What kind of fantasy books do you hope to see more of in the next few years? What direction do you hope the genre goes next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Personally, I would like to see the genre return to its roots. But that probably isn\u2019t a surprise, if you\u2019ve read the other blog posts in this series. I\u2019ve invoked Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien in almost all of them. Those two men are the grandfathers of modern fantasy: Howard from the sword & sorcery side, and Tolkien from the epic fantasy side. Until just the last few years, most fantasy authors stood on the shoulders of those great authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not opposed to rules-based magic on principle. I do think that it can be done quite well, such as with Brandon Sanderson\u2019s earlier work. But I would like to see a revival of more traditional fantasy magic systems, which aren\u2019t really \u201csystems\u201d at all, but mysterious forces of nature rooted in folklore and mythology. With its overemphasis on game-like dynamics and quirky rules-based magic systems, much of modern fantasy seems to have lost sight of the ancient archetypes that gave the works of Tolkien and Howard their staying power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the modern world drifts further from its roots, forgetting all the stories that were handed down to us from countless generations past, so too has our fantasy lost sight of its roots, thinning out to the point where it\u2019s little more than an aesthetic\u2014a bundle of tropes and caricatures that evoke a nostalgia not of our pre-modern past, but of other popular fantasy stories. Thus, with each new work in this vein, the genre is diluted just a little bit more, becoming a pale shadow of what it once was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is why I would like to see fantasy return to its roots. I would like to see more fantasy that draws deeply from the well of history and mythology, not just to create an aesthetic, but to embed those themes and archetypes deeply into the story itself. I don\u2019t care whether that mythology is European or not (though as a pan-European mutt, that is the culture that resonates most with me), but I do want to read books that do more than file the serial numbers off of another culture and wear it like a skin suit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not so much that I\u2019m worried about \u201ccultural appropriation\u201d\u2014hell, as the son of medieval vikings, cultural appropriation is<\/em> my culture\u2014but if that\u2019s what you\u2019re going to do, you should damn right do it well. There\u2019s a reason why we all got sick and tired of all the Tolkien clones. If we\u2019re going to take fantasy back to its roots, we\u2019ve got to do more than copy all the greats who came before us. We\u2019ve got to understand, in a deep and visceral way, just what exactly they were trying to build, and then build upon it with something new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fantasy and science fiction are all about evoking that sense of wonder. Science fiction evokes that wonder by looking to the future; fantasy evokes that wonder by looking to the past. Our modern world has forgotten far too much of its cultural heritage. I want to see more fantasy that brings it back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What kind of fantasy books do you hope to see more of in the next few years? What direction do you hope the genre goes next? Personally, I would like to see the genre return to its roots. But that probably isn\u2019t a surprise, if you\u2019ve read the other blog posts in this series. I\u2019ve… Continue reading Fantasy from A to Z: Y is for Yearning<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,1176,364,376,1857,1828,1193,501,1958,1690,499,565],"class_list":["post-21655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brandon-sanderson","tag-cultural-appropriation","tag-culture","tag-epic-fantasy","tag-fantasy-from-a-to-z","tag-fantasy-vs-science-fiction","tag-hopes-and-dreams","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-mythology","tag-robert-e-howard","tag-sword-sorcery","tag-tropes-and-cliches","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-5Dh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21655"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21912,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21655\/revisions\/21912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}