Epic Fantasy – tracking the Time Travel of a genre that is a Game of Millions today!!

Tolkien oh Tolkien…why art thou not born in modern times!! Had you been born today, we would have had at least 10 novels on Lord of the Rings. Hobbit, would have been a spinoff of gargantuan proportion; and who knows, maybe, we would have seen you spin a different epic fantasy too!! If only you were born today!!

Epic Fantasy today is THE genre in Fiction writing. Most authors love to dabble in it today. It requires a largely imaginative mind and proper PR back up, and in turn it gives you millions of followers on the books and then TV, movies, video games, social networking sites, the works. The author becomes a millionaire and the audience is happy million times over…it’s actually a Game of Millions J

But epic fantasy is not a recent phenomenon; its origins are more deep rooted and historic, which is why this genre is still timeless, provides a plethora of interesting twists & turns, and has an ever increasing set of readers/fans. Before marvelling on this Game of millions, I wanted to look at the Time Travel of Epic Fantasy Genre and what is it that makes it so appealing & timeless even today!! After all it is just a bunch of hocus-pocus J Or is it?

ORIGINS & INSPIRATION – The biggest inspiration of Epic Fantasy is the oldest literature known to mankind – ancient Epics.

EPIC – as we know is a long ballad, which describes tales, set in mythical times of mythical (seemingly historic & real) figures. These tales are generally of extreme bravery; involve kingdoms, warfare, politics; Good vs. Evil happens to be a common theme followed in these poems & they are “THE” point of reference for almost everything sociological and many times religious for generations to come. The heroes of these epics become legends inked in history.

Guru Valmiki’s “Ramayan”, Ved Vyas’ “Mahabharat” (Ancient India), are the oldest known epics in the history of mankind. Then we have Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey (Ancient Greece); The Tale of Shipwrecked Sailor (Ancient Egypt) and Epic of Gilgamesh (Ancient Mesopotamia). All of them lead with legends of warfare and politics, with morally acceptable teachings imbibed in them as well.

EPIC FANTASY – a genre that borrowed from the legendary epics (above) & married them with fantasy fiction (generally Children’s tales), thus creating a whole new & distinct genre.

J.R.R.Tolkien was the hands down pioneer of this genre, which was taken forward in good measure by C.S.Lewis through his Chronicles of Narnia series.

Epic Fantasies are generally placed in three broad categories:

• A setting in which the primary world does not exist^[3] (e.g. The Lord of The Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, Warcraft, Inheritance Cycle, Discworld, The Earthsea Series, The Sword of Truth, The Riftwar Cycle, The Shannara Series, The Edge Chronicles, The Wheel of Time, The Prydain Chronicles, Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Name of the Wind, Gormenghast, and Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn)
• The secondary/parallel world(s) is entered through a portal from the primary world^[3] (e.g. Alice in Wonderland, Oz books, The Chronicles of Narnia,^[3] His Dark Materials, Phantastes, The Dark Tower, Xanth books, and Avantasia)
• A distinct world-within-a-world as part of the primary world^[3] (e.g. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson,, Stardust, Arthur series (Besson), The Spiderwick Chronicles, American Gods, The Gods of Pegana and The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

Source: Wikipedia

The fever of epic fantasy series was huge till 1950s. The formula was simple; all you required was plotline references from ancient epics (listed above), marry them with more characters and a very, very imaginative mind!! Voila, your epic fantasy was done. When Lewis Caroll wrote Alice in Wonderland (1895), he had created a world that was truly fantastical with characters that are real despite actually being unreal. The book did not become a series, but paved way for so many authors to imagine a fantasy world & fill it with more adventures on the lines of ancient epics. Lord of the Rings was one such epic that was huge in proportion & spawned series and spinoffs & prequels. C.S. Lewis furthered this by producing 7 books for Narnia series. With these works, Fantasy fiction actually came out of the mould of Childrens’ fiction, where Alice in Wonderland & Wizard of Oz was generally relegated. It suddenly became much larger than life and had its readers in mature adults too.

To my mind, this genre continued till about early 1960s with success, and then suddenly it faded. Reason could be many, but primary one that comes to my mind is that with 1960s, most literature & fiction started looking at the futuristic fantasy, rather than old world fantasy. Aldous Huxley’s superb fiction “Brave New World” (although written in 1932) paved way for a completely new genre that was futuristic (a topic to be covered in another post).

