Fantasy, unicorns, Quenya, Discworld and lightsabers

[owl]

Recently there has been some kerfuffle of JKR's supposed slighting of the fantasy genre, and Terry Pratchett's comments. I saw both sides of the indignation, and tend to come down more on the Pterry side.

Rowling says that she didn't realise that the first Potter book was fantasy until after it was published. I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, hidden worlds, jumping chocolate frogs, owl mail, magic food, ghosts, broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?'

It's funny, and it's authentic Pterry. I don't think it's insulting to JKR to point this out. There really isn't anything else to classify Harry Potter as, unless it's 'fairy tale', but I don't imagine JKR would like that much better.

Anyway, Pterry's real point was the sloppy reporting. Whoever wrote that article was evidently even less of a fan of fantasy than JKR. From the Beeb:

In a recent interview with Time magazine, Rowling said she was "not a huge fan of fantasy" and was trying to "subvert" the
genre.

The magazine also said Rowling reinvented fantasy fiction, which was previously stuck in "an idealised, romanticised, pseudo-feudal world, where knights and ladies morris-dance to Greensleeves".

Even in Lord of the Rings there isn't any Morris dancing. Every good author subverts their genre to some degree. Tolkien probably seemed madly subversive at one point—whoever heard of inventing a universe, and writing a doorstopper of a book like that, so that one's characters could say 'Hello' in Quenya?

What Pterry and JKR agree on, it would seem, is the definition of 'fantasy' as 'got unicorns'. I would humbly beg to differ from both of them. Fantasy does not equal unicorns; it is the creation of an internally consistent secondary world which is by intention distinct from the real one.

Lord of the Rings is, for me as well as many others, the fantasy, and there's not a unicorn in sight. It has become the default setting for fantasy worlds, and has bitten deep into the collective psyche. As such, it's hard to write about. but at least I can say that it lends respectability to conlangers, the fellow addicts of Tolkien's 'secret vice', everywhere. :-D
Can anyone seriously deny that it is fantasy? Thought not.

Discworld has unicorns, apparently:

"...then there's wear and tear on virgins..."
"What?"
"My speciality's unicorns."
"They must be very rare nowadays."
"Right. You don't get many unicorns, either."
(Guards! Guards, quoted from memory.)

The important thing there is not the unicorn or the idea of unicorns, but the joke. Not really fantasy.

Star Wars is fantasy, but there are no unicorns; the outer trappings are of the science-fiction sort, but who knows how a hyperdrive works? Who cares about the power source of a lightsaber? It's a magical sword made out of light. This is why the EU works badly (apart from large parts of it being mere bad writing); it's trying to bolt on Star Trek-type extras on to a fantasy world.

Star Wars isn't a story about what might happen to the human race in the future (incidentally, I think the term 'speculative fiction' is misapplied to fantasy); it's a story about how the brave young knight and his loyal companions rescued the princess from the black knight in the dark fortress—and, in the end, how he rescued the black knight as well, and how the black knight shut himself up in the dark fortress to begin with. It is a fairy-tale by intention.

sue_parsons surprised me the other day by saying that what she liked about Star Wars were the characters. I may have misunderstood her, but in ANH, at least, they are very close to their archetypes: the noble young knight, the evil knight, the wise mentor, the brave princess, the lovable rogue. Of course over the films they all all grow more dimensions, become breathing flesh and blood, while remaining (mostly) the archetypes beneath.
But what drew me in the first instance was—not exactly the story, for the bones of it are the same as beneath all the other thousand faces—but that incarnation of the story with its particular flavour. No-one could mistake Hogsmeade or Mos Eisley for anywhere else, any more than Hobbiton or Minas Tirith.

One might be forgiven for playing spot-the-difference between Ankh-Morpork and London. At times, Pterry is closer to Jonathan Swift than he is to JKR or to Tolkien. Discworld is often not a fantasy but a satire. In the early books it is a satire of the post-Tolkien fantasy genre, which confuses matters somewhat. That is why Discworld is flat and rides on a turtle and is full of dragons and magic: because of its origins. Discworld is a mirror of Roundworld, existing initially for that. The Ankh-Morpork books in particular show this. The important thing about Vimes is not that he lives on a disc that sits on top of elelphants that stand on the back of a turtle, but that he is a cop. Despite the crossbow and the swamp dragons, he is quintessentially a cop. Strip him of his incidental equipment and you could put him on TV. Men at Arms, Feet of Clay and Jingo could all happen anywhere with minor tweaking.

