(1942) and The Sorceror’s Ship (1942; book 1969). His poetry is collected in Spinner of Silver and Thistle (1972).
BOND, NELSON S. (1908– ). U.S. writer whose most successful works were humorous fantasies in the tradition of Thorne Smith, most notably the 1937 title story of Mr Mergenthwirker’s Lobblies and Other Fantastic Tales (1931), which gave rise to a series. His later collections The Thirty-first of February (1949) and Nightmares and Daydreams (1968) mingle similar works with sf (refer to HDSFL) and horror fiction.
BONDAGE. A term introduced by John Clute in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy as, allegedly, of central importance to the understanding of the genre. It refers to “a state of being contained or trapped in a particular place, time, physical shape or moral condition,” resistant to or in dynamic tension with an active process of change characterizable as
48 • BORCHARDT, ALICE
“Story.” The importance of such states in fantasy is connected with the manner in which fantasy can literalize and extrapolate commonplace psychological sensations of this kind, abstracting the characters from the temporal and spatial tyrannies of “real” life to contrive a kind of escape more profound and awkward in its implications than J. R. R. Tolkien’s.
Clute suggests that a heroic quest is best regarded as a kind of bondage, wherein climactic attainment is release rather than reward.
BORCHARDT, ALICE (?– ). U.S. writer, the sister of Anne Rice. Her historical fantasies include Devoted (1995), set in 10th-century France; several featuring werewolves, including The Silver Wolf (1998), Night of the Wolf (1999), and The Wolf King (2001); and the Arthurian Tales of Guinevere, begun with The Dragon Queen (2001) and The Raven Warrior (2003).
BORGES, JORGE LUIS (1899–1986). Argentinian writer famous for el-egantly profound metafictional/ contes philosophiques, many of which are collected in Labyrinths (1944–61; tr. 1962), The Aleph and Other Stories (1949; tr. 1970), and The Book of Sand (1975; tr. 1977). Collected Fictions (1999) is an omnibus. Notable examples formulated as fantasies include “The Approach to Al Mu’tasim” (1935), the visionary fantasy “The Circular Ruins” (1940), “The Garden of Forking Paths”
(1941), the mythological fantasy “The House of Asterion” (1947), and
“The Immortal” (1949). With Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, Borges compiled an 81-item showcase Antología de la literatura fantástica (1940; rev. 1965; further rev. 1976; tr. as The Book of Fantasy), which is one of fantasy literature’s definitive texts. He also compiled a modern bestiary translated as The Book of Imaginary Beings (1957; rev.
1967; tr. 1969).
BOSTON, LUCY M. (1892–1990). British writer best known for a series of children’s fantasies set in a house that is exceedingly prone to timeslips, hauntings, and other devices of intrusive fantasy, comprising The Children of Green Knowe (1954), The Chimneys of Green Knowe (1958; aka Treasure of Green Knowe), The River at Green Knowe (1959), A Stranger at Green Knowe (1961), An Enemy at Green Knowe (1964), and The Stones of Green Knowe (1976). The Castle of Yew (1958) is similar. The Sea Egg (1967) features a newborn triton.
BOYER, ELIZABETH H. (?– ). U.S. writer. The commodified series of heroic fantasy comprising The Sword and the Satchel (1980), The Elves
BRADLEY, MARION ZIMMER • 49
and the Otterskin (1981), The Thrall and the Dragon’s Heart (1982), and The Wizard and the Warlord (1983) combines humor and drama; its later stages introduce warring elves of a Nordic stripe, which became central in the Wizard’s War series, comprising The Troll’s Grindstone (1986), The Curse of Slagfid (1989), The Dragon’s Carbuncle (1990), and The Lord of Chaos (1991), and the Skyla trilogy, comprising The Clan of the Warlord (1992), The Black Lynx (1993), and Keeper of Cats (1995).
BOYETT, STEPHEN R. (1960– ). U.S. writer. Ariel (1983) features an alternative history in which massive incursions from Faerie have transformed the United States. The Architect of Sleep (1986) is the first part of a complex portal fantasy, whose completion never appeared. The Gnole (1991, with Alan Aldridge) is an ecological polemic in fabular form. Boyett’s short fiction is sampled in Orphans (2001); the earlier Treks not Taken (1996) parodies formularistic TV sf.
