Are fantasy readers more forgiving?

[Jo Zebedee]

But that's my issue - I think you're mixing Space Opera ie books set in space but not neccessarily adhering to the laws of physics, Cap'n, with Space Fantasy, which is the genre that Star Wars is pretty well recognised as being - stories set in space but with a key element of fantasy within them (or, indeed, an element of a fantasy convention, such as a quest.) Fishbowl put up a post about it recently, I'll see if I can find the link.

It may be an old term, but it's still recognised as its own sub-genre of Science Fiction.

Edit: here you go:

http://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/551636/

I suppose, this might belong in that thread rather than this one? Mods?

 

[HareBrain]

And I think some of this reflects a sense of belonging, that it's not just about the writing, but the world building and how much people feel bought into it.

I think there's a direct reciprocal correlation between how immersed someone is in a story and how critical they can be of the writing itself, and I think this becomes obvious if you look at the work of beginning writers.

A beginning writer is wholly immersed in his own story, and is blind to the faults in the writing. It's not so much the fact that it's his own work that makes him blind, I would suggest, it's his level of immersion. Unless a reader has been trained to judge the technical aspects of writing (by having become an experienced and oft-critiqued writer herself, for example) they just won't see that aspect of a story they're heavily immersed in, so it's inevitable that their reviews won't take that into account.

That Adam Roberts page has quite an interesting below-the-line discussion about some of these points, as does his main WOT review page here.

 

[BAYLOR]

Early Pre Campbell science fiction tended to to be more fantasy.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Certainly the original Star Wars Trilogy is elements of SF, Space Opera and Fantasy.
It was always best when stuff WASN'T explained (Willow in Space).

 

[Venusian Broon]

But that's my issue - I think you're mixing Space Opera ie books set in space but not neccessarily adhering to the laws of physics, Cap'n, with Space Fantasy, which is the genre that Star Wars is pretty well recognised as being - stories set in space but with a key element of fantasy within them (or, indeed, an element of a fantasy convention, such as a quest.) Fishbowl put up a post about it recently, I'll see if I can find the link.

It may be an old term, but it's still recognised as its own sub-genre of Science Fiction.

And if George Lucas the person who wrote Star Wars says they are Space Opera then (and he defines Space Opera as half fantasy/half Science fiction)...? And the Culture books do have elements of a fantasy convention in my eyes and I've called them Space Opera the whole of my life...

However fair enough - I'll never use Space Fantasy it as a term, but I understand where you are coming from - and will understand you when you next use the term. And I am very happy for the term to be used.

Let us not get into a silly definitional argument. I'll be frank: I've had a harrowing past couple of weeks on a completely unrelated matter and still a bit fragile from it. I didn't realise I'd stepped on a trapdoor the minute I came back to the site properly.

 

[BAYLOR]

Certainly the original Star Wars Trilogy is elements of SF, Space Opera and Fantasy.
It was always best when stuff WASN'T explained (Willow in Space).

What about Warhammer 40K ? That seems to have both Science fiction and fantasy elements.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Let us not get into a silly definitional argument. I'll be frank: I've had a harrowing past couple of weeks on a completely unrelated matter and still a bit fragile from it. I didn't realise I'd stepped on a trapdoor the minute I came back to the site properly.

Ah, no, you know me well enough to know it's not going to go downhill... I was just interested, that was all, because my own stuff walks the fine line. Hope things are resolved now for you.

(I read an interesting quote from Lucas who basically said he doesn't actually like sci fi. I think he created something without realising what a lot of dissection it would get...)

 

[BAYLOR]

Ah, no, you know me well enough to know it's not going to go downhill... I was just interested, that was all, because my own stuff walks the fine line. Hope things are resolved now for you.

(I read an interesting quote from Lucas who basically said he doesn't actually like sci fi. I think he created something without realising what a lot of dissection it would get...)

And yet he gave us The dystopian science fiction film TXH 1138 .

At one one point he wanted to do Flash Gordon but, did Star Wars instead.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I was just interested, that was all, because my own stuff walks the fine line.

As does mine of course, so I'm generally interested as well! Although I'm sort of clear that I'm leaning much more towards the SF side. And it involves big spaceships, stars and different planets - so it must be Space Opera

 

[MWagner]

I think that supports others' points that fans aren't judging these books by the same standards as non-fans. The books' admitted faults don't significantly detract from the overall 5-star feeling of being immersed in some truly massive story. (Admittedly, this wouldn't account for the same score being given to the first of a new series, except perhaps that its readers have already put themselves into the mindset of being series fans.)

