Revival
From the 1960s up till the 1980s, under the guiding force of Lin Carter, a select group of writers formed the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA) to promote and enlarge the sword and sorcery genre. From 1973 to 1981 five anthologies featuring short works by SAGA members were published: edited by Carter, these were collectively known as Flashing Swords!. Because of these and other anthologies (such as the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series), his own fiction, and his criticism, Carter is considered one of the most important popularizers of genre fantasy in general, and S&S in particular.
Another notable sword and sorcery anthology series that ran from 1977 through 1979 was called Swords Against Darkness (Zebra Books), and was edited by Andrew J. Offutt. This series ran to five volumes and featured stories by such authors as Poul Anderson, David Drake, Ramsey Campbell, Andre Norton, and Manly Wade Wellman.
Despite such authors' best efforts, sword and sorcery has more colloquially come to be known as a catch-all phrase for low grade, derivative fantasy as well as fiction written in such universes. During the 1980s, influenced by the success of the 1982 feature film Conan the Barbarian many cheaply made fantasy films were released that came to be derisively known as "Sword & Sorcery". The term is sometimes used in a derogatory manner by writers and readers of the fantasy genre.
After the boom of the early 1980s sword and sorcery once again dropped out of favor, with epic fantasy largely taking its place in the fantasy genre. However, the end of the 20th century saw another resurgence of S&S. Sometimes called the "new" or "literary" sword and sorcery, this development places emphasis on literary technique, and draws from epic fantasy and other genres to broaden the typical scope of S&S. Stories may feature the wide-ranging struggles national or world-spanning concerns common to high fantasy, but told from the point of view of characters more common to S&S and with the sense of adventure common to the latter. Writers associated with this include Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie, and Scott Lynch, and magazines such as Black Gate and the ezines Flashing Swords (not to be confused with the Lin Carter anthologies) and Beneath Ceaseless Skies publish short fiction in the style. These authors and editors are attempting to return the genre to the status it enjoyed during the pulp era of the twenties and thirties.
Read more about this topic: Sword And Sorcery
Famous quotes containing the word revival:
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—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
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—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)