The Artificial Fantasy Trilogy Since 1977 ( why most recent Sword & Sorcery is bloated and artless) 

I read Corum last year and loved it. Maybe even more than the Elric Saga.

Thanks Barrie, more on Fantasy to come, glad to have you on board!

I recently read the Belgariad earlier this year and thought it was a brilliant time. It’s genuinely one of the funniest and most uplifting fantasy series I’ve ever read.

Exactly. I keep explaining to young readers that the books they're growing dissatisfied with are big and in endless series for commercial not artistic reasons.

Exactly, he's Fantasy in a broader sense. His models are more Peake, M John Harrison and Kafka I'd say. That's my main issue with him as a writer, he's good, but you can see his influences a mile off. I have been thinking of revisiting his work, though, as it's been years since I've read any...

​@@outlawbookselleroriginal His influences are obvious, yes. But as a stylist, he's a very talented fella, and so perhaps surpasses his own heroes as a writer...

@@spencerburke I'll have to disagree with you there- Mieville has nothing like Harrison's breadth or subtlety and cannot match him tonally. The critical consensus is against your view, but then subjectivity is truth and we all have our own faves.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Fair enough. I haven't read so much Harrison, so I cannot really compare. But I would say that China is a far better stylist than the hugely influential Lovecraft, for example.

@@spencerburke Agreed.

Yes, Vance was master of the form! Wheel of Time is probably THE cardinal example of the overblown Fantasy sequence, almost archetypal!

@@Apotheosis_Jim I'm reading The Dragon Reborn right now. I started the series years ago, but stopped after the first book. It just didn't resonate with me. But after seeing the series (which they made a valiant effort at, but ultimately flubbed) I took it up again. I think it's aimed more at a teen/young adult audience, which is why the writing is sort of meh. What bugs me about it is how so much of the story line grows simply from Rand and the others being pigheaded and selfish. Had they decided "yeah, we should work together for the good of everyone" it could be finished in one or two books. Instead we get "Rand, I'm pretty sure you're this legendary dude reborn, and you and your buddies need to work with us to save the world." "No, I don't want to do that!" (runs off, the rest give chase) Just once I'd like to see a young protagonist accept responsibility.

A video on my fave Sword & Sorcery will come, but in the meantime, keep an eye on my unfolding '100 Must Read Fantasy Novels' series and my book of the same name. Please subscribe if you haven't already! Thanks for yr kind comments.

Thanks. What you'll find on this channel that differs to others is the historical/contextual/ professional publishing-bookselling angles that others don't cover- this is due to my work background in bookselling and as a writer. Stick with me and watch more, plenty here!

I think if you stick with the stuff I cite, you'll enjoy it. For the SF reader, it's not really very necessary to read S&S published after the late 70s as more or less all of it is comfort reading rather than discomfort reading -which to me is what SF is.

​@@outlawbookselleroriginalI'd to point out that what made Robert E. Howard's Conan truly sword and sorcery is that it was a union of historical drama, mythology, Lovecraft horror, and at time swashbuckling and western adventure. Conan was also used to explore themes such as Barbarian life vs civilization, the hypocrisy of civilization and how civilizations can collapse inwards due to decadence. Conan had brawn and brains, was a natural born leader and can speak many languages, a thing he picked up during his travels. Later writers only saw Conan fighting monsters and saving women and copied those instead of digging deeper into the world building and the themes and characteristics of Conan.

@@markmunroe-hz8rf Well yes. I've read all the original Conan material- started on it back in the 70s. The other writers? Apart from Poul Anderson, I never bothered, no need...

@@outlawbookselleroriginal what's your take on Conan?

Reread 'Fellowship' this year. I enjoy Tolkien more as I age, but still find him pedestrian at times, though I admire the breadth of conception.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Maybe if you had read him when the books first came out (and before there were any imitators) it would appear much more original to you, and you would find him far less less pedestrian.

