f13.net

Just wonderin'.

- Yes, of course it's a matter of different tastes, but dwelving a little deeper than this:

- In other cases, do you think there is an unwillingness to detach yourself from the 'real world' ? A consequence of this, is that you consider everyone else who is willing to do that a weirdo?
- And why do you think some people can't "suspend their disbelief", while other accept to do that?

- Is the "12 yrs old loner daydreaming in a basement" clichè still viable in a post LOTRO trilogy world? An adult that reads fantasy has an impossible Peter Pan sydrome, blocked in his/her childhood?
- And probably, it also depends on what fantasy have you been exposed to, because some of it may be quite hideous (especially some "high fantasy" stories).

Have you been in contact with friends/parents etc. who offered an explanation to this, when they refused your proposal to read certain fantasy books (or watch fantasy movies, etc.) ?

A large part is probably fantasy fanatics who don't help promote anything but the "loser in the basement" stereotype.

Whatever else you can say about the US, 90% or greater never moves past high school and still worries about looking cool.

I think that the success of Harry Potter has made it so that fantasy isn't quite the niche it used to be. Between HP, the Lord of the Rings movies and now Game of Thrones on HBO, fantasy is becoming more and more mainstream. The same thing has happened to video games beginning with consoles and now hugely due to mobile and facebook games.

Yes, but you're still regarded as weird if you play certain games.  No, not just J-Date sims and MLP.

I agree it's changing, but the stigma for fantasy and gaming is still there, as are the old jokes and stereotypes.   Many comedians, late-night TV hosts and prime-time sit-coms still go back to that well of tired tropes and get mileage out of them.

Yet another question falls to the answer of "People are stupid"

For me it's that I just don't enjoy reading fantasy novels.  I prefer to read nonfiction when I do read.   To the rest of the topic, I don't care what others read nor do I place any stygma on people that like fantasy novels.  Hell, my best friend is a HUGE reader of fantasy novels. 


Hope that contributes something.

Isn't like, 90% of media, books, TV, movies Fantasy?

I mean, I know there is a glut of cop shows and shit, but most of them are also Fantasy. I am constantly amazed at the resources the show bones has. Fucking interactive 3d holograms!

Yes, they often are huge.  Add that to the list.


 :why_so_serious:

In my experience there are much more frail, skinny fantasy lovers than obese cheetos-blooded ones.

I agree with this somewhat, but I think there's something more inherent in it.  Some people just cannot break that barrier, and I think it has something to do with the right brain/left brain division, etc. 

It was kind of discouraging that hanging out with same aged friends when I was around 28-29 that they were still really concerned with how cool they look.  I got a lot of dork stares for reading at all (and fantasy lit at that) and mentioning a video game that wasn't Madden/Halo/CoD was beyond the pale. 

I wonder how they'd feel if I explained them a Persona game or Shadow Hearts 2.  They'd probably run off and take a shower to wash off the dork.

Only technically.  It's only "mass media" fantasy if it has elves and shit.  Bones is Sci-Fi and that's "Totally Different!"

Fantasy is much, much more mainstream than it was 20 years ago. Give it time.

It helps that you see a lot fewer chainmail bikinis in cover art these days.

For me it's mostly been that pretty much every fantasy novel I've read has been terribly, terribly written.

Sure there's some great stories, some wonderful characters, some amazing imagination in settings and worlds and the like, but I've yet to read a single one that wasn't desperately sub-par in terms of actual writing ability.

Maybe that makes me elitist, or snobby, or whatever, but I like writing that challenges me, that makes me think, that pushes me a bit, and I've never read a fantasy novel that comes even close to that.

Because the majority of fantasy in any media is utter shit.

That about settles it I think.

It is all about the extremes. Finding an average sized fantasy nerd is the difficult part.

I think that's a large part of it.  The extremes tend to gravitate towards media or entertainment that doesn't reflect real life so much because for a lot of them real life sucks donkey dick.

You've played, and loved, Demon's Souls and play lots of Magic: The Gathering, so I think that rules your opinion to be unreliable.

I was going to try to challenge you on this, but I do kind of get what you mean. Standard Sword and Sorcery Fantasy is so full of basic tropes and standard settings, it doesn't tend to be overly complicated. I actually read far more Sci-Fi than Fantasy because of that.

I'm sure there must be something in Fantasy I've read that would quallify as deep... I'll have to think on it.

What I'm more interested about is the prejudice toward the genre (no matter the media, and yes, I include sci-fi too, although there may be differences).

- Yes, you have those who dislike it based on what they think is the average person who reads/watches it ("it's kid/loner" stuff ! "); also because maybe they tried a couple times but unfortunately read the wrong authors or watched disastrous fantasy movies/series;

- But, as I observed before, there is another, far more interesting category, and it's those who cannot excerise the so called "suspension of disbelief", who often can't understand why should they get emotionally involved in something that isn't grounded in our real world. It would be interesting to understand why some people lack or utterly dislike this kind of "attunement". I feel, sometimes, that it's more than "I prefer other stuff", they consider it as some sort of "taint", wrong behaviour or something.

Yeah, it's akin to the "pretending" game of our childhood; maybe, for a lot of people, playing "pretending" at an adult age, throughout books or movies, seems wrong, out of place: they're too involved in the gritty real world stuff to escape to another world for a few hours; they don't want to.

There is a subset of people who have difficulty with empathy, I think it is.  If it's not grounded in the real world they have trouble connecting to it.  I wonder if that covers completely with the group of people who can't empathize with people they don't know.  I'm sure everyone knows the type:  Someone who simply cannot or will not care about someone or something unless it falls within their personal sphere of interest.

Most fantasy is terrible, and while it's true that most of everything is terrible, terrible fiction in other genres is often merely boring or amusingly hackneyed. Terrible fantasy is the most painfully cliched, implausible, vaguely racist bullshit there is.

I think I would read a lot more in general today if I hadn't had such shitty taste as a kid.

I wonder if those same people could be "weaned" into accepting hardcore fantasy (Tolkien etc), through gradual exposure to less "fantastic" fantasy (for lack of a better term).  For example, if they have serious difficulty getting even remotely interested in Elves and Dwarves and Dragons, how do they respond to historical fiction, like a King Arthur story with well researched "history" that tries to show how the legend might have been plausable, or stuff about Roman Legions trying to deal with pagan fanatics in Northern England, or the adventures of Vikings etc.

If you could get them interested in that, could you then work them into more and more "fantastic" stuff, untill you have eventually moved from "Historical Vikings" to "Viking Legend" to "Outright Norse Mythology" and then finally end up with them reading LoTR, or is there some point where they hit a wall and just go: Nope, mind not going to go there, too fantastic for me.

This was a few years ago, but I was once unironically ribbed for reading fantasy/scifi books, instead of reading crime novels or something. For some reason, the concept of "the commute sucks and is filled with mouthbreathing asshats I'd rather not lock eyes with, these books happen to be well-written, so fuck you I'm reading fantasy/scifi books" just did not sink in. I gave up discussing books with her, she was obviously dead against the kinds of books I normally read, so spending more time on it would've been a waste of time.

