Popularity of the fantasy genre

What do you think accounts for the popularity of the fantasy genre now, in the 21st century? Why do you like it?

I'm working on an essay that relates fantasy fiction to mythology. There are, of course, strong connections. In thinking about what draws us to modern-day fantasy, I'm examining what it is that I love about it--and I'd like to know what you love about it too. It's not just escapism, even when it seems like some good escapism is a reason unto itself.

What keeps you coming back to the literature of fantasy? And do you think that's the reason for its broader appeal? Or do you think we have to distinguish readers of fantasy fiction from the audiences for other media?

I'd welcome all comments. Thank you.

>1 Meredy:
That is a fascinating topic. My own relationship with fantasy literature has been up and down. I think The Lord of the Rings was probably my first exposure to fantasy. I loved it, of course. That last sentence will of course be taken as a derogatory comment on anyone who did not love LOTR. So be it. :-)

My next fantasy read was Lord Foul's Bane and the following five novels of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever. That was hours of my life that I will never get back again. I found this dreadful. It was contrived, deliberately perverse for the sake of sensationalism, feigned victimhood by having the main character suffer from leprosy, and was heavily overpopulated with adjectives. There is a game whereby people open one of these books and compete to find the sentence with the most adjectives. Double figured counts are not uncommon. Yes, Donaldson left a scare on my reading experience that will never wash off. I was being kind when I thought it suffered from having been read so soon after Tolkien, but having looked back at these books in more recent years I realise, yes it did suffer from that proximity to LOTR but that was not its primary failing; the books are just dreadful.

I loved Le Quinn's Earthsea trilogy.

Your question has me rambling but I am rambling with a purpose; trying to get the answer to your question by reviewing my fantasy reads. The more I seek this answer the more I am drawn to the conclusion that my love if for well written books that tell us something about the real world and human nature. These books do not need to be any particular genre. I do not love all fantasy. When I look at the fantasy books I have enjoyed and the non-fantasy books I have enjoyed I find the reason behind my enjoyment to be the same in both cases. The books I enjoy are either "entertainment fodder" (a phrase I got from Catie Murphy when she was giving out about a poor review she got for one of her books which she regarded simply as "entertainment fodder") that gives me the "escapism" of a relaxing read with no pressure, or a story that I can see as relevant to real life, in particular socio-political reality of the world around us. An example might explain what I mean.

Because of my up and down experience with fantasy, and because some fantasy novels are part of a multi-book series and would require eons of time I do not have, I do not generally read a lot of fantasy. For some reason that escapes me now I decided to read The City of Brass. As you might know from my comments on this book elsewhere I really loved it. What I loved about it included:
1. The characters were quite well written. There were a few little annoyances that I thought looked a bit out of character at times but not a major issue.
2. It was set in an internally consistent universe which is the traditional mythology of people living in the real world and I have been learning from this setting. This is really two points; I am learning things being one, and the other being the verisimilitude born from the story's universe being totally internally consistent.
3. It deals with social differences between groups and deals with them in a very realistic way. Having grown up in a divided community I recognise the reality of what is described in the book.
4. Both sides of the socio-political divide are presented through the viewpoints of the two main characters, one from each side of the divide. This helps the reader see that in any divide the people on each side are sincere in their own beliefs and are often unaware of the motivations experienced or context of the lives of people in the other community. Basically, everyone is the hero in their own story.

I think I would apply the above factors to all fiction I read, not just fantasy.

Of course, you have heard me quote the following before.

"If you want to tell the truth, write fiction.
If you want to write about today, write science fiction.

I think "fantasy" could be substituted for "science fiction" in that quotation without it loosing too much of its validity.

Thank you for prompting my retrospection and keeping me from my work for half-an-hour. :-)

Keep well. I hope the above helps with your essay.

Once upon a time all books that were not factual were "fiction". With the exception of a couple of sub-genres (ghettos?) like "science fiction" or "the detective story", which had their own structural conventions, all fiction was simply lumped together, and sorted by author surname. Authors wrote the book that told the story that they wanted to tell, without worrying over much about how to categorise it. Either you browsed until the blurb on the back caught your fancy, or you talked to the shop assistants, who made suggestions based on what you had previously liked.

