Pagecount Lethality and the Fantasy Novel as Munition

Ladies and gentlemen, surely the majority of you are familiar with that curious beast, the "genre fantasy novel." Weighing down bookshelves in record numbers since the 1970s and a resurgence in the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the RingsTrilogy, genre fantasy novels have evolved according to a strict set of rules which are curiously unrelated to their actual content. Where genre fantasy has few limitations on said content, it has recently been made public that all of its precious produce must unfailingly toe two distinct lines, and woe betide the unfortunate novel that dares break with convention.

The two definitive laws of the genre fantasy novel, revealed only after much personal risk and late-night consumption of inebriating beverages on the part of your commentator, are as follows:

1. The Page Count Law

Any fantasy epic which features a page count smaller than the total number of days that have passed since Ramses II took his last shit in Egypt is inadequate. The author deserves drawing and quartering.

2. The Law of the Trilogy

It is the nature of the fantasy epic to seek a state of trilogy. If a novel features one sword, one mythic continent, or one enchanted lap dog, and therefore fits neatly into one volume, the author should be encouraged to add two more swords, mythic continents, or enchanted lapdogs and thereby make a triolgy of the affair. If they will not, they deserve to have their kneecaps broken.

Mercedes Lackey, Raymond Feist, Janny Wurts, David Eddings, Samuel Donaldson, and Stephen Brust are just a few of the writers responsible for recently producing trilogies or even trilogies of trilogies. Surely, however, they must all fall under the shadow of the late twentieth century's very own King of Overproduction, the inimitable Robert Jordan. Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which saw its latest additions yesterday afternoon and this morning, has now run to 4,309 volumes and has been translated into 811 languages, including dog, cat, squirrel, Klingon, and the language spoken by all chaotic evil creatures.

To Jordan's credit, not one of his epics runs less than 900 pages. Indeed, you'd have to eat birdshot for six or seven days if you wanted to take a dump as weighty as a Wheel of Time book, and even then you'd have to hold it for quite some time. Titles in this fine series include:

The Eye of the World
The Great Hunt
The Dragon Reborn
The Shadow Rising
The Fires of Heaven
Lord of Chaos
A Crown of Swords
The Path of Daggers
Winter's Heart
Abbatoir of the Monkey King
The Grogan That Ate Manhattan
Dance, Reader, Dance
I Shat This Book
Uncle Bobby Needs a New Houseboat
Son of Uncle Bobby Needs a New Houseboat
You Little Bastards Will Buy Anything
Don't You Even Read the Titles Anymore?
The Robert Jordan Story, by Robert Jordan
Another Damn Story About That Wheel You Like So Much
War and Peace II: Ghetto Rhapsody
Lick this Cover- It Tastes Great
Vengeance of the H'hewwwwk
Knight of the J'kl'niggle'hokk
Warlord of the Grogbakjakbakackjakpoon
Supreme Privy Councilor of the Grogbakjakbakackjakpoon
That Whole Grogbakjakbakackjakpoon Thing Was a Joke
Expensive Illustrated Guide to the World of the Grogbakjakbakackjakpoon
I'm Going to Kick Scott Lynch's Ass For Making Fun of Me Because I Write My Novels Faster Than He Writes Essays.

Believe it or not, there will be a sequel available to that last one in just a few minutes at your local Barnes & Noble.

Surely there must be a reason for this. Surely, the genre fantasy market, though large and often fanatical in the pursuit of its interests, is neither large nor wealthy enough to support such a tremendous output- on Jordan's part alone, this amounts to one book for every man, woman, child, fruitbat, and anthill on Earth every nine and a half minutes.

Where does this mountain of fantasy literature go? Who could make use of it?

The answer is simple- since 1988, the armed forces of the United States of America have been subsidizing the production of fantasy novels. Why? Ammunition. Pound for pound, an epic fantasy novel is the densest substance on Earth, even more so than now-obsolete depleted uranium, which makes them ideal for use in armor-piercing shells and missiles. Indeed, most of the media censorship during the 1990 Gulf War can be ascribed to the desire to keep America's secret terror weapon under wraps. Thus, it was never known- until now- that the vanguards of the Iraqi armored divisions were smashed by A-10s rapid-firing hardcover copies of Katherine Kurtz's Derenyi series, or that Iraqi frigates were routinely punctured and sunk by rocket-propelled Mercedes Lackey trade paperbacks. Truly, the pen is mightier than the sword. Just ask the thirty-seven elite members of Iraq's elite Republican Guard who were decapitated with a single copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the people of Kuwait are in your debt.

Having learned all this at great personal risk, I have decided to put it to good use and ride this cash cow as fast and far as possible. To wit, my first novel, The Long Drawn-Out Quest for Some Sword by a Guy Who Should Know Better,clocks in at a respectable two thousands, three hundred and eighteen pages in very small type. Each page is subliminally imprinted with a picture of myself raising a middle finger to the reader and spending my advance on crack-whores and gold-plated olives for my martinis. Furthermore, I have the satisfaction of knowing that my book will be loaded into the nose cone of laser-guided GBU-82 bombs and used to keep the peace in Kosovo and Taiwan. I'm just glad I could be of assistance.

Scott Lynch, June 2000