A.P. Canavan: “Let’s hunt some orc!”
With the exception of dragons, one of the most recognizable monsters of genre fantasy is the humble orc. Orcs, commonly found in hordes (which I believe is the ™ term), are the readily identifiable, disposable foot soldiers of every evil wizard’s or Dark Lord’s army, and they are the ever-useful opponents for would-be heroes in training. But given the trend of modern genre fantasy to move away from moral polarities to more complicated relativistic positions, can we still treat and react to orcs in the same way? Is it time to reevaluate orcs and as a result the texts in which they appear? Can we now view orcs as the victims of the self-proclaimed heroes?
A.P. Canavan, “’Let’s hunt some orc!’: Reevaluating the Monstrosity of Orcs,” New York Review of Science Fiction 318 (February 2015).