As for the wizards, they don't behave the way they do because they're wizards, but because they're part of a university.Ponder, bless him, is transparently a nuclear physicist. In the same way, Small Gods is about organised religion in general, and Monstrous Regiment is about armies and wars. They take place on Discworld because—well, they might bite a bit close to home in a Roundworld setting, mightn't they?

I'm not saying that Pterry doesn't write fantasy at all, nor that the rest of what he does write is inferior to the pure form. The Witches sequence (Lords and Ladies, Witches Abroad) and the Tiffany Aching books, together with parts of the Death sequence (Mort, Reaper Man, Thief of Time), are in my opinion, the books that most consistently reach the fantasy level. The Watch sequence grows less fantastic as the focus moves from Carrot to Vimes. Guards! Guards! is a not-too-severe fun-poke at The Lord of the Rings and its imitators, but the summoning of the dragon and the idea of the returning king who remains incognito are fantasy in their own right, with a distinctive twist. That distinctiveness, in fact, is what makes them fantasy under my definition.

Comments

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Actually, just to confuse matters further, if you follow one of the links from Neil Gaiman's blog, you will find a speech Pratchett apparently gave in which he talks about how the most fantastical part of some of his stories is suggesting that people would actually stop and think, and how if you put in a dragon everybody will say "This is fantasy" whether that's the point or not.

Which, at least out of context, makes one wonder why he is then commenting on how elements X, Y, and Z should have tipped off JKR about what genre she was actually writing. For that matter, I remain perplexed by the fact that so many people (possibly including Pratchett) overlook the fact that JKR made essentially the same point. She didn't deny that she was writing fantasy -- she just said she took a while to realize it, and unless I am wildly misinterpreting the quote, she herself referred to the unicorns and castle with the implication that it had been rather a silly thing to miss.

On the other side of things, I am unclear on how one can intentionally subvert a genre without realizing one is writing in it.

None of which is to say that Pratchett's comment wasn't funny, since I thought it was both a reasonable point and entertainingly put. :)

The Time interviewer, as far as I can tell, seemed to be actively anti-fantasy (and anti-Narnia), not to mention clueless, whereas my impression of JKR's previous comments on her reading habits is that she had read and enjoyed assorted examples of fantasy, among many other things, but doesn't seek it out particularly. I suspect that the quotes were very selective and the summaries heavily colored by the interviewer's opinion, which may have led to "not much of a fan" morphing into "doesn't even like it." (As a side-note, I can think of one way that JKR's previous statements about liking Narnia and this one about not finishing the series might be easily reconciled: granted I was very young, but I think I may have considered quitting at some point during The Last Battle -- that dingy, depressing period where the Ape was introducing the false Aslan. And I have, myself, picked up the next book in a series I'd previously enjoyed and thought, "I don't want to see it end this way" or "This is getting stupid" and just stopped.)

[sohma-kodora.livejournal.com]

To me, what he said, from the link to the speach, is that just because something is fantasy doesn't mean that it doesn't have other elements. To be honest, most people classify JK's book as children, nothing more. However, she did have some fantasy in it, and I think that taking it to get prublished to realized, was fairly stupid. That's just me, though.

[cuvalwen.livejournal.com]

I don't trust that Time article one inch. It directly contradicts some other statements made by JKR, like the bits about Narnia- according to Time she hasn't finished reading the series but according to other interviews she would RE-read them in a heartbeat- if she had time. Another account had her saying that she was part way through PS when she realised that really, it was fantasy. Not noticing that her story fitted in that genre isn't that terrible- it just meant that she was writing the story and not the genre. And it sounds, from her mentioning Dorothy L Sayers in a more recent interview, that she may find that she's been inadvertantly writing detective fiction as well.
All in all, I'm quite prepared to accuse the Time journalist of sloppy and fictional journalism; especially after that morris dancing line. Since a) Lords and Ladies didn't morris dance, b)even if they did you couldn't dance it to 'Greensleaves' as the beat is all wrong and c) given that the standard Lords and Ladies immage for fantasy, held by those who know next to nothing about it, is cod-midaeval (sp?) then 'Greensleaves' would be highly anacronistic. A bit like getting the teenaged Sirius and Remus to make out to 'I'd do anything for love', really...

[yubsie]

I applaud your MOrris dancing paragraph. :D

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. Pterry's comment was funny and not uncalled for. I suspect what he meant by the "unicorns=fantasy" thing is that, colloquially, people are going to call your story fantasy if it has magic of some sort in it, just like people are going to call your story sci-fi if it takes place in the future and involves technologies we don't have yet in the real world.

