Mark Chadbourn on "Are RPGs Killing Fantasy?"

Mark Chadbourn, whose has a story coming up in The Solaris Book of New Fantasy, blogs about RPGs and fantasy fiction.

'The question now is, what is the point of the fantasy author? Any writer coming into this field in this age faces immediate dangers. The core fantasy elements have been so colonised by the games industry that the writer automatically has to handle accusations of being a hack dabbling in cliches. Yes, a good writer should infuse their work with levels of meaning, subtext and characterisation usually unavailable in games and their fictional tie-ins. But is that enough? Any author utilising the long-standing tropes and landscape of fantasy fiction will now always be hamstrung by suffocating familiarity. The games worlds are so diverse, so cleverly and startlingly imagined (usually by teams of highly inventive people) that authors working in these traditional fields will be seen as ‘more of the same’ by anyone giving their work a cursory glance on the shelves. And what author worth their salt wants that?'

A very interesting debate indeed. Worth examining, this one.

And let's turn the heat up a little more when we throw M John Harrison's own, and often controversial, discussions on fantasy literature.

'As a reader I’m not interested in a “fully worked out” world. I’m not interested in “self consistency”. I don’t care what kind of underpants Iberian troops wore in 1812, or if I do I can find out about it for myself. I don’t want the facts about the Silk Road or the collapse of the Greenland Colony, sugared up & presented in three-volumes as an imaginary world. I don’t want to be talked through your enthusiasm for costume. I don’t want be talked through anything.'

This hare has now been wound up and sent racing along the blogosphere for the dogs to run down...