For some people, the very scope of an undertaking has allure, and to them works of epic fantasy are like catnip. They promise months and years of total immersion. The experience of reading itself is not being assessed so much as the limitless promise.

I've played a lot of traditional wargames of the cardboard counter and paper map type. That's another hobby where epic has a quality all of its own. When a publisher announces a massive game - a five-map design on the Barbarossa campaign with 3,000 counters that takes 200 hours to play - many hobbyists go absolutely nuts, and give out 10 ratings on boardgamegeek the moment they open the box and start fondling the counter sheets. It's the boggling promise of the whole thing that excites - a massive campaign fought at the divisional scale that will occupy many, many months of your time. They're called 'monster games' in the hobby, and their ratings are almost invariably higher than games of a more limited scope, even though they're far less likely to have ever been played to completion.

And while some SF series offer a massive scope, they tend to be less intimate and emotionally welcoming than fantasy. Fantasy novels offer not only immersion, but solace. Comfort. Even gritty fantasy like GRRM has characters who inspire more love and empathy than Dune offers. A lot of fantasy fans want to leap through a portal and live in the worlds they read about. That makes critical analysis problematic.

 

[soulsinging]

I thought a lot about this, unlike me, because it is interesting, not just in terms of reviews but how immersed in worlds fans seem to get. And I think some of this reflects a sense of belonging, that it's not just about the writing, but the world building and how much people feel bought into it. And rarely in sci fi do we see the sort of scale of worldbuilding from the likes of GRRM and Rothfuss (it was interesting the original comments about him. I agree it's a bit bloated, but I really like the world - unusually for me for fantasy - and forgave a lot for that. Whereas I can't buy into GRRM's world, so am less invested and more critical of the writing) Or, not so much we don't see worlds of the same scale, we rarely see a cycle of books set in a universe that are all interconnected and grow in the same way fantasy trilogies tend to. (Off the top of my head, ones that don't read as standalones within a shared world, would include Honor Harrington, and Vorkosigan?)

So, my hypotheses is that it's less about the individual books and more about the whole world experience, and that that's more a focal point of fantasy - particularly epic - than science fiction?

I think you may be onto something there... there's a vastness to epic fantasy that's pretty uniquely immersive, and as you point out, sci-fi does seem to have more of a "standalone" trend than the serials you'd see in fantasy. So fantasy readers are really signing on for a big commitment of time. I think that appeals to a certain type that really appreciates a well executed and built world they can sink their teeth into. As to Rothfuss, I liked it a lot up until that last 200 or so pages (chasing the dragon) and then the bloat crept in. I actually used a similar thought process to the one described in this thread to pass on his second volume. It got even better reviews despite tons of people saying the story felt padded and progressed little and it was much longer than the first. Which brings us to that delightful Jordan review above...

By chance, following @J-Sun's link in another thread, I came across Adam Roberts's review of the eighth book of Jordan's Wheel of Time. This excerpt seemed pertinent (I'm not using the quote function so as to preserve italics):
***
I think that supports others' points that fans aren't judging these books by the same standards as non-fans. The books' admitted faults don't significantly detract from the overall 5-star feeling of being immersed in some truly massive story. (Admittedly, this wouldn't account for the same score being given to the first of a new series, except perhaps that its readers have already put themselves into the mindset of being series fans.)

That review was hilariously on point! It's like the problems of this style are openly acknowledged and most people simply don't care. Which is fine, all their enjoyment to them, but I'm starting to think I'm onto something with my review skepticism. Like you said, I think that immersion counts for a lot with the epic fantasy reader (which is clearly a huge audience) and they embrace that so much that it tends to inflate reviews (plus, the more people that read it, the more people they can talk to about it). Notably, the first book in fantasy tends to score a bit lower than subsequent volumes (as people tend to either get on or off the train), and the sequels tend to increase for a few books before dropping again as a few people get weary of the lack of resolution. Sci-fi, on the other hand, is the opposite, with Dune, Ender, and Hyperion all scoring much higher than their sequels, though they are all more standalone books than the average fantasy book 1.

 

[soulsinging]

For some people, the very scope of an undertaking has allure, and to them works of epic fantasy are like catnip. They promise months and years of total immersion. The experience of reading itself is not being assessed so much as the limitless promise.

