The A to Z of Fantasy Literature

by Stableford, Brian M.

  The Book of the Crow series, comprising The Relic Master (1999), The Interrex (1999), Flain’s Coronet (2000), and The Margrave (2001), is a melodramatic quest fantasy. Darkwater Hall (2000) is a timeslip fantasy with an element of Faustian fantasy. In The Lammas Field (1999), magical music draws the protagonist into a secondary world. Corbenic (2002) features a contemporary quest for the Holy Grail. The series begun with The Oracle (2003; aka The Oracle Betrayed) and The Archon (2004) hybridizes elements of Greek and Egyptian mythology. Her short fiction is sampled in The Hare and Other Stories (1994).

  FISHER, JUDE (?– ). Pseudonym of British writer Jane Johnson, who also wrote, in collaboration with M. John Harrison, as “Gabriel King.” As “Fisher,” she produced the epic Fool’s Gold trilogy, launched with Sorcery Rising (2002) and Wild Magic (2003), to be concluded with The Rose of the World.

  FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE (1821–1880). French writer. Much of the juvenilia reprinted in his Oeuvres complètes (1885; exp. 1922) is fantasy, including

  “Rève d’enfer” (written 1837), “The Dance of Death” (written 1838), and the drama “Smarh” (written 1839), a pioneering exercise in literary satanism. The last-named paved the way for a phantasmagoric account of Le Tentation de Saint Antoine (written 1848–49; published as La Première

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  tentation de Saint Antoine, 1908; tr. as The First Temptation of St. Anthony, 1910), which he was persuaded not to publish for fear of giving offense.

  He modified it in 1856, but the version he eventually published in 1874 (tr.

  as The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1895) was even more carefully revised.

  The collection Three Tales (1877; tr. 1903) includes two Christian fantasies, one of them a transfiguration of the story of Salome.

  FLIGHT. Dreams of flying are common, and myth, legend, and folklore all feature an abundance of devices facilitating flight, including such staples as winged horses and magic carpets. Angels and fairies are frequently equipped with wings, whose possession is so often envied by humans that classical legend includes the cautionary fable of Icarus, whose pride in his artificial wings preceded a fatal fall.

  Winged humans enjoy more positive experiences in such sentimen-

  tal fantasies as Barry Pain’s Going Home and Nathalia Crane’s An Alien from Heaven (1929). The women whose wings are clipped in Inez Haynes Gillmore’s Angel Island (1914) embody a different symbolism.

  Some characters who discover that they can fly without the need of wings are content with self-indulgent wish-fulfillment fantasies, as described in Eric Knight’s tales of The Flying Yorkshireman and Michael Harrison’s Higher Things (1945), but some of those so blessed fall prey to messianic pretensions, as in Neil Bell’s “The Facts about Benjamin Crede” (1935) and Ronald Fraser’s The Flying Draper.

  Notable fantasies of flight of more recent vintage, and considerably greater variety, include Grace Chetwin’s Child of the Air, Thomas M.

  Disch’s On Wings of Song, Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, William Mayne’s Antar and the Eagles, Rita Murphy’s Night Flying (2000), Laurel Winter’s Growing Wings (2000), Phyllis Shalant’s When Pirates Came to Brooklyn (2002), and Lia Nirgad’s As High as the Scooter Can Fly (2002). A more discreet elevation is featured in Tom Robbins’s Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000).

  FLINT, KENNETH C. (?–). U.S. writer specializing in Celtic fantasy. A Storm upon Ulster (1981; aka The Hound of Culain) and its prequel Isle of Destiny (1988) recycle the legend of Cuchulain without emphasizing its supernatural aspects, but the trilogy comprising Riders of the Sidhe (1984), Champions of the Sidhe (1984), and Master of the Sidhe (1985) features the Tuatha Dé Danaan, the ancient pantheon whose members

  were reduced to mere fairy folk after Christianization. The trilogy comprising Challenge of the Clans (1986), Storm Shield (1986), and The

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  Dark Druid (1987) recycles the legends of Finn Mac Cumhail. Isle of Destiny (1988) is a historical fantasy, while Cromm (1990), Legends Reborn (1992), and The Darkening Flood (1995) are intrusive fantasies. Most Ancient Song (1991) and The Enchanted Isles (1991) appeared under the byline “Casey Flynn.”

  THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. A legend dating from the 18th century.