Then, with the rise of internet shopping choice and availability increases massively, but reading the blurb is slower, and the friendly bookshop staff are replaced by sorting by genre, in an effort to help readers find the books that they like.

The problem with this is that authors whose books do not fit squarely into one genre label fare less well, because potential readers do not find their books. As do books that do not fit firmly within the category of the label that they have been given - whilst some readers will enjoy the unexpectedness, more will be disappointed because their preconceived expectations were not met, and leave hostile reviews. So nowadays authors who wish to sell (or even get published) write to the genre.

"Literary fiction" is the only area where such constraints are not put on the content - and that is because the constraint is on the form; Heaven forbid that a literary novel tell its story in a linear narrative manner!

So, I think the advantage of reading "fantasy" is that its constraints are simple. Once there is something present that could not exist "in the real world" you have satisfied the demands of the convention. The reader has no further preconceived demands about what the story is going to involve, and so the author is free to do whatever they want with the plot.

There was a long discussion earlier between @Busifer and I about what we are looking for in fantasy and SF. But the advantage of the fantasy genre is that it isn't really a genre. You can find the sort of stories that Busifer and I were talking about there, but not only those. It encompasses, romance, adventure, political comnent, satire, comedy, horror etc.

My first fantasy reading almost exactly mirrors @pgmcc , both in content and reaction - if I exclude the preceding childhood reading of masters like C.S. Lewis and Alan Garner who, like Tolkien, are consciously wielding mythic tropes.

I agree that great fantasy does link to myth in this way.

But I think the wide popularity of this genre, and the reason why I read more fantasy than other books by contemporary authors, is that is is the genre least constrained by convention, and so most likely to exhibit original writing.

I don't read exclusively in any particular genre. But for 21st century authors I tend to read more fantasy, for this reason.

I think that people just love the escapism that fantasy provides. Some people like it complex, some like a little toned down and easier to follow, some like it funny and some like it serious. Fantasy offers a wide variety of places to take you away from where you are and brings you to a place of imagination where reality doesn't necessarily rule.

I think mythology (and the variety of religions practiced in the world) provided a tremendous base for developing modern written fantasy and gave people a jumping off point for the writing/reading of it (I'm kind of thinking of the Narnia books with this).

Personally, I enjoy character driven romantic fantasy, true escapist sort of stuff, that reads without any sort of other agenda, commentary or complexity. I'm a pretty simple individual LOL

I'm looking at the fantasy novels on my shelves which I have chosen to keep. Lewis, Tolkien, Pratchett, Butcher (a genre crossover to mystery IMO), Bujold, Rothfuss, Sanderson and Moore. There are singles of other authors, and many fairy tales/myths.

For me, I want a story which challenges they way I think about the world, yet has an underpinning of something stable to hold me tight. Does that make any sense at all? Other than that, I can say that I found myself saying, "yes," "yes," to both >2 pgmcc: & >3 -pilgrim-:.

As an aside, I find the same satisfaction in the mystery authors I have on my shelves, Sayers, Stout, Fforde (oops, genre crossover), Ellis Peters, Margaret Frazer, Laurie R. King, Martin Walker.

>5 MrsLee:
"has an underpinning of something stable to hold me tight. Does that make any sense at all? "

That certainly does make sense. I think it may have been part of the problem I had with the Donaldson books; there was no explanation of the nasty things that were happening other than that evil things were happening and the world was corrupt. It may be the lack of personification of the evil force that left it floating with no raison d'etre that made me dislike the books. (I do not know how to do the little do-da over the "e" on this keyboard.)

>6 pgmcc: This is a terrific source for little do-da letters which work on this site.
https://www.alt-codes.net/

>7 MrsLee:

Thank you. That is a very useful link.

Proof of the pudding: "raison d'être"

>7 MrsLee: and another fan of your do-da letters! Thank You!

>7 MrsLee:

I have a confession to make. When I added the comment, "(I do not know how to do the little do-da over the "e" on this keyboard.)", I had a hope, and a degree of confidence, that someone in the GD would post a link such as the one you posted. I was startled by the speed with which you provided the missing-link. Again, thank you for that. I have saved that in my browser favourites for future reference.

Here are a few random thoughts. They don’t address all of your questions, but rather are just a few things I had in my head after reading your post.

