The A to Z of Fantasy Literature

by Stableford, Brian M.

  Some of the short fiction in The Panic Hand (1995) is also linked to this sequence. Kissing the Beehive (1998) began a new sequence continued

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  in The Marriage of Sticks (1999) and The Wooden Sea (2000). The novella The Heidelberg Cylinder (2000) develops similar materials in a more relaxed, bizarrely humorous fashion, but White Apples (2002) returned to more intense imaginative territory.

  CARROLL, LEWIS (1832–1898). Pseudonym of British clergyman and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who applied his talent for logical extrapolation to all manner of calculatedly absurd premises in the classic children’s fantasies Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871; one episode dropped at the request of illustrator John Tenniel was belatedly issued as The Wasp in a Wig, 1977). Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice (1960) offers a comprehensive commentary on the texts’

  sources, explaining how—following precedents set by Edward Lear—

  they mounted a defiant opposition to the didactic tendencies of Victorian children’s literature, offering a particular kind of “nonsense” that was both exhilarating and thought provoking. The books were enormously influential, bringing about a sea change in children’s fantasy.

  Carroll’s epic quest fantasy in verse, The Hunting of the Snark (1876), is similarly brilliant, but the more moralistic couplet Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) is lackluster. A few more short fantasies are featured in The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (1939).

  Alice became an archetypal figure, recycled and transfigured in

  countless texts, including John Kendrick Bangs’s Alice in Blunderland: An Iridescent Dream (1907), Gilbert Adair’s Alice through the Needle’s Eye (1984), Emma Tennant’s Alice Fell, Jeff Noon’s Automated Alice, Jeanne Purdy’s Alix in Academe (2000), and the stories in an anthology by Margaret Weis, Fantastic Alice. Parallel texts range from Charles E.

  Carryl’s Davy and the Goblin; or, What Followed Reading “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1884) to Carol Ann Sima’s Jane’s Bad Hare Day (1995), featuring surreal adventures in Manhattan.

  CARTER, ANGELA (1940–1992). British writer who became the most important English fabulator of the 20th century; her use of fantastic motifs is stylistically luxurious and pointedly polemical. She first edged toward fantasy in The Magic Toyshop (1967), a caustic allegory of female maturation, but her work became increasingly phantasmagorical as the science fantasy Heroes and Villains was followed by the striking erotic fantasy The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972;

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  aka War of Dreams), the Odyssean The Passion of New Eve (1977), and the fantasy of liberating flight Nights at the Circus (1984), all of which conduct their protagonists from various models of decadent order to gloriously chaotic scenarios pregnant with new possibilities. The

  baroque children’s fantasies Miss Z, the Dark Young Lady (1970) and Moonshadow (1982) steer in the same direction.

  In the introduction to her collection Fireworks (1974), Carter draws a distinction between (naturalistic) “stories” and (fabular) “tales,” expressing a preference for the latter that was more extravagantly developed in a collection of ideologically transfigured feminist fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979). More items in the same vein appeared, alongside metafictions referring to a rich variety of literary sources, in Black Venus (1985; rev. as Saints and Strangers) and American Ghosts and Old World Wonders (1993). Burning Your Boats (1995) is an omnibus.

  Carter’s translation of The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977) and her anthologies The Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1990; aka The Old Wives’ Fairy Tale Book) and The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1992, aka Strange Things Sometimes Still Happen) acknowledge the sources of her inspiration. The radio plays collected in Come unto These Yellow Sands (1985) and reprinted in The Curious Room: Plays, Film Scripts and an Opera (1997) toy subversively with similar motifs.

  CARTER, LIN (1930–1988). U.S. writer whose own fiction mostly consists of pastiches of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard (to whose Conan series he added considerable material in collaboration with L. Sprague de Camp). They include the five-volume series begun with The Wizard of Lemuria (1965; aka Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria), the six-volume series begun with The Giant of World’s End (1969), the six-volume series begun with Under the Green Star (1972), the eight-volume series begun with Jandar of Callisto (1972), and the five-volume series begun with Journey to the Underground World (1979). His last such series, begun with Kesrick (1982) and continued in Dragonrouge (1984), Mandricardo (1986), and Callipygia (1988), was the most enterprising. His interest in the Lovecraft school—especially Clark Ashton Smith—is reflected in the pastiches collected in The Xothic Legend Cycle (1997), ed. Robert M. Price.

