Over at fellow RORee Marianne de Pierres‘ blog I’ve written an article about the fantasy genre.
It’s a genre much maligned by the literary world, yet many literary books are fantastical in nature. As in all genres there’s a bell curve with a lot of stuff sitting in the middle, being neither remarkably good or really bad. Yet fantasy can be used to explore all sorts of interesting concepts. You only have to look at the work of Margo Lanagan to see how freeing it can be. And you only have to read a Terry Pratchett book to see how it can be used to satirise our world. For Terry Pratchett fans here’s link to TP Quotes.
Closing with a quote from the great TP himself:
‘The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.’
That’s a good article. Though I don’t blame Atwood for protecting her brand.
It’s sad that she has to protect her brand from being associated with the genre.
A few years ago I was fortunate enough to have lunch with Mr Pratchett and then interview him as a Red Dwarf Fan. He is a quite astounding chap and extremely easy to converse with. It is a great shame that there are not more minds like his about.
Cliff, I shared the same hotel as TP at the World SF con in 1999. We had breakfast a couple of times. He was a sweetie.
I wish now I could email him and say that when ever I run a workshop for teenagers, there will be some clever kid up the back who come up with off the wall comments to try and throw me. And I’ll say to him, ‘You wouldn’t be a Terry Pratchett fan, by any chance?’ You should see their eyes light up when they realise that someone else (from the establishment) has heard of Terry Pratchett.
Must be terribly lonely to see the world in a TP kind of way but be surrounded by family and friends who are trapped in a mundane kind of mindset.
It’s not so bad now with the internet. You can connect up with people who don’t think you’re weird.