Having said that, I actually decided to try to read a crime novel, and I actually managed to stumble onto the least crimenovel-y book I think has been written, ever. It took 100+ pages (out of 700) just to get to the point where someone had finally gotten killed, and the main chick was still spending half a page discussing whether or not one guy she was going to work with would hit on her or not, or if they were attractive or whateverthefuck. I've only ever stopped reading books from two people before this book, one was Terry Goodkind because of his 2D bipolar main character, and the other was Melany Rawn for exactly the same thing I put the the crime novel away: I don't deal well at all with what I can only assume is a steam of consciousness of the female mind.

And for all I know, the chick who ribbed me for the fantasy/scifi books had been through one or more similar experiences with fantasy books, and just thought all of them were like that. I know I would've been much more inclined to avoid fantasy books if Melany Rawn had written the first book I read.

You know who does excellent crime novels?  Dostoyevsky.

1. Most fantasy is really bad and fantasy as a whole seems like the lowest-quality genre on average.

2. A lot of people seem to only read fantasy (check out our own book thread) which is kind of an odd turnoff to me.

That said of course there are good fantasy works and watching/reading them is fine. But I don't get why a lot of people seem devoted almost solely to fantasy. To be honest I am a little suspicious of people who are so into fantasy, to me it's not particularly different from being really into romance novels - a mostly garbage genre read purely for escapism.

As someone who has read a decent amount of both science fiction and fantasy it's pretty evident that science fiction writers are just a tier above in general.

There are good and bad things to be said about any genre or entertainment medium. People read fiction that entertains them, just like they watch movies or play a video game or play poker or whatever.

If reading a book (or a type of book) keeps you entertained it is doing its job.

There are very very few themes in western literature that have not been rehashed ad infinitum in multiple genres. To single out one type of  writing as being the only place where the same basic premise is done again and again is totally ignoring the fact that ALL fiction is guilty of it.

Racist?   :awesome_for_real:

The same can be said of comics. Only more so.

If you're a writer with some promise, and you're good enough to know that you've got some real talent are you going to aim for a Booker Prize or an Academy of Arts Award or something or are you going to write fantasy and go for a Bilbo Baggins Beardy Merit Badge or whatever?

Seriously, if you're any good you ain't gonna paddle in the pool that the 3rd graders have peed in.

There's another thing about fantasy as a genre too - it's inherently backward looking by its very nature and thus attracts a more conservative type of writer and reader. Science fiction suffers from some similarities in writing ability but not to the same degree because the essential nature of science fiction is forward looking - either utopian or dystopian, but still forward.

Fantasy is locked into medieval styles and constructs. It's always castles and lords and serfs and preindustrial and pre-enlightenment and as a result has a tendency to go hand in hand with an unoriginal approach. That's an inescapable aspect of the genre. If someone writes a fantasy book that doesn't conform to those tropes then, well, it's not fantasy any more, it gets labelled as something else.

You'd think there'd be more focus on actually telling a good story, though, since there's so little perceived flexibility within the fantasy genre. Personally, my experience with scifi is that some of them take scifi in a ... very weird direction, much more so than fantasy usually does. So much so I'm spending a lot of time trying to fathom what the rules in their universe actually are.

The majority of everything in any media is utter shit.

I like fiction. Just not the specific middle age, knights and dragons style setting. If I'm reading something, then it has to be in a contemporary setting, or scifi. And by scifi, I mean sprawling cities with skyscrapers featuring tech all over the place, interstellar spaceships and all that. Not laser guns or rare references to high tech while in a medieval setting. Iain Banks fooled me once with his book Matter, and I'm still resenting him for it.

Fantasy and sci/fi have the same trouble that Romance does, though. There are some people who will read and recommend books in those genres regardless of how shitty they are. Except in fantasy and sci/fi the books will be 1000 pages long. Here, you can borrow my copy. It doesn't get good until about page 700 but then? OH MAN.

Man, that's what takes Salvatore's Drizzt stuff from harmless hackery to total WTF material for me. Bruenor the surly dwarf is all DON'T JUDGE MY DARK ELF FRIEND BASED ON THE COLOR OF HIS SKIN and then five pages later turns into THERE'S NOTHING I LOVE MORE THAN INDISCRIMINATELY KILLING ORCS HURRR. It just highlights that dark-skinned races in D&D-style fantasy are uniformly unintelligent savages and it's okay to kill them and take their stuff, which is an elephant I might be okay with ignoring if Salvatore didn't point it out every few chapters and shout "But it's okay because SOMETIMES there are EXCEPTIONS, you see!!!" as if he's actually making an allegory about real-life racism somehow.

My first fantasy novels were Tolkien's masterworks; so after that it was all downhill. Also enjoyed the Thomas Covenant trilogy and the Dragonlance books (yeah I said I like DL).

But now I read WW2 books and have forced myself through some Conan books (hint: the bad guy will either be an evil wizard or a man-ape).

Fantasy just doesn't do it for me anymore.  And why read fantasy when I can play Skyrim and BE the hero? 

But I love fantasy movies and I definitely see it becoming more mainstream because we've had big budget ones based on  the greatest fantasy novels of all time.

Some of you fuckers don't realize how bad we had it back in the 80's with Beastmaster, Sword and the Sorceror, etc.

Hee!  I loved getting into such talks about D&D.  I remember when one guy who used to insist there could be no such thing as a Lawful Good Assassin.  I asked him about paladins.  I mean just because most Kobolds or Goblins or Orcs (that PCs know of) are evil doesn't mean indiscriminate slaughter upon sight is a good act.

Watch the DnD Movie.

That is what most people think the fantasy genre is. They're not really wrong to think that either.



The first fantasy book I read, was Dragons of Autumn Twilight, I had no idea it was part of a series, or a interconnected world. I bought it because I was like 11 or 12 and it had a dragon on the cover. I have probably 20 odd DragonLance books now, most of them shit... but I adore the Draconian Brigade ones.

Dragonlance started a weird pattern in my book buying habits. I almost exclusively read books that are in universe now. Dragonlance, Eberron, Republic Commando, Halo, Battletech, Masseffect. Like 90% of my books fall under one of these categories. I have some LOTR books in there and my very first book, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

I've been recommended plenty of books to read, but I have a hard time getting into them unless the setting/world has 'rules' I can readily reference. I don't just mean literal game rules, but like even though the stories world might not follow our natural laws, it has it's own consistency.

You should read Memoirs From the House of the Dead.  I hear it's about Russian zombies or something. :why_so_serious:

The only fantasy I have ever read that I would call literature (in that I would recommend it to others as a fine piece of writing, damn fine) is Glenn Cook's Black Company, and I've read a lot of fantasy.

Tolkien needed a fucking editor. Most fantasy writers need editors, Tolkien just needs to be called out. He's Neal Stephenson bad when it comes to needing an editor. Speaking of...

The only pieces of sci-fi I've read that I would call literature is Ender's Game, Cryptonomicon, and uh, uhhhhh - Nope, that's it. Those two books.

