What Ain't So

How does one fashion a future if the past build itself on lies? The answer is to dig until the truth is uncovered. Until then, we will be forever cursed to repeat the same mistakes.

Today we're going to swim in rough waters, so be aware of what you're getting into. At least it's going to be short and to the point this time.

The topic for today is the wonder and the fantastical, and how we've smothered it so successfully within the last half century. Not only that, but just about everyone involves fully admits there is a problem, but few wish to outright state where the issue stems from. I'm going to try to pin that down today, so be aware of controversial statements.

Let us start with the obvious issue: wonder restricted by systematic editorial pressure has been a net negative for writing. The battle to set up systems in wonder stories over the decades has been a problem for ages. It's also the strangest rabbit-hole I've ever gone down before in regards to writing and creativity, because it is obviously an incorrect approach, and no one will deny it. And yet, here we are in 2024 with a dead industry and a new one selling itself on not following those old mistakes that led to this mess.

This goes beyond "Science Fiction Doesn't Exist" and into something just as controversial: "Fantasy Doesn't Exist." If you thought future stories flew off the tracks back in the mid-20th century then you might not be surprised to learn the same about mythic stories of the past and tall fairy tales. However, it is the same mentality that led to the artificial division between the two and continues to stunt writers from aiming wider and connecting with where audiences are today.

We have to move beyond dead clichés formed over half a century ago and stop acting like they are eternal truths instead of what they were: marketing tools that no longer apply. Suffice to say, OldPub is dead, and so are their labels and categories. We're still figuring out just what that means.

If you're reading this, I assume you are aware of The Last Fanatics, the book I edited together from the post series here on Wasteland & Sky. What you might not know is that a good reason that series was originally written was because I was (and still am, honestly) trying to piece together and understand why modern storytelling is so at odds with the way it was done for thousands of years beforehand, and striving so hard even now to avoid connecting with normal folks. And no, "modern people be smarter now durr" is not a sufficient explanation for any change that has ever happened, it's a self-aggrandizing cope and a smokescreen for subversion.

I realize a lot of what I write on this topic either sounds hyperbolic or crude, but that is mostly because the resistance I've come across in regards to anyone who goes against the prevailing dead narrative is to be outright dismissed as if Canon Law had already declared the issue settled by people who never had authority in the first place. But not only has no such thing happened, the current state of the market is telling everyone that what we thought we understood, what we thought we had mastered, is incomplete at best and outright incorrect at worst. In other words, everything we knew isn't so, and we need to put aside ego and adapt.

This isn't to say I have all the answers, though obviously I think my opinions are right or else I wouldn't have them. The point is to look beyond sacred cows and golden idols and consider things from a bird's eye view. I understand this is difficult, but it's an honest conversation and back and forth that probably needs to happen before anything changes.

And we all know things as they are simply aren't sustainable. Memes and jokes aside, we do need a new approach divorced from the system that has already killed itself off. We should not strive down go down with that ship.

I want to talk about this topic because it is not only a sore point for a lot of older readers who grew up on the Way It Always Was (the "way" in question today which didn't exist before 1969), and those who want to push the "genre" into it's obvious conclusion (a systemic nightmare of political platitudes and overcooked tropes that barely go back to the 1990s), both of which ignore the oversized elephant in the room that this entire frame is busted in the first place.

"Fantasy" doesn't really have a meaning anymore that isn't vague or hinged on outdated mid-20th century tropes. And the distinction was only ever made by materialists who didn't want their grown-up science stories to mix in with childish make believe of silly nonsense that didn't correspond with Reality. When you consider that such meat robot thinkers barely exist anymore (read their genre of choice these days to see just how spiritual and religious they've become) and that it is the lowest selling "genre" today (which proves it does not connect with modern readers) and it is easy to come to the conclusion that something is off.

It is more than story quality, it is the human element. It no longer strikes at what is true to the modern man's condition. It is hinged a Fantasy/Science dichotomy that no longer exists. I know a lot of non-religious folks don't like it when I say this, but it is very clear from casual observation that materialists in the older sense are a dying breed.

