"Bill Fawcett & Brian Thomsen - Masters of Fantasy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fawcett Bill)

- Chapter 1

Back | Next
Contents




file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/0743488229___1.htm (1 of 3)7-1-2007 23:47:47
 - Chapter 1




From Category to Genre
in a Bookselling Sense
Or
When Sales and Popularity
Begin to Command Respect

We all have friends who might look at our reading tastes as being a bit eccentric.
You know who I meanтАФthose who call it "sword and sorcery stuff" and seem to think that every fantasy
needs a Frazetta or Boris cover that will appeal primarily to adolescent boys in search of cheap thrills.
There was a time when their point of view was in the majority and fantasy titles were relegated to the
same level of respect afforded to other "category" fiction titles.
"Category" is a pejorative. For example, in category terms, westerns were "horse operas" or "shoot 'em
ups," romances were "bodice rippers," and fantasies were "that Conan stuff." And the principal venues
for sales were drugstore and gas station wire racks next to this month's issue of Good Housekeeping,
Popular Mechanics, or Playboy. Category books were sold at the bottom of the list and engendered little
respect from either the publisher or the bookseller.
Then, a funny thing happened.
Category books began to break out and sell like hotcakes, and not just at the truck stops but in the book
stores as well.
Louis L'Amour became a topselling author of western fiction (notice "western fiction"; that's a genre
designation, not just a category), romances became either "historical romances," "regency romances" or
"contemporary romances" (again, with genre-specific designations) and fantasies, well . . . let me tell
you what happened.
First, the powers that be began to split hairs.
Tolkien wasn't really fantasy; it was fiction, just like Richard Adams's talking rabbit novel, Watership
Down, and John Gardner's Grendel. Any new book that commanded an equal amount of respect like,
say, The Mists of Avalon, was also obviously fiction, and therefore not like those category fantasy titles
that appeared in paperback and usually were part of some large series like Conan (you know, just like
Mack Bolan except without the guns and gadgets).
They were considered a flavor-of-the-month sort of thing where the authors didn't really matter except to
a small but rabid fandom.
The truth was, however, that the fandom wasn't that small, and in no time at all their buying power
became more noticeable.
In 1982, Ogre, Ogre by Piers Anthony made the New York Times paperback bestseller list, something
category books were not expected to do.
Now, Ogre, Ogre was a paperback original (no hardcover edition), part of an ongoing series, with no