TURN TO THE DARK SIDE
A growing subgenre of fantasy favours gritty reality over pastoral mythology. Alex Davis girds his loins to brave the world of grimdark
WM
The term ‘grimdark’ is one that is relatively new within genre fiction, and has no doubt been a popular trend in recent times. The quickest of looks online will confirm a real new movement in fantasy, alongside urban fantasy and dark fantasy (which we have explored previously in our articles) giving this venerable old genre the chance to spread its wings.
Having spent a couple of years working at Games Workshop’s publishing imprint Black Library, on Warhammer 40,000 fiction, it’s not hard to decipher where the term emerged from – ‘In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war’ is a common tagline for the game. And in science-fiction terms Warhammer 40k is a fair exemplar of the form, although over time grimdark has increasingly become a descriptor more for fantasy fiction. That’s certainly not to say the fantasy hasn’t featured darker elements for many years, but grimdark has become a distinctive subgenre of fantasy and one that has sparked a lot of interest in just how different it can be from traditional fantasy.
So, what exactly does it mean?
In this article we’re going to explore a more in-depth definition, look at some handy advice for writing grimdark fantasy and suggest a few reads that might just give you a flavour of what it’s all about.
There are a number of different definitions for the subgenre provided by scholars and thinkers in the field, many of which come back to a single word – morality. Fantasy has often been epitomised by the classic battle between good and evil, hero and anti-hero being lines clearly drawn and a journey typically following the protagonists rather than the antagonists. Grimdark often throws that out of the window, looking at lead characters who at best are morally dubious and who can extend to deeply unpleasant, malevolent and malicious. The tone is overall very different as well – the grimdark world is gritty, unforgiving of weakness and bleak in presentation. There is often little of the sweeping vistas and beauty that typifies the works of Tolkien – in fact eminent genre scholar Adam Roberts describes grimdark as being ‘anti-Tolkien’, insofar as it flies in the face of that Tolkienesque idealism. Grimdark represents no doubt an attempt to capture a more ‘real’ version of life in the times it typically represents – the medieval world often presented (sometimes with added mystical or magical elements) is one loaded with death, poverty, violence and brutality. With that said, one of the criticisms of the area is that so much of what is presented is overdone and exaggerated.