Although I had read and enjoyed fantasy books as a child, I wasn’t very genre conscious. I read pretty much everything I could get my hands on and never thought to seek out a certain type of book. I was in my early 20’s before I really “discovered” fantasy as a genre and got addicted.

My discovery started with Raymond E. Feist’s Magician: Apprentice. I think that was my first encounter with epic fantasy, although I didn’t know anything about fantasy subgenres at the time so I had no idea that’s what I was reading. That’s what really got me addicted, and epic fantasy is still my favorite type of fantasy to read. After devouring all the books Feist had published up to that point, I started seeking out more books like that. Now, a couple decades later, fantasy makes up probably 2/3 of what I read, although it isn't all epic fantasy. I try to mix other types of fantasy in with my reading for fear of burning myself out.

One of the things I love most about good epic fantasy is the way the authors can build an entirely imaginary world before your eyes and then that world takes on a life of its own. Suddenly there’s this whole world in my head with its own politics and races and factions and problems, usually with magic and rules for that magic thrown in on top of all that. I also enjoy the complexity of having many different plot threads and characters and factions. Since these series are often several books long, there’s a lot of room to continue adding depth and complexity.

Something that I think often annoys people about epic fantasy is its meandering, but I actually enjoy that more often than not. As long as it’s written well, I enjoy the little conversations between characters that really have nothing to do with the main plot. I love the little side stories that add depth to the characters and the setting. I also seem to have more patience with common epic fantasy tropes than I do with the tropes of other genres. For example, the young orphan who’s mistreated in his or her early years and turns out to be special in some way. I often find young children to be sympathetic characters, so the pages that focus on their early years are an easy way to get me attached to a character and interested in them, then I enjoy seeing them develop over the course of the series. I also enjoy character-driven books in general, which is pretty common in epic fantasy.

As far as fantasy in general, I think I just really enjoy the “otherness” of it. I like science fiction for similar reasons. I went through a horror phase in junior high for similar reasons. I like things that are outside the normal, real-world existence, that inspire my imagination to consider things I might never have imagined otherwise.

One thing I actually don’t typically enjoy are stories that focus on real-world mythology. There have been exceptions, but for some reason I much prefer a made-up mythology to a real-world mythology. I’m not really sure why that is, but I think part of it is lack of knowledge. I’ve never learned much about real-world mythology, nor have I ever had any great interest in it. Books that rely on real-world mythology often assume the reader has more knowledge than I do and/or I assume the books have all sorts of clever references that are going over my head. If a book relies on fake mythology, then I know that I know everything there is to know about it, because all there is to know about it is what the author has revealed.

>2 pgmcc:, >5 MrsLee:, >6 pgmcc: I have been thinking about this discussion.

I remember getting into an argument at university regarding whether Tolkien or Donaldson was the better writer. The debate focussed on how these authors portrayed evil.

My interlocutor's contention was that Tolkien failed. "He tells us that Sauron is evil, but never gives examples. Whereas you are told about the awful things that Lord Foul does."

And my view was that Tolkien was the better writer for exactly that reason. By spelling out the atrocities that Lord Foul commits, Donaldson is limiting the scale of the evil. Whereas one knows instinctively that Sauron's evil is beyond such descriptions, so awful that it cannot be put on the page...

In reality, we know enough of the world to know of the truly appalling atrocities that humans commit. Visiting that in detail is of interest only to a sick mind. So, to be publishable, Donaldson's specifics must be tame in comparison to reality. We can imagine worse.

But a more than mortal villain should be capable of more than human levels of villainy. By leaving it unspecified, the evil is implied to be worse than we CAN imagine.

In my opinion, the latter is far more chilling. Whilst the Thomas Covenant Chronicles just left me discomfited, and vaguely sullied, by the twisted nature of Donaldson's imagination.

I felt the distinction was between those who have a good imagination, and those who need things spelled out for them. (I was young and arrogant then...)

In reality, they are simply two very different methods of storytelling (and probably why I don't read a lot of thrillers, or very much horror).

The beauty of fantasy as a genre is that there is room for both.

I think I will write two responses: one that don't address anything that anyone else has said here (as someone who do research I find that sometimes one need to hear people reason about things but sometimes one need to hear unadulterated opinions, as we humans tend towards consensus in settings like these) and one that reacts to what came before I got influenced by the opinion of others ;-)

So, first -

I often say that I'm not a fan of the fantasy genre; in many ways I'm pretty hardcore sf. That said I read a bit of fantasy, and the books and stories that I enjoy often deal with socio-politics, on a systemic scale, or with philosophical issues.
This is a trait that they share with most books that I enjoy, though I do admit to the need of occasional light entertainment as well.

