where is the gritty realism in fantasy ?

[Ursa major]

Yep, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin is awesome for gritty realism in fantasy. Also would recommend China Mieville's Perdido Street Station for something a little steampunky. Mieville manages to make some pretty whacky concepts seem real/feasible.

Agreed.



Note though that, as JDP has implied, while Miéville's work is often gritty, it can stray a long way from realism. This is particularly true in one - relatively short - part of one of the Bas Lag books; I won't say more because that would be a spoiler. (But I'm not thinking of Perdido Street Station, the first of the books and - in my view - the best of them; though I do like all three.)

 

[Fried Egg]

Is that the Victor Gollancz Fantasy Masterwork edition? Just curious is all.

Nope. It's a Ballantine edition (US Paperback) from the 70's. Picked it up in the second hand book shop for only 90p. Bargain.

 

[GOLLUM]

HMMM... that's not the greatest composition for the cover but you got it at a very good bargain. That's probably the 1976 publication, which unfortunately lacks the excellent introductory notes by Brad Searle.

If you were not aware Ballantine put our Pratt's other classic Blue Star as part of their adult fantasy series. I know because I'm collecting the Ballantine series albeit not necessarily those edns, more the titles.

Pratt, who was well known as a military historian, has planned a sequel to the Well of the Unicorn but sadly never created it due to his unfortunate demise. A bummer but true...

Hope you like it, I've always considered it a classic.....

 

[Fried Egg]

Yeah, I would never have bought it in the strength of the cover alone!

 

[Connavar]

I forgot to recommend Tim Power's The Drawing of The Dark and On Stranger Tides both gritty fantasies set in the real historical world of 1500s and 1700s. Supernatural things going on behind real history days is a big theme of Tim Powers.


You cant get more realism than that in a fantasy

 

[Clansman]

Thanks to everyone who replied. I recently saw the complete conan chronicles in a charity shop so I will go back and pick that up. I have seen piers anthony and I know it's crazy but the front covers put me off !!!!!

Just be sure that it is a Howard compilation, and not that god-awful Jordan crap.

 

[j d worthington]

Yipes! That cover art is horrendous! What on earth were they thinking????? Talk about giving a thoroughly false idea of the content of a book.......

As for Elric... given your original post, I would not recommend the Elric books, as the handling of magic there would likely put you off; plus the tales are allegorical in nature, which means the focus is in an entirely different direction. Several of them are quite good (my favorites being The Vanishing Tower -- a.k.a. The Sleeping Sorceress -- The Revenge of the Rose, and Stormbringer!), but I don't think they're what you're looking for....

 

[Fried Egg]

Yipes! That cover art is horrendous! What on earth were they thinking????? Talk about giving a thoroughly false idea of the content of a book.......

I agree with you completely, but it does depict an actual scene in the book. It is a bit like quoting someone completely out of context though...

 

[GOLLUM]

I agree with you completely, but it does depict an actual scene in the book. It is a bit like quoting someone completely out of context though...

AH...you best me to the punchline. It does indeed depict a scene from the novel. The Hildebrandt brothers (twins) were responsible for that cover as they've been active for more than 40 years in SFF now. I gather they are well respected but I've seen some of their other illustrations and felt they were a little too stylized for my liking.

As a footnote they're Tolkien calendars from the '70s of which I have viewed a copy DO contain some excellent illustrations but other images are not particularly good IMO.

Cheers....

@JD: I actually thought Elric may have been something the original poster would enjoy. I will of course defer to your judgement as you have read more of Moorcock than I including Elric.

 

[j d worthington]

What makes me hesitate there are his comments anent magic and the way it was used in things which put him off. Moorcock has a similar approach at times, the magic or supernaturalism isn't generally the point and is therefore often treated as a simple physical law of that universe; no attempt is made to make it convincing; it simply is. This serves the purpose of the story well, in most cases, and to alter focus to give it verisimilitude would be to derail the entire thing; but I think this is exactly what the poster is objecting to, in this case....

And, yes, it does depict a scene from the novel... but in no way represents the novel itself.... F.E.'s comment about quoting someone out of context is beautifully apt.

