{"id":22760,"date":"2013-10-14T06:30:26","date_gmt":"2013-10-13T17:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=22760"},"modified":"2013-10-13T18:24:19","modified_gmt":"2013-10-13T05:24:19","slug":"what-makes-for-the-new-in-epic-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2013\/10\/14\/what-makes-for-the-new-in-epic-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"What Makes for &#8220;The New&#8217; in Epic Fantasy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since <strong><em><\/em><\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/gatheringofthelost.html\"><strong><em>The Gathering Of The Lost<\/em><\/strong><\/a> was shortlisted for the Gavid Gemmell <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gemmellaward.com\/profiles\/blogs\/2013-shortlists-revealed\">Legend Award<\/a>, the whole award process has got me thinking about a number of topics that keep coming up in fora and Q&amp;A. Last week I asked one of the most fundamental questions, i.e. <a href=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2013\/10\/07\/what-makes-fantasy-epic\/\">What Makes Fantasy Epic<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>In the subsequent discussion we talked about some of the enduring and consistent elements of the (sub)genre, so of course that immediately sparked another question: &#8220;What makes an epic fantasy seem new and\/or fresh for readers?&#8221; I say &#8220;and\/or&#8221; deliberately, because arguably &#8220;new&#8221; and &#8216;fresh&#8221; are not necessarily the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>Is it enough to change the historical era or cultural paradigms that inform the epic, for example, to qualify as &#8220;new&#8221;, or does the alteration have to be more far reaching?\u00a0 And is it in fact possible to have anything truly new under the sun (or &#8220;Under Heaven&#8221; a la Guy Gavriel Kay&#8217;s Chinese-informed novel.:) )<\/p>\n<p>Once again, I would love to hear <em>your<\/em> thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since The Gathering Of The Lost was shortlisted for the Gavid Gemmell Legend Award, the whole award process has got me thinking about a number of topics that keep coming up in fora and Q&amp;A. Last week I asked one of the most fundamental questions, i.e. What Makes Fantasy Epic? In the subsequent discussion we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epicfantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22760"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22767,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22760\/revisions\/22767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}