What would you Class as Classic Fantasy

Basically yes, but like with any classification, there are exceptions. I'd be hard pressed to discount Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, just because it was published a little after 1980. I'd say there probably has to be about 10-15 years at least to see if something has stood the test of time, but that wouldn't be enough. The problem is that a lot of what we would usually call classics aren't actually that old - there was a lot written in the 1960s and 1970s that deserve the title, and these are generally reflected by the fantasy masterworks series. Equally, while there are post-1980 works that can be classic fantasy, there are also works pre-1980 that certainly aren't classic fantasy either.
A few things about a classic:
It must either be a completed series or a standalone - it can't still be being written.
There must have been time for it to be influential or important within the genre. Usually this will mean 10-20 years.
It must be unique and original - this tends to mean it's earlier fantasy, pre-1980 fantasy, because the success of Tolkien derivatives had not yet emerged, but again it isn't certainly the case.

I think it's very hard to place an arbitrary cut off point and just say this is classic fantasy though. Each novel/series must be judged on its own to determine this, and by its nature a uniform scale can't be applied to all.
 
Well Nixie as per my Classic Fantasy Authors Biography thread which I do intend to resurrect, I selected a time of pre-1980s, mainly for the reasons Brys has already touched on. This is of course a little aribatary but where I drew the line in the sand as it were prior to what I saw myself at the time as a mainstream Fantasy explosion on the world's bookshelves during the 1980s and continuing on to today.

There are a number of works I consider or suspect will be classed as classics that were published or completed post 1980 but perhaps they could be classed as modern classics rather than classics of the past. It's interesting to note that the Fantasy Masterworks series is predominantly pre-1980 with a few exceptions.

Hope this helps and I'll make sure I wander over to Rune's site of which I'm a member and post some thoughts there too....:D
 
My cut-off, arbitrarily enough, would be pre-1960 at least. That leaves out Terry Brooks and his ungodly spawn, as well as works like Harrison's Viriconium, Moorcock's various Eternal Champion sequences and so on. I consider the latter category of works to be a sing of the genre maturing and finding new ground for itself.

So basically, the works of the Great Eccentrics - Dunsany, Edisson, Machen, Peake, Mirrlees and of course Tolkien, as well as the Pulp Kings - Howard, Leiber and the likes.
 
I agree that the majority of classic fantasy is pre 1960 but I still maintained a cut off of pre 1980s as arbitrary as that is, to include writers like Ursula K LeGuin and her Earthsea series not to mention Left Hand Of Darkness (more SF I know), which were completed in the 60s and 70s, Anne McAffrey’s Dragons Of Pern saga, Zelazny’s First Amber series, Patricia Mckillip’s Forgotten Beasts Of Eld, possibly Richard Adam’s Watership Down, John Bellairs little heralded masterpiece The Face In The Frost etc… All of these series and others i've not listed for me have more or less stood the test of time. The reference to Terry Brooks, whom I don’t mind as a less cerebral read or break between heavier works, was obviously prolific in the 1980s and beyond so he doesn’t come into the field and would never fit into my idea of classic fantasy. I also believe that Moorcock and Harrison’s series rightly fall or remain as classics within the Fantasy Genre as ground breaking as they are. I suppose it may depend upon how generic you decide the term Fantasy to be and of course the term "classic" is a very subjective thing.

Give it another 20 years or so and I’ll be including the likes of Wolfe, Donaldson, Cook and Erikson to name just a few to the classics list.
 
Actually, a 1980 cut-off is fair enough, since the 90s, and hopefully the 00s have been a time of severe growth and diversity for the genre, I think, making the 80s a sort of cut-off for the earlier works.
 
It certainly seems to me at least that there's more of an apparent push or movement by a number of authors in the last 15 years or so towards the less generic Tolkienesque style of fantasy than what I've been aware of was being produced in the 60s and 70s. I still classify these in my own mind as falling under the broad banner of fantasy but certainly there appears to have been a further development or growth of sub genres, which of course is not to imply there wasn't a diverisification of sub genres present in earlier years.

I think it would be instructive to hear from those members old enough to have experienced first hand the development of the genre in the past 50 years or more.
 
