Epic Fantasy: The Five Essentials

[Derek Hiemforth]

A hypothetical situation...

Let's say your best friend has won (by random chance) the opportunity to compete in a lucrative RPG contest, with a $50,000 prize provided by a rich eccentric gamer. The contest involves a group of gamers playing in an epic fantasy adventure, and the prize will be awarded to the gamer who best captures the flavor, spirit, and tone of epic fantasy in his or her roleplaying.

Trouble is, your friend knows nothing about epic fantasy! And there's only a few days before the contest, so he or she only has a very limited time to get up to speed.

Given all this, what five "pieces" would you recommend to your friend that best capture the feel of the genre, or cover the most essential character(s), or so forth? (In this context, a "piece" is something like a single novel or (at most) a short series of novels (no more than five), a relatively limited story arc within a few issues of a monthly magazine, a single movie, a single episode (or, at most, a small stretch of episodes) of a TV series, and so on.)

[Emerald Mask]

Movies Lord of the Rings, Books - the Amber Chronicles, Lord of Light - Both by Roger Zelazney, Any Conan movie, book or comic book .

[Eosin]

1. Troy or The Illiad (Preferably both)
2. Lord of the Rings (Movie or Books)
3. Excalibur or a Mythical Arthurian Story (Preferably both)
4. Gilgimesh

5A. Deeds of Paksanarrion (since it is on my mind).
5B. Star Wars (IV-VI)
5C. Clash of the Titans (Movie)
5D. Belgariad
5E. Dune (Book or Mini-series)


Sorry, EPIC is harder to nail than most. High Fantasy ~ Sword & Sorcery being the two easiest.

[Supreme Serpent]

Movies Lord of the Rings, Books - the Amber Chronicles, Lord of Light - Both by Roger Zelazney, Any Conan movie, book or comic book .

I second this list, with the caveat of many Conan stories, not any of them.

[Steve Long]

First, I think you need to define what you mean by "epic fantasy." By my definition, for example, most of the suggestions made, such as Amber and especially Conan, don't qualify. Since you specifically said epic fantasy, Derek, I assume you mean something by that -- else you'd just have said "Fantasy." So, could you give a couple examples of source material you think qualify?

[Derek Hiemforth]

First, I think you need to define what you mean by "epic fantasy." By my definition, for example, most of the suggestions made, such as Amber and especially Conan, don't qualify. Since you specifically said epic fantasy, Derek, I assume you mean something by that -- else you'd just have said "Fantasy." So, could you give a couple examples of source material you think qualify?

Sure. To me, "epic" fantasy generally means high stakes, powerful magic, and good vs. evil as central trope. I wouldn't include something like Conan because it doesn't really fit any of those three criteria... the stakes (usually) aren't high enough, the magic isn't all that powerful, and the morality is more muddled.

Some people describe this as "high" fantasy, except that I think high fantasy implies a commonality of magic that isn't necessarily present in the kinds of stories I'm thinking of. The magic is always powerful, but it isn't necessarily common.

From a literary standpoint, I guess I'm thinking of the successors to things like The Odessey and the Arthurian grail romances. Important quests undertaken by the worthy or the prophesied... mighty wizards who manipulate events for inscrutable reasons... kings... armies... gods... dragons... that sort of thing.

Stories I've read (or am otherwise familiar with) that I think would fall directly into this vein include The Lord of the Rings and The Belgariad. To make a long story short (too late!), I'm basically talking about exactly what you're talking about in Fantasy Hero when you talk about "Epic Fantasy."

[Steve Long]

OK, that's what I figured.

Offhand, I'd recommend most of what I mention on FH 11. LOTR is of courses your best bet, as definitional as it is; the trick beyond that is to find interesting works that qualify as "epic" but aren't just Tolkien pastiches. The Deed Of Paksenarrion might also qualify.

[Curufea]

Personally, I'm a bit dubious as to whether Amber is actually fantasy, and not science fiction.

