Genre: Deghettoising fantasy - is a high concept fantasy advisable, or a pipe dream?

Question

A recent idea I had for a novella to write at some point involves exploring a high concept; what would happen if you could replace a dead loved one that parted with you bad terms?

I'm expressly using fantasy as a vehicle for this; making it so the grieving woman is a mage capable of summoning naive, shapeshifting 'daemons' that will do as she commands. She commands it to transform into her sister, who was in life an aspiring musician whose final words she heard from her living sister were 'You'll never play at a concert, because you're terrible', or words to that effect.

The resulting consequences involve the mage sister swinging between taking hollow comfort in her replacement sister and becoming blameful and angry at the daemon for 'defiling her memory', and ultimately dying alone and bitter because she never naturally allowed for the stages of grief.

I don't know if it's that high concept with regards to literature as a whole, but for fantasy, it's a tad on the artsy side in terms of thematic richness. My question is thus:

Are there some concepts too 'highbrow' or 'literary' for genre fiction such as fantasy? Is the prospect of rescuing fantasy from the low-concept ghetto it's trapped in feasible? Worthwhile? Would any critics buy the attempt, regardless of the content? It is fantasy, after all.

Edit: To clarify, I myself don't consider fantasy deserving of the ghetto, I'm simply noting the trend of fantasy being looked down upon in the critical community, and its effects on a writer trying to get published. Sci-fi writers who attempt more human concepts (as opposed to exploring technologies and the cosmos) often relabel their genre to 'speculative fiction', and fantasy often does the same, rebranding to 'supernatural', 'horror', et cetera.

Answer 1

Genre is largely a matter of marketing, so the question is really "What audience will your book appeal to?" There's a healthy audience for fantasy, so books are often marketed that way if they can be. If your book crosses over to a mainstream audience, it may be taken off the fantasy shelves, regardless of the content. (Samuel Delany has quite a long discussion of this very topic, in his excellent About Writing.)

I should mention, however, that it's not clear to me at all what about your concept is "too literary" for fantasy. It sounds quite typical for a fantasy book, really. Maybe not a mass-market series paperback, but fantasy goes much further than those. There's quite a lot of mainstream fantasy work that's at least as "literary" as this, if not considerably more so. Murakami's IQ84 and Wind Up Bird Chronicles, Delany's Dhalgren, LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea, Stephenson's Anathem, Beagle's Last Unicorn and Hall's Raw Shark Texts are all unmistakably genre books, all clearly high-concept and literary, and were all quite successful as well. (Or, if you want to go another hundred years or so back, Carroll's Sylvie & Bruno and MacDonald's Lillith show this isn't just a modern phenomenon).

With that in mind, you may want to do some more fantasy reading before you start this project, however. It's a pet peeve of many fantasy readers (and writers) when people who aren't familiar with the genre write things that they think are very original, or groundbreaking but that are instantly recognizable tropes and cliches to anyone who reads frequently in the genre. It's even worse when people who are contemptuous of the genre think they can use writing in the genre as an excuse for bad or lazy writing. There are many beyond-excellent writers in the genre: Compete with them, rather than the bottom feeders.

Answer 2

This is a tough one to answer because the question comes with a lot of personal bias towards fantasy.

1. I think your concept can be executed beautifully and perform really well.

2. If your ambition is to outshine other fantasy novels out now, it may not be the best motivation, but I certainly encourage you to try.

As an avid fantasy reader and writer, I don’t see the fantasy genre as being bad at the moment. There are certainly many books, especially in the super-natural, demon, and magic space that have muddied and sometimes cheapened the genre, but as a whole, fantasy is pretty strong. I’d encourage you to focus on your work, and the people you want to impact with that work, because the cream will always rise to the top and last for decades. If your work is a part of that, that’s great, and I really look forward to reading your work! Great writers and great work rarely need to put down others to be considered worthwhile though, so maybe reward or rethink your preconceptions.

Answer 3

If you don't write what you want to write the way you want to write it your writing will be "sub-optimal" (read terrible). That's the official advice of several of my favourite authors to aspiring writers, don't write for your readers, don't write for your editor, certainly don't write for your critics; write for yourself or don't bother at all.

In terms of the particular story you propose; I've read this story before, you've changed the more usual relationship roles but it's still just a version of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice I can think of at least three reasonably modern treatments of it that are either science fiction, fantasy or an interesting mix of both.

More generally speaking no there are no concepts too high to be successfully treated in a fantasy setting; like any treatment, of any concept, in any genre, the key is not to allow the setting to overwhelm the message.