  It was as an editor that Carter made a crucial contribution to the development of genre fantasy, particularly in the context of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, for which he provided such context-setting an-

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  thologies as Dragons, Elves and Heroes (1969), The Young Magicians (1969), Golden Cities, Far (1970), New Worlds for Old (1971), Discoveries in Fantasy (1972), and two volumes of Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy (1972–73). His nonfiction studies Tolkien: A Look behind the Lord of the Rings (1969) and Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy (1973) provided these samplers with their historical context. The Magic of Atlantis is a showcase of modern Atlantean fantasy. His sword and sorcery anthologies include the five-volume Flashing Swords series (1973–81). Kingdoms of Sorcery (1976) and Realms of Wizardry (1976) range further afield, as do the six volumes of the annual sampler of The Year’s Best Fantasy (1975–80), which he edited, and four volumes of a paperback revival of Weird Tales. He also edited the Lovecraftian sampler The Spawn of Cthulhu (1971) and wrote Lovecraft: A Look behind the Cthulhu Mythos (1972).

  CAZOTTE, JACQUES (1719–1792). French writer who broke significant new ground in the Faustian fantasy translated as The Devil in Love (1772), which views its winsome diabolical tempter with sufficient studied ambivalence to anticipate key developments in modern erotic fantasy and the emergence of literary satanism. Cazotte’s other fantasies include the fairy tales “La patte du chat” (“The Cat’s-Paw,” 1741) and

  “La belle par accident” (“The Accidental Beauty,” 1788), and two burlesques: A Thousand and One Follies (1742; tr. 1927) takes great delight in its own absurdity, while Ollivier (1763) parodies chivalric romances.

  In collaboration with Dom Chavis, he also contributed some alleged translations of Arabian fantasies to the fairy tale anthology series Cabinet des fées (1788–90).

  CELTIC FANTASY. The overlapping terms “Celt” and “Gael” derive from the syncretic term given by the Romans to the indigenous tribes of Western Europe, most of which were gradually brought under imperial rule; the key exceptions were those that held out in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Those countries, along with Cornwall and Brittany, were generally supposed to have retained more Celtic culture than England, parts of which suffered also subsequent conquests by Danes and Anglo-Saxons.

  Celtic fantasy draws on the folklore of all these regions, sometimes separately but often collectively, using broad notions of Celtic culture and religion derived from scholarly fantasies, often featuring druids.

  Celtic fantasy embraces a significant sector of Arthurian fantasy, by virtue of the fact that the Arthurian component of French chivalric

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  romances was co-opted into Welsh legends before the latter were written down in such taproot texts as the 14th-century The White Book of Rhydderch and the 15th-century The Red Book of Hergest (selections from which were translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in 1838–49 as the

  Mabinogion).

  The literary reworking of Celtic mythology entered a new phase in

  Scotland with the fabrication by James Macpherson of
the Ossianic

  verse epics Fingal (1762) and Temora (1763), which helped pave the way for various 19th-century “Celtic revivals” that gave birth to a rich subculture of scholarly fantasy as well as the production of literary fantasies. Walter Scott’s collections of Scottish ballads are of similarly dubious antiquity. Such writers as Thomas Love Peacock delighted in transfiguring such materials, but the likes of W. B. Yeats took it far more seriously.

  Scottish Celtic fantasy was further complicated by layers of invention, imitative of Macpherson, heaped upon it by James Hogg and

  “Fiona Macleod,” whose influence can be seen in the works of the Countess of Cromartie, including The Web of the Past (1905), W. Croft Dickinson; in his children’s fantasies Borrobil (1944), The Eildon Tree (1947), and The Flag from the Isles (1951); his adult ghost stories; and in the Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown. Although Welsh Celtic fantasy is direly confused by its Arthurian imports, notable contributions to its development have been made by Kenneth Morris, John Cowper Powys, Evangeline Walton, Vaughan Wilkins, Lloyd Alexander, and Alan Garner. Irish Celtic fantasy has retained a more distinctive identity, exhibited by such writers as James Stephens, Shaw Desmond, in Tales of the Little Sisters of St. Francis (1929), Eimar O’Duffy, Morgan Llywelyn, and Peter Tremayne.