BRADBURY, RAY (1920– ). U.S. writer whose work ranges across a very broad spectrum, much of it hybrid or chimerical (refer to HDSFL and HDHL). Many of his stories introduce dark elements into stories formulated and stylized as sentimental fantasies in a highly distinctive manner. His early fantasies included literalized allegories like “The Scythe” (1943) and a series of stories exploring the domestic life of a supernatural extended family in more earnestly sentimental terms than Charles Addams’s cartoon family, begun with “Homecoming” (1946;
incorporated into the mosaic From the Dust Returned: A Family Re-membrance 2001). With the exception of his first collection, Dark Carnival (1947; rev. as The October Country, 1955), his early books were dominated by sf imagery, which gave way to a curious kind of fantasized autobiography in the mosaic Dandelion Wine (1957) and the classic dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). Similar materials form a fugitive thread through most of his short-story collections from the 1960s to Driving Blind (1997) and The Cat’s Pajamas (2004).
They are more expansively developed in the children’s fantasies The Halloween Tree (1972) and Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines: A Fable (1998), the latter being an Arabian fantasy.
BRADLEY, MARION ZIMMER (1930–1999). U.S. writer best
known in the early phases of her career for a science-fantasy series set on the planet Darkover (refer to HDSFL), which provides a cardinal example of calculated ambiguity and became a key exemplar of
50 • BRADSHAW, GILLIAN
planetary romance. The “psi-powers” featured in the series are magic in all but name, and the world provided an arena for sword and sorcery adventures as well as political fantasies, the latter including an elaborate description of amazon culture. She moved toward pure fantasy in The House between the Worlds (1980; exp.
1981), completing the transition in the best-selling feminized
Arthurian fantasy The Mists of Avalon (1982).
Web of Light (1983) and Web of Darkness (1984) are Atlantean fantasies. Night’s Daughter (1985) transfigures Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. The Firebrand (1987) features the Trojan seeress Cassandra. The Forest House (1993) is a fantasy of goddess worship in Roman Britain; its sequel, Lady of Avalon (1997), connects it to Mists of Avalon. The trilogy comprising Ghostlight (1995), Witchlight (1996), and Gravelight (1997) is an ambiguous contemporary fantasy; Heartlight (1998) is a prequel.
Bradley wrote short stories set in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth in the 1970s and went on to participate in a number of shared world enterprises, opening up her Darkover series to participation by other writers. Her work in Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey’s Thieves’ World scenario outgrew its origin, extending from the stories collected in
Lythande (1986) to The Gratitude of Kings (1997; with Elisabeth Waters). With Andre Norton and Julian May, she wrote Black Trillium (1990); she made a solo contribution to the project in Lady of the Trillium (1995). Tiger Burning Bright (1995) used the same template, its other contributors being Norton and Mercedes Lackey. Bradley also collaborated with Holly Lisle on Glenraven (1996) and its sequel In the Rift (1998). Her Avalon series was continued by Diana L. Paxson.
Bradley was a zealous promoter of genre fantasy, especially its feminized variants, following up the original anthologies Sword of Chaos (1982) and Greyhaven (1983) with a series of annual anthologies, Sword and Sorceress, the first 20 vols. of which (1984–2003) she compiled—
the final three with posthumous assistance from Elisabeth Waters—before it was taken over by Diana Paxson. In 1988, she launched Marion Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, which published 50 issues before folding in 2000; its spinoff included the anthology Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Worlds (1998; with Rachel E. Holmen).
BRADSHAW, GILLIAN (1956– ). U.S. writer. The trilogy comprising Hawk of May (
1980), Kingdom of Summer (1981), and In Winter’s Shadow (1982) is an Arthurian fantasy foregrounding the character of
BRIGGS, K. M. • 51
Gawain. Some of her subsequent historical fiction has marginal fantasy elements; the series of children’s fantasies comprising The Dragon and the Thief (1991), The Land of Gold (1992), and Beyond the North Wind (1993) is more wholehearted. The Wolf Hunt (2001) is based on one of Marie de France’s lays. The Alchemy of Fire (2004) has elements of alchemical fantasy.
BRAMAH, ERNEST (1868–1942). British writer best known for his creation of the Chinese storyteller Kai Lung, who has Oriental fantasy adventures of his own in addition to those he narrates, them in a laconic yet ornate style (initially in a situation similar to Scheherazade’s). He features in The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900), Kai Lung’s Golden Hours (1922), Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928), Kai Lung beneath the Mulberry Tree (1940), and Kai Lung: Six (1974). Kai Lung is also credited as the teller of the detective story parody The Moon of Much Gladness (1932; aka The Return of Kai Lung).
BRANDON, PAUL (1971– ). British writer and musician resident in Australia since 1994. Swim the Moon (2001) is a hallucinatory fantasy featuring magical music and selkies. The Wild Reel (2004) is an urban fantasy set in Brisbane, where the Irish Faerie court has taken up residence.
BRENCHLEY, CHAZ (1959– ). British writer in various genres (refer to HDHL). His principal contribution to fantasy is the Arabian Outremer series, comprising Tower of the King’s Daughter (1998; 2 vol. ed. separates first half as The Devil in the Dust), Feast of the King’s Shadow (2000; 2 vol. ed. separates first half as A Dark Way to Glory), and Hand of the King’s Evil (2002; 2 vol. ed separates second half as The End of All Roads).
