226 • JONES, GWYNETH
Jones’s impatience with the cliches of contemporary genre fantasy led her to compile the merciless Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1996), with a parodic spirit that was extrapolated in The Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) and its sequel Year of the Griffin (2000). Her shorter fiction is collected in several overlapping collections: Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories (1984), Stopping for a Spell (1989), Everard’s Ride (1995), Minor Arcana (1996), Believing Is Seeing (1999), and Unexpected Magic (2004).
JONES, GWYNETH (1952– ). British writer best known under her own name for sf (refer to HDSFL), although she published Water in the Air (1977) and Dear Hill (1980) under that name before beginning to sign some of her children’s fiction “Ann Halam”; she reverted to her own name for the ghost story King Death’s Garden (1986). As “Halam,”
she wrote the intrusive fantasies Ally, Ally Aster (1981) and The Alder Tree (1982) before turning to immersive fantasy in the far-futuristic Inland trilogy comprising The Daymaker (1987), Transformations (1988), and The Skybreaker (1990). Much of her subsequent work for teenagers was horror fiction or sf, but she began a series of hybrid/
science fantasies featuring magical music for adults under her own name, with Bold as Love (2001), Castles Made of Sand (2002), and Midnight Lamp (2003).
JONES, JENNY (1954– ). British writer. The trilogy comprising Fly by Night (1990, aka Flight Over Fire), The Edge of Vengeance (1991), and Lies and Flames (1992) is a chimerical/science fantasy in which worshippers of the moon/goddess battle patriarchal sun worshippers. In The Webbed Hand (1994), monstrous Fireflies plot the destruction of an imaginary kingdom. In Firefly Dreams (1995), aquamancers battle py-romancers. The Blue Manor (1995) is a metafiction involving the sinister infection of a novel by the locale in which it is being penned. The House of Birds (1996) makes much of the imagery of flight. The Carver (1997) and Where the Children Cry (1998) are dark fantasies. Shad-owsong (2000) echoes legends of Orpheus.
JONES, J. V. (1963– ). British writer resident in the United States from 1980. The setting of the epic fantasy trilogy comprising The Baker’s Boy (1995), A Man Betrayed (1996), and Master and Fool (1996) is also used as a backcloth in the Sword of Shadows series, comprising A Cavern of Black Ice (1999), A Fortress of Grey Ice (2002), and A Sword from
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Red Ice (1004). The Barbed Coil (1997) is an elaborate portal fantasy featuring a world in which patterns have magical power.
JORDAN, ROBERT (1948– ). Pseudonym of U.S. writer James Oliver Rigney, Jr., who wrote seven novels featuring Robert E. Howard’s Conan series in 1982–84 before beginning the epic Wheel of Time sequence comprising The Eye of the World (1990), The Great Hunt (1990), The Dragon Reborn (1991), The Shadow Rising (1992), The Fires of Heaven (1993), Lord of Chaos (1994), A Crown of Swords (1996), The Path of Daggers (1998), Winter’s Heart (2000), and Crossroads of Twilight (2003), with one volume to come. The series set out to take quest fantasy to a new extreme, drawing motifs from numerous legendary and literary sources in order to fuse them into an unprecedentedly all-inclusive whole. New Spring (1998; exp. 2003) is a prequel. The World of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time (1997, with Teresa Patterson) is a guide.
JORDAN, SHERRYL (1949– ). New Zealand illustrator, who moved on from picture books to novels examining the plights of outsiders and outcasts in a variety of settings. Rocco (1990, aka A Time of Darkness) is a timeslip fantasy. The Juniper Game (1991) features an otherworldly visitor. The Wednesday Wizard (1991) is a timeslip fantasy, as are Denzil’s Dilemma (1992) and Denzil’s Great Bear Burglary (1997), wherein the protagonist is displaced from the Middle Ages to the present. In Winter of Fire (1993), a magically gifted girl sides with the Quelled against the aristocratic Chosen. Tanith (1994; aka Wolf-Woman) features a feral child in a primitive society. Sign of the Lion (1995) is the story of a magical child pledged to a mysterious woman before her difficult birth. Secret Sacrament (1996) tracks the tribulations of a healer. The heroine of The Raging Quiet (1999) is accused of witchcraft when she opens communication with a deaf boy. The Hunting of the Last Dragon (2002) tells the story of the last dragon hunt in medieval England.
