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2003-02-16

Johan Anglemark wrote about fantasy — in Swedish though, so all of you can’t read it — and he had some thoughts that I agree with. Genres are not there for the readers, but for the marketing departments. I’ll translate a small quote below (and he’ll probably hit me in the head with a blunt instrument the next time I meet him because of the small but significant errors.)

When I think of fantasy, the authors that comes to my mind are people like Guy Gavriel Kay, Peter Beagle, China Miéville, Mervyn Peake and John Crowley. Books that are well written, very complicated and intelligent. Nevertheless, the fact that they’re marketed as fantasy has the effect that they never receive a real chance to reach out to a wider scope of readers. All this because people are driven away from the genre thanks to the more known authors.” (Before this he described how good fantasy authors tend to completely disappear under all the swill. /Nicklas)

For some it doesn’t help that the book isn’t released as a fantasy. For instance, Tim Powers’ latest book Declare (excellent author, excellent book) was labelled as a thriller by the publisher. I don’t think it had more sales because of that, which is sad because it deserves it.

And yes, I think that the genre — after all, this imaginary idioglossa of literature hangs over us all — needs help from its readers to lift up the good stuff and make it easier to find. It won’t happen by itself. Now, I believe the publishers would want to do this themselves if they could, but I doubt they can afford too. It is easy to keep Robert Jordan in print as he sells lots and lots of books, while a book by John M. Ford only have the initial printing and then the books are gone. You can’t write “an epic by the next Tolkien” and expect millions of sold copies for a singleton about mobster elves with suppressed feelings like Ford’s “The Last Hot Time.” (It did however have a blurb by Robert Jordan for some reason, but then again, he’s a blub slut and the book was published by Tor.)