Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimwit
We've always needed our myths and monsters. It's our entertainment. It's also a direct reflection on the pop culture issues of the day. Vampires really took hold when a STD was devestating the populace. Syphilis was rampant (sex can KILL!) and Dracula hit the zeitgest rather well.
Moving forward, the visual media had a field day mining all the old literature and re-energized the field once again. It petered out and fallow for a few years until anoter STD hit the scenes. AIDS was a bitch (sex can KILL!) and the renaissance followed. This time all the media jumped on board and the field expanded and didn't quite die off like before, but most of the new books tried to find different tropes versus the Stoker original.
Then Meyer hit gold by going for the tween market. Worked well. This time though, there's no pop culture zeitgest behind it. All the bandwagon jumpers we're seeing now are just in it for the money and it's killing the market. There's good material out there but it getting swamped by the crap. This will pass but it's a pain until it does.
My biggest beef is the overwhelming amount of titles stuck in the SF&F genre which I don't think belongs and it really pisses me off how many good titles of non vampire/werewolf/fantasy tropes aren't being published because of this crap.
Ahhhhh, patience. This too shall pass.
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Good overall summary, but you missed the BUFFY influence.
The reason Twilight saw daylight at all was because Whedon greased the way and there was a strong and healthy urban fantasy genre in place.
Three points to consider:
1- Buffy started out as a straight Dracula spoof. Valley girl vs vamps, very Hollywood high concept. It was only when Whedon was faced with adapting it to TV that Buffy became a serious property, mining the territory between horror and fantasy in a modern setting.
2- Urban fantasy is no fad; it is a substantial adult genre in its own right. Most B&M stores I know properly stock it separate from SF and fantasy, some also distinguish it from outright horror. Don't expect it to go away once the zombie and sparkly vamp tropes play out. On the contrary, the tweens weaned on Meyer will be moving on to the more mature adult fare of Tanya Huff, CE Murphy, Anne Rice, and yes, Laurell Hamilton. Essentially, Twilight (and its young-adult focused followers) is the "starter drug" drawing a new generation of teens into reading just as Harry Potter, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings did in their time. This is good. Fantasy didn't go away after the flood of elf trilogies in the 70's and 80's that followed LoTR, and Urban Fantasy will likewise endure its recent increased visibility.
3- Lost in the griping over vamps and zombies is that the real new trope among publishers is a move to increase availability of young adult fiction across all genres. Yes, a lot of this increased content will be substandard (Sturgeon's Law!), but a substantial fraction will be of enduring value. Combine this trend with the mainstreaming of ebook readers and its clear that reading as entertainment is going to see a strong influx of younger readers. And these readers will sooner or later expand their horizons to encompass more mature content, be it urban fantasy, classic fantasy, sf, mysteries, thrillers, romance, etc.
Its okay to joke about glitter vamps and the like, but lets not forget that anything that gets young people hooked on reading is a Good.Thing.