@@captainnolan5062 -You have a fair point: I think we're all affected by personal context. Having said that, I still enjoy Peake, Dunsany, Eddison and Cabel. I think for me it's Tolkien's prose style - he's very slight on descriptive writing, I find, but he is growing on me as I age.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal That is an interesting comment, because I have heard from many of 'today's' readers that Tolkien does too much descriptive writing for them (in fact I love his descriptive passages). Perhaps today's readers are too conditioned by videos, video games and iPhones, and they demand action at the expense of description. I will take a look at Gormenghast again and compare the descriptive writing. I am glad that Tolkien is growing on you. I don't yet know much about you, having only watched two videos and looked at your biography on Amazon, but your self-described sobriquet "Outlaw" leads me to believe that, perhaps in part, you rebel against The Lord of the Rings because it is so popular (I could be wrong). By the way, thanks for pointing out "The Compleat Traveller in Black." I just ordered it on Amazon (it is one that has escaped me all these years), as well as the Penguin Beowulf in prose.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Tolkien certainly grew on me as I aged. Even though I've owned multiple editions of the trilogy, it took years to get through Fellowship. My introduction to Fantasy was through Elric of Melnibone, then the rest of the Champion Eternal books. Those books really captured my imagination when I first read them in the early 80's. I found Tolkien to be a slog, though when I finally "got" Tolkien some years back, I wondered why I found his work to be a slog. Ultimately I think it''s because my favorite fantasy books from guys like Moorcock, Vance, Leiber, Zelazny, were shorter and they understood that world building is only dressing for the stage the main characters inhabit. Tolkien was as interested in the world building as the story. Then we had younger readers who really loved that detailed world building and decided to take it to the nth degree and that's how we ended up with Jordan and Sanderson and 10 volume series full of unneeded bloat. I just don't have time to read that many doorstopper's. Re-reading Moorcock now, and find his work still enthralls me even though I'm far more conscious of the flaws in some of it.

For me it's the authors I cite in my Top 10 Sword & Sorcery video and very few others!

@@outlawbookselleroriginal I should have said that Lloyd Alexander and John Christopher came before Tolkien, which came from the library/school library. I don't like to miss those out as they were great books. I also encountered Robert E. Howard quite early thanks to some Sphere Conan paperbacks at a car boot sale, and remember having a friend at school who also read Howard. I didn't read Edgar Rice Burroughs until I was eighteen, after reading Moorcock's Warrior of Mars, then Clark Ashton Smith/Lovecraft/Leiber and all the other weird tales authors.

Prior to the Enlightenment and the rise of scientific method in the Age of Reason, there was rarely any differentiation between Realism and Romance as people still believed in the supernatural as something real- first came story, then Fantasy and beside some rare exceptions like 'The Satyricon', the Modern Novel didn't begin to emerge until the Picaresque came out of Spain and started to bring some Realism in- then Cervantes wrote 'Don Quixote' and satirised the 'nerdy fantasy fans' of his day who obsessed over Arthurian and Chivalric Romances. So before this, a vast number of Fictions were arguably Fantasy. The difference with Fantasy after the Industrial Revolution is that it is very firmly nostalgic and deals in anachronism rather than the progess of technology, so Fantasy owes less to Realism than SF.

There is a video about 'Magician' on the channel, but 'Fairie Tale' has always been the Feist no-one seems to know: when it came out in the UK, I hosted Feist for an event in a bookshop. No-one ever seemed to care about it (but then it was a singleton, not part of a series, which seems to throw the average Fantasy fan). Garner I respect but have never enjoyed reading- he's clever, but I find his style awkward and the Card, as you say, is little-known too.

Yes, I've read Malazan, the first volume was included in my Fantasy book- though it would be nice to see more people enthusing about his best and most radical book, 'Revolvo', which is a step toward Burroughs and Cronenberg.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal I will have to read this! Thank you

Yes, I like Smith too. I can appreciate the aspects of Tolkien you cite- I'm more concerned with the size of his works, particularly LOTR and how it (inadvertently, I admit) influenced the slew of dross we've encountered since 1977- but this is the fault of publishers and writers willing to sacrifice aesthetics for commerce and readers willing to go along with them. You're clearly a serious student of the literary aspects of Tolkien. Kudos to you.

