I agree whole heartedly, the list of titles is so long that it acts as a catch-all so that everyone gets a chance to vote for something. It seems the idea is to be as inclusive as possible to the voters. The problem is that the result is so diluted that it becomes questionable at best.

Look at last years winner.

I’m not saying it wasn’t a good book or that it wasn’t well written – although I could argue for badly translated – but it definitely did not stand out as anything remotely resembling ‘best’ especially considering some of the other contenders.

After the event I wasn’t entirely convinced that the number of contenders wasn’t, in part, to help sell tickets for the dinner, and that’s no basis for the care and feeding of the fantasy genre.

No matter how the judges vote, people will accuse them of getting it wrong.

But that is — or should be — part of the fun of the exercise. And more fun with a judged award than with a popular voted award, I’d suggest, since in theory the judges have read more of the relevant books in a given year than anyone else. That doesn’t mean they’re right, but it does mean their decisions are worth taking seriously: why did they pick X, and not Y?

Put another way, for me, one measure of the quality of a fantasy award should be the quality of the discussion it provokes: does it pick books that are worth talking about? Does it make people want to talk about the books that it picks? Equally, of course — and this is one reason why the review is appearing even so belatedly — I can’t shake the feeling that fantasy, particularly what you could call “core” or “popular” fantasy (not good labels, either of them, but you know what I point to when say it) doesn’t get the discussion it deserves. The Gemmell shortlist should have been an opportunity to have that discussion, but it didn’t happen. Why not?

“The Gemmell shortlist should have been an opportunity to have that discussion, but it didn’t happen. Why not?”

Because quite simply there is no place to have that discussion. Or rather there are a million different blogs, which despite my lax attitude to work, I cannot check them all. The conversation is so spread out it gets lost in the noise.

Aside: @Niall – if I can get hold of copies I’m going to try and review the BSFA short list.

The reason is that I’ve not read any of them and all of them have some appeal.

Come think of it I have all bar one of the Gemmell Books:

ABERCROMBIE, Joe – Last Argument of Kings (Gollancz/Pyr)
MARILLIER, Juliet – Heir to Sevenwaters (Tor UK)
SANDERSON, Brandon – The Hero of Ages (Tor US)
SAPKOWSKI, Andrzej – Blood of Elves (Gollancz)
WEEKS, Brent – The Way of Shadows (Orbit)

(that’s the Abercrombie btw)

I could review those if I had time.

Lots of blogs attempt the Booker long and short list. I guess it’s something that bloggers in general don’t seem to do.

Maybe we should be encouraging more bloggers to attack the Award short lists and come up with their own judgments after reading the books mentioned?

P.S. Nor am I personally polarised against horror or SF, indeed will be doing my little bit for some horror writers, among them a few from these shores, in due course. My first and main love is fantasy and I for one do not think it is adequately represented in an awards sense in the UK and think it is a good thing, to use a phrase of Peter V. Brett’s (but in no way to suggest his comments are in tandem with mine) that there is an award out there for fantasy with a ‘narrower purview’.

Mark, I am with you in your desire to raise the status of the genre as worthy of serious literary discussion (it is being done now) but the gatekeepers of the broadsheets around the world and the drawing rooms and the Newsnight natters and the cultural radio reviews will continue to manage that rare feat of holding onto those keys and holding forth while having their pokers of pomposity stuck firmly up their arses.

There are classics in Western Literature certainly (I speak not of literature outside it because my knowledge doesn’t extend that far) that are either fantasy or SF or horror. It rankles, I know, but time is ultimately the gatekeeper. But there is certainly no harm in trying. We do indeed have to give voice to these movements in order to help them survive in time. They are not in opposition, they run in parallel and at times they intertwine. That was I think part of the reasoning behind the establishment of the DGLA award. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone and that happens if you do nothing about it or for it.

Ahh Jeff, you should come to the UK so you could rubbish my drunken Late-Night-At-The-Bar theories on the subtle differences between British and American Fantasy.

Anyone in the world can win the Gemmell Award, Jeff. The first one was won by a Polish writer. Only one of the shortlisted authors last year was from the UK. Do all the major awards in genres of the fantastic that really count have to be centred in the US, as if magnanimously allowing in ‘literary immigrants’? Hugos. Nebulas. World Fantasy Award. That must be an example of big pond thinking! It is true that writers here like actors here seem ever anxious to ‘make it’ in the US, partly because that’s where the dosh is. But shifting units and sales has never been a default measure of literary quality, which is what this thread is supposedly about.

I fear I have been partly responsible for shifting the direction of this thread, in which it was Mark’s intention, I believe, to raise the issue of serious literary criticism in fantasy literature.

