M. John Harrison on his preferred flavours of fantasy

5 Responses to 'M. John Harrison on his preferred flavours of fantasy'

1. Mark Chadbourn on October 6th, 2007 8:39 pm

   But I don't believe it's a simple and straightforward choice between traditional/commercial and challenging/uncommercial, Ariel. Those are the extremes and there are a thousand stop-points on the spectrum between them. Somewhere there's a point of balance.

   One of the points I was trying to make in my initial blog was that commercial writers risk having their reputation devalued by continuing to write about what are fast becoming cliches. They should want to move to protect their name - and take their readers with them. In fact, they're best poised - commercially - to do just that.

2. Ariel on October 7th, 2007 8:44 am

   I think you're right, but the problem is that the point of balance at the moment is set too low - in terms of sales - for the vast majority of authors to make a living writing more challenging material, because the potential audience, the potential buying market, isn't large enough to sustain them all.

   Or perhaps it is large enough? Maybe there are more book-buyers out there who would buy the more interesting material if they knew when and where it was being published and how to get hold of it - which is another form of audience education.

   Personally, I think the constant improvement and honing of writing skills is something that every authors should (and surely the majority do) strive for, but whether they take that to the point where they risk writing themselves out of a potentially lucrative core-market in the process is something they have to consider along the way. At least, it is at the moment.

   So there's a damn good question raised in your second paragraph there - should established authors try harder to raise the bar in order to improve the quality standard of the genre, even if - given the prevailing market conditions - that means missing out on the big, fat, mega-bucks earned by the Eddings, Brooks, Goodkind et. al types who regularly make the best-seller lists? The theory presumably being that they take their established fan-base with them, which helps to maintain their income whilst educating their audience at the same time...

3. Mark Newton on October 8th, 2007 5:19 pm

   I think for the next few years it's unlikely to change. What we've seen is super-publishers merging, and that means a certain sales expectation before acquisitions of novels. Basically, editorial has to get books past marketing departments. This can only move in one direction in the short term, and it means that the small presses and to an extent, midlist publishers have room to put out more experimental novels. But consumers need to support and buy books from the small presses to help them survive. With the falling through of indie booksellers, the situation gets only bleaker, as things become centralised by chains—who, let's not forget, are businesses in competition with supermarkets etc.

   That said, re: M John Harrison—I don't think there'll be another writer quite like him, because he's so good at what he does, he'd outclass writers in any field.

   But what IS interesting in this, is how mainstream literary publishers are producing novels that would once be considered slipstream, or even outright SF and Fantasy. I think the literary market is starting to embrace the genre, without calling it the genre of course, and so the talent is being taken elsewhere. Who knows where that will take us.

4. DavidHeb on October 8th, 2007 8:23 pm

   Have been trying to work out the best was to structure this post, and I'm not sure I've managed it, so if seems like a stream-of-conciousness piece, you know why...

   To an extent, I think people always want more of the same when they read a work by a familiar author. And 'more of the same' is a continuum: even when I read something unfamiliar by (for example) Christopher Priest, I have certain expectations of what I'll be getting. And I'd suggest that authors who write 'more of the same' most fully will tend to outsell those who don't. I think we'll always have to put up with it -- the challenge is to ensure it doesn't damage the art form of fantasy, and that writers of the less generic stuff can get their work published and read.

   One problem for would-be authors wishing to 'write to the market' is judging what will sell (and, come to that, what will be published). For example, I remember John Jarrold saying at Alt Fiction in April that people Eddings variants won't be take up by publishers because the market has moved on (though he didn't elaborate on that point). Then you get a writer like Hal Duncan whose work is far from unchallenging and yet has been published by a mass-market publisher; I don't know how much he has sold, but my point is that his case shows that a challenging debut novel can be sold to the big publishers -- and that complicates the picture.

   Which leads me to wonder: how many writers of unchallenging fantasy actually do make a comfortable living from their writing? Are there any writers of good quality material who make a living; and, if so, what differentiates them from writers of similar stuff who do not?

   One thing I found interesting in Harrison's post is that he doesn't want 'self consistency' oir 'fully realized' settings. I think those things can be useful in fantasy, and don't necessarily think they conflict with difference and individuality; I'm thinking of writers like China Miéville there.

5. Ariel on October 9th, 2007 8:42 am

   Thank you very much for joining in there, gents!

   Mark, very good indeed to see a publisher's-eye view of the situation, which I think is something that we readers - and even authors - don't always get a clear picture of.

   And David, damn good point about the earnings situation. Unfortunately that's the sort of data that publishers and authors are likely to keep very close to their respective chests (and rightly so, it being business-sensitive and also deeply personal information) but perhaps one or two brave writers might step forward and offer a ball-park figure...

   Anyway, have flagged both points in a fresh round-up post, which I'll be putting online round about... now.

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