Genre fiction has always carried the stigma that its not 'literature'.  Its a stupid distinction that only matters to hipsters that define themselves by how cool their half unread bookshelf looks.

Black Company just wasn't that good.

Also, Orcs is something I'm reading just now and it seems to have pretty much lifted the entire idea of Black Company and applied it to Orcs that talk like Victorian Gentlemen. It's fucking odd and not terribly pleasant.

Most Fantasy is utter shite, but occasionally the good shines through.  Abercrombie's 3 were good and Locke Lamora was well worth it.

Beyond that ?  I'm struggling.

Stan Nicholls' Orcs? Funny, I found it to be perfect for what I used it for, but then again that was to take my mind off the other mouthbreathers on the subway/buses/etc. I've just read a review from some guy complaining about how it was too entertaining, so by the end he'd been ready for it to be over for a long while. I found it to be just perfect.

I guess that means I should look into Black Company. vOv

It was fine for your purposes, chewing gum for the eyes, and it works for me on that level too.

But literature it ain't.  Grown up, it doesn't manage.  Interesting or novel or with anything that lifts it above the Drizzt Crowd, not so much.

The Orcs just Don't Work for me.  There are some real presentation problems.

I like certain fantasy and certain sci-fi books, not all of them.  I make fun of those who read romance novels, I feel superior to those who don't read at all (there are a lot of people like that nowadays), and I view the "it's not literature" people as elitist.

Orcs was a fun read but it has been a while since I read it.  Speaking of Orcs, I think my favorite book with Orcs being the main characters is Grunts my Mary Gentle.  That was such a fun read that I made a WH40K army based on the idea.

Those old Dragonlance novels by Hickman / Weiss (?) are written like garbage. Like some of the worst writing ever.

I remember liking them when I was in 7th grade or so, picked up one in college to see what it was like and oh god wow.

Yeah.  Exactly.  I remember defending them to someone a while back as not being that bad, then I did a re-read.  It's amazing what seems good when you're a happy child, as opposed to the utter monsters we've all become.

No doubt, that's why I don't understand how any of you fuckers can even tolerate Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

Hey all my Starwars books are Trooper Centric.  :why_so_serious:

For the record, I was referring to the movies also.

It's the same as your love for Magic: The Gathering.  It's a shit card game that has stayed popular due to an emotional attachment.

I think we all got betrayed a bit when we where young.  I loved The Belgariad and Eddings turned out to be the most formulaic hack imaginable, I tried reading one of his other books a while ago and it was horrid trash.

Not a good comparison. Star Wars is bad, sure, but those Dragonlance books are in a whole nother universe. And I'm not talking about plot or characterization, just the actual prose. It's like if you rewatched Star Wars and noticed that everything was horribly dubbed and the boom mic was in the middle of every frame.

I did a reread a few years ago.  It's truly beyond bad.  It's enjoyable for the nostalgia, but it's some of the worst written fiction I've ever read.   I put it down halfway through book 3 and just couldn't go back.

I have very deliberately not gone back to Eddings since I read his stuff when I was 14 or so.  I like my rose coloured glasses and I intend to keep them on.

This is why I never bothered with a Dragonlance reread. WoT still stands up pretty well though; I'm up to Book 6 so far and besides the plot starting to drag they're still decent.

I've never actually made it all the way through the LotR trilogy though; I really can't stand Tolkien's writing style.

I can still re-read the Draconian Engineering Regiment books, I just did like a year ago. I just enjoy them that much.


Old books that bring Dragonlance levels of 'oh man I thought this was good once', are my Battletech novels. They just make me cringe now.


The worst things I've read recently are most of the Eberron novels. I love the setting, but holy shit are these books bad. The ones by Keith Baker are decent enough... mostly, and the ones by Don Bassingthwaite are pretty darn good imo (I would actually be interested to see what you guys thought of his books, specifically the ones dealing with the Goblinoid nation and their ancient empire). The rest of them? Pure self insertion fan fiction, with writing that made me long for the original Dragonlance trilogy. I couldn't actually finish a few of them, just went 'nope, I'm done'.





I've enjoyed all but one of the Halo novels, 'The Flood' by.. Dietz I think? That one was just kinda poopy to me. I just love the Halo Universe in general.

I also enjoyed the MassEffect novels, pretty fun and follow the game setting quite well.

The only Starwars books I've ever read are the Republic Commando series. I loved these for the same reason I love the Republic Commando game and the Draconian Engineering Regiment books. It's still totally 'in world', but it's from such a different perspective.

Jordan's problem is his wife edited everything he wrote, so he lacked an honest "No, this is shit, cut it in half."  Then something wonderful happened with book 11, then he died.  Sanderson isn't Jordan, but he is fucking good at what he does.

Tolkien's problem is elves, and that we're used to heroes screaming "I AM EPIC" as they surf down a mountain of orc corpses.  You sort of need to approach it like you were listening to a humble old man's war stories.

It's been quite a few years since I read LOTR, but the main thing I remember as being absolute shit was the Bombadil segment. The rest was a fair enough page-turner, even though Tolkien hadn't completely gotten away from his Hobbit-style writing for children.

Harry Potter, however, took that WTF part of writing to a whole new level, where she managed to keep a weirdly innocent view of the world (broomsticks, magic wands, etc), and combine it with brutal murders and graphic descriptions. And I think I was only reading the first book at that point, simply because I was curious as to what all the commotion was all about.

People read for different reasons (duh).  For me, I like a world that is not connected with our own reality, so I like sci-fi, fantasy and the like.  But at the end of the day, I have to really connect with the characters and their relationships with each other.  Plot is somewhat secondary - I mean, they are all doing something something grand and heroic on some scale, so that's practically a given.  I also don't automatically assume stuff it shit just because I am supposed to.  I thought the Harry Potter books were extremely well written, and I think that woman deserves the billions she made off of them.  I know I am supposed to hate on them, but I cannot bring myself to do so.  LOTR trilogy is also a favorite.  Steven King's Dark Tower stuff is probably my favorite stuff of all time...to date, those are the only books that have ever made me shed a tear (on a few separate occasions).  Just loved the characters.  I am a big Star Wars nerd, and for that reason, I read most of those books.  To be fair, most of them are crap.  There are some that are actually exceptional, however.  You can't judge that whole category as a single item, because there are so many different authors and their skill levels cover the whole range.  Pratchett can be hit or miss for me, but some of his stuff is hilarious.

I happen to dislike most "literature", and I am not alone in that thinking.  I don't read to be impressed by some pretentious dick's fantastic prose.  If that's your bag, cool, but that isn't what scratches my itch.

So while I am not a prototypical nerd, my reading habits would probably indicate otherwise.  Really, my book collection is quite embarrassing.

Fake Edit:  Reading WoT series for the first time now, and I am on book 8.  I do get some people's complaints about the series (my mind sometimes wanders while I am reading, for example), I am still enjoying it.  I just like the characters.

To be fair to Eddings, his entire career plan was to deliberately write formulaic but readable genre fiction - the fantasy equivalent of airport thriller novels.