I've played a lot of traditional wargames of the cardboard counter and paper map type. That's another hobby where epic has a quality all of its own. When a publisher announces a massive game - a five-map design on the Barbarossa campaign with 3,000 counters that takes 200 hours to play - many hobbyists go absolutely nuts, and give out 10 ratings on boardgamegeek the moment they open the box and start fondling the counter sheets. It's the boggling promise of the whole thing that excites - a massive campaign fought at the divisional scale that will occupy many, many months of your time. They're called 'monster games' in the hobby, and their ratings are almost invariably higher than games of a more limited scope, even though they're far less likely to have ever been played to completion.

And while some SF series offer a massive scope, they tend to be less intimate and emotionally welcoming than fantasy. Fantasy novels offer not only immersion, but solace. Comfort. Even gritty fantasy like GRRM has characters who inspire more love and empathy than Dune offers. A lot of fantasy fans want to leap through a portal and live in the worlds they read about. That makes critical analysis problematic.

Very interesting, i hadn't heard of those games, but I suspect I've played one or two and it's a perfect analogy. If you're in, you're ALL-IN. If you're not, you might enjoy it but be utterly baffled at the passion and rave reviews by the devoted. I also like the last bit about being emotionally welcoming... I liked Dune and Ender better than most fantasy books, but I do not have anywhere near the affection/relation to the characters in those books that I do even to fantasies I'm not a devotee of.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

That Adam Roberts page has quite an interesting below-the-line discussion about some of these points, as does his main WOT review page here.

I suddenly like Adam Roberts. He so succinctly puts into words what I couldn't.
By book 8 I wondered why I was still reading. I thought "Maybe the next will be the end and be much better".
I have thirteen. The last three were presents by a well meaning family member who had left home and didn't understand. Book 13 is only 1/3 read.
There is enough material for five or six.

______________________

How do you explain the success of the series? Isn't it possible that you were missing something major? If the books are as bad as you say, how come they sold so well? This came up several times in the comments, and is clearly important. And, I agree: I can't argue with the series's success. Frankly I'm not sure why the books have done so well; although I'd hazard the later huge sales were more reflections of the previous books' huge sales than any actual merit in the novels themselves. But that still leaves to be explained the earlier books' huge sales. I'm not sure what the answer is. Here, I pondered thuswise: There's something or things about this series has resulted not just in many people reading them, but a good number falling in love with them too. Not me, but I probably need to be more open to whatever this 'thing' or 'things' is/are. Part of me thinks it must have to do with the series sheer length; which by a sort of textual brute force can replicate the immersiveness a more skillful writer achieves through style, worldbuilding or character. The shift (as in Star Wars) into increasingly obviously sexualised territory can't have hurt either: I can imagine readers growing up reading the series.

Or, thinking a little more about this (and picking up on Larry's perceptive comment): by 'length' I suppose I mean more than just bulk of pages. I mean the immense accumulation of and attention to trivial details.

Put it this way: there's an interesting bifurcation in the 'market' (horrid term) for SF and Fantasy: on the one hand the texts themselves (as it might be: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars) which provide one sort of pleasure, and on the other immensely detailed and elongated fan encyclopedia-style anatomies and extensions of those texts: all the Star Wars novelisations, all the books of ships specs and timelines and whatnot. This latter body of writing appeals to a subset of broader fandom, those SFF fans who want to know every atom of the imagined world.

Now what's happening with WoT, it seems to me, is that after a conventional opening, the series is increasingly turning into a man-and-fly-in-the-matter-transporter-together mutant melding of these two modes of text. Each installment devotes a certain amount of energy to moving the story on, and much more to encyclopedically anatomizing world and character.

_---------------------------------------

P.S. Anyone want 13 WOT novels? Six in Hardback, one dust cover got lost, and seven in Paperback.

 

[Toby Frost]

I don't have much to say about this - well, actually, I have loads to say, but it would be unfocussed waffle, and I need to go and think about it. But I'm enjoying reading these posts a lot. In particular, thanks to Harebrain for bringing that review to my attention. I have never read WoT, so I can't comment on it, but this is a great sentence:

"Her eyes are black, they’re white, her eyebrows are escaping, her gaze is audible."

It reminds me of the line "Flames, up the side of my face" from the film Clue.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

she folded her arms
she pulled her braid

Arrrrrrrgh!

I have never read WoT,

Other people have. so that you only need to if some one actually makes a present of them all to you.

It seemed to start so well

 

[Toby Frost]

Ah - is this the series with the braid-pulling and the spanking that I've heard about?

One day, I may be famous enough for people to refer to my books as "the series with..." Right now, I can only dream...

 

[BAYLOR]

Ah - is this the series with the braid-pulling and the spanking that I've heard about?

One day, I may be famous enough for people to refer to my books as "the series with..." Right now, I can only dream...

There's always Hollywood.