  Captain Vanderdecken, frustrated in his attempts to round the Cape of Good Hope by adverse weather, utters a curse that renders his entrap-ment permanent: a classic instance of bondage. It fascinated many later writers, although its transfiguration by William Austin predated any straightforward recycling. Notable versions include Captain Marryat’s The Phantom Ship, Richard Wagner’s opera (1843), W. Clark Russell’s The Death Ship (1888), Tom Holt’s Flying Dutch, and Brian Jacques’s Castaways of the Flying Dutchman.

  FOLKTALES. Stories preserved in oral tradition that command less respect than myths or legends, by virtue of foregrounding the tribulations of common mortals rather than gods or heroes. They are usually set in an imaginary past (“once upon a time”) when supernatural beings were routinely involved in human affairs, although their antiquity is unmeasurable. Folktales continue to be produced in the form of anecdotal “urban legends,” but their study is handicapped by the fact that the act of recording them fundamentally alters their nature.

  A few folktales were recorded in classical times, and many more were written down in the Renaissance, but only when vernacular languages began to generate literatures of their own, independently of church Latin, were European folktales reproduced in print as stories; precisely for that reason, the folktale-based stories reproduced in Gianfrancesco Straparola’s Le piacevoli notti (1550–53; usually tr. as Nights) and Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone (1634–36) are probably as carefully rewrought as those in Charles Perrault’s moralizing collection of 1691, which began the transformation of folktales into fairy tales for the education and edification of children. This transformation was made in opposition to religious suspicion of Europe’s pagan heritage, which led to many folktales being revised; the Church’s persecution of witches had sought support in folktales reproduced as “evidence” in such documents as Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer’s infamous Malleus Malefi-carum (1486). Folktales dealing with ghosts, werewolves, and vampires were routinely co-opted as testimony into a long rear-guard action fought

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  against sceptics critical of the Church’s witch hunting; their produce included such works as Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Malefi-carum (1608), Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus (1681), and Dom Augustine Calmet’s highly influential Dissertation sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits (1746; tr. as The Phantom World). “True” ghost stories became a genre in their own right and still represent the most prolific genre of new folktales.

  When Johann Musäus and the Grimm brothers set out to record Ger-

  man märchen, the idea that such tales preserved something of the authentic volksgeist of German-speaking people was popular among German Romantics, but they knew that their efforts were belated. Attempts to build comprehensive collections of regional folktales in the British isles—including T. Crofton Croker’s The Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1825), Mrs. Bray’s Traditions, Legends and Superstitions of Devonshire (1838), Robert Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England; or, The Drolls, Traditions and Superstitions of Old Cornwall (1865), and work done by W. B. Yeats and the family of Arthur Quiller-Couch—also began too late to sustain any serious claim of “authenticity,” although it is not obvious that oft-repeated tales can reasonably be said to have “true” versions preserving hypothetical

  “originals.” While some folktales are obviously more synthetic than others—Richard M. Dorson mounted a vitriolic attack on “fakelore” in the American Mercury in 1950, further elaborated in Folklore and Fakelore (1976)—there is no recoverable purity in any of them.

  Folklorists have struggled to explain the patterns revealed by thematic categorization since Thomas Keightley’s diffusionis
t theories and Edwin Sidney Hartland’s proto-psychological analyses—in The Science of Fairy Tales, 1870—fell into disrepute. Antti Arne’s analysis of The Types of the Folktale (1910; tr. 1961) and Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale (1920s; tr. 1968) mapped out basic patterns; their work was carried forward by others, including Stith Thompson—who

  edited a six-volume Motif Index of Folk Literature (1955)—in The Folk Tale (1946) and Graham Anderson in Fairytale in the Ancient World (2000). The folktales collected by anthropologists from Native American, African, Polynesian, and many other cultures are likely to be the last surviving relics of tribal societies, whose ways of life were obliterated by the 20th-century globalization of Western culture.

  FORD, JEFFREY (1955– ). U.S. writer. Vanitas (1988) is a dark fantasy set in the Carnival of the Dead. The trilogy comprising The Physiog-

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  nomy (1997), Memoranda (1999), and The Beyond (2001) features an exponent of an exotic occult science who is eventually forced into a Dantean wilderness when the city in which he lives is destroyed. The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque (2002) is a historical fantasy, set in late 19th-century New York, in which a painter accepts a commission to

  paint a portrait without seeing his subject. His short fiction is sampled in The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories (2002).

  FORSTER, E. M. (1879–1970). British writer. His early work, collected in The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories (1911) and The Eternal Moment and Other Stories (1928), is mostly fantasy—including classical fantasies, allegories, and afterlife fantasies—and the lectures collected in Aspects of the Novel (1927) include one on the specific problems of writing fantasy fiction.

