Now that was epic!

No, I'm not using my license as a teenager to use colloquial language in today's post. The epic that I'm talking about refers to epic stories, such as The Odyssey and Beowulf. I've been thinking a great deal about epics lately, and have found that the surrounding bubble of information interests me.

Back when The Odyssey and Beowulf were first put together as something to read, "epic" was used only to describe poetry. The Odyssey and Beowulf were (and are still, no matter how prose-y the format can get nowadays) epic poems. Around that time, I suppose, epic poems were all the rage.

Now fast forward about a gazillion years. Nobody writes epic poems any more, and if they do, then no-one's reading them. Which would be a shame, except we have a substitute in the form of high fantasy. You know the sort I'm talking about, books like The Lord of the Rings, The Edge Chronicles and The Name of the Wind (yeah okay, maybe you haven't heard of the last two but hey, I love them so they're getting mentioned). There's also what I like to think of as formula-fantasy, which is the kind of story where the main character finds out they're magically gifted, they thwart evil plots and ride off into the sunset on their white horse with their closest friends.

I'm not against this sort of novel. In fact, I quite like them. But I've grown and matured as a reader and now I want something that's a bit different from the usual. No more young people with pointy ears using swords that should be too heavy for them on their long and eventful journeys. Actually, yes more, but I want a little more creativity in there. A sudden dragon is no longer a thrill and totally expected. And don't get me started on the fact that the main character is nearly always a Caucasian-esque male tween who gets the girl.

So I've made it my goal to reinvent the epic for the 21st century readers. I'm probably overreaching myself but I don't mind; the challenge should be enough to keep me stimulated until someone else achieves the reinvention well enough so that I have a book to distract me from my own failings. But I'll always be working on it - because the world needs its first sci-fi epic that involves monsters, a quest, romance, violence and aliens. With pointy ears.