Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

There’s a great article by Sean Harnett in Spike Magazine about the bloated nature of modern fantasy books.

As big a fan of fantasy as I am I really can’t argue with the basic point that fantasy stories are in desperate need of a diet. Though I do dispute his inclusion of George R. R. Martin in the category of writers of bloated fiction. While his Song of Ice and Fire series is large, I don’t believe that it is padded unlike say Jordan’s painfully repetitive work.

Interestingly Harnett puts the blame for this situation on Michael Moorcock, which is an unusual choice. He makes some good points but I think misses a number of important contributors to the fantasy bloat.

If I was going to pick an author to “blame” (and really its not the authors, its the readers) then I’d probably go with Terry Brooks. His Shannara series are actually more responsible for the growth of modern fantasy that Moorcock and of course he did create the doorstop series too.

But really I firmly believe that readers get what they want. Its easy to blame authors, but the fact is people want to read this stuff and who’s to say they shouldn’t be allowed to just because I don’t care for some of it?

Thanks to SFSignal for bringing the link to my attention and The Alien Online for bringing it to theirs.