​@@outlawbookselleroriginal Yes, that book casts a long shadow, for better or worse. You're also clearly well-read, with a deep level of insight into the history of Sword & Sorcery as well as Scifi (which is an area where I still have a lot to learn, and have found your channel helpful in that). This video reminds me that I may have to go back and read some Moorcock again, as it's been a number of years since I picked up a collection of Elric stories. The ones I did read still stand out in my mind pretty vividly.

Wagner has been mentioned to me re this video and my Top 10 S&S video many times and I'm in agreement.

​@@outlawbookselleroriginalI would like to add that I'm working on a sword and sorcery tales mixed with elements of spaghetti westerns. I want to try my own variation of the genre.

Yep, delivered weekly to my door when I was a kid, 20p an issue. It took many years for the whole set to build up. Happy days.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Likewise, collected by my mum for me. Currently watching series 5 of Gomorrah.

@@huwprofitt8250 -How are you watching it, Huw? Is it Sky? I know it's been on Sky Arts Italia, so I much check for a bluray date as that's my usual gambit.

Well yes, and his influence upon S&S often goes unremarked as I'm sure you've noticed!

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Unfortunately yes, his influence on S&S does go unremarked, which is a shame.

The D&D thing was much, much smaller in the UK at that time and played very little part in stimulating the Fantasy boom over here- I used to talk to Fantasy readers daily in my job then and it was rarely mentioned. I know it was more effective in North America. As for singletons, you try and name some - they existed, but even then there weren't many- they were either not S&S or High Fantasy or they were such commercial failures the planned sequels never appeared. Series existed before 77, of course, but it was Brooks' Tolkien rips that reset the model for the proliferation of High Fantasy and the decline of S&S. As for Tolkien, I think people forget it was just his hobby and a playful extension of his philological work, which as you say leads to tons of dull exposition.....

Exactly. The ONLY way S&S could be refreshed now is to return to singletons -which publishers simply will not buy- and to invert everything. But M John Harrison, Moorcock and others did that decades ago. It's just comfort reading now for fans of formula.

Artistically, singletons, the dyptich or -at worst- the trilogy is the way to go. But this hasn't mattered in Fantasy since 1977, when it came to be about money rather than literary quality. This underlines the fundamental difference between the SF and Fantasy readerships- the former (until very recently) favoured singletons or closed series, since SF is built upon the new rather than the anachronistic. Fantasy - at least in the narrow sense of Sword & Sorcery/High Fantasy (these days conflated as 'Epic Fantasy' to avoid confusion with the marketplace-dominant Romantasy) - has strangely become the least imaginative genre due to the endless repetition of the same old tropes.

Interesting, for Moorcock, Howard and Lieber are in a different tradition to Tolkien and his imitators like Brooks. Nice to see Kurtz mentioned. The 80s series you mention were staples of my bookselling life in the 80s, happy memories.

With Eddings' "Mallorean" being the prime example of the genre eating itself, as it's essentially a rewrite of his own Belgariad.

You forgot the Chronicles of Prydain.

In the early 1990s, I wrote a fanzine article which was never published, as for practical reasons with production, the issue was abandoned. The article was entitled "The Death of SF" and in it, I argued that the genre had run out of steam, that there was little or no original work appearing and that there was a new professional slickness standard that on the surface, gave the appearance of literature where there was none. The vast majority of new SF writers appearing between 1990 and 2010 on both sides of the Atlantic had short careers in terms of professionally published books: many of them never caught on commercially and incoming readers, browbeaten as they are by generations of hype and canonisation of the likes of 'the Big Three' ensure that most new readers ended up reading what was old and a smattering of the current flavour of the month- just look at how long Banks, Hamilton and Reynolds have been established bestsellers in the UK, for example. Many of these 1990-2010 writers have never had their work reissued after initial publication in book form. Once first printings sold through, they were relegated to being out of print, print on demand and or ebooked. Foy is one of many who fell by the wayside in this sense. I think this says a lot about the readership, but also about the true state of the genre after the late 1980s, when evolution and revolution slowed to a crawl, in line with the decelleration o creativity in culture generally. This is the legacy and culture of Postmodernism.