Just as the stock geek crowd from 2013 no longer exists anymore, so too does the group that demands the material and the spiritual be cast off into their own ghettos have no power or relevance over the way things are today. In fact, sales show they should have been ignored even longer ago.

What is obviously unavoidable today is the entropy that modernity has been spending at least the last quarter century suffering under, which requires an honest critical reevaluation of what works and what doesn't. What was followed and left wanting, and what was abandoned without being tried. This is where a lot of folks will argue and split hairs, and it is where most of the dispute and heated opinions comes from. Fact of the matter is that where we are now is not sustainable and everyone knows it, so now it is time to see just where we skid off the road and learn what not to repeat--what we cannot afford to repeat any longer.

And some do not like that the pavement cracked on their favorite section of the highway. So I apologize for stepping on toes, but it's going to happen.

"Disney" is a catch-all for "Modern Fantasy"

The reason I attached the video about the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series at the top of the post is because I believe the line is part of the source of how we got off track and into the bunk genre distinction weeds. Much of the blame goes to Disney in how wonder stories were watered down over the past century, but little is mentioned on how the framing of a book line was used to manufacture a different Year One of its own sort. Mainly, it was used to spike the divide in adventure storytelling even further than it already had been with the death of the pulps.

For quick clarification, none of this blame goes to either Lin Carter or the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line itself: that is not what is on trial here. Mr. Carter's work was invaluable in salvaging work being buried by the modernist mechanized hell of then-modern publishing and keeping classics in print and in circulation long after Thor Power Tool demolished the market and modern media made reading look like a lame past time for sissies. The fact that the series still contains the best printed versions of many of the books in it is a testament to its quality--and further proof of the uselessness of the old industry in the ensuing years since.

What I am instead speaking of is the usual modern glorification of a puzzle piece at the expense of the greater picture. While too many treat Tolkien as Ground Zero of fantastical storytelling and use is every word and statement as gospel to follow unquestioningly, many others do the same to other writers, whether it be Martin, Jordan, or even Dunsany. That is fine in so much as everyone has a favorite writer they wish to learn from. When it becomes a problem is when one source or period is treated as all that matters in relation to the wider creative world.

Because, it should be reminded, creativity is the name of the game. If you don't think so then just use AI writing problems and model it off of your favorite 20th century writer. At that point, what's really the difference compared to how so many think things should be run today? We talk about artificiality being an issue then ignore that we've turned creativity into a trope checklist to be filed on shelves no reader is perusing anymore and wonder how everyone else has lost the plot.

It's called OldPub for a reason, and we are part NewPub for that very same reason. We are working to correct the mistakes we made, not repeat them.

We are deliberately playing in smaller and smaller sandboxes, breaking off away from the greater whole, and it is a problem that will only get worse the longer we turn away from each other and shrink into ourselves. We are always looking to build walls over the metaphysical and spiritual that we were never meant to build, and it has effected our understanding of older things that existed before our own borders sanctioned them off to begin with. We are still living off old mistakes not yet corrected.

And it is a problem. It is in fact the biggest problem we have today in regards to the writing world. You might complain about political or pseudo-religious nonsense filling the dying book store shelves and not being sold, but that was always the goal of an industry whose main purpose was to shape people the way the tastemakers decided they should be. It was always going to end this way. The question is how do you move on from it, because simply setting up in an earlier stage of an infection doesn't cure the disease. It will always end up in the same position again.

Let me try to frame this by using the above video example of a book line that is both important and has been slightly twisted from its original purpose. Please stay with me on this one.

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy line was not made to "establish" Fantasy as a genre, despite popular opinion. That is how it was used by tastemakers after the fact. Here is the ugly truth: the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was made because of clubhouse materialists who thought Science was all that mattered and the immaterial was for deluded school children and slow-witted religious folk. I could give sources, but you can just read The Last Fanatics again and see their words about "Fantasy" for yourself. They absolutely believed that was true, and it took people like Lin Carter to show them they were wrong. The clubhouse kids and Futurians that were handed the industry are the ones who caused this unnecessary divide in the first place. The Ballantine line was created to contest these obviously wrong and ignorant views and show that there was value in what existed before Donald Wollheim spent the better part of a decade trying to destroy Hugo Gernsback because of an issue that didn't even matter. Little did Mr. Crater know, however, that his creation would lead to yet another mutation in the way things once were.

