I’m still terribly tired. It’s probably spring coming, either that or I’ve caught some kind of bug and my body is fighting it off.
Meanwhile, the “nihilism in epic fantasy” debate just refuses to die. Which is actually a good thing, because some of the best posts to come out of this debate were late to the party, so to say.
Case in point: Sam Sykes speaks wise on the issue of nihilist versus optimistic fantasy.
I very much agree with his post. Life is neither all good nor all bad and neither should literature – any kind of literature, not just fantasy – be. Good authors, and to my mind this includes both Tolkien and some of the authors that have been put on the “nihilist side” of this very artificial line, know this and have both light and darkness, humour and tragedy, in their fiction. Indeed, Tolkien explicitly addressed this very issue in “On Fairy-Stories”.
Finally, here is a lovely post by Theodora Goss on writing and the meaning of life.
sending...