UK/AUS/NZ

With The Gathering Of The Lost currently shortlisted for the international David Gemmell Legend Award, which celebrates the epic-heroic fantasy genre, I thought it was time to talk again about why I write and love epic fantasy — especially given the body of thought “oot thar'”, that alleges that the genre is misogynistic, reactionary and glorifies violence.

Now if NZ author, Kate de Goldi, is right that every writer has a “bone” he or she tends to “gnaw away at through their writing”, then it may well be that some writers of epic fantasy are concerned with misogynistic and reactionary bones, or the glorification of violence, and their writing will reflect that accordingly.

I would point out, however, that if some writers in epic do display these characteristics, they are certainly not limited to that genre of literature alone–and it is certainly not true of all writers of epic. To pluck a few names from authors currently writing, I can readily say that, so far, I have not found Daniel Abraham misogynist, or Kate Elliott  reactionary, or that Stina Leicht glorifies violence. Far from it, in fact.

So I thought I’d like to reflect again on what else epic fantasy may comprise, and very often does.

USA

Firstly, for me epic will always be about the grand sweep of events—in many cases world altering—and using the play of those events to examine the conflicts they generate within societies and individuals. The stuff of life, in my opinion—and I love reading it, so it’s perhaps not surprising that I want to write about it as well.

Some other reasons I choose to read and write epic fantasy include:

— epic fantasy is also high fantasy and allows the author to write stories that operate at the mythic and legendary level of storytelling, in the same way as the epic sagas such as the Iliad and Parsifal, for example;

— All SFF allows the author to explore ‘what if’ and ‘wonder’ and to speculate on the how and why of other worlds, but because of its grand sweep and focus on world altering events, epic fantasy—more than any other in my opinion—allows the author to speculate on the behaviour of characters and societies. Several reviewers have already commented on the matter-of-fact equality of men and women in the Derai society of The Heir of Night. The opportunity to “just do” this, without either “discussion or worthy treatise” (SFX) is part of what it means to write speculative fiction.

— All SFF requires the writer to do a certain amount of world building, but while urban fantasy is almost-but-just-not-quite-our-everyday-world (Robin McKinley’s Sunshine is a great example of this) and steampunk draws heavily on what we know of late 18th-19th century history, epic fantasy requires world building on a, well, epic scale.  The world is often, but not necessarily, alternate to ours and holds out the possibility of other beings, cultures, societies, and ways of doing things: fan-tastic.

So to look at those authors I mentioned above, in his Long Price quartet, Daniel Abraham created a world in which magic is based on poetry; Kate Elliott’s early industrialised, Spiritwalker world is gripped by an Ice Age in which West African and Celtic magic, as well as the peoples who generated them have fused; while Stina Leicht’s Fey and the Fallen  juxtaposes fallen angels, the fey, and the church militant in a conflict within the northern Irish troubles.

In the end all fiction is about storytelling, and in my opinion epic fantasy contains some of the very best stories, with grandeur and sweep, “what-if” ideas, a sense of wonder, intriguing world building, and tremendous passion and heart.  Put quite simply, a significant number of epic fantasy stories rock! I love them—and that’s why I write them, too.