M. John Harrison on his preferred flavours of fantasy

Just spotted - via Mark Newton of Solaris Books, writing on When Gravity Fails - that M. John Harrison has also been expressing his views on fantasy fiction recently. He's very clear on the subject of why he reads fantasy fiction, and what he wants - and definitely doesn't want - to experience when he does:

"When I read fantasy, I read for the bizarre, the wrenched, the undertone of difference & weirdness that defamiliarises the world I know. I want the taste of the writerâ€™s mind, I want to feel I'm walking about in the edges of the individual personality."

I agree wholeheartedly; in fact, the article as a whole neatly sums up the thoughts I was groping my way towards a while back (albeit far more eloquently, naturally).

Of course, being an immensely skilled wordsmith in his own right, M. John Harrison also writes for that same effect and as a result his work is incredibly intricate, and beautiful, and disquieting, and very weird, and sometimes just a little impenetrable and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone looking to push those aforementioned boundaries of their reading experience.

And yet - if I remember correctly from my bookselling days - I'm afraid his books just don't sell particularly well... which is a crying shame and exactly the sort of situation that needs to be turned on its head. But it does rather neatly illustrate SF Diplomat Jonathan McCalmont's point about the inherent problems with Mark Chadbourn's call to action.

Yes, if more writers moved towards writing the sort of fantasy that M. John Harrison both produces and appreciates, then we'd have a much richer and much more interesting literary landscape to explore, and this is altogether a good thing.

But given the currently prevailing business model in publishing, we'd also have a great many more writers who weren't able to earn an independent living from their work (that isn't meant as an inference or speculation on the state of M. John Harrison's finances or situation, I hasten to point out) or whose only outlet was the independent presses.

There would then be a great many more gaps in the mainstream market being filled by even more supermarket-fodder pap and the mainstream readers would still be sticking to what they know and still reading the same-old, same-old because that's all they have access to. After all, those big publishers aren't going to stop putting something out there, are they?

So, while I wholeheartedly agree with both Chadbourn and Harrison, I think McCalmont's argument is currently carrying the day: audience education is the key. More on that subject in a future post (time permitting).

October 6, 2007 | Filed Under Writing | 5 Comments

SF Diplomat responds to Mark Chadbourn

SF Diplomat Jonathan McCalmont posits an interesting twist on the point raised by Mark Chadbourn yesterday, by pointing out that the rot goes both ways: the tropes and stock characters of the fantasy genre are actually poisoning the well of wider-interest RPGs. It's difficult, he argues by way of example, to find a historical RPG that doesn't have some element of fantasy thrown in for good measure.

And in direct response to Mark's suggestion that fantasy authors need to innovate, Jonathan points out that there's an economic danger inherent in adopting too radical a stance: it's usually the readers themselves who demand stock fantasy and vote for it by way of their purchasing decision, so moving away from providing content for this market could prove financially damaging for the author:

"The problem here is that the vast majority of fantasy fans simply have no interest in innovation. If fantasy authors were to hear Chadbourn's rallying cry I suspect that the result would be a decrease in sales across the genre. The problem is not with the world of RPGs or lazy authors, it is the audience and until someone finds a way of evolving the tastes of that audience, the market will reward the writers who are able to pleasingly re-arrange old ideas and not those who present us with new ones."

Very good point, well made. Interesting to see how this one is developing. And I do have the inkling of an answer to his second point about how best to evolve the taste of the audience, but I'll need to work on it some more, I think...

October 6, 2007 | Filed Under Writing | Leave a Comment

Mark Chadbourn's call-to-action for fantasy writers

Just a quick note (as I'm still up to my eyeballs in work-related stuff) to flag up a very interesting post over on Mark Chadbourn's Jack of Ravens blog. It's about the changing landscape of the imagination, the changing role of fantasy fiction writers, and the challenge that fantasy writers face: of stepping out of the shadow of the RPG industry in all its multi-faceted forms and really pushing the boundaries:

"Fantasy authors need to find a new unique selling point. If they want to maintain their reputation as the elite of this field, they need to work their imaginations harder, start defining new territories, go to places that the gamers wouldn't (yet) dare to go.

"Who is up for that challenge?"

Damn good question. One I wish I had more time than I do right now to have a go at answering... anyone else want to chip in?