My first fantasy was LoTR, after which I read rather a lot of Heinlein's YA (all of it, in fact) and a lot of Jules Verne, then Alan Garner's Brisingamen, and then later UKL and A Wizard of Earthsea, and the Valerian graphic novels, when I was about 14.
I have of course read a lot more since then, of which I have enjoyed Discworld - both fund AND critiques of our society, imho - and some select books from Guy G Kay the most.
Recently I greatly enjoyed The Raven Tower, and I have City of Brass waiting in the pile of my bedside table.

I'm not certain that I agree on the parallel with mythology, but it is an interesting topic to explore. I think many authors borrow from well established myths, both of archetypes and stylistically. If one look at the function of mythologies in the societies that spawned them some were tales of morality and ethics, and for those a certain similarity apply, for some fantasy genre stories. When this happens I often find the story too didactic for my taste.
But in other cases what we today label mythology was a pre-scientific attempt at explaining how the world worked: why humans, why the sun, why the moon, why illnesses, why flooding, why draught, and so on. Looking at this aspect of mythology the link with modern fantasy is very weak, if not non-existing.

Then, reactions on what others have written -

I find that I nod along with a lot of what has been said by others, but I'd like to add that I think writing within a genre that works with worlds to us unknown, be they parallel universes, other galaxies, or in the far future, makes it possible to explore topics that otherwise would be very infected. This was one of the reasons my own father stated for his own interest in the sf/f genre. And this was well before the commercial internet and internet shopping, as he's born in the mid-1930's and some of the books that I, um, kidnapped, when I left to stay in my own dwelling, like his first edition Swedish translation of LoTR, or Sands of Mars, To Live Forever, or The 1000-year plan (I could go on) all are from the 50's, as is the stack of Galaxy magazines which I rescued from getting thrown away. So I'd say that this freedom, as long as one conformed with the rules of the genre, is nothing new.

It might well be that it has accelerated with the absence of personally curated selections available in a bookshop (though at least the Swedish genre bookshop SF Bokhandeln (sf, fantasy, horror, manga, and DVD's and board games), with shops in our three largest cities, seems to thrive).

When thinking about the popularity of these genres I offer this -

In the 1950's we saw the rise of the first "young adult" generation. Before that, if you weren't of a well-off family, you started to work in your early teens, sometimes and not unusually even before that. The aftermath of WWII saw the entry into a more "modern" world, optimistic, but also consciously trying aiming to be "new". The generation born in the late 30's and early 40's formed the basis for the first "mass market" youth culture, and some of them read all these pulp paperback sf books. They were mocked, and were not expected to read on as adults, at least not in Sweden. But their kids grew up with parents who did not look down on genre fiction, and so it could grow, even if it's readers often were mocked or ridiculed.

But now we live in the time of the third generation sf/f reader, the kids of those born in the late 50's or 60's, and with the help of TV shows such as Star Trek, Dr Who, and comic book based franchises such as Marvel or DC, and the huge popular success of the LoTR movies we suddenly live in a time were it's OK to be a grown-up fan of Star Wars and voila - The Handmaid's Tale makes television, and GoT, and a lot of people doesn't even know that there's books behind them, but they will find out.
Of the 10 highest grossing films, globally, only two are non-sf/f genre (to me super heroes are part of the sf/f genre), which to me says that the genre/s has crossed into the domain of the publicly acceptable, and so more people can dare to read genre fiction.

Just my 5c :)

(I'll be honest enough to add that with earnings adjusted for inflation 5 of 10 could be called sf/f genre, but that's quite a lot anyway, for something that often is looked down upon.)

>13 Busifer: I did not mean to imply that the freedom of the fantasy genre is new, only that the restrictions imposed elsewhere are, and may account for its growth.

But I disagree about your assessment of when SF became respectable. The Day of the Triffids, The Crysalids, Animal Farm and 1984 were all part of my school English literature curriculum, as was Lord of the Flies, which should probably also go under that heading.