BRIGGS, K. M. (1898–1980). British folklorist. Her excursions into fiction include the children’s fantasies The Legend of Maiden-Hair (1915) and The Witches’ Ride (1937), the historical fantasy Hobberdy Dick (1955), and the psychological fantasy Kate Crackernuts (1963; rev.
1979). Her nonfictional works include the useful source books The Per-sonnel of Fairyland: A Short Account of the Fairy People of Great Britain for Those Who Tell Stories to Children (1953), A Dictionary of British Folk-tales (2 vols., 1970), Folk Legends (2 vols., 1971), and A Dictionary of Fairies (1976; aka An Encyclopedia of Fairies). Her critical studies include Pale Hecate’s Team: An Examination of the Beliefs
52 • BRIGGS, RAYMOND
on Witchcraft and Magic among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and His Immediate Successors (1962), The Fairies in Tradition and Literature (1967), and The Vanishing People: Fairy Lore and Legends (1976).
BRIGGS, RAYMOND (1934– ). British illustrator and writer who broke away from the conventional work he had been doing since 1961 in the satirical comic-strip fantasy Fungus the Bogeyman (1977), a portrait of a gloomy bogeyman who finds his duties as a moral terrorist onerous and absurd. The sentimental fantasy The Snowman (1978) was much more popular. After excursions into political satire, he returned to melancholy existentialist fantasy in The Man (1992) and The Bear (1994).
BROOKS, TERRY (1944– ). U.S. writer. He and Stephen R. Donaldson were the writers who demonstrated that the commercial success of Lord of the Rings had not been a fluke, and that commodified/epic fantasy really did have potential as a mass-market genre. The Sword of Shannara (1977) is a dumbed-down version of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work, so closely imitative that Lin Carter described it as a “war crime of a book,” but it became the foundation stone of Ballantine’s Del Rey imprint; its sequels are The Elfstones of Shannara (1982), The Wishsong of Shannara (1985), The Scions of Shannara (1990), The Druid of Shannara (1991), The Elf Queen of Shannara (1992), and The Talismans of Shannara (1993); The First King of Shannara (1996) is a prequel. The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara series, comprising Ilse Witch (2000), Antrax (2001), and Morgawr (2002), took up the story a generation later.
The High Druid of Shannara series launched with Jarka Ruus (2003), and Tanequil (2004) moved on to a further generation. The World of Shannara (2001, with Teresa Patterson) is a guide.
Brooks’s Landover series, comprising Magic Kingdom for Sale—
Sold! (1986), The Black Unicorn (1987), Wizard at Large (1988), The Tangle Box (1994), and Witches’ Brew, (1995) is a humorous fantasy akin to the works of Piers Anthony. In the dark/contemporary fantasy series comprising Running with the Demon (1997), A Knight of the Word (1998), and Angel Fire East (1999), a small town becomes the stage for an epic struggle between the Word and the Void.
BROWN, GEORGE MACKAY (1921–1996). Orcadian writer whose
fantasies are mostly based in local legend, especially the short fiction collected in A Calendar of Love (1957), A Time to Keep (1969; the 1986
book of the same title is a sampler), Hawkfall (1974), The Sun’s Net (1976), Witch (1977), Andrina (1983), Christmas Stories (1985), The
BRUST, STEVEN • 53
Golden Bird (1987), The Masked Fisherman (1989), and The Sea King’s Daughter/Eureka! (1991). Magnus (1973) is a longer work in the same vein. Time in a Red Coat (1984) is a serial timeslip romance. Beside the Ocean of Time (1994) is a visionary fantasy celebrating the role of storytelling in formulating history. Brown’s children’s fantasies include The Two Fiddlers (1974), Pictures in the Cave (1977), and Keepers of the House (1986).
BROWN, MARY (1929– ). British writer. Her fantasies are distinctive; The Unlikely Ones (1986) and the series comprising Pigs Don’t Fly (1994), Master of Many Treasures (1995), and Dragonne’s Egg (1999) describe elaborate seriocomic quests undertaken by ill-matched assort-ments of human and animal companions.
BROWNE, N. M. (1960– ). British writer who has also published under her maiden name, Nicola Matthews. The timeslip series begun with Warriors of Alavna (2000) took on an Odyssean slant in Warriors of Camlann (2003), when the characters’ attempt to return home went awry. In the psychological fantasy Hunted (2002), a girl in a coma identifies with a fox living in the distant past. In Basilisk (2004), underworld-inhabiting “combers” reluctantly join forces with “abovers” when their rigidly stratified society is disturbed by dreams.