He's annoying enough to be an elf.


Look, I can understand you.  Really, I do.  I was like that the first time I read through the series.  You are going to hate book 10, it will make everything else in the series worse.

Hey, maybe.  But in reading through the average Amazon feedback, people seem to be bashing 10 for the same reasons they were bashing 7, 8 and 9.  Only I thought 7 was okay, and 8 is actually pretty good (2/3rds through it).  Some people get antsy about THINGS NOT GETTING RESOLVED, but I am not one of those people.  If I like the world, I like the characters and the plot is at least moving in some direction, I am generally satisfied.  I don't actually want my stories to end too quickly.  I actually hate it when my favorite stories come to an end.  I mean, why the fuck would I want them to end if I enjoy them?  I may be an outlier, I admit that.

Or maybe 10 is unequivocal shite, and I will be back here to let you know what I thought about it.

That's pretty much how I approach reading books as well, Cyrrex; as long as the characters interest me, I don't want the stories to end. Maybe that's why I like both LotR and WoT in their entireties. :P

There's only one fantasy series I have ever started reading that I just couldn't finish: Malazan Book of the Fallen. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because of the OVER 9000! main characters.

Haha, exactly the same here...only one I never finished.  Those books made me tired.  I started off liking them, but they lacked so much cohesion.  And then he kills off the only characters I get attached to, so I am left with no reason to continue (only to find out the next book in the series is with brand new characters in a brand new timeline...wtf?).  Also, Ericsson was too in love with his own prose.  A little to self important for me.  I can see why others will dig it, though, because some of it is great.

What?! :ye_gods: :uhrr:

And I found GoT to be hard to keep straight for a few pages when he switched over from character to character.

I had problems with the Malazan series too; by the end of Book 1 I had finally gotten a handle on most of the characters, started to like some of them, etc. Then Book 2 starts and we jump halfway across the world to a whole new set of people. I think I made it two chapters in before getting fed up.

I really liked Malazan, though it was kind of difficult to transition between the cast at times.  I have to say the last two books kind of let me down.  I felt it got just a bit too metaphysical and didn't portray the epicness you were building up to through the series.

FYI, books 1, 2 and 5 are pretty much standalone.  You can enter the series at any one of those.   Book one is really his weakest of the bunch as it's written like a tribute to all of his favorite writers.  There's also a lot of minor details in that book that end up getting retconned in later books.    I just ran out of steam with the series.  One book in particular just killed it for me with the ending. I don't think I've ever been more disgusted with a book that I actually finished.

The most disgusted I have been with a series of books (trilogy, actually) was peter f hamilton's night dawn trilogy. It was pretty damn good, then he got to the final 100-200 pages and it just went total  :uhrr: to wrap it up.

Hamilton does have weak wrap ups.  Fortunately most of his work up to that point is good enough to forgive him for it.

Unless you happen to like genre fiction and want to write genre fiction, regardless of what some shit-eating award-giving dickhead says?

Just spitballing here.  :awesome_for_real:

The Malazan books are well written, if crazy long.  What really makes them work is the dialogue.  There are so many characters but they all remain consistent book to book.  The one fault I have with them is the heavy doses of "I wanna be a god".

Yea, I want to see Richard A. Knaak's treatise on The American Dream with a forward by Mary Kirchoff.

People aren't going to turn down money and fame to write genre fiction unless they're fucking bad. Sorry Haemish.

Someone wants to offer me tons of money to write pretentious shit, I can be as pretentious as the next dickbag.

I'll still write genre fiction because I like writing and reading genre fiction.

Good writing <> pretentious.

The insistence of people in this thread equating the two is making me roll my eyes so hard I think I've pulled a muscle.

The assertion that genre writing can't be good writing is what is pretentious.

Also the good writers chasing the big money aren't going for Booker prizes, they are trying to be the next Rowling/King/Patterson/Meyer etc.

Both of this.

Genre writing IS total crap for a lot of it... but so it most writing of any kind. But that doesn't mean genre fiction can't still be literate and it's really goddamn arrogant to classify all genre fiction as sub-literate pablam shat out for the masses. Fuck, the reason Dickens is such a long-winded cockgaggle is that he was getting paid BY THE WORD. It doesn't make him literature - in fact, it's the reason I can't stand his work. Most of Melville's works could be considered "adventure" novels that might otherwise be found in a penny dreadful if not for the fact that some pretentious windbag decided to find symbolism in it. I'm quite sure Melville might have actually meant half of the symbolism found in a work like Moby Dick, but I can almost guarantee you when writing it, he wasn't analyzing it for the symbolic nature of soandso and suchandsuch.

Literary fiction is essentially a genre.

At high school in the 1980s, I was conditioned to hide my computer gaming magazines and AD&D stuff from bullies. I was a combination of sporty and nerdy, so nobody pushed me around, but I fucking hated being confronted and teased about my nerdy side.

Near the end of our final year, I had a Commodore 64 games mag in my inside coat pocket with an RPG on the cover. A guy who had hung out with the bullies in the past spotted it. He asked to read it. I got defensive and told him to fuck off. He was surprised and shocked, because he was actually interested in the magazine. Games had crossed the threshhold from nerdy to mainstream and I hadn't even noticed.

I still have that instinct to be defensive about fantasy and sci-fi stuff. I can't get used to non-nerds being interested in it. I instinctively look down on most fantasy as trashy, and treat the stuff I'm interested in as a vice I like to discuss secretly with others who are into it. For example, reading the Game of Thrones series. I never thought I'd get into George RR Martin because it was for neckbeardy basement dwellers. I want to apologise for mentioning it, instead of talking about it like I'd talk about a sports match. That all comes from my conditioning at high school.

My ex-girlfriend is my age. We went to different schools, but she was the hot, rebellious queen of the social scene, who most high school nerds would struggle to talk to. When we met 20 years later and had a relationship, we watched Game of Thrones together. And she was still all "what is this, I don't even..." about fantasy worlds.

At first, she asked what period of history it was set in, and couldn't quite comprehend when I said it was a made-up world. Because she was conditioned to look down on that kind of thing. But eventually she got into it.

I imagine there would be less of this gulf to overcome for younger people, as they've grown up through an era where fantasy often entered the mainstream.

This.  My stepson isn't mocked for being the best Starcraft 2 player in his high school, instead he's got a place in the heirarchy roughly equivalent to the jocks of the less popular sports (track, wrestling, etc.).  Other kids come to him for pointers on build orders, girls pretend to be into video games to hang around with him.

It's a brave new world, these kids have grown up in a world where things we considered hopelessly geeky are just *there*, part of the atmosphere.

--Dave

Well, I don't know literature from pretentious crap.  I grade fiction on a scale of Good, Bad, Fun/Light, and Guilty Pleasure. I gave up on literary criticism in High School reading the Red Badge of Courage and having my brain dragged through so many layers of bullshit analysis of the symbolism and hidden meanings self-important folks have wasted their lives imagining were scrawled in invisible ink between every single line of the book it made me puke.