[aquarius-1977.livejournal.com]

Recently I posted in my own journal, wondering if I was the only person on the planet who wasn't s "Potterhead." Most of the people who I've friended and have friended me are Star Wars fans, so it gave me a good chuckle to read a couple of them saying "I don't get into fantasy..." Star Wars is SO fantasy!

Part of the confusion stems from how label-conscious people are, and how subjective those labels are. No matter what we see, we always have to call it something, even if we're calling it by the wrong name. I'm reminded of my other fandom love, Star Trek. My whole life I've seen the label "science fiction" on it, but those who've thought about it and even Roddenberry himself when he was alive knew that wasn't really true. If you took away the starships and the phasers, you still basically have a story because it's about people, not the science. The other stuff is just props and decoration to set the story against. Even TV Guide knew that "sci-fi" wasn't quite right and categorized it as "adventure" in the 60's. Roddenberry's own term for it was "space opera."

I think the "fantasy=unicorns" thing just comes from a mainstream population that doesn't have the exposure to something to know any better, so they just latch on to the most universally recognized symbol it seems to have in common. These are the same people who think artists like Avril Levigne and Green Day are "punk," and don't realize that the term "alternative music" is meaningless now because that style has become marketed and popularized so it's no longer an alternative to anything. But you know, labels are so important...

Now, I've established that I'm not into Harry Potter beyond having seen the movies, but as an "outsider," I'm just wondering why JKR got picked on for her comment about not knowing HP was fantasy until it got published? From the way I understand things, she started out as a mom who told cool stories and took a chance and took them to a publisher. Is there any reason why she should have been label-conscious before that point?

[owl]

Well, JKR generally comes across as well-read and knowledgable, so you'd expect her at least to know about fantasy even if she didn't like it. The tone of the interview came across as scornful of fantasy as a genre, which I think is what people are getting annoyed about.

It looks to me as though JKR was poking fun at herself for not realising what her own book was about (she seems to think it's obvious to the reader, which it is), and the interviewer ran with it in the cause of his/her anti-fantasy bias.

On SF: laser guns and spaceships do not necessarily the SF make :) Talk like Yoda I must not, as confusing it is.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

On SF: laser guns and spaceships do not necessarily the SF make

Especially if those things don't operate in a scientific manner.

[davenchit.livejournal.com]

>What Pterry and JKR agree on, it would seem, is the definition of 'fantasy' as 'got unicorns'.

I don't think pterry was necessarily saying that. He was suggesting that, since JKR uses so many common fantasy tropes, and uses them pretty conventionally, it was disingenuous of her to suggest that she was ignorant of the fact that she writes "fantasy". That doesn't mean, however, that pterry is restricting the definition of fantasy to the stuff he names, such as unicorns.

Excellent post. Imo, you raise an interesting question. Arguably, pterry challenges the fantasy genre by using its many tropes in an unexpected way. So the question is this: when you subvert a genre of writing, do you stay within it, redefining it, or do you stray without?

[impropaganda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in the interview Rowling was playing up to the bias against fantasy - the idea some literary critics have that if a book is good, then it can't be true fantasy - and that is what pissed Terry off. I don't know how intentional that was on JKR's part though.

Re: your question, I would say that challenging a genre doesn't mean you are writing outside it. Otherwise, we would have countless millions of new genres, and all books in, say, the 'fantasy' genre would be pretty much the same. The beauty of genres is that despite being fairly easily recognisable, they encompass a wide range of styles. Variety is the spice of life, etc. And so I'd say what Pterry writes is definitely fantasy. Funny, satirical fantasy, yes, but still fantasy.

[owl]

The interviewer seemed to be flogging the 'fantasy is crap by definition' dead horse with some considerable energy.

[cjspock.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is, is that my husband and I were discussing this sort of topic not long before Pterry made his comment. We were discussing that Star Wars is not sci-fi at all, but it is fantasy that happens to be in space and has technology. The reason we were discussion this is because I work in a bookstore and apparently because I like HP and Star Wars I am the resident sci-fi/fantasy person (what I mean is that if anyone has any question about the sci-fi section, its brought to me). I tried explaining at work that Star Wars really isn't sci-fi but fantasy and they (my coworkers) just laughed at me. They think that because its in space and there is all this technology that its sci-fi... and there is no dissuading them.

The thing about the HP books is that they really can't be labeled as one genre or another. It really does encompass different ones. It is fantasy and a great mystery novel as well. In our store its in our children's section, but I (and the woman in charge of the children's department) think it should not be there. I can see how JKR could say that she wasn't sure that it was fantasy, because it is so much more than that.

