Found in the blogosphere today was this piece by Vera Nazarian lamenting the current state of urban fantasy. David Moles is right to point out that Sturgeon’s Law applies. However, I suspect that there is something more going on. Gary Wolfe talked about this at ICFA a few years back. His basic thesis (as I remember it) was that as a particular type of story telling becomes more popular so the stories produced become more predictable and formulaic – more generic, in fact.

There are reasons for this. Firstly if demand for a certain type of fiction increases then that field will attract more writers of lesser talent, some of whom will be more comfortable writing to a formula. But equally for every Vera who craves fiction that is new and exciting and adventurous there will be at least one (I suspect a lot more) reader who prefers something familiar, comfortable and safe. That’s just the way the business works.

This reminds me of a long conversation I had with Kevin yesterday while we were out walking. Basically I was musing about taxonomies of fandom, and the thesis was that the real divides were not between media and and book fans, or between SF fans and fantasy fans, but rather are based on the type of experience individual fans want from their entertainment. I may write something more about this later.