Why are historical epics falling out of fashion?

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Originally published at: Why are historical epics falling out of fashion? | Boing Boing

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Fantasy scratches the same itch and is usually just as historically accurate.

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Genres don’t go away, they just get mushed together. War movies, but with zombies. Romance movies, but with zombies. Zombie movies, but with different, edgier zombies.

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Only seven basic plots, but an endless variety of combinations.

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So… this guy who was of the minor nobility and grew up in poverty in a hovel covered in shit, wearing clothing that hadn’t been invented yet and covered in war paint that nobody had worn in almost a thousand years, and conspicuously not wearing anything remotely resembling armour in pitched battle, had an affair and fathered a child with a woman who was ten years old and in another country when he was executed, screaming a word which had almost nothing to do with why he was fighting or being executed?

Cool story, bro. Totes historical.

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I was thinking about this with westerns. For a few decades there in the 20th century it seemed like there was always a western in theaters or on Tv. It was like, you have dramas and comedies and westerns. I’m not lamenting this fact. A lot can be done with that time period in American history in terms of storytelling, but I also realize the problem with glorifying expansionism and the displacement of native people etc… it’s probably good that they are a bit fewer now. I guess marvel movies are serving the same cultural position now…

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I’ve noticed a huge shift in the length of a lot of new fiction, mostly towards shorter and shorter books, with things that I would have called a novella and that would have been released in a compilation now being sold on their own, for full length prices, too. Some of this seems related to changes in the way F&SF is classified for the Hugos. Maybe Covid stress had people writing less overall, maybe readers now buy shorter works more, maybe the margins are better for the publishers.

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