As a consequence to Carter's work, the conclusion was not that these old stories had value and should be treated with reverence and respect (though that was the intent), but that this was actually a completely separate genre of writing that new writers could follow if they wanted, but of course make sure it is systemized and modernized so that even materialists might indulge in this "Fantasy" fluff on a lark. In case you don't remember, this was John W. Campbell's original intent with Unknown magazine: to demystified the mystified. Keep it separated from the "real" stories while the psychic seers and technopriests are working on Fixing The World. The Science Club spent the back half of the 20th century trying to convince you that "Weird Tales was second to Unknown in influence" for that very reason. They needed it to be so.

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy line was therefore an excuse to fashion the separation the Fanatics had always desired, to define something that never needed to be defined. You could write this Nonsense, you just had to file it over there away from the Real books. They now needed this distinction, however, because modern materialists had taken over wonder stories and the industry itself. and now they had a special shelf to shovel it off onto. That was what they always wanted: to get rid of the old ways and defang it.

I do not wish to drag down the creator of the above video, but his confusion as the why GK Chesterton should be included in a "Fantasy" line when his book is closer to a "surreal spy thriller" is very much the point of this piece. Chesterton wasn't writing a "Fantasy" story or a "surreal spy thriller" or anything like that. He was writing an adventure story that took place in a nightmare world. No distinction needed to be made when he wrote it, and neither did those who read it thought so, but we need that distinction now because we lost some semblance of understanding of what this is all about. We lost ourselves along the way in trying to partition off and wall ourselves away from each other. Mr. Carter clearly understood that, because he included the book in his line for a reason. Unfortunately, we seem to have forgotten what they knew back then.

And so it is to this day that this separation in the "genres" exist that never had before the line was created. Every segment, idea, and approach, need be shuffled into its own designated quadrant never to meet again, and the technopriests can lead us to utopia in the mean time. This is how the industry was meant to go after the stumbling blocks of the late 20th century.

Until NewPub came around, that is.

Those writers and readers out there scratching their head on where to go next are beginning to understand the truth of the matter: the 20th century was wrong. What specifically it was wrong about, of course, is still not agreed upon nor where we should go in response to what has been learned. However, the answer most definitely does not lie in rehashing What Everyone Knows from said dead century, as it is very clear now that no one appeared to know anything--they were simply told what was so. And we cannot keep that charade up any longer.

The time for inflated egos, wild subversive mavericks of bad taste, and destructors ruling over the masses has come to an end. We are beyond that era, and it isn't coming back. Whatever comes next is still yet to be decided.

The reason we must reassess and reconsider our prior assertions on genres and creative boundaries is because we've already hit the limits on where those old ones could take us. You might say we could still do so much with those old ways so why abandon them, but I would say you could say the same about any era or trend. You can always do more, but you will never be able to do it all. That isn't quite how it works. We  don't choose when we leave one era for the next, it just seems to happen whether we are ready or not. And we can all tell we are entering new territory. We don't have any choice except to try and meet it head on.

This fear of the unknown is doubly bizarre in a sector that purports to understand the past and future better than any other, despite selling the least by far. We should have already seen these changes coming and prepared accordingly for what is on the road before us. Instead, we have dragged our feet for far too long and ignored the world spinning around us.

So what do we do? Just check out some of what NewPub has been up to in recent years. We're already on the way to whatever is coming next. We no longer need to pine for a past that rejected its own roots, or hope for an anti-human future that will never come.

Instead, we can accept what ain't so, and what one day will be. The 2010s are over. Let's just see where the 2020's will lead us now.

Star Wanderers has funded in two weeks! Now we can aim for our stretch goals to give backers even more. Jump on in if you have yet to!