Here’s a Sunday link round-up with yet some more reactions on the subjects that have kept us occupied of late.
I have also found some more reactions to the nihilism in epic fantasy debate of the past week and a half.
At the Apex blog, John H. Stevens weighs in one the nihilism in fantasy debate and particularly takes issue with the Theo/Vox Day post.
Athena Andreadis argues that both “sides” of the debate represent just the same old testosterone club at the Apex blog. I agree with her there, because the two “sides” in this debate don’t really seem all that different. Fantasy as a genre is a lot bigger and more diverse than traditional epic fantasy, traditional sword and sorcery and the new dark and gritty epic fantasy. There are plenty of subgenres, traditions and styles beyond the “moral/black and white” vs. “nihilistic/realistic” dichotomy (which is false anyway).
Sherwood Smith asks “What is adult?” over at the Book View Café.
Mary Catelli ponders the different meanings of “realistic” in the context of fiction. Blood, guts and gore are just one possible meaning.
One thing I’ve noticed during this discussion is that even though the discussion was dominated by men (and the authors mentioned usually were all male as well), the most thoughtful posts all came from women. But they got much less attention, probably because the men were shouting louder.
On a different note, Jeff Vandermeer claims that story is style and even that character is style. Not really surprising, since Jeff Vandermeer strikes me as a very style driven writer. I also wonder whether this is a response to the voice post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch I linked to yesterday.
sending...
It’s not a response to anything. And by typifying my work the way you do you fall into the very binary trap the blog post and comments there decry.
I simply noticed the thematic similarities between your post and Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s and wondered whether one inspired the other.
Does that “successor to Guttenberg’s doctoral supervisor at Bayreuth University” mean they fired his Doktorvater? They really should have, because he was the direct defense of Bayreuth’s quality.
I wondered about the same thing. Though of course, he might also have simply retired. And of course, professors are very difficult to fire, though gross negligence might have been sufficient cause.
I’m glad you found my response to the loud-testosterone squad interesting, Cora!
Thank you for writing such an interesting post.
And it’s certainly telling that even though some of the best posts in this discussions were made by women (Juliette Wade, N.K. Jemisin, Sherwood Smith, Foz Meadows, yourself), the men got much more attention.