Old School v.s. New School: Books

I was over at the blog Today's Entertainment in Movies and Literature I was reading a post titled Old School v. New school. The post was comparing the old Jurassic Park movies with the newer ones and how the hold up. So I thought about it and came to the idea that you could compare books in the same way. So compared to older books how do books that came out around now hold up.

When thinking about this I came to a weird realization that book that were published back in the day are pretty close to books today. Now the ideas and messages are complete different because they were published in different eras so different things were happening, but the books were very similar and their plots.

Fantasy books written is 1970’s still have to deal with evil mages, fire-breathing dragons, an unexpected hero and damsels in distress. Si-fi books still have to do with evil aliens and the endless reaches of space. Even Romance books are the same, a guy and girl fall in love, something happens, they break up, they both realize they were wrong, they make up and happy ever after. There I probably just summed up over 80% of ever romance, fantasy, and Si-fi book ever created. But now why do there basics plots stay the same over so many year?

Well here is what I think, I feel the plots stay the same is because they tell a good story. All of these books keep the same basic plot because it is what works. Yes there are a few books that do break this idea but most stay to basic mold, and it works. In fantasy we love to see the hero progress through his journey to beat the evil whatever. In Si-fi we want to see places that we have never been and probably never be. And even in romance we want to see the two perfect strangers get together in the end.

So are books to day basically the same as they were many, many years ago, basically. No matter what kind of genre it is, the basic plot has probably stayed the same over many, many years. But books today have still changed with the times. With addition of new genres it is becoming harder to make connections to books from the past. But if you do look hard enough books today are basically books from the past with a new coat of paint.