Fantasy over time

I recently reread the original Icewind Dale trilogy by R. A. Salvatore published in the early 90s. I've also been rereading the Lord of the Rings for the first time in a few years, and I'm about 25% or so into Return of the King as we speak. Because my wife is out of town helping my injured son who broke his ankle in a bad landing from a jump, I will probably have little to do in the evenings and on weekends other than read, so I expect to make good progress. I've also got the follow-up prequel to the Icewind Dale trilogy queued up; the Driz'zt origin story, and I've got Raymond Feist's Riftwar Saga—in its original edited form, not the "author's cut" that's been in print since. 

I've also recently reread a collection of Robert E. Howard stories, and I have more to go, some Black Library stuff from the old Warhammer world published a number of years ago, some more Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stuff to read, some Thieves World stuff, etc. And not that long ago, I reread The Belgariad five book series again for the first time in many years. While I'd often mocked that, the truth is that I've also always liked it, and rereading it again, I realized that my mocking of it as extruded fantasy product was probably unfair, and as much driven by the zeitgeist about that series over time and the unlikeable and stupid statements made by the author about fantasy fans before his death. He actually doesn't seem like a very nice guy. And finally, I've also recently reread the original Dragonlance books—although I was doing those as an audiobook while traveling, and I peetered out before getting all the way through the third book. Part of those were better than I expected them to be after all of this time, and parts of them... were not. Terry Brooks is the most iconic author of this era that I never had much interest in, after failing several times to reread the first Sword of Shannara book because it just didn't interest me enough.

I became a fantasy fan at this crucial juncture, in the 70s and 80s, when an older generation of faster, punchier, sword & sorcery (and anti-sword & sorcery, full of subversion of all the tropes, just like the anti-western is a subversion of the western) were still in print, and readily available. It was easy to find sword & sorcery, planetary romance, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, John Norman, and Robert Adams all over the public library, shelves on the bookstore, and even the little book section of Wal-Mart or Krogers. Much of this wasn't great; thud & blunder it had been derisively labeled, referring to its facile pastiche nature of better written stuff by guys like Howard in decades earlier. But what was also happening is that pastiches of Tolkien in a more high fantasy mold were becoming mainstream at this time, including much of the work of the authors mentioned above. To me, these were the twin pillars of the fantasy genre, and anything else that was out there was either unusual or unique, or completely outside of my interest, like romance in fantasy drag, or feminist screeds in fantasy drag, etc. Y'know, like Marion Zimmer Bradley or Mercedes Lackey.

What seems to have happened since then is that a new type of fantasy, or maybe new types of fantasy, have become prominent since then. Brandon Sanderson is one of the faces of this; which is kinda funny, as he finished the Wheel of Time series after Robert Jordan died, and Robert Jordan is seen as one of the vanguard of writers who pioneered this new fantasy. Sure, sure... Wheel of Time starts off very similar to a typical 80s-90s high fantasy, but 1) it was super, super long with a bazillion characters. I mean really long; one book in this 14-15 or so book series is nearly as long as the entire Lord of the Rings, 2) it had tons of soap opera elements and politics, etc. 3) it starred deeply flawed characters, including a main character who literally went insane over the course of the series, and 4) it indulges heavily in high concept and world building. I would say to the detriment of character, but given the length of time that we spend with the characters, that's not really true. But definitely to the detriment of plot and pacing. But the fans don't seem to mind that. 

George "Rape Rape" Martin seems to have pioneered a second point of this new type of fantasy. It has most of the same "features" as Brandon Sanderson's stuff, but not only are the main characters frequently flawed, but they're literally terrible people; more like villains than heroes, and the tone of the stories indulges this deep dive into nihilism and borderline snuff film material. A lot of other authors have also made hay in this "grimdark" side to "modern fantasy".

Here's a decent video that some guy who I often disagree with makes discussing modern vs classic fantasy, but he has a gigantic "classic" definition that basically means the 70s-90s generation of high fantasy, and he ignores everything else classic that comes from before that. Full disclosure; I disliked the video because I think that it's got a perception bias due to his Millennial generational perspective. But it's a nice place to at least start with a discussion of generations of fantasy.

Of course, he's a reader Youtuber. That's not the entirety of fantasy. I would suggest that the prevalence (if you can call it that) of TV shows and movies has a very different picture. What's going on there is often unrelated in many ways to what's going on in publishing. In the 80s, sword & sorcery pastiches of the Conan movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger were super popular, although few people were writing new works and publishing them that were in that mode. And what's going on now in fantasy streaming and movies is heavily influenced by 1) the success of the Lord of the Rings movies and the Game of Thrones streaming show, and 2) the influence of woke ideology. Even when they're adapting (for many definitions of adapting) older works like the attempt to launch a Shannara show, or a relaunch something based on Willow, etc.

I think another breakpoint is RPGs. It seems to me at least, although maybe my perspective and perception is too limited to really be correct, that "classic" fantasy has lingered much longer in the fantasy RPG world. Indeed, it seems that contrary to what "modern fantasy" fans seem to desire: overly innovative high concepts and world-building wonkery, these traits are typically rejected in the RPG space. Sure, sure... innovative settings have their fans, but they don't end up getting as much mainstream success as the much more traditional settings. 

Although one aspect of "modern audiences" that seems to be prevalent is woketardery. But like woketardery everywhere, its impact is—at best—polarizing. There's a big chunk of gamers that are overtly rejecting that in the game and playing older, or at least older-fashioned stuff. Not just in terms of mechanics, but they also heavily reject a lot of aspects of diversity and specialness. Of course, fantasy diversity as a metaphor for real diversity is a tricky thing. I think loads of people who virtue-signal haplessly and frequently about how wonderful it is that some other town than theirs has loads of Third World scumbags in it are still skeptical of fantasy turtle people and fantasy crow people and fantasy rabbit people, or whatever.

Anyway, what do I think and what to I like? Mostly, I'm a traditionalist. I went through a lengthy phase where I wanted fantasy to do something a little different, but it wasn't really classic fantasy fatigue... it was bad classic fantasy fatigue. I'm finding, especially as I revisit a lot of my older favorites, that they're as good as ever. I'm also finding that a lot of new trends in the publishing world are not to my taste. In fact, many of them actively offended me to the point where I'm now much more entrenched in my classic fantasy tropes than I used to be.

Although; I should add that I'm not quite sure what my own breed of fantasy really is. Is having a setting that's as much Old West in many ways as it is Medieval Europe a classic or modern fantasy trope, or does it not even track on that divide? I think relative to what's going on in books, it's probably not super innovative, but compared to what's going on in RPGs, its borderline heretical.

I do also tend to favor plots and heroes that are not necessarily traditional fantasy plots and heroes, but are very traditional from things like spy thrillers, conspiracy theory stories, and crime stories. Again; I don't know that that's really all that innovative; Glen Cook was writing Garrett P.I. books in the 80s, and Simon R. Green published the first Hawk & Fisher story in 1990, and if I thought hard enough I'm sure I could think of more examples. I'm also not entirely sure that mixing fantasy with some other genre is really all that innovative, or has anything to do with what "modern fantasy" is doing. But in general, I'd say that focusing too much on worldbuilding and high concept is wonkish and borderline masturbatory. But that's my taste; I prefer a focus on character and plot, and while I like worldbuilding for its own sake—to a point—I think it's easy to go too far into that. In fact, I think that it's particularly a pattern that I could fall into if I'm not careful, so I go out of my way to keep it to a dull roar.