Conglomeration changed the publishing industry and American literature | Hacker News Reader

Conglomeration changed the publishing industry and American literature

slate.com

30 pointslermontov11 comments

This article seems incorrect enough to question the motives behind publishing the piece at all. As other comments in this thread have already pointed out, many authors predate Lester del Rey by many decades. Genres rarely just spring out of nothing, if ever, and gradually arise and take the shape of the genres we recognize today.

Did Lester play a part in shaping fantasy fiction? Of course. Did he "invent fantasy fiction as we know it"? Come on. If you trace things back arguably something like "Der Ring des Nibelungen" is the invention of the fantasy genre, but is even that it!? It's perhaps not even a modern opera since it's from 1869. If you had to point to only one author it would certainly be Tolkien, but he didn't write in a vacuum and was certainly inspired by others as well.

So can anyone here speculate as to why Slate and Dan Sinykin decided to publish this piece, they make a completely offside mention of white supremacy and sexism towards the end, so I'm drawn to suspect this is just another piece trying to rewrite history to make it seem like modern and less "problematic" authors invented genres we all cherish.

They're not suggesting he invented the genre in a literary sense, but in a business sense.

Before Del Rey fantasy was fringe and hard to find (apart from Tolkien, obvs.) After Del Rey it was mainstream and a huge commercial success.

There was a post-Tolkien market slot and Del Rey filled it.

It was more innovation than invention.

I believe this is on-track.. without debating the finer points of the publishing industry, I would say this topic reminds me of "National Biscuit Company" creating products that can be stored and shipped across a continent, while every local town already had a bakery industry of some kind

Would Slate do such a thing?!

No, never mind. I can't fake genre-ignorance about Slate the way they can about fantasy.

The goal isn't to rewrite history, it's to draw rage-clicks and invite proud corrections, in other words waste our time, for their advertisers.

> I'm drawn to suspect this is just another piece trying to rewrite history to make it seem like modern and less "problematic" authors invented genres we all cherish.

That doesn't work in this case, because the article calls out Lester's early work as 'absurdly' sexist and claims that the standard playbook for fantasy required a male central character. He seems plenty problematic to a modern sensibility. If anything, the opposite seems like a more plausible aim - to claim that Fantasy as a genre is tainted by its sexist origins.

Robert Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance, Fritz Lieber, and many others were publishing classic swords-and-sorcery tales well before the post-Tolkien fantasy boom described in this article.

And, for the most part, not making a heck of a lot of money at it. Yeah, the article kind of overstates its case (I think that is required for academics), but it is also true that in a publishing-business sense, Del Rey had a huge effect.

As we know it, perhaps. However, many seminal works of fantasy predate del Rey's own influence (e.g. The Lord of the Rings, Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.) Credit where credit is due, the Ballantine books are what made Tolkien explode in popularity here in the U.S.

Completely agree. Tolkien for one established many of the basic parameters of modern fantasy novels.

Incidentally, the US Ballantine edition of TLoTR had massive publicity from Tolkien himself, in response to an earlier unauthorised publication in the US by Ace Books, for which Tolkien didn't receive any royalties. Tolkien was uncharacteristically active in helping to suppress the unauthorised edition, leading to a major grass-roots campaign and useful publicity in US universities and the wider counter-culture.

TL;DR: del Ray was an editorial consultant at Ballantine who saw a market for formulaic Tolkien-derivatives (e.g. The Sword of Shannara) and worked successfully to get them published.

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