Wow. Thank you for the detailed explanation. It sums it up very succinctly. I think also, as you've mentioned on numerous occasions, that readers must support their bookstores in order for writers to have better success.

Most of the classic S&S authors did it 'on the side' in magazines like 'Unknown' during the Golden Age, 'Weird Tales' prior to the Golden Age and through it, in 'Science Fantasy' in the UK (for Moorcock). I'm a Jungian too - and on this front you should def read 'Mythago Wood' by Holdstock. Yes, the series mentality dilutes everything down to stagnant flat ale in the end.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Mythago Wood, ok! I'll be sure to check It out. BTW, forgot to mention that my copy of LOTR was a single volume, with those bible-thin sheets of paper. I don't recall who published It, but I bought It around 1977 in London.

@@luiznogueira1579 Hardcover or paperback? If t was a hardcover, that sounds like one of the Unwin deluxe editions. All Uk editions were Unwin until around 1990

@@outlawbookselleroriginal It's a paperback, by Unwin like you said(just checked)

At the moment, I have no plans whatsoever to read any Genre Fantasy published recently, I'm afraid - it just holds no interest for me now, as I feel S&S/High Fantasy are totally played out, relying so much as they do on the multivolume formula, the same old tropes and symbols. Fantasy is total different to SF in its underlying philosophy- and increasingly so as time goes on- and as a genre form it simply reinvents rather than doing anything new, being bound to anachronism as it is. I know this may sound closed-minded, but one can't read everything and I feel there are far, far more interesting things going on in general fiction and SF- and even then they are struggling to innovate. Fantasy for me is very much an historical and contextual interest in terms of its relationship to SF in publishing- there will be more on the channel about this aspect, as Fantasy publishing, by being linked to SF publishing for reasons that are quite simply less and less valid as the years go by, has gone enormous harm to SF publishing. I am about to start work, however, on minor revisions to '100 Must Read Fantasy Novels', since I'm reclaiming the rights to the book and aiming to reissue it, redefining it as an historical overview of 20th Century Fantasy and adding much additional material about the genre's relationship to SF. Watch this space...

It's also that publishers think everyone wants 'value for money' - bloated repetition as opposed to sharp style.

Totally agree.

These are subgenres, of course, not distinct genres. I refer again to Clute and Grant. The point I'm making is that in the commercial world of Fantasy fiction -what most people think of when they see the label 'Fantasy', there is very little reader distinction, at least initially. I've seen and spoken to thousands of Fantasy readers of the last four decades and what is clear is that they mostly want the same old thing- overlong, repetitive, cliched material - with little knowledge of the early history of Fantasy as a popular form. And of course I'm regarded as enough of an authority to have had a book published on the genre by Bloomsbury, J K Rowling's publishers, so you're making a point of knowledge to the deeply initiated here. Regarding JRRT and S&S, even Tolkien has a massive picaresque element (that which is de rigeur and a marker of S&S) in the shape of Hobbits, so again the distinction is a minor one.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal It is interesting that in your video "Top 10 Classic Fantasy (Sword and Sorcery)", you begin by defining Swords and Sorcery as opposed to Epic Fantasy and you then exclude Tolkien from the video. In essence, you made my point for me in that video (i.e. that: Not only did Tolkien not invent Swords and Sorcery, he also did not write it. His novels are more in the Epic Fantasy subgenre (and not in the Heroic Fantasy / Sword and Sorcery subgenre) .

@@captainnolan5062 I think everyone knows that S&S and epic fantasy are different subgenres and Robert E Howard was one of the founders of the former and Tolkien the founder of the latter. It´s hardly a new idea.

@@hypatia4754 I wouldn't be so sure that "everyone knows."

