Re: Genre Study 2: Fantasy


Tue, 25 Apr 1995 07:25:59 GMT

whizzard@uclink.berkeley.edu (Gerry Kevin Wilson) writes:

>Mini-sermon #3: Mixing Signals
> To me, there's just something grating about stepping across different
>folklores within the same game without a good explanation. In one room, you
>match wits with a Chinese dragon, in the next you fight a minotaur, before
>going out to catch a leprechaun. It's sort of distracting, and Sierra is
>probably the worst one about swiping puzzles willy-nilly from different
>stories, squishing them together, and expecting to get something
>intelligible. It is in any game author's best interests to present a unified
>atmosphere, and staying within the bounds of your chosen genre is a very
>good guideline to help you do this.

This is pretty clearly a case of Your Mileage May Vary. Most of the really
good Fantasy stories I've read consist of big mish-mashes of folklore
traditions which the author has made his own, synthesizing it all into
something original and distinctive. Susan Cooper's series _The Dark Is
Rising_ is the best example of this, and _The Lord Of The Rings_ borrows
freely from common European themes, cross-culturally. Both Cooper and
Tolkien, needless to say, have created something new, and one doesn't
read them for their faithfulness to the traditional folklore.

There is an strain in modern Fantasy writing in which the author, who
apparently was a Comparative Literature student in college, writes for
readers who are all amateur folklorists. The sort of breathless
attention to scrupulous accuracy, while better than just pathetically
getting it wrong, produces a dull book. Morgan Llewelyn is a good
example of this: she markets as Fantasy books which are essentially
rewrites of the Irish legends -- apparently for those who are unable
to appreciate the wonderful available translations of the original material.

So: give me wise old dragons, hyperactive little men, and menacing unseen
half-human hybrids lurking in mazes. Keep me enchanted with your own
vision. Don't break the "unified atmosphere," but don't get all literal-
minded on me. Once I have to start thinking about mundane things like
Bulfinch's Mythology, you've lost me.

- David Librik
librik@cs.Berkeley.edu