/lit/ - Literature

Hey guys, can we have an honest conversation real quick about fantasy writers? I say this as someone who reads science fiction mostly and have been watching these "flame wars" and, have been reading excerpts from the most commonly posted fantasy writers in /sffg/ .. It's made me think about how blessed the science fiction audience is, because to be perfectly honest - it's jarring going from the pantheon of great writers in scifi, to the almost (and I say this with all due respect) the fan-fiction level writing that is paraded as great in fantasy circles. For example, The Kingkiller Chronicles, that seems to be well respected in /sffg/ and, while I think everyone should be happy and bathing in what they enjoy, I don't even understand how the lauded fantasy work is respected on the level of authorial skill.

Obviously you have Rothfuss, R. Scott Bakkar, Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks (the common names in /sffg/) and I find the arguments of who's better and who's not better, to be a bit null, because none of them are particularly good at writing, but at the same time, fantasy readers don't seem to mind. I wonder if it's because the intelligence barrier of entry in hard scifi is much more difficult to reach than fantasy, which seems to attract a-lot of undesirables, and I mean that in the depth of readers, writers, and just the general audience. Again, I don't mean any disrespect, but, I just take your fantasy reading suggestions to heart, and I can't help but laugh after the first chapter of every single work I've seen named in /sffg/ - it's just all just so poorly written when compared to the work of every other "serious" genre. It's almost like.. no-matter how mature the content is written, it's written at a YA level, and who knows what the reason of this is for, I think people who get into fantasy are generally the types to be anti-social, have an array of personality disorders, these types of things, and that goes for the authors, as-well. There's no Asimov, Phillip K. Dick, Wells, Orwells, Huxleys, Navens, etc - when it comes to fantasy, and I think the reason is because fantasy has no where to go, it's just perpetually going down, it's a race to the bottom, not just in terms of the claustrophobic ceiling that fantasy is limited to, but also the (no-offense) mentally unstable population of fantasy writers can only go down in terms of quality, they're from and cater to an audience that leans heavily into genetic degredation and isolation, which bleeds into their creators, creating a self-perpetuating pig pen of garbage. Again, I don't mean any offense to you fantasy readers of /sffg/ but, I think you should all step out of your genre, and realize you've been standing in a puddle of shit for decades, it's actually quite terrible, all of it. Further on that point, the golden age of fantasy will never happen like it did with science fiction, because you can't golden a piece of shit.