That said, probably the most well written fantasy book I've read in ages is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.  Every significant character is fleshed out, unique, and believable, acts like real people act, and is a unique mishmash of the good bad and ugly that all people have varying portions of.  The dialog is witty and the style is consistent for each character but varies between characters instead of everyone speaking with the same voice.  The world is described in wonderfully evocative narrative which still manages to avoid the perilous pit of purple prose.  And the story is engaging, somewhat familiar, yet surprises you with unexpected twists and turns that fit the world and characters perfectly.  My only complaint is that sometimes the emotional strings he's deliberately tweaking are a little too obvious, but it does make for an engrossing read, even if I'm annoyed at having my emotions toyed with.  And it's got some serious sad parts and I'm struggling with stress and depression right now so I can't take very much of that at a time, so my rereading is going at a ridiculously slow pace, like a chapter or two a week.

As a general rule, most of the stuff I read is nonfiction. Usually True Crime, History and Military/Military History. (Books about War, as Denis Leary put it) And whatever Charlie Brooker puts out.

Occasionally, I will read a novel, though those tend to be either Warhammer/40k Novels (because I'm a Warhammer geek. Though some are actually good, which surprised me - though I assume most are trash and I've just been lucky with the ones I've read), classic Sci-Fi/Fantasy which includes Tolkien and others (I inherited a huge amount of Asimov/Doc Smith/Moorcock/Harrison from my brother) or trashy "war genre" things, written by people like Andy McNab, Dick Marchinko, Chris Ryan (though much of that is crap). Otherwise it's the occasional random novel or interesting "comedy" book that finds it's way into my lap.

I used to read a lot of Steven King, Koontz, etc, but I guess I got bored of that sort of thing a decade or so ago now. I tried reading a few Drizzt books, and got through the first or second while travelling, then lost interest.

Really though, outside of my narrow and "Which-ones-are-any-good?"-researched Warhammer books and the "classics" of the genre, I agree that most Fantasy is garbage. (Which as I said, includes many of the Warhammer books).

As well as this, the general perception of "real" adults is that they're books for kids and teens, and for people like the geeks in Big Bang Theory. (Which I guess, is us?) Add in a TV diet over the last couple of decades of Hercules, Xena and Legend of the Seeker, and it's not surprising that the genre isn't really taken seriously.

I have a box of Star Wars books actually. I'd forgotten about them. I bought them cheap off some guy. Read the 2 Republic Commando books in there (Karen Traviss, written like war novels), got halfway through the short story collection about Jabba's Palace or some shit, and , um.. I'm not sure where the box is now. Pretty sure the Jabba book went back into it.

What I realised when the prequels came out was that I like Star Wars not for the story or the characters (*well, we all like Han), but because of the visual and industrial design elements. LOTR in book form has some incredibly tedious sections, and the film has way too much of hobbits staring lovingly into one anothers' eyes, as well as some fucked-up bits, but remains an overall positive experience. And I really like the visual design.

Alright I'll rephrase - I've never read any fantasy (which is what this thread was about, I even specifically differentiated from science fiction already) that didn't make me cringe at how piss poor the writing was. I've been recommended tons of stuff by lots of people and it's all been crap.

The fantasy writers that seem to be the most highly regarded all do the exact same thing that Tolkien does - tell good stories in good settings with good characters but tell them really, really badly in uninteresting language. I'm reading Game of Thrones at the moment and it's the same, pretty good story but terrible, tedious, simplistic writing.

I'm not 17 any more, I'm in my 40s and I've been reading books for a long time. I get very bored very quickly when I don't feel I'm being pushed by an author. Yeah I'll occasionally pick up a Pratchett or a Le Carre for a light read for a week but those are the book equivalent of an Iron Man film - fun, entertaining, candy-floss for the head. Not a meal.

There's nothing wrong with lightweight art (or craft, depending on just how lightweight you go) but there's so much more interesting stuff that people do with their various media, and fantasy writing has never yet moved out of that bracket.

If you want fantasy that's got amazing writing, I recommend Patricia McKillip. The plots are all tangly potboilers, but she can turn a hell of a phrase.

I'm reading Clash of Kings right now and I disagree with what you said.

That was my point in recommending The Name of the Wind.  It's not like the other stuff.  He doesn't just use words to tell stories, he paints worlds with them. It really is well-crafted prose rather than the typical hackneyed cliche-ridden crap.  The kind that seems like, if he were to apply it to describing paint drying, you half expect it would actually be pretty interesting.  Of course the bulk of the book is not quite up to the standards he set in the opening chapter and at other highlights, but even in the weakest passages the wordcraft is still way above the at-best average drek you'll find in most of what you read no matter what genre you pick.  Because of that inconsistency it may not be "serious literature" yet, but I think the author shows more promise than anyone else still living that I've read recently.

I complained about how slow my progress is with my re-read, but I suspect that may actually be a good thing.  Normally a good story with a minimum of bad writing in it will suck me in and through it so fast and so deep that I don't remember any of it when I'm done.  This one actually has me thinking about passages I read a few days ago, something that pretty much never happens with mass-market fiction anyway.

Australian politician Malcolm Turnbull, 57, speaking a few moments ago about the history of broadband: "...I'll just step back a little bit, and get a bit geeky so I apologise for that."

Geek = bad = requires apology. I noticed this because a 20-something journalist on Twitter queried whether an apology was needed.

geeky = technical, people have always apologised for getting technical in conversation.

Geeks can be so sensitive  :awesome_for_real:

Quite.

OK, so another 2 recommendations to add to my list. However after 30 years of trying fantasy writers recommended to me and hating them *all* you can understand my reticence to go and spend £20 on books right away.

And I've kept trying over the years because I like the genre! I played D&D as a kid, I've been a gamer all my life, fantasy has been a part of my culture forever, which is why I am constantly disappointed with the quality of fantasy writing.

And Haemish, if you like George RR Martin's prose that's fine, but it gives you and I zero common ground on which to discuss writing. It's a long, long way away from my taste.

See, I should have just posted "Because the majority of fantasy in any media is utter shit" instead of actually trying to justify my feelings. Would clearly have been a lot easier.  :why_so_serious:

Apoc - I don't mean this as a diss, but you clearly have a different itch you are trying to scratch when reading.  I think you all but said that you want to be "challenged" by the author.  To each his own, but that is the exact opposite of what I want when reading...I do it for escapism, and I don't want the language trying to get in the way of my enjoyment.  I prefer straight forward, everyday language, to such an extent that I don't even notice it, if you catch my meaning.  The only exception is when the writing is supposed to be humorous, in which case I really enjoy clever wordcrafting and subtlety..

Anyway, I only mention because I think that the kind of writing style you are interested in would be hugely underrepresented in Fantasy.  I don't think that makes it shit by default - there are plenty of other things that make it a shitty genre.

Absolutely.

That's pretty much what I've been saying all along, and it's in response to the thread title which is "Why some people hate/refuse Fantasy" etc. I am one of those people, and my posts here have been explaining why that is for me.