There certainly are artistic criteria, collectively arrived at and which already exist and have existed for a good century or more in series acamdemic study, which can be applied to measure whether a book is good or bad art. Not everything is relative. But in an age of online relativism all too often good or bad simply becomes what you or I like and that is not a measure of good or bad art, regardless of genre (which in the measure of those criteria would be one element of many taken into account to judge it). But you wouldn’t believe it from many of the online forums.

There are more than enough authors in fantasy and SF and horror and so called ‘literary mainstream’ fiction who have not a basic grasp of the use of foreshadowing, thematic variation, a well wrought metaphor, credible characterisation, just to take some of the more traditional and recognisable tools and basic requrements of the writer’s craft. A lot of genre writing is awash with would-be disingenuous practitioners who say they don’t know about all that stuff, they just write to entertain. Very often ‘just writing to entertain’ is the cowardly refuge of a ham-fisted writer. Fantasy has more than its fare share but so does SF and horror (and thriller writing).

Take info-dumping for one. In a secondary world it is a knotty artistic problem to say the least but it never ceases to amaze me not only how brazen writers can be about it (I’m assuming they know they are being so) but just how many supposedly distinguished and discerning editors allow it through. Does that say as much about the readership of the genre as anything else? “When Raark decapitated Villen on the battlements at the end, that was awesome dude! Best EVER!” There’s your literary critique from the main body of the readership? It seems that info-dumping, which i would argue is bad art, is readily accepted by editors as a necessary piece of evil machinery in the ‘entertainment’. In the words of Pink Floyd: it can’t be helped, but there’s a lot of it about…

Now to write a novel which is a sophisticated work of literature with symbolic and thematic layers to it and in which the prose is distinctive, striking but not over-wrought, in which information is merged organically, filtered through with a considerable measure of skill, while creating an entertaining work of art that moves along at a compelling lick, a compelling story – Now that’s a work of art. That’s entertainment! It can be helped but there ain’t a lot of it about.

Nor is the debate about literary quality in a fantasy or horror or SF aided by the nepotism inherent in the genres. Far too many rave blurbs on book covers come either from authors within the same publishing house stable or simply, frankly, from professional friends. Just how much a measure of literary quality are those pronouncements? It is the way of the literary world in general I suppose and has ever been thus.

I’m going to defend the people who say “When Raark decapitated Villen on the battlements at the end, that was awesome dude! Best EVER!”

Why? Because they might not know the tools of literary criticism to dissect a book. And why should they? Do I have to dismantle everything I like? I don’t analyse the tunes I like on the radio, I just say that’s a cool song.

What’s more important is passion for the genre. We seem to forget that Fantasy is the story of adventure, and we can get all prissy and say it’s really about social commentary, but it’s not just that. if I want social commentary I can read the Guardian. We love fantasy for the imagined worlds, the weird creatures, the mythologies and the very, very cool decapitations.

@Martin. So what do you think it is? Escapism? I genuinely interested in your opinion.

I think it is many things, I don’t thing it is a monolithic enterprise that one person can claim ownership over using the word “we”. Just like all literature.

There is a market for serious, well-crafted fantasy that avoids the tropes, cliches, and cheap pulp style so prevalent in the genre. This market exists both among fantasy readers (like myself) who just put up with poor writing because I enjoy the genre so much *and* new readers who would be attracted to the fantastic if it weren’t for the poor style.

I’ve read very positive reviews of very dreadful books from very popular reviewers. Seems like serious literary criticism could be a good place to start these discussions, and hopefully enrich the genre’s offerings.

I don’t know whether Serendip (the body that administers the Clarke Award) has ever thought in that direction. I’d be a little surprised if it’s never crossed their mind. But I imagine before it gets any further than a vague notion you’d have to have a pretty good idea where the money would be coming from. If a sponsor or other source of funding could be found, I hope they’d at least consider it … Of course, then you’d have to decide what to call it.

Meanwhile some more recent Elric offerings by Michael Moorcock are brought under some rough-house but witty and telling forum critiquing here.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/41452-elrics-new-adventures/

Moorcock is not nearly subjected to enough criticism, serious or otherwise; often revered by writers coming via way of Peake. Famous for apparently pwning that (apparently unknowing, unthinking) cap-doffing Royalist apologist dolt, J.R.R. A torch taken up by China Mieville in an article about ten years ago, highlighting a seeming contradiction in Tolkien’s view of things in ‘On Fairy Stories’. (CM recently gave a more favourable view of Tolkien ten years on from that in the spirit of clear-eyed crticism.)

http://www.omnivoracious.com/2009/06/there-and-back-again-five-reasons-tolkien-rocks.html

Back to Moorcock. A would-be knowing but worthy dose of political satire cannot excuse bad art. Even more inexcusable if it is bad satire. (Terry Goodkind doesn’t even know what the word means.) But usually, if it’s on behalf of the Left, all is quietly forgiven…

I’m neither right nor left by the way. Nor am I counted in the middle. As Hal Duncan once said about something else on his About Me MySpace page (it was actually about the ‘About Me’ bit): **** that ****.