 

[GOLLUM]

What makes me hesitate there are his comments anent magic and the way it was used in things which put him off. Moorcock has a similar approach at times, the magic or supernaturalism isn't generally the point and is therefore often treated as a simple physical law of that universe; no attempt is made to make it convincing; it simply is. .

AH I see what you were driving at. Mr. Dobbs certainly seemed to be implying he wanted a world he could really believe in. A case in point in Steve Erikson's brilliant EPIC fantasy series Malazan book fo the Fallen. Now that's magic systems thought out to the nth degree for you with awe inspiring world building to boot.

I also agree with the comment that the cover for Pratt's classic novel is hardly representative of the story. Disappointing from both a conceptual and visual viewpoint.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Isn't this whole question a bit of a category error? Like walking into a lingerie storie and asking for a trenchcoat?

 

[j d worthington]

Isn't this whole question a bit of a category error? Like walking into a lingerie storie and asking for a trenchcoat?

No, I don't quite think so. There are too many "flavors" of fantasy for that to quite apply, as there are those which deal quite meticulously with making the "magic" believable, as well as being given to a gritty realism in dealing with characters, battles, politics, etc. So it all depends on just what the poster means by the term; in this case, I take it to mean making such things believable, accepting the existence of such things as magic, but presenting them with a valiant effort toward verisimilitude.

 

[Fred C. Dobbs]

I'll try to make it a bit more clear - but bear in mind I am new to fantasy other than tolkein and lewis so I am limited with the examples I can give.

I have just finished the excellent gray mouser book swords against death and whilst I did like the interaction between the two and I will read more it did seem like many of the stories were lazy and just expecting too much suspension of belief. Now Tolkein has a world full og magic but it wa still damned hard to get out of mirkwood in the hobbit and the the two towers try as they might the fellowship could not catch the orcs after they had taken the two hobbits.

I want to read good fantasy but I want an author that strictly sets out rules within that world that cannot be played around with so the author can get out of a tight spot. I go back again to the Le Guin example when faced with a dragon I was lapping up the pages in anticipation to see how the character ( who's name evades me ) would handle this situation. As it happened he simply changed into a dragon. Anti climax wasn't in it. I did finish the book though and will try her again.

hope that's more clear though I suspect it might not be.

 

[Clansman]

Ged. His name was Ged, in the LeGuin novel.

The rules of the world being strict?

Malazan, to be sure.

A Song of Ice and Fire, yes, as in that series, if you are too virtuous, you die. At least in the early books. Now it appears that if you are too evil, you get yours too. To live, there must be a balance between being virtuous and evil, and even then, you might die.

Wars of Light and Shadow, by Janny Wurts. The most powerful dudes on the planet in that series are constantly prevented from doing things to further their cause because of the rules governing them.

Now, on the other hand, if you want a really good dues et machina, give Terry Goodkind a read.

 

[j d worthington]

I'll try to make it a bit more clear - but bear in mind I am new to fantasy other than tolkein and lewis so I am limited with the examples I can give.

I have just finished the excellent gray mouser book swords against death and whilst I did like the interaction between the two and I will read more it did seem like many of the stories were lazy and just expecting too much suspension of belief. Now Tolkein has a world full og magic but it wa still damned hard to get out of mirkwood in the hobbit and the the two towers try as they might the fellowship could not catch the orcs after they had taken the two hobbits.

I want to read good fantasy but I want an author that strictly sets out rules within that world that cannot be played around with so the author can get out of a tight spot. I go back again to the Le Guin example when faced with a dragon I was lapping up the pages in anticipation to see how the character ( who's name evades me ) would handle this situation. As it happened he simply changed into a dragon. Anti climax wasn't in it. I did finish the book though and will try her again.

hope that's more clear though I suspect it might not be.

Thanks for the clarification. (Though I can't say I agree with you at all about Leiber on this one. The man tended to be a meticulous craftsman, and the magic in his fantasies does indeed follow certain rules; he loathed the deus-ex-machina and even poignarded it in one of the Fafhrd-and-Mouser tales, "The Sadness of the Executioner".)