In my experience, the mass culture embrace of fantasy and science fiction of the last 20 has been largely limited to men. Women consider it largely children's literature and when adult men read it simply categorize them as man-children. The urban fantasy genre is starting to change that, but it tends to be acceptable in women's circles because it's romance fiction, not because its SF/Fantasy.

If you think high fantasy is poorly written, read urban fantasy.

I put an urban fantasy on an e-reader once for instructive purposes, teaching our Director how to set it up.

Hey, it was the first title that came up in the catalog (new, available).

Wow.

My boss had me testing some inter library loan stuff last night and I used a title she said she uses because we only have one paperback copy so it is easy to search. Pretty sure it is an urban fantasy, she said with a chuckle "I can't wait to see your reaction when you finally read it, it is a 'chick book'."

She reads a lot of similar stuff to what I do and the derisive tone in her voice made it clear that the book would probably not be for me.

But, but, I really enjoyed the Dresden Files.  :cry:

Those are "contemporary fantasy". Which I think is a genre term that exists solely because people don't want to put the Dresden Files in a category that is 99% vampire softcore.

I can't help but wonder what's really wrong with f.ex GRRM's prose, because I literally don't remember a single time I went "...what? Why did he write it this way?"

Vivid descriptions of heavy glistening members springs to mind.

Whether that's the rule or not, I keep meeting exceptions. My friend's wife put me onto post-Snow Crash Neal Stephenson and Jeff Noon's Vurt and Pollen. Separately I know a female medical doctor whose favourite authors are William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. I've dated a girl whose favourite movie is Predator (or any Arnie sci-fi flick!). Maybe not so many women who follow fantasy, but I guess there's Hex (http://twitter.com/hexsteph) and Felicia Day.

Am I going to regret asking what "Urban Fantasy" is? Is it along the lines of "Dark Romance" which I noticed Waterstones now have as a section header.  :uhrr:


You know there are some good libraries in Leeds right?*  :awesome_for_real:


*Or at least there used to be.

My post on it from the Book Thread, though "Dark Romance" specifically sounds like the "Paranormal Romance" section some US stores have. 

Thanks JC.

I JUST finished book ... I think 9 of Anita Blake on Audiobooks.  I started out enjoying the series and have liked it less and less the last few books to the point where I think I'm not even going to bother going forward.  Glad to see it's not just me.  I like the contemporary fantasy settings, but just keep running into number one from your list over and over.  Like the Mercedes Thompson books my wife had me read, I enjoyed the ones I read enough to read more, but they fit exactly into your description.  I also listened to the first Marla Mason book recently which again fits easily into your groupings, but in that case I hated it and never moved to the second book even.

The general endpoint people give for Anita Blake is book 10, Obsidian Butterfly....  pretend that's the finale and give up.  After that, it's loose shreds of plot wrapped around orgies and really increasingly bizarre sex behaviour/hangups.

Female authors, and female centric wish fulfillment, are just more prevalent in UF than in SF/F which is kind of a boys club.  I like plenty of 1s, but I have grown heartily sick of the bad novels in that category...  you know, female protag who thinks she's ugly, everyone has a secret crush on her and thinks she's perfect, and a great big heaping of deus ex to tie up the plot.  It's as cliched as farm-boy prince levels up, slays badguy and wins heart of scantily clad beauty.

Yeah, Obsidian Butterfly is the one I just finished.  I started the next audio book and it was a different (and VERY bad) reader which was kind of the clincher killing it for me.

Well, that's a LONG LONG WAY from saying that Martin's prose straight up sucks, which is what you seemed to be saying to me. It's not to your taste, well, different strokes. Saying it's "terrible, tedious, simplistic writing" is pretty saying it's utter shite, and well, it's not. I don't put him amongst the greatest wordsmiths of all time, but it is hardly the utter crap you make it out to be. His prose reads at a good pace. My biggest problems with it seem to be his fascination with describing the meals people eat and the clothes they wear, but those tend to be over quick and I can move on to the more interesting stuff. Compared to the last book I read (The Windup Girl) which had more intricate prose but read REALLY SLOW, Martin's a breath of fresh air. Windup Girl was a really good book but it took a lot more mental chewing and I almost gave up a few times because I just wasn't sure that the author was taking me to a place I gave a shit about. He did, but it was a close run thing.

If Martin's prose is so goddamn bad to you, what is it you consider really fantastic prose that you are trying to compare fantasy genre stuff to?

Seriously.  My ex-wife loved those books but stopped with Obsidian Butterfly because it was just all about dirty sex (I believe there's even some hentai thrown in for good measure).  The author is actually a trip to talk to and discuss her writing thought processes and how she develops characters, but honestly the books themselves are more like pr0n now.

Urban Fantasy: the women's gateway drug to tentacle rape?
 :ye_gods:

What's the point? We've established that we have different tastes. I already said that I was probably being elitist and a snob in my first post in this thread. If you want me to list some writers I like so that you can call me pretentious or argue about our tastes then tough, I'm not interested.

If we know what your tastes are we may be able to suggest to you some fantasy you might actually like.

Exactly - I don't think anyone wants to tear you apart Apoc, it's more curiosity as to what it is you are looking for.

I've read books by authors that make me stop and reread every other paragraph to fully comprehend it, and then make me pause again to think it through. After a chapter or so I feel like I may have exercised my mind, but I don't typically feel entertained. I would say that William Gibson is about as "hard" a reading as I am looking for.

I'm actually quite proud of the fact that I could only get ten pages in to Gravity's Rainbow.


On another topic from the thread - Anita Blake. I made it about as far as each of you did, giving up when it reached the point of entire book covering basically a 24 hour orgy. Quite a divergence from the gritty, macabre crime drama of the first few books.

It annoys me, because I liked the first couple books quite a lot, but any attempts I've made to find other authors in the genre have been met by what could be best described as "utter drek".

I think I made it a couple books further than that.  It wasn't so much the orgies or dropping of plot as much as the bizarre sex/fetish/hangups she got into.  For instance, the vaguely bisexual vampires switched to straight because Anita was that good or she was jealous or something... and some of the dominant/submissive wank that got worked in was out there.  Or the fact that literally every time Anita was captured someone tried to rape her, at which point she overpowered them and escaped... or later I think she ended up raping some submissive boytoy or something? 

Basically, it was the female version of the Piers Anthony descent into the darker and darker reaches of the author's personal sex hangups and fetishes.


On the JC Urban Fantasy scale, you sound like you want a good #4.  Harry Connolly Child of Fire, Charlie Huston "Joe Pit" books, Mike Carey "Felix Castor", Sandman Slim.  All "darker" in tone, more noirish. 

- Just recently found Connolly, and I really liked it.  Modern world, magic is secret.  Magic is actually Lovecraftian, so the good guys are callous assholes who are trying to stop people from accidentally calling an eldritch horror.  The bad guys are usually pretty sympathetic....  trying to use magic for a good purpose and not realizing what they've done.

- Joe Pitt is very noir vampire story, with an asshole protag whom life shits on.

- Felix Castor is basically the comic book John Constantine with the serial numbers filed off.  Carey is a comic book guy, who wrote the Hellblazer comic for a while, so it's a really good Constantine knock off.