[impropaganda.livejournal.com]

Sorry, why shouldn't HP be in the children's section again? So you can feel better about reading them? I love HP as much as the next guy, but to say they're not children's books is ridiculous.

And you say that stuff about HP being hard to classify like it's relatively unique in that regard. There are THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of books that belong in more than one genre, or cannot be easily classified. Working in a book store, you should know that.

[cjspock.livejournal.com]

I actually read quite a lot of children's literature and don't feel bad about it. There are other reasons why I do not believe that HP should not be in the children's section. The books were not originally meant to be children's books, but that was the only way JKR could get them published. The content of the books is a big reason why I do not believe they belong in the children's section. It matures as the children mature and at best it should be in the young adult section. I have seen HP in some book stores in a category called "For All Ages" which I think is more appropriate than just children's.

I never said that HP was the sole book that could be classified as being in different genres. There are plenty of books that could be in different places. Yes, I am quite aware of that since I do work in a book store. Customers often think a book should be in one section when it is in another.

[owl]

Just because a book has a child as the central character doesn't mean it's a children's book. Look at, what was it, 'The Lovely Bones'? Harry Potter may have started out as children's, but at the very leaast it's in the 10-13 range now. If the readers are the same age as Harry, it's YA.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

There's also a unicorn in Lords and Ladies.

I basically agree with your definition of fantasy. I think the thing with the unicorns is that you don't have to have unicorns to have a fantasy story, but if there ARE unicorns in the story, it pretty much has to be fantasy.

[owl]

Yes, as there aren't unicorns in the real primary universe, a story which contains them has to be a set in fantasy universe, and therefore is a fantasy. Doesn't mean it has to be a good fantasy, of course.

[niicoly.livejournal.com]

Hullo, came on over from jedi_news.

Star Wars is fantasy, but there are no unicorns; the outer trappings are of the science-fiction sort, but who knows how a hyperdrive works? Who cares about the power source of a lightsaber? It's a magical sword made out of light. This is why the EU works badly (apart from large parts of it being mere bad writing); it's trying to bolt on Star Trek-type extras on to a fantasy world.

I completely agree with you. There are extremely casual fans interested in the futuristic things like hyperdrives, death stars, lightsaber, etc, if just because they've grown up in a society with SW being very popular. Then there are the fans more interested in the stories. It's fantasy set in space, and casual fans/non-fans would say it was obviously scifi.

Bah! I don't pay attention to genres. It's all different versions of storytelling to get a point across.

[owl]

Your icon is very disturbing O_O

Yes, you have to be watching on a pretty superficial level to think that SW is SF.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

Fantasy does not equal unicorns; it is the creation of an internally consistent secondary world which is by intention distinct from the real one.

Actually, I disagree with this definition, since I find it too limiting. To me, fantasy falls into three major categories:

1. Events in a secondary world without connections to the real one. (Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Prydain)
2. Interaction between the secondary world and the real world (Narnia, Elidor)
3. Events that take place entirely in our world but includes magic or fairy-tale elements (Fire and Hemlock, Which Witch?)

Of course, #3 is a borderline case - take it one step further and you end up in magical realism - but it's also the form of fantasy JKR seems to have taken most of her inspiration from, even if the Harry Potter books themselves are closer to #2.

[owl]

I think perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying. All those to me are secondary worlds, in that the author was consciously setting out to create a world which doesn't physically exist, never will and never has. Harry Potter takes place in a fantasy world by my definition, even though it comes in your definition #2 or #3. However, if you want to define sub-categories in fantasy, yours are pretty good.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

Do you mean then that the parts of Harry Potter that take place among the Dursleys or in the prime minister's office are also set in a fantasy world? Because by that definition, any fictional novel would be fantasy. It would also rather take away the culture clash between the mundande and the fantastical, which is part of the point of stories of type #2 and #3.

[owl]

An England which contains wizards and witches is a fantasy world, yes. Unless you've had a Hogwarts letter you're willing to show me, anyhow :)

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

But that pretty much destroys the non-high fantasy genre. If we forget Harry Potter for a moment - because the witches and wizards do live in a world of their own most of the time - there are plenty of stories in which the point is that the world has more strange things happening than anyone would ever believe, and that ordinary people can be drawn into paranormal events.

These books contain fantasy elements, but they most emphatically do not take place in a fantasy world, no more than "Bridget Jones's Diary" or "David Copperfield" take place in a fantasy world because those people never existed.