  Notable examples of generic fantasy employing Celtic materials in-

  clude Pat O’Shea’s complex portal fantasy The Hounds of the Morrigan (1985); Gregory Frost’s Tain (1986) and Remscela (1988); Sheila Gilluly’s trilogy The Boy from the Burren (1990), The Giant of Inishk-erry (1992), and The Emperor of Earth-Above (1993); Juilene Osborne-McKnight’s Bright Sword of Ireland (2004); and works by Kenneth C.

  Flint, Catherine Cooke, Deborah Turner Harris, Robert Holdstock, and Eoin Colfer. Celtic materials are usually prominent in syncretic endeavors assuming a single common mythology underlying all the European variants; notable examples include numerous works by E. Charles Vivian and Paul Hazel’s Finnbranch trilogy comprising Yearwood

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  (1980), Undersea (1982), and Winterking (1985). Some such works extend the net even farther; Cecilia Dart-Thornton’s Bitterbynde series includes Australian elements.

  CERVANTES, MIGUEL DE (1547–1616). Spanish writer. His classic delusional fantasy Don Quixote (1605; exp. 1615) made fun of the chivalric romances that had retained their popularity into the previous century, although the allegation that it killed them off is probably unjustified. Don Quixote did, however, become a legendary figure in his own right, archetypal of many other deluded heroes; although the book is a comedy, the tragic dimension of his quest’s futility left many readers yearning for a re-enchantment of his thinned-out world.

  CHABON, MICHAEL (1963– ). U.S. writer. The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2001) is a sophisticated metafiction about World War II comic-book artists whose transfigured motifs include the Golem. Summerland (2002) is a tongue-in-cheek contemporary fantasy with elements of sports fantasy. His short fiction is sampled in Werewolves in their Youth (1999).

  CHADBOURN, MARK (1960– ). British writer who worked as a journalist and wrote thrillers (refer to HDHL) before embarking on the Age of Misrule series of apocalyptic fantasies comprising World’s End (1999), Darkest Hour (2000), and Always Forever (2001). Although the subgenre does not lend itself to sequels, he followed it up with the Dark Age series, comprising The Devil in Green (2002) and The Queen of Sinister (2004). The novella The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke (2002) is one of several works inspired by Bedlamite Richard Dadd’s cardinal example of Victorian fairy art.

  CHALKER, JACK L. (1944– ). U.S. writer and small-press publisher.

  His Mirage Press specialized in writers associated with the Lovecraft school, including Robert E. Howard. His own fiction is hectic action-adventure fiction mostly formulated as a hybrid example of science fantasy (refer to HDSFL), his first excursion into wholehearted fantasy being And the Devil Will Drag You Under (1979). Series in which fantasy elements predominate include the Soul Rider sequence, comprising Spirits of Flux and Anchor (1984), Empires of Flux and Anchor (1984), Masters of Flux and Anchor (1985), The Birth of Flux and Anchor (1985), and Children of Flux and Anchor (1986); the four-volume Dancing Gods series begun with The River of Dancing Gods (1984);

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  the sequence comprising Lords of the Middle Dark (1986), Pirates of the Thunder (1987), Warriors of the Storm (1987), and Masks of the Martyrs (1988); and the three-decker novel comprising When the Changewinds Blow (1987), Riders of the Winds (1988), and War of the Maelstrom (1988).

  CHANT, JOY (1945– ). Pseudonym of British writer Eileen Joyce Rutter, whose children’s fantasy Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970) made a significant crossover into the adult market in the United States when it was released as a paperback in the wake of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (to which it is heavily indebted). The Grey Mane of Morning (1977) is a sequel. When Voiha Wakes (1983) is more enterprising, but less successful, in its depiction of a matriarchal society. The High Kings (1983) recycles the source materials of Arthurian fantasy.