Which brings to mind what Howard Jacobson – himself no stranger to charges of bias -wrongly in my opinion of being either a) an apologist for Israel – Jacobson is a non-worshipping Jew; b) a misogynist – if you are a male and write with the same merciless scrutiny about women in your novels as you do the men, that seems to make you one; c) both – once remarked about the critic Terry Eagleton, to the effect that nobody critiqued a text with more insight than Eagleton, but that Eagleton was a Marxist, not some of the time but all of the time and you can’t be something all of the time when it comes to art. Maybe that can only be understood if you try and do some. It lies somewhere in the realm of Keats’ notion of ‘Negative Capability’. If you don’t possess that you usually don’t get very good art.

Like the religious Milton creating in Satan in Paradise Lost one of the towering characters in literature.

Meanwhile, this is a response to a music critic’s outrage of the reality series ‘From Popstar to Operastar’ in itself apt when it comes to the subject of criticism on this thread:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7078389/Popstar-to-Operastar-is-only-a-television-show-Rupert.html

‘In his polemic outburst, Christiansen questions the credentials of one panellist because she “has never sung a full opera in her professional career” and therefore “carries little authority”. I have always found this contradiction interesting: the majority of critics are usually not capable of singing real operatic notes, let alone performing entire operas on stage, yet they make their living by evaluating musical performances’.

Ken Hom once joked that ‘every Chinese person is a food critic’. If you have close associations with the Chinese you will know this to be true. Ditto *everyone* on The Net.

So would a panel judging a shortlist of genre titles generate constructive debate online. Sadly, Mark, the Slav in my tends towards the cynical conclusion that it will not.

It is my belief that what has become our main means of communication in a very short time is subject to Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics. An entropic babel of relativism.

If Godwin’s Law doesn’t get it first.

I won’t say time and money aren’ts issue but I do think they are relatively trivial. Inclination is the heart of it. I don’t buy hardbacks either and I like to mix up my reading so I’ve never especially had the inclination to read a shortlist. However, the fact remains that people do have the inclination to read the Booker and the Clarke lists but don’t appear to have the same inclination for the Gemmell. (I mostly follow genre blogs but two of the ones I read covered the Booker shortlist.) So, yes, discussing any shortlist requires commitment but that doesn’t explain the difference between these levels of interest.

As an aside, it is wrong to describe all shortlisted novels as having a “huge marketing budget behind” them, for juried awards at least (which ties into this whole conversation).

The question of infrastructure is interesting. Is there really a perception that there aren’t hubs for fantasy? What are the hubs of science fiction perceived to be?

I’d say the Literature board at Westeros does a pretty good job at a lot of those things, Daniel Hall. I don’t know if you already know about it or not, but here’s a link:

http://tinyurl.com/y9xytub

Hi guys
Just a quickie thought – if we all stopped discussing why there “appears” to be so little discussion of the Nominees, and erm… I dunno… discussed the Nominees – that would BE the discussion nes pas?

Also, Daniel – come on over to Wonderlands! – It’s exactly what you mention – a Fantasy “hub” http://wonderlands.ning.com

Yes, we DO want readers to have a go at reading the Nominated books – that is the whole point of the exercise. It would be nice to think that people discover NEW authors they had not previously considered too… at the end of the day we think reading is a very “good thing.” And we who are passionate about any form of literature, tend to forget that a surprisingly low percentage of adults read for pleasure. Awards are not really about the winners – although it’s obviously nice to win! Or about critics and bloggers – they’re just about readers.

You are not the only writer with deadlines – in fact most of those in the industry whose opinions we might respect re judging an Award, have similar deadlines. Just try asking them to read a Shortlist of 5 novels, give up a couple of days of their time – for free – to be shut in a room to argue and debate.

And at the end of the day, what exactly makes a collection of such people – who we may well like and admire – the arbiters of what is ‘worthy’ or not? Do we need their opinions as to what we should or should not like? I think not. Do you rush out a purchase the Costa & Whitbread winners every year? (And I know we’re not going to agree on this point Mark! Let me just say, the DGLA is “unashamedly commercial/populist” & I have no issue with that.

“Really, it just means “those with enough of an active online profile – in all languages – combined with those who already sell well.”

If that were the case, what happened last year to Raymond Fiest, Steve Erikson, Ian Esselmont, RA Salvatore…? It takes more than an online presence & a previous track record, I would venture to suggest it takes readers who really care enough, are invested enough in your work, to turn out and vote. Last year’s Shortlisted Juliet Marillier, being a prime example of this…

Anyway, ’nuff said’ – hope to continue perhaps in a bar near you next weekend