Fictional stories by definition has things happening that hasn't happened for real. To use another example, Woody Allen's films mostly take place in New York. In one of them, his mother's face hangs over the city, telling people embarrassing things about him. This is a paranormal/fantasy element, but the New York it takes place in is the same New York as in the other fictional films. Obviously it could be said that it's a fictional New York - it's a representation of the city, not the real thing - but it's not a "fantasy world".

[owl]

But isn't the point of paranormal stories that strange things might be happening in the real, primary world?

I don't count Mum Allen's face or Ally McBeal's dancing babies and so on as fantasy in the genre sense, because they are isolated weirdnesses and don't make up an internally consistent world. All novels have an internal world, with degrees of success, but you have to be consciously changing the entire world to make it fantasy.

Hey, if you don't like my definition—it's practically the same as Tolkien's.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

Hey, if you don't like my definition—it's practically the same as Tolkien's.

Well, Tolkien was a purist who thought even Lewis was too frivolous with his use of fantasy, so I don't see him as the definite authority. Especially since I think the high fantasy inspired by his work is the least interesting of the fantasy sub-genres. (It's not his fault, of course, but I do think fantasy could have benefited from not having Middle-Earth as the huge fucking role model.)

I don't count Mum Allen's face or Ally McBeal's dancing babies and so on as fantasy in the genre sense

I don't count them as such either; rather, they're step four: magical realism. I used Allen as an example because it shows that New York remains New York regardless of what happens in it.

But a story like, say, Eight Days of Luke, that has paranormal events happening all over the place but still tied in with the mundane, that I would count as fantasy. Admittedly, it's not subcreation of worlds, but it's not magical realism either, and since fantasy is originally based largely on this type of stories, I think it makes sense to count them in. Before Tolkien, most stories of a fantastical nature were not set in another world.

I think one reason it's hard to peg down #3 is because it's largely ignored in modern adult literature - someone like Neil Gaiman might slip through the cracks, but largely the publishers are scared to death of things that can't be definitely pegged down as fantasy or mainstream. In children's literature, however, it's among the most common forms of storytelling.

I tend to see it as a POV thing. #2 type of fantasy has the ordinary person as an aberration in a fantasy world. #3 type of fantasy has the fantasy people as aberrations in the ordinary world. It often blends with the horror story - American Gods has horror elements and Buffy the Vampire Slayer has fantasy elements - but it doesn't have to.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

In general, my test for science fiction/fantasy is much simpler: if they use metric, it's science fiction. If they use the British system, it's fantasy. It's not foolproof, as there are some near-future science fiction works which use the British system, and L.E. Modesitt, Jr. uses metric in his fantasy novels.

I don't consider a genre to be something that determines the content of its members, but more its forms. So a unicorn, in general, would make a story fantasy; genetically engineered horse creature with a horn would make it science fiction. In general, science fiction and fantasy stories tend to "transcend" their genres much more than some other genres in which the genre does tend to determine content, such as romance or mysteries.

[owl]

That's a weird if almost accurate definition. Even SF written by Americans? (Reminds me of the story of the half-American half-European space probe that came to a sticky end because it was built using two different measuring systems).

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Most of the SF I read is by Americans, and I'd have to say that yes, most American SF writers use metric for anything other than extremely near-future universes.

[a-blue-moon-cat.livejournal.com]

Have read through all the comments. :) Quite fascinating.

Would you mind providing the link to the original article? Thanks in advance!

As for genres, I really think that there are two types of genres. First there are the forms, or what might be called trappings. These would be the categories such as mainstream, children's, SF, fantasy, western, horror, etc. Then there are the styles, such as romance, mystery, action/adventure, drama, comedy, tragedy, suspense, etc.

A SF novel can be a romance--most of the Pern books I would classify as this. A SF novel can be a mystery--the Stainless Steel Rats books by Harry Harrison can fall into this category. Fantasies can be comedic, such as some of Pterry's earlier Discworld novels, which I would classify as more like parody, perhaps satire. Fantasies can also be mostly action/adventure, which could include the Witch World series by Andre Norton, since there's not that much character development. Of course, these labels limit the books. The Amber series emcompasses many genres, as does the Harry Potter series.

I see horror and fantasy as quite distinct, even though they share supernatural traits in common. Simply put, in fantasy, the good guys win, at least for a time, and in horror, the bad buys win, at least for a time.

As for the comment about TOS being adventure, or action/adventure as I prefer to call it, it was, but it was still SF. All the other Treks that come since are drama. TOS was more plot-driven, with some character development. TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT were drama in that they still had plots, but were more character-driven. Of course, each individual eppie can be further broken down into genre stylings.

Some of this is IMHO and some of this comes from my background as an English major. :)