My junior school teacher took us through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but reading fantasy at secondary school would not have been as acceptable, I think.

However the use of SF as a vehicle for social comment was well-established. (Maybe fantasy too, such as The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde?)

I had always considered the association of SF with a teen market to be a specifically American phenomenon. H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, John Wyndham, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, C.S. Lewis, Pierre Boulle, Olaf Stapleton, Stanisław Lem, the Strugatsky brothers, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Mikhail Bulgakov all wrote for, and were read by, an adult readership.

Similarly the genre of SF was well-established on British TV from the outset, and not just in children's programming. From The Quatermass Experiment and its sequels in the fifties, to the grim post-apocalyptic world of Survivors in the seventies, and Blake's 7, with its audiences of over 10 million, SF has always been a part of prime time viewing. All these programmes had a significant aspect if social comment alongside the adventure.

Fantasy literature aimed at adults is a far more recent phenomemon. For early adult fantasy writers, I can think of only a few - such as George Macdonald and David Lindsay, who are not so well-known. Tolkien was, in many ways, breaking new ground in writing serious, adult fantasy in English. (The major precursors are in Russian literature, which does bor draw the same boundaries, or 18th century and earlier utopias.)

Just because something wasn't labeled as fantasy doesn't mean it doesn't fit the parameters, and MANY older (pre-1950s) fantasy works exist that absolutely were intended for adults.

That "fantasy" breakthrough came partially because Tolkien, and partially because of the development of catalogs where you could market and sell books (dime paperbacks especially) to people in specific GENRES that would sell better and have better profit margins when you advertised them off of each other, and when the publishers learned that with genre tropes, you could farm out a whole bunch of stories by basically sending a rough outline and a set of style points to a network of underpaid desperate authors and have them churn out as many versions of the classic western or the pulpy 60's spaceman hero-gasm as possible. Fantasy didn't QUITE reach the top levels of that market (sometimes I'm thankful) but there are still plenty of examples of trashy yellowing paperbacks of the "musclebound knight rescues the kidnapped elven princess from the evil ape kingdom" that I see come through our library donation box to know there must have been a decent potload of them to begin with.

Just off the top of my head for older fantasy-that-isn't-fantasy:

Dracula is nothing if not a perfect example of early Urban Fantasy.

Le Morte d'Arthur? Adult Fantasy. From the 14somethings.

Gulliver's Travels. Definitely Adult Fantasy. 1700s. (relatedly, in the 40s, Mistress Masham's Repose by T. H. White was Most ASSUREDLY written for an adult audience, or at least a very educated and and classically trained older child audience.)

Night Land by William Hodgson (really weird book) from 1912 - set in a dying earth with no sun, and giant monolith citadels besieged by unspeakable enormous monsters. Definitely a fantasy (arguably a science-fantasy), absolutely for adults.

I would strenuously argue that by story-craft and style, Lovecraft is solidly fantasy rather than science fiction, regardless of the medical/sciencey trappings he hung all over his stories. (also apart from his being a truly awful human)

So I guess I'd mainly want to contribute that we don't want to get too hung up on labels or on modern notions of popularity - fantastical stories were being written down (even Lousia May Alcott wrote a few) for as far back as I've been able to research, it's just that they've been short stories, or they've been serialized in small publications and not paid much attention to, or never published widely to begin with, or (and here's the real difficulty) they weren't ever called "fantasy." They were just "a novel" or "a work of light diversion" or whatever, and unless you actually READ the old musty thing, buried in the piles of other musty old things, you don't KNOW that it's randomly got fairies and a magical forest in the middle sections.

>14 -pilgrim-: Different cultures, perhaps. I did not imply that you were wrong, even if I might have sounded that way. In Sweden sf and f both invariably was branded YA, and if they were translated the "adult" (could be sex, could be topics considered "difficult") simply edited out. Even my English language copy of The Two Towers are about 1/3 thicker than the 1950's translation to Swedish. I have not done a comparative read, though, so can't say what's missing.

And having sf/f as part of the school curriculum doesn't always means it is seen as respectable - I read A Wizard of Earthsea in school, in year 8 (that's when one's 14/15 yo) but still most people my age (I'm in my early 50's) look down on the genre/s.
A colleague refers to it as "trolls in space", and when I mentioned in passing that The Handmaid's Tale generally was considered sf she was shocked. She loved the TV series and had no knowledge of the book (or of Margaret Atwood).

