Earlier today, I wrote a post about my declining interest in forums. In that short essay, I noted that part of the reason why I had become disenchanted with online forums dealt with the perceived "conservatism" of book coverage. I want to elaborate a bit on this, utilizing a few recent online posts. Mind you, I am not "calling out" anyone; their posts just happened to have been made recently and they underscore several of the problems that I have had with what I jokingly entitled "The New Myopia," playing off of the desires of some to delineate "new" forms of the same old topic material.
Take a look at this recent thread on SFF World entitled "Recent books that define the current territory of fantasy." Let's see who is discussed here by the majority of the posters (it should be noted that there are a few who do not conform to the unspoken expectations within this thread):
Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind - a 2007 secondary-world fantasy opener that is fairly decent, has its moments, but is little more than a good recent example of older works of the same vein.
R. Scott Bakker, The Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor series - Bakker is a friend of mine, and while I do enjoy his erudite take on epic fantasy, his is not (as he'll readily admit) a story that's going to have mass appeal outside of certain gender/age demographics and online forums.
Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont, Malazan books - Although each has some interesting anthropological perspectives that enrich their shared-world setting, I wouldn't think of these books as being anything more than just continuations from what Glen Cook, Jack Vance, or Michael Moorcock has done with their epic fantasy/sword and sorcery tales.
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - how this is any different in tone or feel from several English rural fantasies of the past 130 years is beyond me. I enjoyed this book, but it certainly is not groundbreaking in any sort. It continues a long tradition quite nicely, though.
Jim Butcher, The Dresden Files - closest thing to "urban fantasy" that I saw, but this is more in the vein of investigative novels that have a nice formulaic approach. Nothing spectacular, just a series of pleasant reads.
The list goes on and on, with only two posters making anything in the way of attempting to cover other facets of contemporary genre writing. A similar thread, "Fantasy - 10 years from now," also treds much the same ground and ignores much that is able.
Another list, this one provided by a visible SF blogger, Adam Whitehead/Werthead, was pointed out to me today by author Mark Charan Newton. Within a limited (OK, very narrow) ground, he covers well certain writers writing in what he notes some have called "The New Fantasy." Adam notes the limitations of the term and how it does exclude other subgenres of fantasy writing, but it is interesting that in covering this perceived grouping of authors based on a few superficial characteristics, that he covers authors that either do not have a huge profile in the United States, or who are lumped in with certain others only because they've written excellent new work recently, or who have stories that appeal to him. It is odd seeing a list that has Steph Swainston, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Joe Abercrombie being part of a common grouping. Their narrative styles, their storytelling modes, and the way their characters and plots are presented differ wildly. On closer examination, there really doesn't seem to be any strong argument being made justifying such a classification, especially since there is really no proof evident (either in this link or in numerous posts I've read online, whether they be blogs or fora) of these "new fantasy" stories doing anything in terms of style, mode, or presentation that weren't done decades or even a century or two ago.
But beyond these attempts to reclassify newer fictions into their own "movement" or grouping lies a glaring silence. Where are the other subgenres? How come there is, relatively speaking, very little to no discussion of the long traditions of "weird" or "fantastical" fiction? Where are the magic realists or those who write "urban fantasies" set in cities or those paranormal romances that have taken Romance tropes and have melded them with speculative fiction ones? While I readily admit that I am somewhat ignorant of paranormal romances in general, I do know there have been some interesting, albeit formulaic, tales constructed around modern-day, urban settings. I've only read one graphic novel adaptation of Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson tales, but what I read combined Native American myths involving the coyote, werewolves, and investigative fiction into a pleasing harmonic whole. Nothing spectacular, but certainly nothing offensive about it.
I'm not a huge Charles de Lint fan, but his Newford tales have been very popular for two decades now, but yet there is little to no mention of them on several of the larger online venues and blogs. Why is that? Or what about those authors, such as Michal Ajvaz, Goran Petrović, David Albahari, or Zoran Živković, who have been influenced by Central European fiction of the sort written by Franz Kafka or Thomas Bernhard? Those stories are certainly among the best fantasies (and general fictions) that I have read in the past few years. Let they receive little coverage from those wanting to talk about "new fantasy."
There certainly is a lot in the wide-labeled field of Fantasy. It is easy to understand why many would choose to concentrate on a particular area. But it also seems to be a shame to see these limitations, especially when several feel the need to compose "Best of Year" lists every December. Too often, these read like a "best of this one tiny sliver of the field, the only one I bothered to read much in this year." This is not a sin, but rather a common oversight. I too sometimes overlook certain subgenres, but at least I do try to keep abreast of what is considered to be "good" there. If large blogs and online fora are considered to be trendsetters, is the trend that of usurping the title for a wide-ranging field and applying it to a very narrow, often conservative section? Myopia, neither new nor old, still rules so much today.
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