10 Authors Who Wrote Gritty, Realistic Fantasy Before George R.R. Martin

When George R.R. Martin released A Game of Thrones in 1996 , he helped to change the plot with his grounded approach to fancy tropes . At the same meter , peoplesometimes talkas though Martin was the first to bring Platonism to heroic fantasy . So here are 10 other authors who were doing “ mealy ” fantasy before Martin .

To be fair , Martin himself was also write for a long time before A Game of Thrones get out — but Thrones , in particular , is normally referred to as a game - changer for larger-than-life fantasy . So these are industrial plant that do n’t necesarily antedate Martin ’s entire ouevre , but do antecede the release of the first book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series .

1) Stephen Donaldson

When you talk about work that brought a unexampled darkness to fantasy , it ’s hard to look out on Lord Foul ’s Bane , the 1977 bestseller that plunge Donaldson ’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant serial publication . Donaldson ingest all of the image of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis , and peer at them through an ugly igniter . And he gave us a protagonist that it’salmost insufferable to understand with , especially in the first book . Thomas Covenant is a ego - loathing writer who ’s become a castaway after he ’s infect with Hansen’s disease — so when he run to a fantasy earthly concern where he ’s hailed as the mythical savior , the first thing he does is to rape someone . And then he carries on being the hero of the series , slowly coming to indue in the world of this strange fantasy world . Not surprisingly , this serial publication hasfallen out of favor more or less — but it still merit a place in the chronicle of illusion that challenged our desperate ideals .

2) Celia Friedman

Friedman ’s Black Sun arise fall out just five years before A Game of Thrones , in 1991 , and it made a splattering at the metre . AsAdam Whitehead writes in The Wertzone , it ’s “ unrelentingly grim , ” and filled with unappealing characters . Friedman “ is n’t afraid to kill off major characters , and paints them in convincing item . ” This series , like the Pern serial publication and a few others , is a hybrid of science fable and fantasy — the human race has colonized a fresh satellite , Erna , which is full of hazard . Over time , humans have diminish back to a or so Renaissance story of technology , and meanwhile we ’ve encountered beings called the Fae , which can pose a huge peril but also can be used by sure muscular homo for their own ends .

3) Robin Hobb

Hobb ’s novel The Assassin ’s Apprentice amount out in 1995 , a year before A Game of Thrones ( and George R.R. Martin actuallyblurbed it , as Hobb blurbed the first variation of Thrones . ) And this story of Fitz , a youthful bastard who ’s looked down on and mistreated by everyone — but who secretly gets develop in the ancient artistic creation of the assassinator — hassome obvious parallelsto sure aspects of Martin ’s storytelling . In particular , Hobb ’s willingness to paint a disconsolate and terrible world where moral excellence is n’t always honour , and where horrors — in this subject , the Red Ship Raiders that turn their victim into quasi - zombies — lurk just on the bound of the world .

4) Glen Cook

Cook ’s Black Company serial of novel begin in the mid-1980s , and they ’re often hailed as important works in the story of military fantasy . But they ’re also important precursors to the current epoch of fantasy about real , flawed characters in a complicated and virtuously white-haired world . As Martin Lewiswrites in Strange Horizons , The Chronicles of the Black Company “ is the book that injected a crack of realism into the musical style , and helped steer it on the course of study towards forward-looking so - called ‘ spirited ’ fantasy . ” Instead of following horse or arrant hero , this series follow a company of soldier of fortune , who are slowly fading away as their member die off and nobody come along to replace them . Like the crew in Firefly , they take whatever jobs they ’re offered , including helping a sorceress to put down a rebellion .

5) Michael Moorcock

To be fair , Moorcock does n’t on the button avoid the housing of high illusion with his stories of Elric of Melniboné , a reddened - eyed , white - skinned antihero who goes around murdering people with his individual - eating steel , Stormbringer . It ’s full - on epic phantasy , with less of the overt political haggle that you ’ll see in Martin ’s piece of work and other granulose fantasy account of the past 20 years . But long before most of these other authors were around , Moorcock was already challenging Tolkien ’s manichean vision of a struggle between good and immorality . Elric is a total antihero , not to mention a drug junky , whose morals be given to be slippery at best .

6) David Gemmell

Gemmell excellently began writing Legend in 1976 , when he was misdiagnosed with cancer and needed to take his nous off his suppose illness . And not astonishingly , the termination is sullen as hell , and is often brought up as a herald to Martin , Joe Abercrombie , Scott Bakker and the other writers of gritty , brutally crimson fantasy novel . As Tor.com explains :

The fortress of Dros Delnoch represents the last remnant of a faded conglomerate . A barbarian legion known as the Nadir threatens to brim over it . In desperation , the dweller of Dros Delnoch flex to one of the greatest heroes the world has ever known , the figure of Druss . Druss is a he - man sort , corresponding to Conan in terms of forcible stature and prowess , a world who has carved a name for himself throughout the worldly concern through decades of awesome deeds . Only in this taradiddle , Druss is 59 years old . He has a balking articulatio genus . Age is creep up on him . His best years are behind him . But responsibility calls and Druss has never been one to duck a battle . What follows is one of the blooming phantasy novels I ’ve read .

7) Mary Gentle

Gentle ’s fresh Grunts is an epic illusion fib from the distributor point of view of the Orcs who have to go into battle and die by the thousands for a case that they barely sympathise . At the time when it was release , in 1992 , its darkly comic approach of take in the story from the gunpoint of thought of the “ villains ” was considered radical , and it became famous for a joke about Orcs raping Elves that probably would n’t be consider rummy today . But there ’s also funny scene of the Orcs eating their own wounded , and the war criminal offence trials that result . It ’s strong to get less uplifting , and nastier , than Grunts .

8) Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin ’s Earthsea books are n’t exactly meet with bloodshed , or atrocious human being who acquit in monstrous fashion — but she still deserves a place on any list of the great unwashed who bring more naturalism and political shade to fantasy . In particular , the fact that she returned to Earthsea for 1990 ’s Tehanu , and started to nick away at the sexism ( and species - ism ) at the antecedent of her mankind , deserve a mess of recognition . To read the first three Earthsea book and then Tehanu is a piece of a mind - altering experience , because Le Guin ’s prospect of Earthsea in 1990 is a lot more equivocal .

9) Karl Edward Wagner

Wagner ’s Kane series , release in the seventies and 1980s , is more by rights called sword - and - sorcery rather than epic phantasy — like Elric , it features an anti - Heron who ’s immortal and has moderately transcended our human ideas of good and bad … and Kane is another hero that it ’s difficult to identify or sympathize with .

10) Tad Williams

The Memory , Sorrow and Thorn trilogy , begun in 1988 , take place in a magical realm wher the humans have been unite at enceinte cost — but now the King is old , and his Son are falling into feuds and hang back the realm into a civil state of war .

As Ash Silverlockwrites in Fabulous Realms :

George R R Martin ’s A Song of Ice and Fire serial publication has advance plaudits from every turning point but I have to say that in my view the foundations and first floor of his serial were laid by Williams ( Martin himself has indicated that he was heavily inspired by Memory , Sorrow and Thorn ) . Although much of Williams ’ writing itself owe a debt , unavoidably , to J R R Tolkien ’s Lord of the Rings , it is in Memory , Sorrow and Thorn , perhaps for the first sentence , that we truly see an grownup take on the genre of epical fantasy . expected value are turned over , dear lineament suffer ( and die , over and over again ) and the fantasy world that is presented is every flake as gritty , believable and sometimes unpleasant as our own .

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