Throughout the years, genre fiction always has suffered from a sort of stepchild reputation, in part because so much formulaic, derivative, clumsy work has been produced in the various categories. Then again, as Jordan points out, much the same can be said of any literary form. Regardless of the fictional landscape he explores—fantasy, Westerns, historical—he rejects the creative straitjacket whose constraints allow no deviation from a basic genre formula.
“Genre survives; Moby Dick is an adventure story, for heaven’s sake. William Shakespeare wrote comedies. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote mysteries. What dooms a book is believing you have to stay within the guidelines. And with each book you write, in whatever genre, you must strive to make it better than the preceding one. You hope one day to write The Canterbury Tales , something that will last 1,000 years.”
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