Grimdark fantasy has always caught flak for its purported “nihilism” and shock-value violence. But fantasy fans slightly older than me will probably always think of one article in particular: Leo Grin’s vicious ideological takedown of Grimdark on Breitbart. It represents the peak of the backlash against the subgenre, at least in terms of inflammatory rhetoric. Unfortunately, I was not yet part of the community when the article and its responses were timely, but I’m here now and I’m not going to let a five year delay stop me from picking at this scab. The article is as caustic and nonsensical as you’d expect from Breitbart. But it articulated, however rabidly, a thread that a lot of conservative fantasy readers found compelling. Grimdark fantasists like Joe Abercrombie, George RR Martin, and Matthew Stover were profaning the hallowed narratives of epic and heroic fantasy, dragging masterpieces of Western civilization into the gutter. A sign of the times, that no one respected tradition these days, and bad things were bound to come of it.
A lot of the responses to that article were critical of its tone and extremism but agreed with its underlying argument: good and evil are metaphysically real, and deconstructing or “polluting” fantasy built on that premise threatens social well-being. Such arguments can only be made by those who believe that their moral constructs somehow exist independently of cultural context. That’s a philosophical divide I won’t waste my time attempting to bridge--especially since it has just become more entrenched in the fantasy community by the Puppygate garbage.
But the thing that confused me in all of this was the eagerness of authors on the Grimdark side of the debate to claim that their works were, in fact, philosophically aligned with early fantasists. It’s odd and somewhat maddening to look back on this conversation and see no one defending what’s actually innovative about these books:
Honestly, it all just seems so pointless and facile — are we really going to pretend that this might be something new, that Robert E. Howard’s fiction wasn’t nihilistic? - Jesse Bullington
After all, if all Martin wanted was grim and gritty antiheroes, he didn't have to reject the staples of fantasy, he could have gone to its roots: Howard, Leiber, and Anderson. There seems to be a sense that Martin's work is somehow revolutionary, that it represents a 'new direction' for fantasy, but all I see is a reversion. - JG Keely
However, my problem with these “new takes” on the genre is that they don’t, actually, do anything new. Strip away the swears and the sex and you’re left with works not much different from their predecessors. Yes, there may be moral ambiguity, but Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith also wrote amoral worlds. - Mijal Wojcik
There’s no specific characteristic so far enunciated that really distinguishes, say, Abercrombie, Eriksson, and Swanwick (all mentioned in Grin’s essay) from Howard, Leiber, Cabell, and Vance. When that definition is made, there might be a useful advance made in the way we talk about fantasy. - Matthew David Surridge
This sort of thing makes me pull my hair out even now—which is why I’m motivated to write an article reviving a five-year-old debate. I haven’t seen any really compelling answers to Surridge’s question (though it gets hard to follow this conversation once it moves beyond linking to Grin’s piece directly so I’m sure I missed plenty). I think I have an answer, though, that will make some sense of the situation. Maybe it makes too much sense of a complex issue, but I’ll leave that to you to judge. Everyone in this debate, with the exception of Grin, oddly, seems to place classic Sword and Sorcery in one box, Tolkien-school epic fantasy in another, and the “vulgar” contemporary fantasists in the last. I’ll call these Heroic, Epic, and Grimdark. Everyone seems to agree, further, that Epic fantasy is distinct--its emphatic moral framework sets it apart. But how well does the direct likening of Grimdark to Heroic works hold up? Are they really both based on more or less identical “nihilist” worldviews?
The Heroic frame directly echoes the way violence is handled in epic poems like Beowulf or the Iliad. Their protagonists are members of warrior cultures with a strong emphasis on codes of honor. They seek status by performing feats of valor and obtaining loot in war and raiding, adding exploits to their names in songs. When these stories have overarching moral conflicts at play, they often have more to do with the correct observation of the rules governing warfare, rather than the acts of war, murder, and theft themselves. Epic poems themselves bring a propagandist slant to their subjects, exaggerating feats of heroism, slandering enemies, and enforcing cultural norms. Regardless, the warrior cultures they depict existed within a complete cultural context lived by real people, with all the complexity and ambiguity that implies. Heroic fantasy authors, on the other hand, consciously set out to remove such complexity, removing even the traces of cultural authenticity present in their epic models. L Sprague Camp’s introduction to the anthology Sword and Sorcery, for instance, claims that the genre was “laid in imaginary prehistoric or medieval worlds, when (it’s fun to imagine) all men were mighty, all women were beautiful, all problems were simple, and all life was adventurous.” In the process of translating historical warrior cultures into pulp adventure stories, the framework was distorted to more closely resemble a sport. Opposing factions are differentiated less by their moral or cultural identity than by the simple fact that they’re two teams competing in a zero sum game—raiding the same coasts, seeking the same treasures, or conquering the same territory. Players score by earning honor in fights and accumulating treasure. The rules are important, and those who break them egregiously are generally punished by the (authorial) hand of fate. But, importantly, the consequences of playing by the rules—collateral damage, dead civilians, civic disorder, and even personal trauma—are either ignored or glorified. After all, it wouldn’t fun, simple, adventurous, to confront those consequences.