The 1980's BBC production of The Day of the Triffids was a huge hit in Sweden but almost no one knew about the book. The series V likewise was a huge hit, and most people my age saw it when it aired. Watching such fare for entertainment, suspense, and fun, was and was OK. It was TV and TV is something you do as a distraction. It was aired early in the evenings, just like ST:TOS and Space 19999 had been before them, and this did not mean that sf/f was an accepted genre back then. Not in written form. I'd go as far as saying that because of series like those sf/f has been perceived as light-weight, kiddie stuff. Real grownups who like to read do generational relationship dramas and depictions of life for the different strata of society, preferably with a huge dose of angst, and very definitely set in a present-day time frame, written by authors who are now sullied by their association with the (Royal) Swedish Academy.

(If I come through as bitter here it's because I've spent my entire life being on the other end of that stick. Finding the GD had such a huge impact on me partly because I finally got connected with people who didn't judge me for my choice of reading material. When I visit the sf/f bookshop here in Stockholm 80% of their customers are 20-25 years younger than me. If you see someone my age you could almost bet they're there getting a gift for a young relative.)

It makes sense, though, that the evolution differs between parts of the world, and only now, with the internet age, are the gaps starting to close, at least in parts. That is both for the better and for the worse, I think.

Edited for typos.

Do not forget Lord Dunsany. He was not writing for children.

That might be why his works never found their way to Sweden.

>15 RowanTribe: Yes, I was not expressing myself as clearly as I cpuld have done.

In discussing genres here, we are looking at audience perception, rather than how a modern reader would classify a book.

Firstly, I would definitely dispute some of your categorisations. For example, there is nothing in Malory that was not considered believable at the time. Just as Macbeth is not "fantasy" for including witches and prophecies, nor the Iliad for including gods and nymphs - because they were written for audiences who believed in those things.

And Gulliver's Travels was a satirical political diatribe, rather than entertainment.

Similarly ghost stories are not fantasy, when written for an audience that believes in the supernatural.

We can't really call anything "fantasy", when discussing audience reception, that was not regarded as "fantastic" by its intended readership (although we can, of course, enjoy it in that way if we choose, nowadays). Fantasy is a compact between writer and reader to tell and hear tales of that which does not, and cannot, exist (as opposed to science fiction, where the qualifier is "not yet exist").

And so, I would argue, it is not really possible to talk about fantasy as a genre until after the Enlightenment. In the pre-modern world, there was not the mindset to draw clear demarcations between the possible and the impossible.

Dracula is your first example of popular fantastic fiction - although there were cultures for whom vampires were a reality at the time that Stoker was writing, those believers were not his audience.

The problem is that "gothic romances", as they were termed, were not accepted as serious literature. They were considered "suitable for the weaker intellects of women and servants", but something that anyone who wished to be considered a serious gentleman would be ashamed to be found reading. (Jane Austen satirises these attitudes admirably in her Northanger Abbey. The point is, that Northanger Abbey is accepted as "literature" because it mocks the gothic, as well as those who despise it; if she had written it as 'straight' gothic fiction, it would have injured her reputation.)

In other words, fantasy was, and continued to be ghetto-ized, in a way that science fiction was not. (H.P. Lovecraft is widely read today, but was not so mainstream at the time of his writing.)

The other examples you give confirm this. Good fantasy was being written. But, because of prevailing social attitudes, it was not so widely read.

It doesn't matter how good a book is; if it falls into a socially proscribed category, a lot of people who might have enjoyed it are never going to read it!

And I still think this denigration persisted into the fifties (and maybe beyond). I have both H.G. Wells and Lord Dunsany on my shelves. But the former has never been out of print, the latter I had to seek out.

For fantasy to become as popular as it is nowadays, it has had to lose the stigma that used to be attached to it.

>16 Busifer: I can commiserate with those jibes. Although I only received them for reading fantasy; science fiction tended to fall under the heading of "socially conscious political comment ".

>19 -pilgrim-: I find that I agree wholeheartedly with your analysis, only in Sweden is applied to sf as well.

>20 Busifer: Out of curiosity, what was the reception in Sweden of books like 1984 and Brave New World like (to name some of the most overtly political SF that I can think of)? Were they treated as "political debate" or as "entertainment"?