Epic needs world changing events to have an epic scale.

[austenandrews]

LOTR (books or movies, either will do)
the Iliad
Excalibur (or some more representative Arthurian novel; I haven't read many myself)
A Song of Fire and Ice (doesn't have so much magic, but I don't think that matters; it's epic enough, surely)
maybe the Narnia series

[Savinien]

What about Dennis McKinerian and that duology I can never remember the name of.

[McCoy]

Only one answer, Lord of the Rings, and you're not getting through that in a couple of days.

[keithcurtis]

1. LotR, of course.
2. The Once and Future King
3. Willow or the Princess Bride
4. Chronicles of Narnia
5. Chronicles of Prydain

Keith "tough choices" Curtis

[Markdoc]

Like everyone else, LoTR. Not just an epic fantasy novel but THE epic fantasy novel. And you *can* read it in a day - I certainly have.

Agree with Chronicles of Prydain - I'm glad someone else remembered the assistant pig-keeper!

The Belgariad. It's actually rather crappily written, but it's certainly epic and covers the main tropes in almost slavish fashion.

The first three Earthsea books. 'nuff said.

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn or Hobb's Assassin Trilogy: Both newer versions of epic fantasy with a slightly different focus than the shamless LoTR knockoffs.


I would rate Chronicles of Amber as Fantasy (and better than half the stuff on this list), and it's pretty epic as well, but would not recommend it for this purpose, simply because it's so atypical. The books I recommended above all cover the basic epic fantasy storyline (the Hero's journey, if we want to get Campbellian), all have world-shaking threats and plenty of magic (though it's not always overt) but they all fall within the mainstream of modern fantasy. It's the same reason I would *not* recommend the Once and Future King, the Worm Orobourous trilogy or the Iliad. Epic, certainly and fantasy without doubt, but by no means typical (of course that's why I like them, but....)

As an aside - Moorcock's work, especially Elric. Swords and Sorcery or epic fantasy? If the latter, they should be on the list.

cheers, Mark

[Hisho]

Ok, if you think big epic, good vs. evil or as I prefer Chaos vs. Law, I say nearly everything by Michael Moorcook, Corum and Elric beeing the essentials... not everything about Elric (some of these stories are not that fantastic, I for example didn't like the whole storyline with this evil sorcerer... which name I try to remember but I didn't like the ending of it... sort of anticlimatic... was it Thaleb Kaarn... damn... ah.. whatever)

I'll second that conan is not epic fantasy, it's sort of an epic life he leads, ending up as a king but well, not epic fantasy as in Good vs. Evil and so on.

LOTR, even if I don't like it,it would be good to represent epic fantasy.

The Worm Ouroborus is also good for epic fantasy, heaving raknarok in it as a main part of the story (ok, I'm reading this at the moment so I don't know how it will end but it sounds epic to me till now)

Star Wars, well it's a fantasy tale of wizards and paladins, absolutly epic fantasy... ok at least part IV - VI, the others... mhm there are others...

So
#1 Star Wars IV - VI
#2 LOTR
#3 Corum / Elric
#4 The Worm Ourobourus
#5 Record of Lodoos War (Ok, it's along the line of LOTR light but i definitly like it more then LOTR, sometimes a copy to me is better then the original)

[gamerz123]

Hmm..

Well, anyone attempting to write anything within the Fantasy genre should at least read The Odyssey and the Epic of Gligamesh.

Shortest span of time I could think of would be five days to one week:

1. LoTR (Extended movie plus actually read The Scouring of the Shire until the end )
2. Magician series by Raymond E. Feist (This person better be a fast read. Books aren't very thick, but there are 4 of them.)
3. Slayers Next (Yeah, it's comic. But you don't get any more epic than the final couple of episodes.)
4. Record of Lodos War

And (I might get blasted for this one)

5. The Secret of NIMH