This attitude towards fantasy is weird. There is something that makes many people avoid fantasy like it was an illness. My mother, for example, once said to me that "I hope that you some day grow out of that" when I pondered if I should start LotR again after just having finished it. Though her comment was humorous and affectionate, it still was a stupid comment, if you ask me. One of my mother's best friends is a man about her age. They've known each other for something like 20 years. This man is around 40 years old and he owns a fantasy shop of his own and plays various fantasy games and reads fantasy and sci-fi. Sometimes it seems my mother regards him as very childish because of this, or if not childish, then maybe a bit weird/funny, but again in the good snse. Can't fantasy be a "serious" hobby or interest for grown-up people? Why does it provoke such amused hush-hush reactions? I appreciate my mother but I just can't get why she shares this very common viewpoint.
But if you look very close, the heart of the problem is probably that most people see fantasy only as the Dragonlance/Robert Jordan/Weis&Hickman/Eddings (whose books I actually do like unlike the others on this list
) stuff. The clumsy and pompous badly-written and cheap-looking stuff with too much everything just seems to rule the popular image of fantasy. Some say that the so-called magic realism and the Nobel-winner García Marquez's A Hundred Years of Solitude is fantasy. It is highly approved in literary circles. There are many similar writers categorised as fantasy. But because they are fantasy, not "normal literature" potential readers avoid them. Wouldn't people who like historical novels enjoy say Guy Gavriel Kay's ambitious political alternative history books? But they can't read them because they're
fantasy. So stupid. I'm waiting for the day people realize fantasy includes those interesting cross-overs between imaginary and real and the highly complex almost political thrilling novels and so much else. Not just dragons, trolls, elves and dwarves in cheap-looking covers.
That would be one problem solved and as already said aloud in this thread, it probably is being solved these days. But what about our traditional fantasy with dragons, elves, dwarves, magic and valiant heroes? When can it arise and shake off the cheapness writers like Weis&Hickman have stamped over it? I don't know. Many writers seem to be avoiding this kind of fantasy these days. I've noticed avoiding it myself if I'm making up stories for my own amusement. It's a pity. For who would not like to read something about those great peoples and creatures of Faerie, if it was well-written and believable?
And this has very little to do with the thread topic, but as it's somewhat related I can ramble a bit about it as well. Why are fantasy books separated from other books in libraries and bookshops? Maybe therte are good reasons for it. But there is one bad thing about it as well. If you pick a book from thhe "normal book" section and in the book a wizard appears and claims to be able to do magic you instantly think "hah, he's a fraud, because wizards don't exist in the real world". But if you had picked the same book from the fantasy shelf, you'd (probably) think this character was really a wizard and able to do magic. How annoying.
Sorry for ranting and rambling...