Time for dragons

And without monitoring the contents of book trays, today it is obvious that traditional science fiction, SF (science fiction) is losing ground in the overall “fantastic” volume published and, on the contrary, non-scientific fiction, fantasy (fantasy), also known as the literature of “Might and Magic”, is gaining ground all records for demand. Is it good or bad? Critics are angry, teachers are frowning, and publishers are rubbing their hands, opening new series (only giants like EKSMO and AST have dozens of them) and recruiting legions of domestic authors. The author of these lines is not one of the ardent fans of the Might and Magic genre, but he is not going to fall into alarmism. Firstly, being angry about the landslide expansion of fantasy is, in our opinion, a massive and vulgar activity. Secondly, passionately scolding the inevitable tomorrow's literary mainstream and its various adherents is as absurd and humiliating for the scolder as going to a rally in the last days of November against the onset of winter. It’s easier to reconcile and buy a warm hat. Remember the joke? “Maestro, how do you like the music of young N? - Disgusting, but it is the future.”

A writer with more or less inclinations is a traditionally sensitive mechanism, no worse than a barometer. Even the well-known specialist in the genre of non-scientific fiction, Nick Perumov, who once or twice went beyond the boundaries of fantasy (for the sake of the monstrous “Skull on the Sleeve,” for example) and tried to reject elves and goblins, returned back: instincts still took their toll. Like winter in December, like rain in autumn, the all-out offensive of “Might and Magic” is now objectively determined by the laws of nature - in this case, the laws of the evolution of human civilization. So it is in vain that historians see in this process only a bare consequence of the decline in interest in the popular genre of the SOVIET era. And in vain, conspiracy theorists see in what is happening only the result of a cunning CONSPIRACY of self-interested science fiction publishers. The obvious fact that today in terms of circulation and names dragons and gnomes outweigh robots and astronauts does not fit into simple politics or simple economics. It's still simpler.

Well, yes, of course, liberation from totalitarian ideologies could not help but bring down in the eyes of the advanced reader the literature of the winged dream - all this tin-wood-cardboard rubbish about the conquest of Mars in one single country (not the USA!) and the highly spiritual heating of the North Pole with gas nozzles . Against this eerie background, the previously semi-forbidden fantasy gnome could seem like a giant. However, after justified indignation, many felt a feeling of nostalgia and tenderness for the past - but Might and Magic did not disappear anywhere, and the SF did not return its positions.

The same nonsense - and with a potential inter-publishing conspiracy. Yes, fantasy literature is faster to write than SF. Yes, it’s easier for publishers to find a hundred or two fresh, cheap volunteers to pump the seven hundredth water on Tolkien’s jelly than to scour in the hope of finding one unbought creator of a decent SF (for this you need to have at least a technical - or at least any higher than vocational school - - education plus a penchant for systems thinking). However, even the most massive offensive of orcs-goblins-trolls-witches-sorcerers would sooner or inevitably choke, despite all the commands of the book bosses not to give up positions and fight to the death - if the current reader did not have a deep inner need for Might and Magic. To believe that the book market ITSELF, through simple advertising manipulations, has created a demand for this kind of literature is the same as, say, believing that the mechanical replacement of rolls with bricks in bread stores will lead to the consumer including bricks in their menu . Advertising can do a lot, but not everything...

The point is different. The retreat of science fiction and the triumph of fantasy is the first sign that humanity is returning (of course, on a new turn of the spiral of evolution!) into the pre-Gutenberg era . In our country this is happening more noticeably, because we now have to catch up with the world around us, and in Russia many processes (both with a plus and a minus sign) go faster and more convulsively than in the West. As is known, in pre-literate and pre-printing times, literature existed in audio form - it was sown and preserved by aeds, rhapsodists, storytellers, and they talked about events that were completely supernatural, by today's standards. With the invention of the printing press, the printed word replaced the spoken and written. It was a communicative explosion of unprecedented force, and literature in its “off-paper” form practically ceased to exist. THE WORD has ceased to be sacred, having gone to the masses. Science fiction was, by and large, generated by the atheistic era of the Enlightenment, which was in dire need of literature about rational miracles, clearly “parallel” to the biblical ones (in this sense, the experience of Dr. Frankenstein was only an analogue of the resurrection of Lazarus; the corpse was not animated by the command “Get up and go” !", but by the skill of the surgeon and the electric discharge). Technical progress has elevated SF literature, but it has also ruined it. The work of reading has become so mechanized that it is now killing reading.

VHS and DVD formats, which transform the printed word into video, return humanity to primitive syncretism, the Internet - to paperless literature, audiobooks - to literature that is generally unwritten, to aedas and rhapsodes. There is no intermediary in the form of letters between the creator, who is able to “speak” his composition onto a CD, and the consumer, who turns on the audio player in his car. And the content must also respond to this form - this is where the literature of Might and Magic is irreplaceable. It is simple in plot, it obeys even stricter laws of composition than even a fairy tale (and therefore is even easier to digest), contains the necessary amount of miracle and an inevitable happy ending... In general, it’s time for us, critics, to stop mocking the wretchedness and illiteracy of most current fantasy. The authors are simply preparing us and themselves for the future. In the end, the prophetic Bayan also did not know how to read and write - and it was okay, he got along just fine.