  FORSYTHE, KATE (1966– ). Australian writer of Celtic fantasy. The series comprising The Witches of Eileanan (1998), The Pool of Two Moons (1998), The Cursed Tower (2000), The Forbidden Land (2001), The Skull of the World (2001), and The Fathomless Caves (2002), following the tribulations of a young witch, was planned as a trilogy but was expanded to epic dimensions. The Rhiannon’s Ride trilogy, begun with The Tower of Ravens (2004), employs the same milieu.

  FORTUNE, DION (1890–1946). British lifestyle fantasist; born Violet Firth. She joined the Order of the Golden Dawn in 1919 and the Theosophical Society in 1923 before founding her own Fraternity of the Inner Light in 1927. She wrote a good deal of scholarly fantasy about various occult traditions. The Secrets of Dr Taverner (1926) collects an occult detective series. The Demon Lover (1927), The Winged Bull (1935), and The Goat-Foot God (1936) are accounts of exotic spiritual redemption akin to the works of Marie Corelli but far less orthodox, featuring male magicians modeled on Aleister Crowley. Sea Priestess (1938) and its sequel Moon Magic (1956) feature a syncretic goddess whose modern worshippers include a reincarnation of Morgan le Fay.

  FORWARD, EVE (1972– ). U.S. writer and artist whose full name is Eve Forward-Rollins. In Villains by Necessity (1995), miscellaneous villains set out to restore balance to a world in which Light has triumphed. The equally enterprising Animist (2000) features “animism” as an academic discipline, in which graduates are paired with empathetic animals that help them evade magicians bent on exterminating their science.

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  FOSTER, ALAN DEAN (1946– ). U.S. writer best known for sf (refer to HDSFL). His principal fantasy series is a lighthearted portal fantasy in which the Earth-reared protagonist becomes a hero in a secondary world; the series comprises Spellsinger at the Gate (1983; 2-volume version as Spellsinger and The Hour of the Gate), The Day of the Dissonance (1984), The Moment of the Magician (1984), The Paths of the Perambulator (1985), The Time of the Transference (1986), Son of Spellsinger (1993), and Chorus Skating (1994). Maori (1988) is a historical fantasy set in 19th-century New Zealand. To the Vanishing Point (1998) is a hybrid/

  science fantasy featuring a bizarre parallel world. The Journeys of the Catechist series, set in a fantasized Africa, comprises Carnivores of Light and Darkness (1998), Into the Thinking Kingdoms (1999), and A Triumph of Souls (2000). Mad Amos (1996) collects a series of fantasies set in the Old West. In Kingdoms of Light (2001), a dead wizard’s pets become human in order to save the world from goblins. Some short fantasies are included in Metrognome and Other Stories (1990).

  FOUQUÉ, FRIEDRICH, BARON DE LA MOTTE (1777–1843). Ger-

  man writer whose central involvement in the Romantic movement in-

  spired several landmark fantasies. He revived the tradition of chivalric romance in the play Sigurd (1808) and the novella translated as Aslauga’s Knights (1810; tr. 1827). Undine (1811; tr. 1818) is a classic art fairy tale in which the foundling daughter of an elemental king falls in love with a knight who turns out to be faithless, with tragic consequences. The Magic Ring (1813; tr. 1825) is the first modern quest fantasy, a prototype for generic heroic fantasy. Sintram and His Companions (1815; tr. 1820) is an allegory based on an engraving by Albrecht Dürer. The best known of Fouqué’s short works is the often-imitated Faustian wish-fulfillment fantasy “The Bottle-Imp” (1814; tr. 1823), which probably recycles a folktale.

  FOX, GARDNER F. (1911–1986). U.S. writer best known for comic books. His novels include the hybrid/science-fantasy couplet Warrior of Llarn (1964) and Thief of Llarn (1966), and also two sword and sorcery series imitative of Robert E. Howard. The first comprises Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman (1969), Kothar of the Magic Sword! (1969), Kothar and the Demon Queen (1969), Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse (1970), and Kothar and the Wizard Slayer (1970), and the second, Kyrik: Warlock Warrior (1975), Kyrik Fights the Demon World (1975), Kyrik and the Wizard’s Sword (1976), and Kyrik and the Lost Queen

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  (1976). Fox wrote the portal fantasy The Druid Stone (1965) as “Simon Majors.” Some of the historical novels he wrote as “Jefferson Cooper”

  have elements of biblical fantasy.