What I'd say, Frank, is that working in the book trade for the last 38 years and keeping a close watch on this, there have been fewer and fewer Sword & Sorecery singletons published since the late 70s and after the early 90s, none except for ones by authors like Kay & McKillip - and interestingly these are writers whose careers go back to the 80s and before (Kay of course worked on extant Tolkien manuscripts in the 70s. Obviously, I'm speaking of the UK here and there are many novels of all kinds issued in the USA that do not get published over here (ever). In fact, I keep hoping for correspondents here to point some out, but so far I hear of none (though would love to!). Clearly, there are many singleton novels that get nominated for the WFA, but they are not Sword & Sorcery (or even High Fantasy - and as 'The Encyclopedia of Fantasy' points out, this is a virtually meaningless distinction). I must take a look at the Mythopoeic listings though, as it's been some time...thanks for your comments!

With Kay’s work as he moved on from the series his work transitioned from being fantasy, (with some history mixed in) to historical fiction (with some fantasy mixed in). Not a negative thing. It seems like he had to change genres to be able to publish what he wanted. Of course the success of his early work empowered him to make this move.

There's a video about CL Moore on the channel in which I show her books. If I put author names in text in descriptions, guess what happens: people don't watch the videos, just use the text as a list. Apologies. Any time you're struggling, post a question, I'll answer.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Thank you very much! It is always refreshing to go back and find the authors who made the trial of time, today it is an ocean of nothing-special

@@gendor5199 You're not wrong there!!!

People keep mentioning Wagner to me so I need to revisit- it's been a long time since rock and roll as they say.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal The short stories are usually recommended as the best starting point, my favourites are in the 3 story collection "Death Angel's Shadow" (available at sensible prices on Kindle).

I am of course aware of this and have been for decades. However, Clute & Grant, in 'The Encyclopedia of Fantasy' (THE world authority on the subject) state that the difference between the two is often negligible when the tropes and symbols are given full consideration. The fundamental difference is between Chivalric and Picaresque, to refer to the originating forms- and 'Don Quixote' conflated, deconstructed and revealed both for what they are centuries ago.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal When I reread the first page and a half of Don Quixote, what struck me was the passage that Quixote likes from Feliciano de Silva: " The reason for your unreasonable treatment of my reason so enfeebles my reason that I have reason to complain of your beauty." It so reminded me of Tolkien's passage from the beginning of the Lord of the Rings: "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve" that it can not be an accident. Both passages are of similar length and rhythm, both are intentionally confusing, and both are at the beginning of novels of a journey. Both journeys are about a gentleman (Don Quixote and Frodo Baggins [four syllables in each name]) accompanied by their man-servant (Sancho Panza and Samwise Gamgee [four syllables in each name]). I expect that Tolkien inserted this on purpose as an allusion to Cervantes novel. Your thoughts?

@@captainnolan5062 I'm sure Tolkien would have been familiar with Cervantes- it's such an important taproot text for anyone wanting to understand the evolution of modern fictional forms out of the cauldron of story- and a great read too!

Highly unlikely to read it if I'm honest Matthew, I've basically given up reading new Fantasy for the time being, but I'll take a look.

I can't say I have, though I have sold his work- the fact is that pretty much all S&S writers are influenced by Dumas, who obviously was the swordplay kind re 'The Three Mustekeers' and its sequels - 'The Encyclopedia of Fantasy' concurs with this view too. I very, very rarely read contemporary S&S as I find it does nothing for me - but if more of the current writers would take risks and write singletons to break and remake the mould, I'd get interested - however, I don't think there's a mass market publisher trading who would publish a singleton: there was one about 10 years ago - can't think of the author name- but it was someone better known writing one psuedonymously as an experiment. It clearly failed, as no other books appeared. I think this is the sole example this century in the UK of this. I'm much the same re SF series with exceptions like Gibson, Dave Hutchinson a few others. My approach if I do try Fantasy is to read volume one then quit, as the whole formula (1 - setup, 2- quest, 3-resolution) thing drives me mad with boredom! Expan on why you like Brust, be interested to hear more...

@@outlawbookselleroriginal The novels are very well written, quite funny at times, the hero is an antihero, a sort of magician mafioso in telepathic link with his small dragon that helps him out in his various capers. They are quite political at times and the back story of the world and characters is given out in each novel a little at a time. Brust has Hungarian ancestry and this is used in the novels as well. The novels are written out of sequence which adds to the mystery, too.

