Why is there so much unimaginative fantasy?

Because it sells.

@shrubbery – Exactly. The big companies stick to producing the same stuff because they are sure it will make them money. There are plenty of great ideas that just don’t see the light of day because of a lack of funding.

One could argue that in a consumer culture, many are too preoccupied with the creative works of others to find time to come up with any original ideas. Some days I feel like a robot, living out the expectations of marketers. Other days (when I turn off the TV and really think about things), I feel truly alive.

It’s easy to lose touch with one’s creative side, IMO.

EDIT: My point in all that? That it’s hard to be original in a consumer society.

Mhmm. Publishers (as opposed to writers and other creative people) often look at the past to determine future success, resulting in new products seeming like old products.

Exactly. Like fashion, it moves in cycles.

you have 2 schools. The old school and the new school. The old school will always have the money. Much like the republicans and democrats. It’s obvious who has more creativity and then it’s obvious who will spend all their money just to make the democrats show look bad.

There’s tons of it and it’s easy to sell?

… but even the modern stuff I consider quite imaginative (Robert Jordan, Geroge RR. Martin, Stephen King) boils down to it’s derivative components fairly quickly.

This is a good question.

I’ve wondered that as well. All the remakes of old movies and TV shows…I’m sure everytinhg hasn’t been done all ready. Yet the steady stream of the same old thing continues and is never as good as the original, with a few exceptions.
Are ppl getting lazy and chose to do what has been done so as not to have to think up anything else? We need some new blood out there!

There is tons of new fantasy (at least, written fantasy), and some of it is quite good. The trick is finding the good stuff and avoiding the crap.

I’d be interested in knowing other people’s strategies for doing this. Mine—I read the reviews on the book seller sites, but I also read several magazines in the genre and look at the reviews there. On occasions, I get recommendations from friends whose opinions I respect. One other trick is to go to the award websites, and just buy everything that wins or is on the nominating lists.

Fantasy is a relatively new genre. Many people lump it in with science fiction which has been around at least since the 1900’s, possibly before that, but fantasy as a separate entity is much newer. Aside from that, good fantasy is really really new. Most of what I read is fantasy and I have learned a few things. You have to know what kind of fantasy you’re looking for. It’s like any other genre. There are sub-genres and different themes, some complex, some simple, some new, some hackneyed so on and so forth. Also, I have learned that young adult fantasy tends to be of a higher quality, or, rather, there is more high quality fantasy in the young adult section. My favorite book is still Sabriel by Garth Nix, which I read in middle school for the first time. It’s the kind of fantasy that uses the genre as a vehicle for the story. Sure there’s magic and necromancy and fantasic lands, but there’s also the story of a girl who thought she knew who she was and then finds out she knows nothing.

Basically, my rule of thumb, for any genre, is this: if the basic, human story can’t be told without all the flash and dazzle of that genre, it’s not worth reading.

@katawaGrey: re the quality of YA—I think you’re right. It has alos been noted in many reviews I’ve read. One theory is that many of the writers have kids in the appropriate age range, so they’re writing for their kids.

I’d say it depends on what level you are looking into the story.
The basic archetypes (hero, sage, temptress, innocent one, evil one) have been used over and over again ever since the Oddesey, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t used in new and creative ways.

I remember reading The Dark Sword trilogy and getting a lot out of it even though it was the same basic premise as many other stories. The same with The Rose and the Prophet, really great story, but quite similar to many mythological stories.

Really, Tolkien set the bar pretty high.

Yeah I’ve liked Weis and Hickman since I was a kid.

And that’s an interesting point that a lot of the more “original” sort of new fantasy is geared toward the younger crowd.

@fireside: Tolkien? You’re comparing fantasy to Tolkien? My god. There’s so much more out there. I don’t read a lot of fantasy, but even I know about genre bending stuff like what Walter Jon Williams writes and what Michael Swanwick writes. It’s not swords and sorcery any more. It’s modern day settings, with people, and magic, and vampires (like the “Twilight” series) and Anne Rice and so many others.

@daloon – yeah, i can see that point. i would have put Anne Rice more in the horror genre myself along with most of Stephen King’s works.

I just saw the science of sleep. It was one if the most imaginative stories I have watched and heard in years.

@KatawayGrey, up until the ‘70’s, no one really considered fantasy a genre. then Terry Brooks published his first book and the horizons contracted and narrowed. unimaginative and trivial works outnumber the good stuff in any genre though, as pointed out by Sturgeon’s Law, because most writer’s don’t have the talent to write significant work. (talent does not get evenly distributed.)

@Ria – Wow, I had never heard of Sturgeon’s Law. Thanks!

@fireside: genre identification is a whole ‘nother story. Horror is, I believe, a subgenre of fantasy. Vampire stories can be horror, but they don’t have to be.

It used to be that science fiction was the big brother in sf/f publishing family. Now, it’s the other way around. Far more fantasy is sold than sf, and fantasy also has more subgenres. There are those who argue that sf is a subgenre of fantasy.

Since much of sf does require at least one fantastic element (say faster than light travel), they do seem to have a point. The folks who write about the near future and who don’t need any fantastic elements—well I don’t think they represent a huge portion of what is called science fiction.