 

[Nechtan]

I'm still quite new here. A lot of you have been here a long time and know each other really well and understand where each of you are coming from. I don't have that privilege and I may not get to have that privilege as I'm about to alienate a lot of people here. I also want to say that I've re written this post several times trying not to make it an attack or start a flame war or get myself banned. A lot of you are writers and I get the impression that many of you have degrees and are highly intelligent people. I don't write and I left school with four O Grades and I ended up in care work trying to make a difference to people's lives. I'm not particularly bright or eloquent or erudite and I struggle to express myself. I'm just gonna go for it and hope for the best.

Soulsinging. So books you don't like get higher scoring than books you do. So what? It doesn't prove anything. You like Dragonlance, Abercrombie and Gemmel and not GRRM, Sanderson and Rothfuss. Fine but how do you measure worth? Surely that's highly subjective? A matter of personal taste? Where are the rules saying who deserves five stars and who doesn't?

Extollager. "These would be readers who read to indulge in self-pleasing daydreams, building castles in the air. The writing they like is at once superficial and absorbing." Is this a description of all fantasy readers and all fantasy authors? You got that from C.S. Lewis? The man who wrote Narnia? If you give Narnia a superficial read, it's an imaginative, entertaining adventure story for kids. Give it a deeper reading and Woah!. There's some seriously nasty sh*t in there along with heavy handed and clumsy allegory. I'm not prepared to take Lewis as a voice of authority. Also, given that most people are doing jobs they don't particularly like but have to do and aren't on high incomes and find day to day life a struggle, what's wrong with daydreams? Anything to take you away from the daily grind. Not everything has to be a great literary experience.

Stephen Palmer. "the acolytes".

HareBrain. "get large numbers of their fans to post reviews".

MWagner. "My sense is fantasy fans today tend to be:

A) Young, and seized with radiant enthusiasm for the subjects of their affection.

B) Emotionally-engaged fans, who regard any rating below five-stars to be a vicious and unfair attack on their favourite book or author. Post a critical review of a popular fantasy novel on goodreads and you'll see what I mean. It stirs up a fierce reaction in a way that criticism of a mystery, historical fiction, or literary work doesn't."

C'mon guys. You're being very dismissive of people's reactions and experiences based upon their age as if what they feel isn't valid. We've all been there. That amazing, heady, wonderful time when you feel things way more than you do now. When everything is bright and shiny and fresh. None of us were born this old and jaded. And none of us were born with inherent good taste. Can you imagine what the Chrons would be like if it had been around when we were all bright eyed, enthusiastic and yeah, young, dumb and full of it.

Ray McCarthy. You're going to have to explain to me what agenda GRRM has. I know where you're coming from about Terry Goodkind. I haven't read him because of his views and also because I get the impression that his stuff would be what I would describe as cheap, commercial and superficial. I also haven't read Philip Pulman but I believe His Dark Materials is an atheist response to Narnia. I hover around the agnostic atheist border so I don't have an issue with his opinion. Is it how he expresses it? For example, I find Narnia very hard to stomach because of how Lewis expresses himself. *Cough. Susan. Cough* amongst others but I have no issues with Tolkien or Wolfe who also have religious themes but handle it much better. I also think we would disagree very deeply about Eddings. What do you think his ethos is?

I have to agree about the immersive quality of fantasy but I don't think that's a bad thing. It's just one kind of experience that you can get from books. You are allowed to like different experiences.

For the record I haven't read WoT as I feel it belongs in the style of fantasy I don't like. Commercially driven. Superficial and simplistic. I also haven't read Sanderson for pretty much the same reason. But if people like that, who am I to piss all over them for it. Not everything I like is high literature.

I'm sorry if I've come across too strongly or if people feel I've attacked them. It's entirely quite likely that I have read things into posts that aren't there. I apologise if I have crossed a line but I just felt that lines were crossed in some of the above comments and that some things that are purely subjective have been presented as facts. I'm all for different opinions and debate but I thought the Chrons was a safe haven for sf and fantasy fans and it just felt that there was some serious Othering going on about a section of readers/members which I felt compelled to respond to.

 

[soulsinging]

Soulsinging. So books you don't like get higher scoring than books you do. So what? It doesn't prove anything. You like Dragonlance, Abercrombie and Gemmel and not GRRM, Sanderson and Rothfuss. Fine but how do you measure worth? Surely that's highly subjective? A matter of personal taste? Where are the rules saying who deserves five stars and who doesn't?