>21 -pilgrim-: Both 1984 and Brave New World got labelled dystopian fiction, not science fiction, and at least 1984 is still a common reference in popular culture and in political debates. Brave New World, not so much, but both are widely known as "literature".

Ahh...so "dystopian fiction" is the code for "respectable SF", just as "magical realism" is the code for "fantasy you can maintain credibility in literary circles whilst writing"....

Yeah, at least in Sweden it is ;-)

“Dystopian” has apparently now become a genre itself—in a W H Smith at the weekend I saw a shelf label “Science Fiction, Fantasy & Dystopian”.

Gosh; I pretty much read only Fantasy, but I'm not quite sure how it came about.

As a child, I had a lot of Enid Blyton books - who wrote a heap of fairy stories as well as school stories - as well as having Arthurian and Robin Hood books, but I also read mysteries (Nancy Drew et al), classics (The Man in the Iron Mask, Black Beauty, Swallows and Amazons and so on) as well as books like Peter Pan and the Narnia series.

When I started borrowing from the public library, I think I was attracted to the covers that UK publishers in the 80s put on Fantasy books. I still like mysteries (Agatha Christie, Phryne Fisher) but I tend to find (fiction) books grounded in everyday life tend to focus on character interaction rather than the adventure and the characters tend to be unlikeable (in my limited reading).

I think that's what it is - the adventure. Which, of course, comes back to escapism. I always wanted to be a knight in shining armour (never mind gender).

But as for 'popular', people around me don't read much and when they do, barely anyone seems to read Fantasy. Now, though, it's becoming more mainstream, thanks to TV and film adaptations.

I used to find (back in the last century) that there seemed to be more Fantasy books in US bookshops than in UK bookshops. Now I'm living in Singapore, bookshops here tend to focus on academic and factual books with only one shelf for fiction of any description.

My 10 year old is an avid reader. While he reads all sorts, he's into Rick Riordan's series (pl) as well as Harry Potter and Skulduggery Pleasant.

I love fantasy! I read mainly for escapism and my favourite genres are fantasy, science fiction, and mystery.

I read very few "literary" books. My experience of them, based on school reads and a book club I used to belong to, are they they are depressing, filled with unlikable characters, and full of incest and worse. If real life is like that, I don't want to know about it, and definitely don't want to read about it. The real-world news is bad enough.

I love urban fantasy, with the suggestion that maybe the magic and/or supernatural or magical creatures are out there somewhere. Maybe there really are fairies at the end of the garden, werewolves passing as human, and witches and wizards trying to keep the rest of us from finding out what is going on.

Other fantasy, set in imaginary worlds or alternate versions of earth, inspires me with visions of what might be. Fantasy can explore real-world what-if scenarios, morality, courage, adventures, character interactions, and all the best and worst of humanity.

>27 NorthernStar: "I read very few "literary" books. My experience of them, based on school reads and a book club I used to belong to, are they they are depressing, filled with unlikable characters, and full of incest and worse. If real life is like that, I don't want to know about it, and definitely don't want to read about it. The real-world news is bad enough."

Very well put, that's just how I feel about it. I would maybe had said "I know the world's a bad place, I don't need to spend my free time wallowing in it", but that's about it.

That the spec fic genres are getting more popular, or at least not shunned, as I'm used to, might be a sign that more and more people feel a need to put a distance between the self and the everyday experience of a world that's somehow not what we'd want it to be?

>27 NorthernStar:, >28 Busifer: I would add to that, that it is usually about relatively privileged characters, who are wallowing in a cesspool of their own making.

I don't feel it entirely healthy to consistently evade the harsher realities of life - although occasional escapism is great! - and that's why I particularly enjoy the type of science fiction and fantasy that tries to give a fresh perspective on fundamental issues.

Where literature deals with grim, but universal, issues, it can be an inspiring and uplifting read. To speak in (rather unfair) generalisations, in my experience, Russian literature tends to have that universality, but American and British tends not to.

Even though I’m a member of the Green Dragon and have been for years, I read almost no fantasy. Please don’t kick me out, lol.