As an example, note that all the antagonists in Robert Howard’s Conan stories rely on sorcery, poison, and deception. They know that Conan is the strongest and bravest person around, so they can’t win in a contest of strength and fighting prowess. They must use other tactics to win, but those tactics constitute cheating, which further defines them as villains. Cheaters deserve to be kicked out of the game, so Conan is not only the best at the game--he’s on the side of the referees, too.
I think it’s reasonable, if not entirely fair to nihilism, to call this setup nihilistic. It prizes violence as empty spectacle and puerile power fantasy, placing little value on life, political stability, or happiness. To my mind, this deliberate suspension of moral norms to enable a consequence-free play space is a fair criteria for “nihilism.” It’s important to note, however, (and this is something I think the commenters above miss) that the warrior culture of Conan and his Heroic brethren is still a culture. It’s a myopic caricature of an appropriative mishmash of historical cultures bent to appeal to a certain contemporary audience, but it’s still a culture. Valuing treasure and honor is not the same as valuing nothing. It’s nihilistic insofar as this value system exists outside the presumed Judeo-Christian value system of the reader, and insofar as it is not elevated to the status of a metaphysical moral framework. But it is, ultimately, a value set that exists on the same level in its own world as every value set we adhere does in ours: as a social construct.
(NB - I’m going to use Game of Thrones to illustrate some points because it is a great example and it is so widely known, so GoT Spoilers Ahead. Black Sails might be a better example, but unfortunately I can’t assume most of you will have seen it.)
Protagonists in Grimdark fantasy are playing a game, too, of course--the Game of Thrones is so called for a reason. In this sort of game, however, everyone conceptualizes the rules differently, and they all play for different reasons using different means and even on different battlefields. Warrior honor cultures are still present, but they are discrete elements within the story, enforced by characters, not the narration and plot. ASOIAF has its Dothraki, but they have quite different ideas of honor than Westerosi knights, or the Ironborn, or the Unsullied. As characters from these cultures meet and confront each other, their contrasts illustrate the provincialism of each system, rather than elevating the perspective of the protagonist to a universal.
This means that transgressive techniques like poisoning, sorcery, and politicking aren’t taboo for everyone; just for the people whose ruleset marks them as such. This makes the players asymmetrical: Cersei’s control of the strongest fighter in Westeros wins Tyrion’s trial by combat for her, but it doesn’t protect her from the maneuvering of the Faith Militant, or save Joffrey from poison. None of those tactics are moralized by the narration--unlike in Conan, it’s not clear that using any particular tactic marks one as a villain, destined to lose the game because the good guys must win.
That asymmetry has wider implications. Without the pretense of meritocratic equal opportunity, authors don’t need to minimize the roles of forces that dwarf character agency. Factors outside the battlefield no longer exist only to provide plot coupons and deus ex machinae. Systems like the economy, religious sentiment, or public perception can be manipulated by players but retain their autonomy and chaotic predilections, imposing unexpected outcomes that match neither their instigator’s virtues nor the author’s sense of justice.
On one level, then, characters in Grimdark fantasy are simply playing a richer game than heroes of Heroic fantasy. Their playing field is more diverse, they have more techniques available, their success and abilities can be judged on more metrics, and they can pursue more win conditions. This alone shows the progress fantasy has made in expanding its scope and deepening its worlds. But the detail and realism of the world and the diversity of tactical gameplay are bonus prizes, not intrinsically tied to any philosophical approach. The salient point here is the question of values, motivations, and truths.
The Iron Throne of Westeros is nominally the "win condition" of the Game of Thrones, but only a few characters value it exclusively. Others seek safety, revenge, belonging, redemption, abolition, reform, or defense of the realm. Every character has a different understanding of history and a different valuation of possible outcomes. That foregrounds their decision making process, rather than their willpower or prowess in battle or even their skills or wits. It puts the emphasis not on the strategies they use to obtain power, and especially not on the lack of overarching moral endpoints, but on the way characters conceptualize their lives. It is, in short, nihilism through social-construction of morals, rather than a willful (childish?) suspension of morality.
This, insofar as a work pulls it off, is the thing that elevates the nihilism of Grimdark over the nihilism of Heroic fantasy. It doesn’t present a world with no moral compass, but a world full of compasses pointing in different directions. It presents a morality that is contextually contingent, individual and cultural but no less real and important for that--just like our own. It interrogates morality as a force within the story in a way that Sword and Sorcery "nihilists" were never interested in. The extent to which any given work actually pulls this off is up for debate. And whether it’s necessarily desirable in a fantasy work is a matter of taste. But it’s hard for me to swallow the assertion that these subgenres have the same approach to morality, that Grimdark didn’t bring anything new to the table.