  CHAOS. The alternative to the ex nihilo model of Creation, in which the universe emerges from a void, represents it as a process that brings order to some kind of primordial chaos. Theories of serial creation imagine ordered structures being periodically rendered back into chaos before being reordered, while theories of dynamic creation imagine a more or less permanent balance between perennially active opposed forces of order and chaos. Modern fantasy often substitutes a dualism of Order and Chaos for the more traditional one between Good and Evil, in order that virtue may be more evenly divided; such works as Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, L. E. Modesitt’s Recluce series and Louise Cooper’s Time Master series acknowledge the vigor and liberating potential of Chaos as well as the harmonizing effects of Order, thus echoing the argumentative thrust of literary satanism, surrealism, and Alfred Jarry’s pataphysics.

  CHAPMAN, VERA (1898–1996). British writer, born Vera Fogerty, who founded the Tolkien Society in 1969. Marriage to a clergyman did not prevent her indulgence in pagan lifestyle fantasy, whose principal literary legacy was a groundbreaking series of feminized Arthurian fantasies, which anticipated Marion Zimmer Bradley’s work in that vein.

  The Green Knight (1975), The King’s Damosel (1976), and King Arthur’s Daughter (1976) were reissued in an omnibus as The Three Damosels (1978). Blaedudd the Birdman (1978) dramatizes the legend of another legendary British king, while The Wife of Bath (1979) recycles one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and The Notorious Abbess (1998) offers synthesized legends starring the Abbess of Shaston. Judy

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  and Julia (1977) and Miranty and the Alchemist (1983) are children’s fantasies.

  CHARNAS, SUZY McKEE (1939– ). U.S. writer whose best-known

  works are feminist sf (refer to HDSFL). The stories comprising the mosaic The Vampire Tapestry (1980) made a significant contribution to the development of revisionist vampire fiction. A subsequent vampire romance The Ruby Tear (1997) was bylined “Rebecca Brand.” The trilogy comprising The Bronze King (1985), The Silver Glove (1988), and The Golden Thread (1989) describes resistance to an invasion from a secondary world. Dorothea Dreams (1986) is a timeslip fantasy. The Kingdom of Kevin Malone (1993) features a portal to Faerie.

  CHAUCER, GEOFFREY (c1340–1400). British poet, one of the first to work effectively in the hybrid version of English developed in the wake of the Norman conquest. Most of his surviving works are responses, usually ironic, to earlier literary works: The House of Fame is a parodic Dantean fantasy; Troilus and Criseyde is derived from Homer; The Parliament of Fowls is a satirical animal fantasy. The mixed collection of stories framed as The Canterbury Tales includes only a few fantasies, but the overall tone of the collection and the worldview it encapsulates display a clear understanding of the various functions of calculated fabulation.

  CHERRYH, C. J. (1942– )
. U.S. writer best known for sf (refer to HDSFL). She made her debut with Gate of Ivrel (1976), an early commodified fantasy that retains some fugitive hybrid elements of science fantasy in its account of a multiverse whose connecting portals must be destroyed—a project continued in Well of Shiuan (1978), Fires of Azeroth (1979), and Exile’s Gate (1988). The enterprising couplet comprising Ealdwood (1981; rev. as the Dreamstone, 1983), The Tree of Swords and Jewels (1983), and the connected Faery in Shadow (1993) is similarly syncretic, favoring elements of Celtic fantasy in an elegiac account of thinning. The Paladin (1988) is an Oriental fantasy. The trilogy comprising Rusalka (1989), Chernevog (1990), and Yvgenie (1991) draws on Russian folklore. The Goblin Mirror (1992) is an account of a powerful talisman. In Fortress in the Eye of Time (1995), a botched spell summons an enigmatic amnesiac hero, whose adventures continue in Fortress of Eagles (1998), Fortress of Owls (1999), and Fortress of Dragons (2000). Cherryh has also contributed to several shared world projects, most significantly the series begun with Heroes in Hell (1985), which she and Janet E. Morris originated.

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  CHESTERTON, G. K. (1874–1936). British writer whose assertive reli-giosity lent a baroque edge to most of his fiction, including numerous detective stories and a number of works that are set in the future but hardly warrant description as sf. His most explicit religious fantasy was The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908), an allegory absurdly shaped as a spy story; it was reprinted with some “related pieces” in 1996. The Ball and the Cross (1909) has a darker allegorical conclusion.