BROWNING, ROBERT (1812–1889). British poet. He was much preoc-cupied with metaphysical matters of personal evolution, concerns that are elaborated in such long poems as Paracelsus (1835). His most influential works, so far as fantasy literature is concerned, were “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” (1842), a lively version in verse of a famous folktale, and the brief and enigmatic “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”
(1855), which extrapolates a chivalric quest into an exceedingly gloomy milieu. The imagery of the latter echoes in many modern works, most elaborately in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.
BRUST, STEVEN (1955– ). U.S. writer. He is best known for the anti-heroic Taltos series, initially comprising Jhereg (1983), Yendi (1984), Teckla (1986), Taltos (1988; aka Taltos and the Paths of the Dead), Phoenix (1990), and Athrya (1993); Dragon (1998) is a prequel. The series continued in Issola (2001). An earlier historical phase of the same secondary world is featured in the trilogy comprising The Phoenix Guard (1991), Five Hundred Years After (1994), and The Viscount of Ardilankha (1994), which pays homage to Alexandre Dumas; this too
54 • BUCHAN, JOHN
was continued in Paths of the Dead (2002), The Lord of Castle Black (2003), and Sethra Lavode (2004). The portal fantasy Brokedown Palace (1986) explains the Eastern European folkloristic intrusions in the Taltos series, which are also recycled in The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars (1987) and redeployed in the contemporary fantasy The Gypsy (1992 with Megan Lindholm). To Reign in Hell (1984) is an angelic fantasy offering an unorthodox view of Lucifer’s fall. Agyar (1993) is a meditative vampire fantasy. Freedom & Necessity (1997, with Emma Bull) is a historical novel with marginal fantasy elements.
BUCHAN, JOHN (1875–1940). Scottish writer and diplomat. The collections Grey Weather: Moorland Tales of My Own People (1899), The Watcher by the Threshold and Other Tales (1902), and The Moon En-dureth: Tales and Fancies (1912) ma
p his progress from folklore-based fantasy to the psychologically sophisticated visionary fantasy that he deployed in The Dancing Floor (1926) and The Gap in the Curtain (1932). Witch Wood (1927) is a historical novel about devil worship. The Runagates Club (1928) features fanciful travelers’ tales narrated by the members of a dining club, including several accounts of subtle hauntings. The Magic Walking-Stick (1932) is a children’s/wish-fulfillment fantasy.
BULGAKOV, MIKHAIL (1891–1940). Russian writer whose work was suppressed in the 1920s but who enjoyed a degree of protection from persecution because Stalin liked one of his plays. Many of his satires are framed as sf (refer to HDSFL), but the heartfelt novel translated as The Master and Margarita (written 1938; published 1966–67; tr.
1967)—which fuses a satirical black comedy in which the Devil pays a flying visit to Moscow with a poignant account of the tribulations of a writer working on an account of Christ’s crucifixion—is one of the masterpieces of fantasy literature.
BULL, EMMA (1954– ). U.S. writer. In 1980, she and her husband, Will Shetterly, founded an Interstate Writers’ Workshop in Minneapolis, aka
“the Scribblies,” which became the parent of a shared world project set in the city of Liavek (1985–90). Other members of the group include Kara Dalkey, Patricia Wrede, Stephen Brust, and Pamela Dean.
Bull’s principal exemplification of the group’s anti-modernist and pro-entertainment stance is the urban fantasy The War of the Oaks (1987).
The Princess and the Lord of Night (1994) is a fairy tale fantasy. Her short fiction is sampled in Double Feature (1994 with Shetterly).
BULWER-LYTTON, EDWARD • 55
BULLETT, GERALD (1893–1958). British writer. His most significant venture into fantasy was the quasi-autobiographical allegory Mr. Godly beside Himself (1924), a key text in the post–World War I crusade for re-enchantment, in which a jaded businessman exchanges places with his fairy doppelgänger and finds Faerie in a state of political turmoil. A brief preparatory sketch, “The Enchanted Moment,” appeared in The Street of the Eye and Nine Other Tales (1923); the title story is a psychological fantasy. A few posthumous fantasies are featured in The Baker’s Cart and Other Tales (1925) and The World in Bud and Other Tales (1928). The title story of Helen’s Lovers and Other Tales (1932) is a notable timeslip romance. Ten Minute Tales and Some Others (1960) and the samplers Short Stories of To-day and Yesterday (1929) and Twenty Four Tales (1938) also mingle fantasies with naturalistic works. Eden River (1934) is a biblical fantasy following the early generations of the character Adam’s family. Marden Fee (1931) juxtaposes different eras in a melancholy romance of eternal recurrence. Cricket in Heaven (1949) transfigures the classical myth of Alcestis in a contemporary setting.
The A to Z of Fantasy Literature Page 15
