What is the future of fantasy literature? Where is the genre headed, based on current cultural trends?
For a long time, epic fantasy was basically Tolkien-light. There were exceptions, of course, but most readers wanted something that felt a lot like Lord of the Rings, and the most successful writers were the ones who gave it to them. There was a little bit of innovation, probably culminating in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, but if you picked up a random epic fantasy off the shelf, you could have a pretty good idea of what you were getting into.
Then, in the 90s and 00s, fantasy started to get dark and gritty, with writers like Joe Abercrombie and George R.R. Martin setting the tone. This new subgenre or flavor of fantasy, called grimdark, really came to dominate during this time, to the point where some were calling Martin an “American Tolkien” (though all that talk more or less died with the terrible finale of the show). Grimdark is still quite dominant, though an increasing number of readers are turning to “cozy” fantasy or slice-of-life in subgenres like litRPG. And of course, romantasy is taking off like crazy, though as we’ve already discussed, most romantasy is basically just porn.
So where are we going from here?
Our culture tends to pass through a cycle of seasonal turnings, where each season is the length of a generation, and the cycle itself is the length of a long human life. Reduced to its simplest form, the cycle follows a pattern like this:
Strong men create good times (first turning).
Good times create weak men (second turning).
Weak men create hard times (third turning).
Hard times create strong men (fourth turning).
We are currently living in a fourth turning, which is the period when all of the major wars and catastrophes tend to happen. In other words, the fourth turning is basically a grimdark world—or rather, when the full consequences of a grimdark world become manifest. But the grimdark subgenre really took off in the third turning, when dark and grim fantasy worlds resonated with the “hard times” that we all were starting to live through. This is also why dystopian YA became so popular in the 90s and 00s.
(As a side note, I have to say that I find it both perplexing and hilarious how so many zoomers think of the 90s as a simple and wholesome time, to the point where they think they experience nostalgia for it. Those of us who lived through the 90s remember it very differently, as an era of school shootings, political scandals, collapsing churches, teenage pregnancies, and ever-escalating culture wars. There’s a reason why Smells Like Teen Spirit was the decade’s anthem. Though in all fairness, I suppose that if someone from the middle ages were to visit our own time, they would find the nostalgic yearning on which the whole fantasy genre is based to be just as perplexing and hilarious.)
I believe we are on the cusp of a major cultural wave that is going to change everything, to the point of making our world almost unrecognizable to those who lived through the 90s and 00s. And just as the grimdark authors like Martin and Abercrombie rose to prominence by riding the wave in their part of the generational cycle, there are a lot of noblebright authors who stand to benefit from riding this next wave, which is only now beginning to break.
After all, there is another way to formulate the generational cycles. It looks something like this:
Complacent men create a spiritually dead culture (first turning).
A spiritually dead culture creates awakened men (second turning).
Awakened men create a spiritually vibrant culture (third turning).
A spiritually vibrant culture creates complacent men (fourth turning).
In the summer of 2024, I think we passed through a critical fork in the current timeline. If the generational cycle had followed its usual course, then our current crisis period would have ended with a period of unification under a new order, based upon the spiritual foundations that were laid during the 60s and 70s. In other words, the woke left would have won, and we’d be living under the sort of regime that would enforce woke values. Dissent would not be tolerated, because dissent is never tolerated in a first-turning world.
The second most likely outcome would have been a complete shattering of the generational cycles. In other words, we would have fallen into some sort of national divorce or hot civil war, with the United States splitting apart and the Western world completing its cultural suicide, which has been ongoing for several decades now. There has never been a time when such a major cultural rift has been accomplished by peaceful means. It is always accompanied by a terrible, bloody war.
But when President Trump survived the assassin’s bullet at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that’s the point where I think our timeline diverged—and it followed the least likely path, which has only ever happened once in the history of modern generational cycles. We skipped from a fourth-turning straight into a second-turning, skipping straight from crisis to revival.
The last time this happened was with the US civil war. Usually, after a culture survives an existential crisis, you get a period of national unity, which often results in a brief golden age (or at least, an age that is remembered as such, often by those who did not live through it). But after the civil war, there was no national unity. Instead, we skipped right to the second turning, which is typically characterized by a major spiritual awakening.
Whatever your opinions of President Trump, the fact that he survived the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and went on to win the 2024 election in a landslide means that we have (for the moment) avoided the first two scenarios. At this point, it’s difficult to imagine the woke left taking back the culture and leading us into a first-turning world in their own image. And though the US may yet fall into a hot civil war, from where I’m standing in flyover country that no longer seems quite so imminent.
Don’t get me wrong, though. We are not about to enter a period of national unity anytime soon. Certainly not a period of national unity whose foundations were laid by the previous spiritual awakening, which is what the generational cycle requires. At the same time, because President Trump survived the Butler assassination attempt (thank God), I think we avoided a hot civil war.
Because of all this, I think that we are about to experience a major cultural upheaval, the likes of which have never been seen in living memory. We will not get a period of unification. We will not experience a golden age period of material prosperity (though there may be a few years of plenty before the years of famine begin in earnest). But we will experience a cultural and spiritual revival that will burn through our culture until it has utterly demolished the woke worldview and values laid down during the 60s and 70s, and built something entirely new in its place.
What will that look like? And how will it affect the trajectory of fantasy literature?
Culturally, it will be a period of incredible dynamism. We will see an explosion of creative expression in every field, including in literature. Books and movies and games that are cultural mainstays now will be totally forgotten within a couple of decades, and everything that is popular now will feel dated and out of touch in the space of just a few years.
The authors and artists who will do the most to shape this new culture are today almost completely unknown, but they will become household names in surprisingly short order. Others will take decades to become known, but they will write their most important works in just the next few years.
The country will hold together. There will be no civil war, though there may be a global one. And there will almost certainly be an economic collapse, like the Great Depression, except much deeper and much longer. But all of this will only serve to fuel the spiritual revival, and the revival in turn will fuel the cultural dynamism, until the country and ultimately the world have been entirely transformed.
In more practical terms, I think we are going to see a lot of publishing houses fold, and a lot of popular authors fall out of favor. Many of them will keep their core group of fans, but they won’t be nearly as culturally relevant moving forward. New authors will rise from unexpected places to replace them, especially as the old institutions (publishers, conventions, magazines, review sites) collapse.
Romantasy will ultimately be recognized as the pornography that it is, though not until after it’s done great damage to the fantasy genre as a whole. The damage will be healed by a return to the genre’s spiritual roots. Grimdark will fade, and noblebright will rise, though it will ultimately take a different name and be recognized for other characteristics. It all depends on which of the thousand blooming flowers get picked.
LitRPG will mature into a long-term stable subgenre, and capture most of the innovation in the field. It may spin off into multiple long-term stable subgenres. Meanwhile, epic fantasy will return to its roots and grow as the spiritual revival takes hold. But instead of getting Tolkien clones, we’re going to see a lot of original and innovative work.
That’s the zeitgeist as I see it. The next few years are going to be a wild ride. Are you up for it? I hope that I am.
