Fantasy

In my relatively long life, I have read quite a bit of fantasy. The Lord Of The Rings obviously, and Conan, not to mention Thongor and Brak. I've read Silverlock, I devoured The House On The Borderland, and I started The Worm Ouroboros. I've read Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon, Pamela Dean's Secret Country and its sequels, Thieves' World and Leiber's Fafhrd and Mouser stories. I've read Moorcock, Cabell and de Lint; Kay, Kurtz and Kress. I've read R A MacAvoy, Sheri Tepper and Tanith Lee; Joel Rosenberg, Mercedes Lackey and Louise Cooper. And of course I've read Diana Wynne Jones.

And my question, in the light of the frequent allusions in various posts on Diana's death to her very funny and acutely written Tough Guide to Fantasyland, is this; where is all this routine, clichéd, boilerplate fantasy I keep hearing about?

Before anyone shouts, I will give you Terry Brooks. The Sword of Shannara was indeed an attempt to tread as precisely as possible in Tolkien's footprints, and it succeeded. One imitation does not, however, a cliché make, and the one thing I have noticed in all my fantasy reading is that every author, every series, every book, is different. Not just as different as two birch trees side by side; different as two separate species of tree half a world apart.

I have a theory about this. I think the notion of countless inept hacks haplessly churning out endless "routine sagas of elves and quests" has a twofold origin; firstly, in the minds of people who do not like, do not read and try not to notice fantasy any more than they can help, but have no problem whatsoever in pouring scorn on what they think it might be like; and secondly, in the proliferation of fantasy role-playing games whose campaigns can all too easily assume a depressing similarity. What puzzles me is that fantasy fans sit still and take it.

But it has given rise to the Tough Guide, which is just as funny whether the clichés it lampoons are real or not, so I guess it can't be all bad.

Song: "Boilerplate Blues"

Well, I wake up every morning, and the sky is grey or blue.
With so many colours to choose from, why stick with only two?
I got the boilerplate blues, and I don't know what to do.

The trees are green and brownish, and in the autumn they turn red;
Why can't they be pink or purple, aquamarine or orange instead?
I got the boilerplate blues, and I wish that I was dead.

When I go out shopping, it always goes the same.
I get the stuff, they get the money, I go home poorer than I came.
I got the boilerplate blues, it's such a crying shame.

My life is made of boilerplate, the same elements crop up every day.
There's just no originality, looks like boredom's here to stay.
I got the boilerplate blues, and I wish they'd go away.

(take it, man)

(all right, bring it back here)

Well, now my house has exploded, my wife's gone off with a marine,
We've been invaded by tentacled aliens, and they're not even green,
And the sky is a shade of heliotrope that I've never even seen.

I'm on the run from the aliens, sleeping somewhere different every night.
I lost one arm, one ear and my sanity, and I really look a sight.
Please won't you gimme back my boilerplate, and I know I'll be all right.

Yeah, the boilerplate blues, they can make you so forlorn.
When things are the way you like 'em, you can talk about tedious corn.
But if you still got the boilerplate blues, you don't know you're born.

(yeah)

What we did this weekend

Well, we rehearsed, is what.

Not an awful lot, though. Time was limited, as it must be when one or more members of the band have to travel a couple of hundred miles between working weeks; it isn't fair that it's always C and V who travel to us, but I know if I drove up to them I'd be too exhausted to do much. Also, my kit's less portable than theirs is, though we've solved that one with the little keyboard from Lidl, which makes some very creditable sounds and would do for a gig in which I could play everything live (yeah, like that's going to happen).

But we played some things together, worked on a couple of new things, and I think we're still a band despite the long gap. Sadly the blister prevented my showing off my total lack of skill on the guitar. At one point C and V both tried something called a "Travis pick" from one of the how-to books we've acquired; it took me a long time to realise they weren't taking the mick, it was actually something they didn't know. Sometimes it's hard to tell, with C especially.

We also watched "Not The Messiah" (while eating) and the film of "The A-Team" (when we got too tired to play), both of which I enjoyed with some reservations. I never cottoned to Monty Python entirely, and a lot of the things that I found good in "Life Of Brian" were exactly the things that were missing from this oratorio. As for "The A-Team," one of the things I liked about the series was the feeling I got (which may have been entirely subjective) that Hannibal was actually the most insane of the lot of them, only nobody noticed. I didn't get that so much with Liam Neeson. Besides, nobody could ever replace Dwight Schultz. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

It was a good weekend, though, and next time I shall be better organised and hopefully have at least ten good fingers.

Headlines

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More as we get it.