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"The Final Fantasy"

As a new era of technology dawns on the world, with its revolutionary space-age electrical bits and bobs, 'old-fashioned values', as my grandparents like to refer to them as, have all but vanished. No longer do we go for a nice long walk in the New Forest, but we go around mauling people on GTA3. Recreation now consists of anti-social, idle screen-watching, and the only muscles getting a vigorous workout are those button-pressing thumbs and fingers.

We don't walk, we don't run, we don't ride. Or at least, not in the way that they did in the old days. Obesity is becoming the norm; and people just don't exercise right. Added to that, people's diets revolve around junk food and coke. No healthy food, no healthy exercise, the youths of today are quickly becoming unhealthy, obese sloths.

So I may be taking it to a bit of an extreme; people still play sports, people still eat right, but for the majority of the people on these forums, gaming is a much more preffered pastime to say, playing tennis or riding bikes.

Another smaller, less noticeable factor to this revolution, is in written material. As reading coils back into the shadow of interactive electronics, books are fast becoming an extinct genre.

People not buying books = Not much money to authors
Not much money to authors = Authors don't write books
Not many books = BAD.

Pop down to your local bookshop. Few, if any, truly decent books are released lately. People just don't read. Instead, stood on the best sellers stand are 'Jamie Oliver's Cookbook' and 'Big Brother Uncut'. It makes me want to be sick. The true books are all still a load of tripe; romance novels written by a person with an intellect of a 9 year old (yup, I'm looking at you Pocket Rocket) and terrible written crime novels. Books are becoming extinct, just like exercise and healthy eating.

I absolutely love fantasy books. I prefer heroic fantasy, like David Gemmell, but will still gladly enjoy a spell of Terry Pratchet's Discworld novels. However, there is one very worrying trend that is coming with this change in lifestyle.


There are no new books.


OK, so Terry Pratchet does faithfully write new Discworld novels year in, year out, something which I am very fond of, but the fact remains that Nobody writes fantasy books. My favourite author, as stated before, David Gemmell, is the only consistenly good author who writes fantasy books. Also a worrying factor, is that the best selling science fiction and fantasy books, happen to be the Oh-so-ironical re-production of Lord of the Rings books. Bookshops don't seem to promote new authors, but are just in it for the money. I have already read the Lord of the Rings books, so they no longer interest me. I have read most of the great fantasy books, and enjoy Ian M. Banks as well.

My main gripe with this lack of new books, is that the genre is dying. In the late 60s and 70s, following from the standard set by Lord of the Rings, fantasy became an 'in thing'. Yet nowadays, for every author that comes anywhere near the standards set by Tolkien, is another 10 R.L.Stines with a further 50 terrible droll 'Goosebumps' books that could easily be written by my non-existent pet dog.

Fantasy is the best genre of book available. I would stick by that statement of my opinion no matter what. Yet I see it to be so saddening, and so maddening that people would prefer Big Brother to classic works of literature. Fantasy books, or, no, decent books on the whole, are such a rare occurence that one would think the whole human population has become a race of mindless numbskulls. Mind you, judging by the success of books like 'Jamie Oliver's Cookbook', it is probably true.

I am truly saddened by the demise of such an interesting and gripping genre; if only the mindless fools who buy the tripe that infests the bestsellers stands would wake up and see the decent books taking a backseat to their inbred cousin's success. If only people would see clearly.

But it will never happen. There are always people that will read the bad literature, always the blinded kids groping for 'Goosebumps' in favour of 'Gulliver's Travels' and 'The Wizard of Oz'. I am just hoping that in light of the success of the Lord of the Rings film, people will be drawn back into the wonders of fantasy, and that more authors will discover the potential of the gripping genre that will always better its siblings.

But sadly, I don't think that this will happen. Fantasy will always be the underdog genre, and I don't think that it will ever share the success of other books. Only time will tell, and what will most likely happen is that in the wake of technological advancements, books will become as infrequent and uncommon as records have become in light of CDs. Only time will tell, and I doubt that fantasy will be able to stand the test of time, under the constant bullying and rule of technology. If only people would wake up and see the true potential for good books.

Come on, don't sit there and watch 'footballer's wives'. Go and read something, I certainly know which I would prefer.

"for the majority of the people on these forums, gaming is a much more preffered pastime to say, playing tennis or riding bikes."

It's a games forum!

Anyway, what annoys me is people who claim they are really big fans of Lord of the Rings, when they've only seen the film. If someone asked them what happens in the second one they wouldn't have a clue. And some people say they don't want to read the book because it would spoil the second and third films for them. There's no winning with some people.

Small_Frog wrote:
Although some people really enjoy
> fantasy novels, as you seem to, it is other genres (like romance, horror and the
> boring 'real-life' books)that actually sell in vast quantities.

A lot more would probably enjoy them if you could get more of them more easily. Loads of people are Buffy fans and there is tons of vampire themed fiction out there which never se the light of day in this country, the same can be said about nearly every genre of book - unless it'll sell thousands in Tesco's then no one bothers stocking it

Of course bookshops are only in it for the money. It's the publishers that are responsible for spotting new authors. JK Rowling is easily as successful as Tolkien (not neccesarily as good, though). Although some people really enjoy fantasy novels, as you seem to, it is other genres (like romance, horror and the boring 'real-life' books)that actually sell in vast quantities.

And you'll find that the most successful books in the world at the moment are the Harry Potter books. If they aren't fantasy (even though they're kiddie-fantasy), I don't know what is.

N3MISIS wrote:
> I also agree with this. There was huge hype before LOTR came out at the Cinemas,
> but very few people have actually read the books, and even fewer are big fans.
> Even after seeing the film alot of people are too lazy to read the books, they
> just think they'll wait until the next installment comes out a year later.

I
> find that the only people who really are interested in supplying you with good
> books are Librarys. The problem is though, that they take along time to get new
> stock. If you waiting for, lets say the new Terry Pratchet Novel and you cant
> find it in the shops, your library will get it, just after a while. Annoying or
> what?!?

--------

I find that a lot of people in my school are reading the books because of the movie, either because they want to read the book before seeing the movie or because they enjoyed the movie and want to read the book.

I agree with the library dilemma, As I said in my post (I think), I have had to buy pretty much all of the David Gemmell books because of lack of stock in libraries. It would be better if libraries actually did get stocks of new books when released in shops, but I suppose there are probably copyrights to say that libraries can't loan books until about a few months after them being released. That way publishers get money from book sales solely, and people can't borrow the book from the libraries. This is probably the case, but I'm not too sure on the subject. Any enlightenment would be appreciated. :)

I also agree with this. There was huge hype before LOTR came out at the Cinemas, but very few people have actually read the books, and even fewer are big fans. Even after seeing the film alot of people are too lazy to read the books, they just think they'll wait until the next installment comes out a year later.

I find that the only people who really are interested in supplying you with good books are Librarys. The problem is though, that they take along time to get new stock. If you waiting for, lets say the new Terry Pratchet Novel and you cant find it in the shops, your library will get it, just after a while. Annoying or what?!?

GAD stands for Game A Day - the competition....its a play on radar...GADar...he thinks that this topic is a possible GAD winner for who started it.

BradW wrote:

GADar??? im not familiar with what that means?

Game
A
Day

And she was saying it like it was a Radar.

½pint wrote:

There are no new books.


What's one of them?

GADar??? im not familiar with what that means?

my GADar is detecting a winner here