I just don’t have the patience for make-believe on that scale. The fake languages, the weird names and magical abilities - basically all the trappings of a completely pretend world with all its customs, etc. One thing that I noticed that might not be the rule now, but seemed to be then, was that almost every society was firmly entrenched in a medieval/agrarian/feudal time warp. Everyone had swords even if they could call up demons or bend time or whatever. There were kings and princesses and monsters. Even some tales I read that were set in the future had governments exactly like this. There were titles and dynasties and spaceships. What? Can’t we evolve beyond this debasing way of creating society? Ugh. Not for me. It does my head in.

Insofar as modern literary fiction goes, I don’t read it exclusively, but I do find it interesting when done well. It can show mindset or circumstance I’d never find myself in and so enlightening me about a way a person might deal with it. Sometimes it isn’t pretty because, frankly, sunshine and puppies don’t make for interesting reading, even in fantasy. You need drama and discord to frame a lot of action and characterization and relentlessly nice people don’t create drama or discord. Nor do doormats or people so cowed by tradition that they can’t dream of making waves. It isn’t all wallowing in negativity if a person overcomes, changes herself or the people in her life for the better. Not every book is wonderful, but it isn’t a homogeneous genre either.

No, mostly what I read are thrillers and mysteries, albeit less of them than before. The cruelty and viciousness have been getting out of control in recent years and I just don’t want it in my head. I’ve started reading more easy going books, older books and natural history.

>29 -pilgrim-: "I don't feel it entirely healthy to consistently evade the harsher realities of life - although occasional escapism is great! - and that's why I particularly enjoy the type of science fiction and fantasy that tries to give a fresh perspective on fundamental issues."

I'm in total agreement.

>30 Bookmarque: My reasons for not reading much fantasy are similar to yours, but I see a shift going on were the fantasy genre seems to open up, to leave the restrictions of the stereotypical medieval swords and sorcery.

>30 Bookmarque:, >31 Busifer: I intensely dislike the lazy style of fantasy writing that automatically uses a cod-mediaeval setting for no particular reason other than that being where other books have been set.

But I think that there is a good reason for magic tending to result in agrarian rather than technocratic societies.

Looking at the history of the development of guns, there was a long period when, frankly, they were grossly inaccurate instruments, slow to operate and cumbersome to produce. But their potential for greater range (as well as their requiring a far less skilled operator than traditional ranged weapons) meant that people persisted in developing the technology.

But in a world where magic can fill the requirement for range attack, the need to develop guns would b not exist - so rulers would be more likely to support research into magic instead.

Since magic is usually represented as being accessible by only a few, talented individuals, rather than operable by the population in general, in such cases it does not fill the requirement of requiring less natural skill, physical fitness and training than archery. But magical means of production are likely to be easier to develop than early industrial ones, so the mass-produced weapons are more likely to be magically produced than by industrial means.

The history of industrialization caused immense impoverishment of the environment in terms of deforestation, pollution of air and water and do on. Magic is rarely represented as being so ruthless in its destruction or depletion of natural resources - apart from the inhuman factory conditions whose imposition made such enterprises profitable - so why would any society choose to destroy its environment when a cleaner technology (namely magic) is available?

Magic systems differ widely between authors, but a good fantasy novel will take into account the social, ecological and political effects its existence will have on the world portrayed.

>30 Bookmarque: I find it puzzling that you consider a feudal system a debasing way of creating society. Most societal systems are hierarchical. With the exception of small scale societies, where authority rests at the village level, no truly equal system has ever existed. Cases where governments have attempted to impose equality from above, on a national scale, have failed miserably. I personally consider a society in which wealth provides the rationale for the hierarchy more inherently debating and degrading. It also tends to have less practical opportunities for social mobility than more traditional societies.

When Plato discussed the various political systems (autocracy, democracy, oligarchy, a caste system and so on) he came to the conclusion that the most just, and fairest, system was a tyranny, ruled by an individual who, having been selected by birth, has been trained since birth for the role, and inculcated with the knowledge that the purpose of his/her existence was to govern their country for the optimum good of its population.

Of course, when Plato's pupil attempted to implement this model in practice, it failed too.

But the feudal system in fantasy novels is often the idealised version that Plato dreamt of. It is as impractical, and nearly as impossible to achieve in reality as genuine democracy, but I see no ground for disliking ab initio.

In fact, one of the joys of fantasy novels is when the opportunity is taken to try out different governmental systems, and explore their benefits and flaws.