- Sandman Slim is a darkish action book.  Read the first, ignore any followups.

Its tough to say what I'm really looking for. Dresden with a little more sex? (I'm on like book eight, and he's been pining for the same woman for the entire series)

Dan Simmons meets Urban Fantasy?

The Connelly books are pretty good, actually. They were a nice change of pace.

Mr. Cee usually makes pretty good recommendations imo.

This. I'm actually curious what apocrypha considers good writing that he rags down genre writers so badly. If I just wanted to call him a crotchpheasant, I would have done that in the first post I made. apocrypha, you brought up the discussion, you claimed the writers were so bad. If so, who is SO GOOD? Not knowing what you are comparing it to doesn't help the discussion.

You also started off the discussion with the idea that people who write or like genre fiction need to somehow justify it to people who think it's drek. That's a bad starting point. I think most of Dickens is drek, and yet literate types would clutch the pearls to hear me say that.

Sorry Apoc if I'm only quoting this phrase among the other replies related to your posts.

Topic got an interesting turn, maybe strayed a bit from my original dilemma (wow :P) : as you can see, most of us who wrote in this thread are actually insiders. Read or tried to read fantasy and got a positive or negative opinon about it.

I was more interested in the outsiders, with average interest toward reading in general, which refuse *any* fantasy or science-fiction media in general because they cannot connect it to reality, and see if there were some psychological meanings behind it.

Here's something you may find interesting:

"Investigating imagination: Research shows we all experience fantasy differently, which determines how much we enjoy it" (published on Nov. 8th 2011)

http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/nov11/fantasy110811.html

Alright, a quick run down my bookshelf of the last couple of years, most recently read first, kind of:
Tim Winton
China Mieville
Peter Carey
Salman Rushdie
John Steinbeck
Jorge Luis Borges
Franz Kafka
Hermann Hesse
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bret Easton Ellis (bit of a love/hate thing there though)
Will Self (same again)
Irvine Welsh (and again! All those last three I love their writing, hate their stories & characters)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bram Stoker
Mary Shelley (and P.B. but poetry is a different beast that I read in dribs & drabs occasionally, never in large chunks like a whole book)
George Orwell
Hemmingway (although he infuriates me)
Hunter S. Thompson

That's the kind of general gist. I tend to read 2 book at a time, often with more more lightweight stuff thrown in - Iain M. Banks, Pratchett, other trashy SF - what I think of as brain candy floss - for when I'm too drunk to read a proper book or only have 10 mins spare, etc.


I'm not really sure how much that applies to me - I regularly get heavily emotionally invested in a story (in any media) but also have a visually rich internal landscape and am perfectly capable of daydreaming far too much! But yes, an interesting read, would have been nice to have more detail on the research, for all we know from that article he could have interviewed 10 people.


No, I don't believe people need to justify their choices in what they read/watch/etc, that's what taste is all about. If someone likes J.K.Rowling then that's fine with me, but I'm not ever going to say that I think she's a good writer. I agree about Dickens, I've never been a fan. I love they way he makes a connection with real people but I don't like his writing, I find it one-dimensional.

In fact that's a key thing for me with writing - I need layers, complexities, things I don't understand at first (or ever sometimes!), a feeling that the words are a window onto a busier world than they are able to convey. The use of the medium is also crucial for me - you used the term wordsmith earlier, and that's what works for me. Writers who are masters at turning words into more than the sum of their parts, not just using them as a simple tool to describe things. George RR Martin is a very good example (IMO) of this limitation. His writing is entirely one-dimensional. He describes scenes and events and that's about it. There are no layers, what you see is what you get. There's no poetry to his prose! He's heard of alliteration and metaphor and he tries them out sometimes but never in any way that would surprise you if you read it in a high school homework assignment.

If you don't like my views on writing then, well, fair enough. I know what I like, I've never read any fantasy (talking specifically about the genre here, there's incredibly strong elements of fantasy in a generic sense in almost all of the writing I do like) that came close to hitting the notes I like. If it helps then simply append the words "In my view" to the front of every one of my posts.

I disagree with this so completely I don't even know where to start.

Your list of writers is about half what I would put on my list of "non-genre" writers. But this:


Wow, so much wrong with that one line. The bolded part is what really gets on my tits. You have essentially started with the wrong attitude. You consider sci-fi or at least the sci-fi you mention as not a "proper book." As a writer of "not proper books," you might as well have come and pissed in my bowl of Cheerios. It's like you are starting from the point of "genre fiction cannot be proper literature" and proceeded into beret territory after that. Why do you not consider them proper books?

I'm sure Hunter S. Thompson would get a right kick out of you including him on that list, BTW, as would Kafka. The fact that both Stoker and Shelley are essentially fantasy genre fiction that just happen to be old enough for literate types to point to as proper books is also funny.


I think you are incorrect about the writing quality of fantasy, though most of the genre probably would fall into the "unoriginal hack" category. If you don't see the poetry or alliteration or wordsmithing of Tolkien, you are not looking hard enough. The man created entire languages, FFS. Though a lot of the work is very dry, that was an intentional stylistic choice. Again, I think Martin is an adequate writer, not on the level of a Kafka but certainly not trash.

I've never understood why metaphors seem to be so important to some people, but I guess they're just reading books with a very different viewpoint from mine; I'm just in it for the story, and my expectations of a book is that the language shouldn't get in the way of said book.

I guess it's telling that I didn't trigger on f.ex Eddings' or Goodkind's language, but in Eddings' case the incessant humour, and in Goodkind's case the bipolar-ness of the main chick. vOv

Edit: In fact, I'm not sure I'd recognize metaphors unless I were specifically looking for them, simply because I just don't spend time thinking about it.

Coming from a background where I had to read and listen to a ton of analysis and criticism of literature, I can say that a lot of the metaphors being "found" in analysis are the product of the reader looking for a "why did the author write this?" reason that is deeper than "because he liked the sound of it".

Yeah I didn't think you were really interested in what I had to say Haemish, it was pretty obvious you were just looking for an opening to get personally butt hurt about my tastes.

Have at it, I don't feel like there's anything to be gained from further participation in this discussion from me.

I like your tastes. One m in Hemingway though. Winton, Steinbeck, etc... You're naming artists who string words together like no-one else.

George RR Martin uses words as a blunt instrument to tell a wonderfully epic story. He'll use what he thinks sounds cool like "The morning air was dark with the smoke of burning gods", but he's no Annie Proulx. He's also inconsistent in the way his characters speak. They mix an old style English with Americanisms, which is jarring like a US accent in a fantasy film.

But it's far from shit. He builds a fantastic world and you absolutely don't know where he's going with it. If I can see what the author is trying to do to me, I put the book down in disgust, like Markus Zusak's The Book Thief or Nicholas Evans' The Horse Whisperer. And it's not painful to read like Dan Brown or Matthew Reilly. It's enjoyable.

Based on your second sentence, I don't think it's my posterior that's smarting. And I'm not talking about your tastes in reading, because as I said, half your list would be on my list of some of my favorite writers ever, especially Thompson and Kafka.