@@richardbrown8966 This all sounds promising- taking things out of internal chronology is one mark of a sophisticated writer...I shall get back to you...cheers!

Brust is heavily influenced by Dumas. In fact the Phoenix Guards (one of his best) is a straight up pastiche of The Three Musketeers set within the context of his Taltos series. I used to sell Brust as "The best fantasy writer you've never heard of." He's a fantastic writer in the vein of Roger Zelazny (and closer to his style than either of Zelanazny's more popular acolytes Neil Gaiman and George RR Martin) though he can also be a bit difficult to get into if you start in the wrong place. The big issue is that he sort of throws you in the deep end and its easy to get lost in all of the weird names he uses for things and the fact that he never explicitly comes out and says things other writers would consider very important (like the fact that the Dragaerans are basically elves though they always refer to themselves as humans). I'd recommend reading Jhereg first. I'd also add that he's hardly "contemporary". He started in the mid to late eighties and feels like he's working in a much earlier idiom.

@@joncarroll2040 "Phoenix Guards" sounds like good fun, thanks. Off to amazon to load up the TBR!

I can't argue with that!

I didn't mention him, no, though he did come to commercial success in that timeframe, but inasmuch as he was a Fantasy writer, his work was very much satire. Personally, I never liked his work-despite his cleverness- as I found his sense of humour rather adolescent at times and I think he and Adams (probably inadvertently) did much to damage any serious reputation SFF might have had in the 80s and beyond.

Many thanks for joining!

Yes, it's a shame that Fantasy in the popular imagination is synonymous with S&S and its close relative High Fantasy - as a genre, it's broader than SF and Realism, I'd say.

In that case, list some titles and authors of the books you cite- can't tell where you are, maybe there are some in the USA, maybe not. There are singleton Fantasies in the broad sense of the word, but in terms of Sword & Sorcery, I reckon you're looking only at first volumes that will be succeeded by second volumes soon.

Thanks. It's impossible the understand why commercial Fantasy has been in such a poor state of ever-declining imagination and pure formula without this knowledge...it wasn't always that way!

What I'd say about the contemporary authors you cite as authors of singletons: First of all, I'm primarily speaking here about how Tolkien's success led to publishers requesting copyist high fantasy trilogies which then turned into endless sagas a la Brooks (and say Sanderson as an example from recent years). I'd also say that of the authors you cite, most of these are not S&W or High Fantasy (and the difference really between these sub-subgenres is minimal), but are writing other types of fantasy - also, almost all of them have primarily written series -Nix, Novik, Catling (despite a long career in avant-garde performance art and writing). Moreno-Garcia does seem to be a true exception. I would say that Fantasy has diversified enormously in the last few years, but that the predominant model is series based and this is down to the fact that publishers want series. These books are mostly written as series for commercial and nor aesthetic reasons. If you look at many- if not most - of the acclaimed non-S&S fantasies in the period before 1977, the vast majority of them are singletons. It's clear that the vast majority of Fantasy writers only get to write singletons if their publishers get a successful series out of them first. And this has spread increasingly into SF, with generally disastrous consequences for SF as a vital, artistic, innovative form, which it needs to be to be good SF. Fantasy, relying more on anachronism and tradition because of its totally different philosophical base doesn't need to be as innovative as SF. SF is Modern, Fantasy is archaic. My real challenge to the reader here is to find recent S&S/High Fantasy writers who have produced singletons in these areas and managed to get the m published commercially. This basically doesn't happen. To be fair, it hardly ever did- but the likes of Anderson, Vance at al did this, or were published as serials in genre magazines. DAW of course -despite the charm and iconography of the books themselves- generally produced formulaic books in both SF & Fantasy since DAW himself was a Golden Age relic. Ultimately, what I'm saying is that one of the fundamental artistic problems with Fantasy is its series obsession, which has long been publisher driven and since 1977, increasingly so. Very pleased to hear you enjoyed my books, great to hear that. The Horror one will probably never happen, I'm afraid. Thanks for your thoughtful comments and observations!

