The State of Fantasy in 1977

Four years ago, Tom Simon's site, Bondwine, featured a five-part essay on the state of fantasy in 1977, with special focus on the impact of Tolkien, incorporating the del Reys, a couple newly-released fantasists, and Tolkien's own posthumously-published The Silmarillion. His essay is keenly astute and tightly focused on 1977 and the works that were released in the nascent days of epic fantasy. As one author wrote in an article for Black Gate Magazine's blog, "The man with two R's didn't invent the field, but he dominates it to the extent that we all write in his shadow."

It is a fascinating read. Simon eloquently and effectively dismantles The Sword of Shannara on its own merits (or lack thereof) and not on its "slavish imitation of Tolkien." His analysis on The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is impressively penetrating. It reminds me of John Fultz's own series of posts on Discovering the Unbeliever. Although I've not read Niel Hancock's The Circle of Light, Simon's thorough analysis of its story and shortcomings don't really inspire me to pick it up. Tom Simon finishes with a heavy commentary on why The Silmarillion fails as fantasy fiction.

I've written down my own thoughts on Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara. By-and-large, Tom Simon's thoughts dovetail with my own, especially concerning Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey. Although I've not really expounded on the impact of the del Rey's on fantasy as a literary genre, I'm very much inclined to agree with Simon that it's been quite negative, overall. Their attitude toward readers was that of a sneering penny-dreadful salesman and little else. Although some of the editing choices they had on Donaldson's work were positive, their motivations were puerile and avaricious, having nothing to do with the conventions of taste and substance.

Simon's analysis of The Silmarillion is incredibly insightful. He analyzes the causes for its failure and why it was eclipsed by The Lord of the Rings. Yet Simon's major flaw is that he overlooks Tolkien's purpose in writing it. I think Simon was acutely aware that The Silmarillion was written as a compilation and synopsis of Tolkien's entire mythos (that is, what parts of it he had finished). As a fantasy novel it fails. As a history book (or perhaps religious account) of a world-that-never-was, The Silmarillion is not nearly so flawed (although it is far from perfect). If one approaches it as though it is such a text, it becomes much more coherent. Simon's approach, though, reflects that the audience was neither looking nor prepared for the kind of work The Silmarillion was.

In the end, Simon doesn't really support the thesis that epic fantasy was a slavish imitation of Tolkien in 1977. He points out one work by Tolkien that was a disappointment to his fans (because they didn't know how to approach it), one highly subversive and challenging fantasy that most certainly is not an imitation (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), one puzzling and ultimately unsatisfying work that seems to draw more from The Chronicles of Narnia, Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and The Wind in the Willows (The Circle of Light), and one single highly derivative work that cribs Tolkien (The Sword of Shannara).

Does this weaken Simon's argument? Well, what exactly is Simon's argument in the first place?

But in fact all these things were new under the sun in 1977. To anyone whose reading tastes were formed, even in part, by the avalanche of Tolkien imitators of the last thirty years, the fantasy genre of 1976 must be as alien as a lunar landscape. In those days Sword & Sorcery was king, and king of a very small domain. Except in children’s books, fantasy was the weak sister of science fiction, a kind of playground where authors like Sprague de Camp and Poul Anderson went to relax after a serious day’s work of Inventing the Future.

Well, it's apparent that Simon certainly believes that between 1976 and 1978 a very large shift had taken place in the fantasy genre. That the del Reys had something to do with it is undeniable. They pumped out Donaldson and Brooks.

When Simon speaks of The Silmarillion, The Sword of Shannara, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, and The Circle of Light, he says:

I believe that nearly all the genes, so to speak, of the epic fantasy sub-genre are to be found there, and also the chief reasons for the parlous and shabby condition of the field today.

A-ha! For Simon, what is wrong with epic fantasy today is not simply slavish Tolkien-imitation. It is something much more complex and deep. But what are those chief reasons for the shabby condition of the genre?

Simon says that The Sword of Shannara is "a train-wreck of a book," and gives numerous reasons why, but he doesn't isolate the individual "genes" that are consistently ruining the genre, aside from the reader's inference that it is simply imitation combined with "trying to write the worst book one can get away with." Writing a novel where the writer cribs from another, seminal, author isn't enough, as Simon points out a whole slew of plot and characterization issues where simply being The Lord of the Rings "with the serial numbers filed off" is not enough to make a good story with identifiable characters.

Simon's analysis of Thomas Covenant really seems to support the idea that its lack of success in comparison to Shannara and the del Reys' opinion that Shannara was actually superior (an opinion Simon doesn't seem to share) reflect a problem with both editors and readers of epic fantasy. They want Tolkien and they can't really comprehend the complexity of Donaldson's initial trilogy.

When Simon says Hancock's The Circle of Light's release, accompanied by fanfare recommending it to Tolkien fans was "a portent of worse things to come," I'm not exactly what he's talking about, except perhaps the fanfare. Without giving away spoilers, I'll simply say that the climax and resolution of the story is Deus ex machina that renders every single event in the novels as absolutely and utterly pointless. This, coupled with New Age pseudo-Buddhist/pseudo-Christian/synergistic moralizing turns the entire book into a philosophical/metaphysical upchuck. In this regard, Simon seems to be indicating that there is a lack of coherency amongst many fantasy authors in incorporating coherent philosophical systems into their narrative and then moralizing about them.

In regards to The Silmarillion, I think Simon's words speak for themselves:

I do not mean that a lesser writer should try to fill the gaps in The Silmarillion: God forbid. What I mean is that it, rather than the much-abused Lord of the Rings, should provide a standard and a signpost, pointing the way forward for epic fantasy. The Road goes ever on, but few have cared to follow it so far. If we truly honour the work of Tolkien’s heart, we should be out there, blazing trails beyond the last milestone, seeking our way to vistas yet unattained.

In other words, Tolkien had a lot of other stories he wanted to tell, many of them briefly glossed-over in his Silmarillion. He wasn't locked, like L. Frank Baum was to Oz or Piers Anthony is to Xanth, to Hobbits, Mordor, magic rings, and the Shire. He had a very vast world he wished to explore, with thousands of years of history and stories that had yet to be told. He simply let it pile up and pile up, works unfinished.

So, what are we to take from this? What are those chief reasons epic fantasy is in such muddy waters?

To distill from the above, it seems an over-arching adherence to Tolkien as the defining figure of the genre seems to be crippling it. In addition, attempts to break away from his influence often falter with both editors and audiences. Dabbling in the mythologies and philosophies of non-Western cultures can be interesting, but it must also be coherent--when its not you get confused and pointless sagas that go nowhere like Hancock's Circle of Light. Although I skipped over it, writing down to children seems to be a major turn-off (they're often quite capable of reading stuff that doesn't insult their intelligence--indeed, I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings while other kids were reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing).

But is this really the case? Is epic fantasy so locked into a ditch where all of these huge flaws are part-and-parcel of much of fantasy, especially its strongest-selling sagas? Or is Simon writing back to not only 1977, but also 1987 and 1997? Has he missed the past 15 years, with Stephen Erickson, George R. R. Martin, R. Scott Bakker, and Tad Williams?

This I will leave for a follow-up post: is the genre of epic fantasy in such a perilous and shabby condition today as it was in 1977? And if it is, how did it get there in the intervening decades?