Another reason could be that people had had a fill of epics & fantasy and were slotting it in the bracket of children’s books increasingly, and moving to futuristic fiction – after all peace was restored finally after two World Wars a and naturally the global sentiment was to look ahead to a better future. Thus this genre remained under a pile for almost two decades; also no other compelling work could have hit shelves in this time period.

Of course we cannot deny that with television coming in the picture in a big way, book reading as a habit started declining. Most fantasies were adapted to TV series or films at huge production costs and thus were easier to consume; thus lesser books started hitting shelves that required a rapt attention & were generally considered heavy reads.

REVIVAL:

The genre started getting its known & popular revival in 1980s. The 80s saw another old sub-genre of Fantasy reviving – Sword & Sorcery. Though not very huge in scale, this kind of fiction focussed on tales from a parallel world, a lot of magic & swordfights, but on personal level and did not involve a realm or the world for that matter. However, this genre started fading too, as the success of 1982 feature film Conan the Barbarian paved way for many such me-too ventures and to top it, some badly made Sinbad films relegated the whole genre to mediocre adventure fiction at best.
However, Fantasy work continued in good measure and in 1990s notable series like Belgariad by David Eddings & Sword of Truth – 12 part epic fantasy by Terry Goodkind hit shelves.

MODERN Day POPULARITY:

Then J.K.Rowling happened to the genre. Rowling, cleverly constructed the whole genre back into a more acceptable format. She started HP series focussing on Children, since she knew they would be her primary readers, who would grow up to be adults by the time the last book releases, and thus she will capture a larger audience gradually. She backed up her books with effective PR, wherein Harry Potter became a household name globally. Finally she sold the rights of her epic fantasy to Hollywood for a mammoth film franchisee that could only result in more popularity of the genre. Rowling’s work was contemporary hence more attached to the world, her characters were real, and their World was so real despite its unreality!!

The success of this genre suddenly paved way for fantasy works appearing on screen pell-mell. Twilight, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia were pulled out from under a pile and made into mega projects, and they succeeded. Then came George R.R.Martin’s fabulous “A Song of Ice & Fire” that was again adapted into a mammoth TV series by HBO, in a first ever move of this scale. Never was the scale of fantasy so huge; never was its frame so opulent. In fact Martin’s books are adapted into the TV series so beautifully, that there seems to be little difference in reading or watching Game of Thrones.

Now, the next, most awaited book franchisee is “The Queen of Tearling” by the young debut author Erika Johanssen, again to be adapted into a mammoth film franchisee.

Meanwhile closer home (India), the genre got a lease of fresh life after Amish Tripathi’s brilliant “Shiva Trilogy” came into the fore. Again borrowing from Hindu mythology and keeping a fantasy element in mind, Amish spun a story that was pure fantasy, yet had ample amount of adventure, mega-wars , larger than life characters roaming in the oldest civilization of the World. His books made him India’s J.K.Rowling, where readers thronged bookstores when the third book in his trilogy was released. Such fervour for an Indian author was never seen before!!

FORMULA & its FLAWS:

Yes, I do not deny, this genre does seem to have a set formula.

(Old folklore + pick legendary characters of past + refer to old epics + sorcery + an imaginative mind (into the power 100) + a mythical land)*(many characters + many plot twists and turns + romance tracks) = a Fantastic Fantasy novel

Now you simply take the above and multiply it with PR machinery and then a Hollywood production house backing this formula = a guaranteed money spinner Epic success J

The only flaw in this genre to my mind is that by the time the series ends, it sort of loses its plot by the last books. Generally brought over by mega budget production houses for on screen adaptations, these books become more of money spinner film rather than honest, good, old fiction. It seems that the end is being written for a huge film and it loses out its original charm. The charm of HP series in first four books did go downhill by the last three. This is not to say I did not enjoy the complete series, but I felt so much PR and demands from fans and production houses, did put a pressure on the author & could have influenced her work to some extent.

Similarly Game of Thrones has its obsessive fans (I am one too) and they already love the characters and have their favourites. Social networking pages are dedicated to such characters and it could influence the work of the author in creating further plot twists. Amish’s third book in Shiva Trilogy, was not quite the work the first two were, but nonetheless it was huge and will make for a brilliant on screen adaptation.

To sum up, epic fantasy is a most welcome genre, and definitely for readers like me. Its unreal world is so welcoming; the adventure & travails of the characters are to be followed scene by scene, and its twists and turns are most welcome. It is a push button escape from the real world & may we be showered with many more from this genre of Fiction.