I wouldn't have said the last 15 years - 15 years ago was basically when Tolkien-derivatives really took off- it was the time when Jordan, Eddings, Feist, Brooks etc were all doing really well. In the last 5 years, there's certainly been a shift - authors like Vandermeer, Mieville, Swainston et al outside of epic fantasy and within epic fantasy we've had Erikson and Bakker emerging (Martin was a bit earlier). "Generic" fantasy may be the most popular, but the truth is that it hasn't been written for a particularly long period - it started around the 1980s, but it's already starting to decline. It's surprising, given the common perception of the genre, that most of the Tolkien-derivatives have been written in a very narrow period.

I may have argued against the 1980s as a cut off point, but it's the best we can realistically do. If we take the 1960s, we come into the problem of writers, like Jack Vance, who were writing very much in the style of the 1950s, who are missed out because they're stuff came out later. As I said before, the best way to look at it is I think to see when the series was started (example of Vance again - Tales of the Dying Earth was begun in 1950, but not finished until 1984, but should still be considered viable for classics - though the obvious ones such as Peake, Tolkien, Dusany, Eddison etc should be considered first).
 
@Brys: I'd agree certainly up to 20 years ago from the mid 1980s onwards was when Brooks and co. really started to rocket up the fantasy charts but when I suggested 15 plus years ago I was thinking of authors like Donaldson and his Covenant series, Glenn Cook's Black Company, Gene Wolfe etc.. as at least the beginnings of the current push towards, as JP puts it, a maturing or diversification away from the more generic style of fantasy. Certainly I'd agree in the last 5-10 years this movement has become a lot more pronounced within the mainstream and even more so in the 00s if the likes of Martin, Bakker, Erikson, Wolfe, Mieville etc.. I now see apperaing in popular bookshops is anything to go by, at least in this country.

@Nixie I started a Bio thread here on Classic Fantasy Pre 1980 earlier this year. It ran out of steam a little but I'm planning to resurrect it over the Christmas/New Year period as it seemed to receive some fairly positive feedback at the time....:)
 
There were a few, but the thing is we have to remember that during the early '90s, it was the generic fantasy that was really growing in strength - ironically enough, the more original authors, like Donaldson, Cook, Wolfe etc, weren't actually doing something that new, or at least it didn't seem like it, because it was before the plague of generic, poorly written fantasy came. If we look back to when it started, we could easily go back to the 1930s. Perhaps you're right though, as it was around that period that the first anti-fantasy really started to emerge (Michael Swanwick's the Iron Dragon's Daughter came out in 1993 I think).
 
Twenty years ago (and I know that figure is accurate, because I can compute the date according to certain events in my own life) there was a huge fantasy boom, during which all the genre publishers bought up everything in sight. A great many highly original works by new authors were published at that time and into the early 90's. In the US, Ace, for instance, introduced new authors about every month with their Ace Fantasy Specials. Unfortunately, many of these books sold very poorly, and the authors either disappeared or else held on by their fingernails for a few more years and then disappeared (although a few came back under different names).

What happened, I believe, was that all these books divided up the (already limited) readers looking for "something different," by providing so many different somethings that no one could grab a hold of a fad and ride it to success. Authors like Brooks and Eddings, on the other hand, survived and continued to flourish because they reliably produced what most readers would reliably buy.

Since then, various trends have come and gone -- "Steampunk" is one that comes immediately to mind. What happens with these trends is that everyone who is looking for something new is pretty much reading (and writing) books in line with the latest fad, and the books sell well enough to create buzz and keep the writers of those books in business until another trend comes along, and everyone fades into the midlist. I feel reasonably confident that the "New Weird" will come and go in the same way. Meanwhile, the Brookses and the Eddingses continue to sell much as always.
 
Thanks for the clarification Kelpie, I was sort of alluding to that myself.

Certainly I've noticed quite a number of original works appearing in the past 20 years or so as part of that explosion of fantasy. I remember the mid 80s very well because it was around that time I started to really gain a strong taste for fantasy as a High School student. I remember some of those excellent Ace series, Paul Kearney's interesting Monarchies Of God being a prime example. But you're right, they're commercial viability has been IMO somewhat sadly diluted by the majority of the more mainstream fantasy of authors like Eddings, Rowling and Brooks.

I guess as in most cases those authors and stories which dwell within the fringes of a Genre can tend to go in cycles a bit whilst the more conservative mainstream keeps on keeping on, a direct reflection of the greater society perhaps.