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Good points. I think it's perhaps even more notable that Silvia Moreno-Garcia has managed to genre hop after each book. I recently saw her shelved in the mainstream section, including her vampire book. Would you make a video about the perhaps even more bleak state of short fiction from major publishers? The Year's Best anthologies have mostly disappeared from Waterstones and short SFF that is considered for publicly voted awards is dominated by online sites that get shared on social media and some think that favors increasingly frivolous short stories. I'm afraid a lot of worthy short fiction will not get collected into book form. Small Beer Press is a small press but they're one of the few SFF publishers with a serious commitment to short fiction.

Well, I don;t think it has any novum in it that would tip it into SF, but I'd like to hear more about that!

@@outlawbookselleroriginal something about the idea of gondor and mordor being on a different planet such as venus or Mount doom being the sun and sauron the interplanetary tyrant.

@@jonswift6173 -Well, if he'd gone that way, yes, that would have tipped it over...but given his deep love of the Nordic and Old English, that clearly won out

LotR was never intended as a science fiction novel. Perhaps you're thinking of the agreement Tolkien and Lewis made that one of them would write a time travel story and the other space travel? This resulted in Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet and its two sequels, while Tolkien started but abandoned a time travel story, The Lost Road (from which some ideas were later re-used as the also-abandoned The Notion Club Papers).

@@stevenklinden ah yes... Possibly. I just remember hearing about it on the radio ages ago. I was always struck by the idea of mordor as having a different planetary feel with its barrenness and rocks.

Yes, Carri On was played by Charles Hawtrey, I recall, her mother depicted as a religious fanatic by Kenneth Williams.... :-)

I'll take a look. thanks!

Re LOTR: Yes, but that is a device to indicate 'book' as in the Biblical sense, as in scrolls or individual parts. LOTR was conceived and written as a single book, but was produced as a three volume novel due to the problems with (1) marketing such a large novel and (2) the unreliability of binding techniques at that time. And yep, short Heroic is more enjoyable, agreed.

SF & Fantasy are indeed very distinct as I detail in my video series 'The Elements of Science Fiction' -check it out.

I think the 'market' aspect can be overstressed, but it plays a big part in perception and limits. I've said elsewhere that Horror is NOT a genre perse, but a marketing category - wach my videos on this in the Genre Theory strand, but you have a sophisticated understanding of all this, no doubt. The next video in the series will take it further!

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Thanks, I know I missed one of my points, but it had been such a long roll that there was no going back and sifting till I found it. Although one of the points *was* that genre is more about marketing, or assigned after the fact. Glad it made sense without the missing bits.

@@waltera13 -I don't think that 'genre is more about marketing', actually, though it's played a huge part in what people think about genre, as the way it's used as a mere label doesn't actually go any way toward defining genre, just hinting at possible definitions and (importantly) boundaries. As for 'assigned after the fact', well yes, once the work is completed, then people apply a label to it, though of course the creator will usually have a firm idea of what the genre of a work is. But for me genre in fiction is about looking at what fiction is, how it has evolved and in doing so, how it has reflected the narrative of civilisation - so you could say broadly that Fantasy is the past (anachronistic), Realism is the consensus and SF is the acceptance of changes that might occur in our post-Enlightenment project. I think the strength of this tripartite view of fiction genres is that they are connected but do not have fuzzy edges- though when we look at Science Fantasy as typical of the argument 'the exception that proves the rule' it'll be pretty interesting. Thanks as always for your thought-provoking comments!

@@outlawbookselleroriginal No worries. This medium is 'less than ideal' for exchanging theses, and I'm pontificating on your nickel anyway. Thanks for the great vids and hey, just found some John Crowley today" the Deep" - any words?

@@waltera13 -You pontificate away, no problem. Crowley has been a mixed experience for me and I'm planning to re-read some. I loved his novel 'Beasts', but I found 'The Deep' and 'Engine Summer' difficult. He's quite verbose and indirect, but I think the fact that I owned his works in some of the most hideous paperback editions you've ever seen didn't help. I think bad experiences with his writing were me, not him.