Ursula LeGuin described the difference between sci-fi and fantasy rather well, I think. She said that sci-fi always has a link back to our universe – its world obeys the rules of our own (by and large), and no matter how far removed the sci-fi society’s technology is from our own, it can always be traced back (though this often requires a little stretching). Every Fantasy story, meanwhile, is set in its own universe, and has its own set of rules created by the author. There are often similarities between our world and any given fantasy world, but not necessarily any connection.

Nice definition, Hobbes. I don’t know if I’m stating the obvious, but I always take sf or f to be a metaphorical way of talking about contemporary society. So, in that way, there is always a link and always similarities between our world and the imagined world in the fiction.

I think our educational system, our entertainment media, and our toy industry discourage imagination and reward passive consumership. If fewer people know how to cultivate and liberate their imaginations, there will be less truly imaginative writing and more imitative and derivative work. Also I think more and more people write without reading widely and deeply and don’t even realize they are being repetitive.

Weighing in on genre definitions:

“Science fiction means what we point to when we say it.” -Damon Knight

“If it has horses and swords in it, it’s a fantasy, unless it also has a rocketship in it, in which case it becomes science fiction. The only thing that’ll turn a story with a rocketship in it back into fantasy is the Holy Grail.” -Debra Doyle

Quick and dirty rule of thumb: If it’s about the impossible, it’s fantasy; if it’s about the improbable, it’s sci-fi. And if it’s scary, it’s horror, no matter what other genres it touches on.

stories about the probable that hasn’t happened yet also counts as sf. though I think a lot of people will disagree with me on that.

@Jeruba, I think we have found that the entertainment media promotes a particular kind of creativity. thinking specifically of fan fiction, which I consider a mixed blessing, but I will spare you the book-length essay. as for the second and third sentences, agree completely. completely.

@Jeruba – I don’t really know about the toy industry, and I agree with you (in general) about the educational system, but I’ll have to side with Ria on the entertainment media bit. Sure, there’s a lot of crap, but if you probe the TV, the radio or the internet (especially the internet) a bit, you’ll find some immensely creative stuff.

Ah, but what I meant was that the media encourage you to be a spectator. You are a passive consumer of others’ modest, imitative, and repetitive but widely distributed efforts, which can have a numbing effect. So the edge of your own creativity is dulled. I think mass media have an effect opposite to that of the stimulus provided by small circles of artists in any genre interacting with one another and with a knowledgeable, discriminating audience. This is partly because what it takes to sell on that scale is an appeal to the taste, intelligence, and discernment of the masses.

I’ll plead ignorance with respect to fan fiction, which I tend to view from afar as a somewhat bizarre phenomenon (especially erotic fan fiction) but admit I do not know how to appreciate as a genre. Maybe it is a standout exception, as you suggest.

You know what you need? Roleplaying games! The ultimate in participatory media!

As far as traditional media, though… I see where you’re coming from, but I don’t feel that watching a (good) TV show is an entirely passive act. I’m engaged with the characters and the setting, and while I’m not creating anything myself, I wouldn’t say that the viewing and appreciation of someone else’s work is necessarily a passive act.

Personally, I absolutely despise what passes for fantasy nowadays. Vampires, elves, orcs, wizards, dragons and the like bore the living shit out of me. Give me something I’ve never seen before. Right now I am working on a novella story of creatures that have wheels instead of feet, and how they evolved, how they interact with each other and their world. Creating something that original is challenging, but damn, it’s fun to try.

Someone sent me part of a tale they are working on, and while it does cover some very novel and original story ideas, the whole elves and mages battle scenes only reminded me of Tolkien and no one will ever top that man’s work. I suppose people are always going to try, though.

It wasn’t a bad story, in fact, it was pretty good. I just hate reading about battle scenes with a Tolkien flair. I’d like to see something with an original idea that forces me to expand my mind. I suppose there are just so many ideas available, and there is nothing new under the twin suns of Wypuranus Pleez.

@evelyns_pet_zebra, have you read The Amber Spyglass, book 3 of His Dark Materials?

nope, only the four books Lord of the Rings series. I find myself bored by fiction books anymore. I usually read history, the only thing I’ll read in the way of fiction is short stories.

I think the reason she asks is because there are creatures that essentially have wheels for feet in the third volume of that series. How did your creatures evolve wheeled feet? The problem is (as far as I can see) that you would need a the wheel and axel to be separate pieces, and organisms usually don’t come in multiple parts. The Amber Spyglass solved the problem by postulating a symbiotic relationship between the creatures and the seed pods of a certain tree (the pods were large and circular, with hard shells that could only be broken when they were “ridden” long enough by the creatures, who had a diamond-shaped skeleton, and thus could make axels by grasping the pods with their fore and aft talons, using the side legs for locomotion).

The mulefa! His Dark Materials didn’t completely wow me, but the mulefa were one of my favorite things about the series.

Agreed. Though the series did indeed wow me, the mulefa are definitely one of the highlights.

@Hobbes, well not to give too much away, but I recently read in Scientific American about certain species of aquatic organisms that have spinning flagella, and their flagella actually spin with an axle-like motion. I just took that idea and expanded on it. My creatures are more like Triffids than Vertebrates, so there is no real need for blood veseels and the like.

Seriously, is there any other kind?

Largely because all the editorial decisions are made by fat gits who’s eye is on the bottom line rather than the talent.

Because you don’t subscribe to Heavy Metal magazine. That’s why…