I hope you're proven wrong about the "New Weird" movement but I'm not sure I hold out any great optimism in the longer term....:( I'm sure Brys, Knivesout and Jay amongst others will have something to say about this.
 
Well, what are the alternatives, Gollum? It can either be replaced by the next New Thing. It can dwindle to a small niche market. Or it can take over the mainstream and be imitated to the point where it becomes a cliche. I really don't see that last one happening, though it's barely within the realm of possibility.
 
Yes I think you're right on those alternatives and like you I can't really see it ever being integrated into the mainstream, so I think the best case scenario would be the development of an econmically sustainable niche market. The field of speculative fiction remaining stagnant with no new development or trend in sight may be the day I might have to give it away but I don't think it will ever come to that thankfully.

Over and out...
 
Kelpie said:
Twenty years ago (and I know that figure is accurate, because I can compute the date according to certain events in my own life) there was a huge fantasy boom, during which all the genre publishers bought up everything in sight. A great many highly original works by new authors were published at that time and into the early 90's. In the US, Ace, for instance, introduced new authors about every month with their Ace Fantasy Specials. Unfortunately, many of these books sold very poorly, and the authors either disappeared or else held on by their fingernails for a few more years and then disappeared (although a few came back under different names).

What happened, I believe, was that all these books divided up the (already limited) readers looking for "something different," by providing so many different somethings that no one could grab a hold of a fad and ride it to success. Authors like Brooks and Eddings, on the other hand, survived and continued to flourish because they reliably produced what most readers would reliably buy.

Since then, various trends have come and gone -- "Steampunk" is one that comes immediately to mind. What happens with these trends is that everyone who is looking for something new is pretty much reading (and writing) books in line with the latest fad, and the books sell well enough to create buzz and keep the writers of those books in business until another trend comes along, and everyone fades into the midlist. I feel reasonably confident that the "New Weird" will come and go in the same way. Meanwhile, the Brookses and the Eddingses continue to sell much as always.
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That seems pretty accurate. Generic fantasy was something reliable for readers and publishers, and the original fantasy novels slowly disappeared. An example - who here has read Michael Swanwick's the Iron Dragon's Daughter?
Now who's read Robert Jordan's the Eye of the World?

I'd expect a lot more have read the latter, even here, where we explore a number of the more obscure writer's, but for the general reader, the difference will be even more pronounced.

I disagree that New Weird will go the same way, for a couple of reasons.
1) There's been a move away from traditional epic fantasy - people have become disillusioned with Eddings, Jordan, Goodkind etc. Where have they moved to? Mainly to Martin, but Bakker and Erikson have also got quite a bit of support. They show much darker stories, and people often find they want more of these. As it is, within epic fantasy there isn't that much, and people won't have heard of most of the authors. But they may hear the name Mieville, or the name Vandermeer, and so, not realising what they are (myself an example here, seeing Mieville's the Scar on sale expecting it to be epic fantasy), pick it up, and get hooked with New Weird. I doubt it'll ever be as popular as traditional epic fantasy, but I think that with hybrid authors (like Swainston) more are being attracted to New Weird and there'll be enough to survive.
2) Less to do with New Weird surviving and more to do with all other fantasy subgenres:
the Fantasy Masterworks collection by Gollancz
Its existence proves your first point - it has a number of novels from the 1980s and early '90s, and the masterworks series is supposed to be a collection of the best fantasy novels that are also out of print or very difficult to obtain. It shows what happened to original fantasy novels if books published only 10 years ago are now very difficult to obtain otherwise. But its existence means that many fantasy readers now have the opportunity to read a lot more widely within the genre. A lot of people who become disillusioned with epic fantasy don't realise that it's only one subgenre of many. The Masterworks series helps to prevent this. I know that it isn't available in many countries yet, but I hope that publishers in the US for example follow Gollancz's lead.

I think New Weird will always remain a niche market - it won't ever be the dominant force in fantasy, because of Tolkien's influence - but I think that in the near future, it looks like it will grow. It seems like you're suggesting it would go the same way as New Wave (almost disappeared in fantasy now), but there are a few things you have to remember about that movement. It was mainly a science fiction movement - that's where it's main influence is today, and in fantasy there were only a few authors in the first place who were a part of it (mainly Moorcock and Zelazny). New Weird has had a much greater base of support, and stronger foundations in fantasy than New Wave ever did - it's set to survive, even if not to grow hugely.
 