Tolkien has always been overrated- Moorcock and Leiber agreed with this, though I have softened towards his work in the last couple of years. Again, I'm more interested in the phenomenon of JRRT than the actual work, which is atypical of Sword & Sorcery and has done much indirectly through copyists to destroy the original hard and fast school.

Yeah, I sell them all the time in work. The trilogy was enough for me, but he's more than a cut above most of what's out there in S&S land these days...

Well, you have to be VERY selective with Fantasy and basically stick to stuff published before 1977 (other than authors working before that year who continued, like Moorcock) - as you're finding. Overall, the more 'dread influence' is the endless sagas - as I say in my video on The Artifical Fantasy Trilogy since 1977, these are constructed purely for commercial reasons this way, which is why you never see Sword & Sorcery singletons anymore after 77. This damage is long done, however. At the moment, though, the low-quality prose and lack of imagination shown by female authors moving from YA into Fantasy is having a swift and devastating effect not only on Fantasy but on SF publishing - the whole industry is being dragged down into the mush. It's heartbreaking to see and I see it daily. Unfortunately, SF publishing has done itself no favours by excessively focusing on identity politics (as if gender and race issues were anything new in SF when they started to be explored extensively and intelligently in the 1960s) and on downgrading literary SF in favour of formulaic space opera. A video on all this will come.

I read Kay's 'Sailing to Sarantium' book and hated it. Then I read his 'Tigana', only because it was a gift, and loved it. So he must be all over the place.

To a degree, yes, but not so much over Heroic Fantasy - Lewis, like fellow Inkling Tolkien, was an outsider in the world of genre publishing, not coming from the magazine culture of Howard et al. Instead, he came more directly -at least in theory, since Narnia references 'The Snow Queen' - from an older European tradition, but interestingly twisted away from his Nordic- flavoured predecessors like WIlliam Morri because of his heavy Christian allegory in Narnia, which sits uncomfortably in the Sword & Sorcery tradition.

Obviously. But far less satisfying aesthetically. This is why SF - and often general fiction - actually have greater imaginative sweep at times than Fantasy. My videos in the 'Elements of SF' delve into this, the idea of conceptual breakthrough at the climax of SF singletons being key to the importance of SF. The amount of series SF published now- with similarly diminishing returns as that supplied by unending Fantasy sequences - is purely down to the Fantasy model since 77: it's easier and panders commercially to the fundamentally unimaginative reader.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal Perhaps I will try my hand at writing a singleton Fantasy book (at least the fact that it is a singleton would be a novelty these days). I will check out your 'Elements of SF' video. I went ahead and subscribed to your channel. What themes in Fantasy do you wish were explored more?

@@captainnolan5062 I think the problem now would actually be getting it published. There was one a few years back, written by a writer established in another genre using a pseudonym, but it was never revealed who this was (and I can't for the life of me recall the book title). It was partially an experiment, which had it been commercially successful, might have spawned sequels. But now, authors are contracted for trilogies but of course even if volume one sells, then it's unclear until second volume sales are in (or not) if it's been successful except in runaway sales cases (I know an SF writer whose successive trilogy volumes underperformed against the predecessors, which led to the end of his deal). The 'three strikes and you're out' clause is now depressingly common in all areas of fiction. Themes? I'll admit I don't think about it much, as I'm more SF oriented and I do feel that all of the arts are in crisis re fresh ideas. An upcoming video 'Hauntology & SF' will cover this next month.

@@outlawbookselleroriginal I will stay tuned (I signed up for notifications) for next month's video 'Hauntology & SF'. These days, the book could be self published if no publishing house is interested, so I am not worried about that. I am more interested in what kind of book you would want to read (what kind of a 'fresh' take on the genre you would like to see).

Well that's exactly what I mean by 'artificial'. The popularity of such things only shows the lack of imagination in the readers who are theoretically seeking imaginative writing-when what they really want is soap opera familiarity!