  FOX, KAREN (?– ). U.S. writer whose paranormal “Fae Romances” are unusually various and enterprising. The hero of Prince of Charming (2000) is trapped in a portrait by an evil spell. In Buttercup’s Baby (2001) a fairy from Titania’s court visits the modern world. Grand Design (2001), is a timeslip fantasy. Cupid’s Melody (2003) involves reincarnation. Impractical Magic (2003) is a wry feminized fantasy.

  FRANCE, ANATOLE (1844–1924). Pseudonym of French writer

  Anatole-François Thibault. “The Honey-Bee” (1889; tr. 1909; aka Bee and The Kingdom of the Dwarfs) is a moralistic novella in the tradition of Charles Nodier’s Trilby, in which the eponymous princess is abducted by the dwarf king. Thaïs (1890; tr. 1901) is a sceptical Christian fantasy reminiscent of Gustave Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony (1874), in which Anthony’s disciple Paphnuce saves the soul of the eponymous courtesan but lives to regret it.

  The attacks on the life-denying asceticism of Christian orthodoxy featured in Tales from a Mother-of-Pearl Casket (1892; tr. 1896, aka Mother of Pearl) are relatively lighthearted, but those in The Well of Santa Clara (1895; tr. 1903, aka The Well of St. Clare) are more robust, especially “Saint Satyr,” which explains how the tomb of a mistakenly beatified satyr became a refuge for the last remnants of Arcadian glory, and The Human Tragedy (separate pub. 1917), in which a saintly monk imprisoned by medieval churchmen discovers that his only friend is the Devil. This long-drawn-out adventure in literary satanism eventually culminated in the subgenre’s masterpiece, The Revolt of the Angels (1914), in which a guardian angel converted to Epicurean free thought organizes a new revolution against the tyranny of heaven.

  The first story in Crainquebille, Putois, Riquet and Other Profitable Tales (1904; tr. 1924) is a humorous fantasy about an artifact of the imagination ironically brought to life. In the satire Penguin Island (1908; tr. 1909), a company of penguins mistakenly baptized by a my-opic saint recapitulate the history of France. The Seven Wives of Bluebeard and Other Marvellous Tales (1909; tr, 1920) features satires modeled on legends and folktales.

  FRASER, RONALD (1888–
1974). British writer. His fantasies express the hope that certain spiritually blessed human beings might contrive a

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  bountiful transcendence of the human condition, while recognizing that such epiphanies would inevitably alienate them from their loved ones.

  In the mildly satirical The Flying Draper (1924), the Oriental fantasy Landscape with Figures (1925) and the striking botanical fantasia Flower Phantoms (1926), the theme is treated lightheartedly, but it became more earnest in the metaphysical fantasies Miss Lucifer (1939) and The Fiery Gate (1943) before reverting to humorous development in Beetle’s Career (1951) and the series of contes philosophiques comprising A Visit from Venus (1958), Jupiter in the Chair (1958), Trout’s Testament (1960), and The City of the Sun (1961). A Work of Imagination: The Pen, the Brush, the Well (1974) re-embraced a more serious mysticism.

  FRAZER, JAMES (1854–1941). British anthropologist. He wrote one classical fantasy, “The Quest of the Gorgon’s Head” (in Sir Roger de Coverley and Other Literary Pieces, 1920); his vast importance in modern fantasy fiction derives from his massive scholarly fantasy The Golden Bough (2 vols., 1890; exp. in 3 vols., 1900; further exp. in 12

  vols., 1911–15), which replaced August Comte’s “law” of the three

  stages of explanation (religion, metaphysics, and science) with a supposedly universal scheme of cultural evolution in which magical beliefs—

  interpreted as a practical pseudoscience based in mistaken laws—were replaced by religious systems that progressed from primitive fertility cults to monotheism before giving way to science.

  Although it was never taken seriously by anthropologists, who were sceptical of Frazer’s armchair speculations and syncretic interpretations, it had an enormous influence on literary men, including such pioneers of Modernism as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and D. H. Lawrence, as well as fantasists like Aleister Crowley, Henry Treece, Naomi Mitchison, and Robert Graves. It was a great inspiration to subsequent scholarly fantasists: Margaret Murray reinterpreted the entire history of European witch hunting as an assault on the relics of Frazerian cults; Graves linked it to goddess worship, in The White Goddess; and Jessie Weston greatly expanded the analogical use Frazer made of the allegory contained in Chrétien de Troyes’s Conte du graal. Assisted by these elaborations, The Golden Bough became a key taproot text of genre fantasy, echoed in a great many historical and prehistoric fantasies by such writers as Helen Beauclerk and Naomi Mitchison, including some Arthurian fantasies, and works offering quasi-theoretical accounts of magic. Notable examples include Aleister Crowley’s Golden Twigs,