectively lump a current period as better than just ten years ago or twenty years ago, I think misses the point. One, it looks at a small timeframe in the scheme of things. NOt to mention applies one individual's tastes as a benchmark for a huge array of individuals. Two, it skews to that taste. For every great book there are maybe two or three good books and maybe a half dozen decent entertaining books and a good dozen not horrible but needs work books and two dozen or more books that were a blind throw at the wall and hope the stink sticks.
Regardless of what I think of Brooks and Eddings and Weis and Hickman, we have many authors I think are much worse and do the genre even greater damage when trotted out as representative of the genre. I see gimmick after gimmick in terms of marketing that actually works. And gimmick after gimmick by authors that really aren't writing what I consider fantasy but merely adding the slightest touch to their criminal procedure novel, their murder mystery novel and even their espionage thriller novel. Some of them are quite good. I guess my point being that for every Bakker in this current "period", there is a Mitchell Graham. A Robert Newcombe. A Christopher Paolini. Who write incredibly derivative dreck and have healthy, if not huge followings. I don't see any great maturity in that regard.
And what about someone like Brooks or Jordan who still sit firmly at the top of the sales bunch? Both certainly are reaching new audiences as readers either reach the reading age and awareness or just finally broach an author that is rather ubiquitous to the genre. No matter what the popularity poll is here or elsewhere, the fact that Jordan's entire backlist is still outselling most other "current" authors mentioned, if viewed outside the subjective realm, certainly does not indicate that the genre has "matured" so much as simply continued to broaden in scope.
We must remember that we are reading fantasy in its infancy.
Could not disagree more. Fantasy is something that has been around for ages and ages. Long before even the first "The Wooley Mammouth that Got Away" story. Various mythologies, legends and oral histories all embodied the continal fascination with the fantastic. Jules Verne. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Even Jack London. Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant comic strips. Superman. Batman. The Grimm Brothers. The Chanse de Roland. The Decameron. Shakespeare. Heck even Louis L'Amour touched on some type of fantastic that sparked the human imagination. L'Amour wrote "westerns". But did so in a way that made readers flock to falling into a world that really never did exist but in the legendary imagination of one person. Sure some things were "real" but many were part of the mythic culture of the Ole West.
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.
.