No, my problem is that you are essentially confirming what Lucas started the discussion about - why do some people refuse to read fantasy books? Which in your case is because you apparently dismiss it as trash that isn't a proper book. The specific case you mentioned was George Martin's Game of Thrones, dismissing him as an untalented, poor writer because he is not the wordsmith of a Thompson or Kafka. I would actually agree with you that he's not nearly the writer Kafka is - only I don't think that means he's trash. If you don't find him entertaining, well, that's a matter of taste. Calling him a poor writer and lumping him in with hack writers like say a Piers Anthony or Terry Brooks, I think is a mistake and given your stated reasons, a little snooty.

In other words, you come off sounding really pretentious when you say things like fantasy or scifi lit are not proper books. If you don't feel there's anything further to discuss, there probably isn't.

I would posit that if you're not reading Kafka in German the translator deserves at least an equal share of credit.

So, would I be terribly off base if I assume that the people who seem to like scifi/fantasy are concentrating mostly on the story and characters themselves, whereas those who look down upon those genres are looking more at how said story/character is presented?

I'm assuming that's being a bit simplistic, but that's a bit of the gist I'm getting.

Lately, I've spent a lot of time learning Jungian psychology. I'm sure most people here have taken MBTI tests? It's based on the same theories.

Anyhow, there are different dichotomies in it's system.. How people percieve (down to earth/hands on Sensing types vs big picture/imaginative Intuitive types), how people make judgements (rational/pragmatic thinkers vs gut feeling and value oriented judgements). Not to mention how even those branch off into different styles. There's introverted sensing, which is more detail oriented, and extroverted sensing which is less on the details and more utilitarian and action oriented. Introverted intuition is just weird.. not sure how to explain. Extroverted Intuition is very wholistic, puts a lot of small pieces and forms a whole, and invents new perspectives on things. A lot of "brainstormer" career consultants would be extroverted intuitives a lot of the time. Same goes for inventors, who can look at a problem, and invent a solution from something seemingly unrelated. Like a Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

That all said, what I found is that a lot of people who were extroverted sensors, especially young ones who probably haven't had time to think on their other faculties, hated fantasy stuff. I didn't take a poll or anything, but it came up often. They were all into sports, clubbing, working with tools, shit like that. Their interests were tied to the "moment", rather than going deeply into stuff. They also liked more realistic movies. A lot didn't even have the patience to read much. I'm not knocking it though. I think I'm borderline with these people. After my teen years, I changed for various reasons (you're not completely destined to be "one type" or anything.. It's just a matter of preferences or strengths).

So that's my 2c.

edit: Oh, and as for thinking it's just people "trying to look cool". I don't think it's that simple. My dad's an old fart who doesn't like fantasy, but the last thing on his mind is trying to look cool. He just has a more down to earth mindset.

And like I said, I used to be the same way. Maybe I did too many drugs.. "unlocked the intuitive" achievement.  :why_so_serious: I remember I used to be a lot more "fun" in the traditional sense. I was always out doing something. And when it came time to sit around and geek out, I wasn't trying to be cool. I just got bored easily. I remember being a dick once and turning off someone ELSE's television, when they were watching Star Trek. But it wasn't about being cool. I was probably pissed off that we weren't doing anything.

Fast Forward 10 years and I've fucking seen all of the Trek seasons back to back. Go figure.

Lately, I've been looking in the mirror.

So you prefer horror to sci-fi/fantasy then?

oh that was cruel.  fair, but cruel.

Because the people who like them are socialally inept very often and as social animals human beings don't like to be associated with those people.

Same goes for authors like apoc likes to read. Talk about them in some groups and people start glazing over. However those people often make more money and the like so there is more cultural capital to invest in, giving wider audience appeal.

Also there are works of fantasy that are very umm, 'fine' in their craft. Umberto Eco wrote fantasy for the last half of Baudilino (spelling). There is just a difference between fantasy writing and fantasy authors.

Also, most writing in every genre, including lit fiction, is fucking awful.

Funny that. I've grown to hate people and socializing in general as I get older, and coincidentially, my knowledge of fantasy works has improved.

You would.  Because, you know, Hemmingway and his weird fucking style which apparently doesn't allow syntactic sugar.  Let's not forget the Russians either: nobody murders the pace of a story like a Russian.

That's because there's nothing to do in Russia except drink or bitch.  (I have this on good authority from one of my professors from Russia!)

Heh, my favourite author is Dostoevskij  :awesome_for_real:  (and "White Nights" is probably the short story I love the most) but yeah, tough fella :P.If you think about it, you could even categorize some of Dostoevskij works as "fantasy" ("The Idiot", for example), because of the dreamy atmospheres, extreme characters, situations, and inner psychological troubles.

"Good Lord, only a moment of bliss? Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of a man's life?"

I've never finished any Dostoevsky stuff, except Notes From Underground. Which is all the Dostoevsky I probably need (I liked it, don't get me wrong).

My favorite fantasy author is Robert Howard, but he would probably be one of those that didn't consider himself one. He started Conan because he wanted to write historical fiction - except he was fascinated with all ancient cultures, and decided to place them all in one basket, in order to commentate on civilization as a whole. He ended up created a neat fantasy world because of it.

LOL, well, you read what's arguably his toughest piece of work, I'm not surprised  :grin: . With that story, I think he voluntarily wants the reader to feel hate and repulsion for the protagonist, the locations and the other secondary character that populate the pages. It just oozes with pessimism, although, on the other hand, "Notes from Underground" is one of the most intense pieces of literature I've ever read.

I'd be interested to know if you've tried any of Stephen Donaldson's books (particularly but not limited to Covenant), because that describes his writing to a T.

As long as you like Rape.

Btw apoc, china mieville is pretty universally regarded as an author of fantasy. But who is now being 'accepted' by the literary snobs.

Basically you are a cliche snob, in both word and interests.

I'm told the lev Grossman's recent one is great ( the magician king (http://cityoftongues.com/2011/10/18/lev-grossmans-the-magician-king/) a sequel to the magicians), As is fowlers 'what I didn't see (http://www.amazon.com/What-I-Didnt-See-Stories/dp/1931520682)' collection. There is a lot of sf out there that goes far beyond the crap you so glibly dismiss, but I expect you will never enjoy it unless it starts to gain some snob cred first?

I can't seem to find the stats, but I've seen that women read the vast majority of fiction out there while men read little fiction and stick mostly to non-fiction and news. So if you're a guy and read any fiction beyond great classics already you're putting yourself into a minority and will get cock eyed looks. As others have mentioned, add in the basement dweller factor, and poor quality of the genre, and you're really opening up your tastes to question.

Here's a study I think you may be referring to.
http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/workpap/WP06%20-%20Tepper.pdf

But you're not really opening up your tastes to question unless you are hopelessly addicted to the whims of your peers.  Given that most people spend so god damn much time watching TV, coupled with the fact that there is absolutely shit on TV 99% of the time, the type of book I read doesn't even rate.