If you're looking for that sort of explicitly structured set-up, you may want to look at some of Jack Vance's fantasy, especially the tales of his Dying Earth cycle. There are very strict rules where the use (or even the ability to use) spells is concerned; several of the stories use this as a plot point, in fact. Also, the earlier Witch World tales by Andre Norton pay close attention to this, and keep the magic to a more subtle level as well. (Leiber does sometimes pull out all the stops in his more whimsical tales in the series, such as "Bazaar of the Bizarre", for instance. In these tales, at least, he is focusing on irony or outright farce. He still "plays by the rules", but he does so for a different effect.)

And, of course, for sheer density of realism, you can't get much more of that than with Peake's Titus books (Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone). You can literally feel the oppressive presence of Gormenghast all around you there. Then again, there really isn't any "magic" in those books... though there is in the single short tale featuring Titus, "Boy in Darkness"....)

As I said earlier, you might want to take a look at some of the older writers in the field, as the approach there toward such things as magic was often quite different....

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Dobbs: I would also suggest you try Tim Powers. His books contain gloriously far-fetched magical concepts, but worked out with an attention to detail that borders on the obsessive. His best works are the ones set in modern times; they read like bestselling thrillers with a lavish helping of secret-history and weird magics thrown on. Try LAST CALL or EARTHQUAKE WEATHER (I think THE ANUBIS GATES, while fun, is not as tightly structured as these, being more or less a strung-together phantasmagoria at times). It doesn't hurt that Powers has also worshipped at the altars of Hammett and Chandler and writes a mean suspense tale, leavened with vivid characterisation.

Interestingly, Powers states that some of his ideas on how to make the mechanics of magic work came from reading Leiber, who as JDW above points out, was very meticulous about these things.

(I still say that the sort of realism you seem to be aiming for is not necessarily what makes for a good fantastic tale - fantasy, like horror and mystery is a genre that is based on the effects you get by disturbing or skewing the established order of things (reality as we know it in fantasy and horror; society/law and order in a mystery). For me it's not the explanations that make for compelling fantasy - how do you explain a dream? (Freudians need not apply) - but how well the strangeness of that disruption is depicted, with the right mix of subtlety and vividness. A lot of what I call entrenched secondary-world fantasy loses its fantastic impetus for me from the fact that it plays too closely to its own rules, with nothing seeming truly fantastic once you know those rules. But this is no more than a personal declaration of taste.)

To conclude all I can say to your question is try Vance; try Powers. I believe their works will still resound with readers long after much of the stuff that currently weighs down the shelves in the fantasy racks in the bookstores is lost and forgotten. Or you may find an epic fantasy series that suits you better; there is no shortage of recommendations in that direction. Good luck!

 

[williamjm]

AH I see what you were driving at. Mr. Dobbs certainly seemed to be implying he wanted a world he could really believe in. A case in point in Steve Erikson's brilliant EPIC fantasy series Malazan book fo the Fallen. Now that's magic systems thought out to the nth degree for you with awe inspiring world building to boot.

I like Erikson, but I'm not sure I'd recommend him for this particular request. The first book in particular throws the reader into the middle of the story without explaining any of the rules of how the world or magic works. Erikson does seem to have a reasonably good idea of how the magic system is meant to work but it takes a long time for this to be explained to the reader and even after 11 Malazan novels there are still things that are unclear about it. I actually quite liked having to try to work out how the world worked in the first book, but it seems like the sort of thing the original poster was trying to avoid.

I'd second the recommendations for Powers, Martin and Abercrombie. Guy Gavriel Kay's books might be worth considering as well.

I still say that the sort of realism you seem to be aiming for is not necessarily what makes for a good fantastic tale

I'd agree that some great fantasy novels can lack any verisimilitude in how they portray their magic. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel, for example, blatantly just made up any magic spell that the author felt like the character being able to do at that time and would then promptly forget about the spell for the rest of the novel, but I still thought it was an excellent book and it didn't matter that it wasn't 'plausible'.

 

[Khale]

I would go with Abercrombie for starters. If that works, then move on to GRRM and finally when you are really serious and ready to roll up your sleeves for a complex mind blowing series start on Erikson's Malazan series.

 

[Hilarious Joke]

I would also recommend GRRM and Steven Erikson.