I think you are wrong on several points, Brys.

1. Yes, there has been a shift toward darker fantasy, but a) the darker fantasy that sells the most is not that different from traditional epic fantasy in all other respects (no matter what Terry Goodkind would have us believe), and b) it's not like dark, cynical fantasy is anything new; writers have been writing it and publishers have been publishing it steadily for the last twenty-five years. In fact, the only change that I can see is that dark fantasy, which used to be shorter and more slanted toward sword and sorcery, is now taking on more of the characteristics of epic fantasy (and vice versa).

2. If these fantasy masterworks now being reprinted didn't lead to greater diversity the first time around, why do you think they will do it now? The genre -- in the sense of a clearly recognized and marketable genre as we know it now -- gained much of it's original impetus from the series of reprints and originals brought out by Lin Carter under the Del Rey imprint for Ballentine, and that was about as diverse a group of fantasies as could be well imagined, and yet in spite of that excellent beginning the genre became steadily narrower.

Readers have been moaning and groaning about how disillusioned they are with authors in the Brooks/Eddings/Jordan mold for at least the last sixteen or seventeen years; they've been begging for something new and different. I used to believe them, but not any more, because the numbers tell a different story. The people who want to see a change are much more vocal, but the people who don't buy a lot more books.

The thing most people don't realize (although the publishers know it very well) is that the more original fantasies don't compete with the standard generic fare, they compete with each other and have no impact at all on the sales of epic medieval fantasy. Some day this will change, of course, but that change will be heralded by a bigger shift in the market than any we see right now. In meantime, each new trend will force the previous one out, as the readers attracted by novelty naturally move on to something different.

To move back toward the original topic: the true test of a classic is, I think, that it will look as good in twenty, thirty, or forty years as it did when it first came out. It doesn't depend on the mindset of the period in which it's originally published in order to be understood and appreciated. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it will appeal to a different or a wider group of people (except in the sense that new readers are born and grow up and older readers pass on). By and large, the same people who would have liked it at the beginning will like it now, and the same people who wouldn't have liked it won't.

I'd like to believe that the recent re-issue of so many great fantasies will have an impact and change the face of the genre, but experience tells me that this is just wishful thinking.
 
Dark cynical fantasy isn't new, I know - but reading dark, cynical fantasy by large amounts of fantasy readers is new. It's never been hugely popular.
A comparison: Moorcock's Elric to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The first is dark, cynical, the second is the opposite. While both existed, Moorcock's Elric sold very little compared to LotR. Now though, we have some authors, (mainly GRRM) who are actually quite popular but also write this type of fantasy. As you said "writers have been writing it and publishers have been publishing it" - but readers haven't been reading it, and that's what is beginning to change. Perhaps you're right that readers aren't particularly moving towards New Weird as such (though the relative success of Mieville does seem to put some doubt on that), but they are moving towards a different, darker type of fantasy than has been common for the past 20 years.

The point I was making with the Masterworks series is that they're all available at once. Before that, at pretty much any time you would never have the opportunity to get them all. There may have been a few you could find, but probably not nearly the same number. And the collections also make it easier. And why would someone read them before the masterworks series? They are generally by relatively unknown authors, they're difficult to get, and there is no way to tell whether they're going to be good or not. And for some authors (eg Clark Ashton Smith) almost the entirety of what they wrote came in magazines - and though collections of the short stories came out, it was still difficult to track down many of them, though now they all come in one volume.

I'm not saying that the two (epic and New Weird) are in direct competition with each other, but that while epic fantasy is relatively stagnant (in terms of numbers of readers), New Weird is growing, albeit slowly. Many people read both - most Mieville readers will probably have read at least one of the major epic fantasy novels, but the opposite probably isn't true. New Weird may be growing, but it isn't pushing epic fantasy out at all.
 
Kelpie said:
The thing most people don't realize (although the publishers know it very well) is that the more original fantasies don't compete with the standard generic fare, they compete with each other and have no impact at all on the sales of epic medieval fantasy.
Kelpie said:
Brilliant point Kelpie.

So what about me then? I write fantasy in a traditional setting but it is not at all traditional, nor is it generic in intent or concept. So who am I competing with?
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