I'm sorry if I've come across too strongly or if people feel I've attacked them. It's entirely quite likely that I have read things into posts that aren't there. I apologise if I have crossed a line but I just felt that lines were crossed in some of the above comments and that some things that are purely subjective have been presented as facts. I'm all for different opinions and debate but I thought the Chrons was a safe haven for sf and fantasy fans and it just felt that there was some serious Othering going on about a section of readers/members which I felt compelled to respond to.

I think you might have misread some of the intentions of my original post. I NEVER complained that books I like don't score as high, nor did I ever indicate I get to decide what's worthy and what's not. All I did was ask if anyone else noticed that epic fantasy scores are way higher. I even explicitly said time and time again that there's nothing wrong with that and if people enjoy it more power to them. I only brought it up because I feel like I keep getting suckered into buying books I don't enjoy all that much by really good reviews and am starting to think I need to take really good reviews for fantasy with a grain of salt. That is it. I never said there was anything wrong with people that enjoy it, just that fantasy readers seem to rate books higher than readers of other genres and maybe I need to consider that before I spend my money on something just because it had rave reviews. I even admitted I might be imagining the whole thing.

After that, a lot of people here agreed that fantasy scores DO tend to be higher, and we started discussing why that is... are the books actually better or is it something about the genre and/or its readers that causes the higher scores? I think the discussion has been very interesting and enlightening and I don't see a bunch of people crossing any lines or ridiculing people for reading fantasy. Most of the responses I see tend to admire the passion of those readers. In the end, I think most people are saying exactly what you are... that there is a level of enthusiasm for fantasy (that could be caused by any number of things, from age to ideology) that is admirable and doesn't seem to exist in other genres, and that's great for those people but it means some of the rest of us need to take that into consideration when reading reviews and looking for recommendations.

So far I'd say it's been a really interesting discussion that tackles different ideas than the usual "what we're currently reading" (which I love, don't get me wrong), and gets into WHY we love reading it.

And one quick aside, if you go back to page one you'll see that I said almost the exact same thing you say here:

Also, given that most people are doing jobs they don't particularly like but have to do and aren't on high incomes and find day to day life a struggle, what's wrong with daydreams? Anything to take you away from the daily grind. Not everything has to be a great literary experience.

I completely agree, and I'm one of these readers. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Nor is there anything wrong with being a heady youth swept up in fantasy (as I was by Dragonlance and WoT as a teen). All I'm saying is that if I'm at a bookstore trying to decide between two books, the 4.0 rated mystery is likely to be every bit as good as a 4.5 fantasy to me since I love both genres and will escape quite happily into either one other than the fact that apparently I don't enjoy epic fantasy the way I used to.

Which is what caused my post: I was confused by the fact that I keep reading books with off the chart positive reviews and not really enjoying them much and wondered if maybe I'm missing something. Because when I said above that something like Sanderson's newest book getting a 4.8 was absurd, it wasn't because I think the book isn't good enough or no fantasy book could be that good. It's because I'm shocked ANY book could be that good... it means that essentially everyone that reads it considers it amazing and one of the best they've read, which is astonishing to me whether it's fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, or nobel-prize-worthy. So I asked... is it REALLY that amazing and I'm missing the boat somehow? Or are these scores maybe a little inflated by the enthusiasm of the fanbase and I should recognize that despite those incredible reviews it's just not my cup of tea?

 

[MWagner]

Hi Nechtan,

I'm quite new here myself. I'm enjoying this site because, from what I've seen so far, people can express their opinions here without worrying about starting a flame war. A lot of fantasy sites that I've come across aren't especially welcome to criticism of fantasy novels. But I'm a critical (though I don't think negative) reader by my nature. As I noted up-thread, if you post a critical review on some of those sites the fans seem to take it very personally and go into attack mode.

For my part, I wasn't trying to be dismissive of the feelings of fantasy fans. Soulsinging brought up what I thought was in interesting question: why are certain kinds of fantasy novels, often epic and often newer, rated substantially higher than the top-rated books in other genres? In response, people have come up with suggestions why. I think it's a perfectly legitimate questions, and the answers have been plausible. However, I do understand where you're coming from, since most of the responses have been from people who don't seem to enjoy that type of fantasy.

I don't have anything against the enthusiasm of young readers. But if that's one of the explanations for the very high ratings for certain fantasy series, there's nothing wrong with recognizing it. It isn't about getting upset that people like books I don't like. Rather, it's about trying to understand why we see differences in things like ratings, why SF readers as a whole don't seem to consistently rate the tops books as highly as epic fantasy fans. I enjoy speculating about these sorts of things, teasing out cause and effect.