JUSTER, NORTON (1929– ). U.S. writer. His first novel, The Phantom Tollbooth (1962), became a classic children’s fantasy in the same exuberant vein as James Thurber’s stories; its hero passes through the eponymous portal into an allegorical landscape, where he must help to end the war between Dictionopolis and Digitopolis and reunite the
realm of Wisdom. His picture books The Dot and the Line (1963) and Alberic the Wise and Other Journeys (1965) are didactic fabulations of a similar kind, as is AS: A Surfeit of Similes (1989).
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KAFKA, FRANZ (1883–1924). Czech writer who wrote in German; his distinctively surreal dark fantasies present a quasi-allegorical/existentialist dramatization of 20th-century anxieties about alienation. The protagonist of the theriomorphic fantasy novella translated as Metamorphosis (1915; tr. 1937) does not thrive as a giant bug. The protagonist of The Trial (written 1914–15; published 1925; tr. 1937) is trapped in an inexorably frustrating legal process. The protagonist of the unfinished The Castle (1926; tr. 1930) cannot persuade the authorities to recognize his identity. Several contes philosophiques are assembled in The Great Wall of China and Other Pieces (1931; tr. 1933). Derivatives of his works include Marc Estrin’s Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa (2002).
KARMIC ROMANCE. A story embracing a version of the Buddhist thesis that every living being is heir to the accumulated effects of morally weighted actions carried out during previous incarnations, often presenting images of moral evolution frustrated by some kind of bondage.
Karmic romance became a popular subgenre at the end of the 19th century under the influence of the occult revival, especially as reflected in H. Rider Haggard’s She and the works of Edwin Lester Arnold, Mrs.
Campbell Praed, and Lily Adams Beck. Notable examples include A.
P. Sinnett’s Karma (1885), Hume Nisbet’s Valdmer the Viking (1893), Marie Corelli’s Ziska, Fergus Hume’s A Son of Perdition (1912), Mary Bligh Bond’s Avernus (1924), Roy Devereux’s When They Came Back (1938), Warwick Deeping’s I Live Again (1942), and Francis Ashton’s Alas, That Great City (1948). Thanks to theosophical intrusions, sequences of incarnation are often traced back to Atlantis, as in Marjorie Livingston’s trilogy comprising Island Sonata (1944), Muted Strings (1946), and Delphic Echo (1948). Similar patterns recur in many fantasies that have shed the vestiges of Buddhist terminology, especially timeslip fantasies; examples include works by Moyra Caldecott and Helen Cresswell’s Moondial.
KARR, PHYLLIS ANN (1944– ). U.S. writer and Arthurian scholar, the author of a massive The King Arthur Companion (1983; exp. 1997 as The Arthurian Companion; rev. 2001). She redeployed such materials in the mystery novel The Idylls of the Queen (1982), the humorous The Follies of Sir Harald (2002), and several items of short fiction. She be-
KAYE, MARVIN • 229
gan a series of quasi-Arcadian/immersive fantasies featuring Torin the Toymaker in 1974; its only novel is At Amberleaf Fair (1986). Frostflower and Thorn (1980) and Frostflower and Windbourne (1982) are feminist fantasies. Wildraith’s Last Battle (1982) is a sword and sorcery novel.
KAY, GUY GAVRIEL (1954– ). Canadian writer who helped J. R. R.
Tolkien’s son prepare The Silmarillion for posthumous publication before embarking on his own epic/portal fantasy trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, comprising The Summer Tree (1985), The Wandering Fire (1986), and The Darkest Road (1986). The quasi-Platonic metaphysical frame that orchestrates events in the secondary world is highly distinctive and remarkably comprehensive. Tigana (1990) is a further development of one of the series’ principal narrative threads, the replacement of matrilineal and matriarchal institutions by patriarchal ones. A Song for Arbonne (1992) examines the role played by troubadours in the making of romance. The Lions of Al-Rass
an (1995) is an elaborate historical fantasy set in a version of Spain that reproduces the cultural milieu of actual medieval troubadours. The Sarantium Mosaic, comprising Sailing to Sarantium (1998) and Lord of Emperors (2000), makes similar use of an alternative Byzantium. The Last Light of the Sun (2004) focuses on the Cyngaels, the secondary world’s equivalent of Celts, and continues Kay’s preoccupation with building elaborate plot structures in which humble individuals play vital roles. Beyond This Dark House (2003) is a collection of poetry.
KAYE, MARVIN (1938– ). U.S. writer in various genres. Some of his early work—including the heroic fantasies The Masters of Solitude (1978) and Wintermind (1984)—were written in collaboration with Parke Godwin. The Incredible Umbrella (1979) and its sequel The Amorous Umbrella (1981) are humorous fantasies modeled on Un-
known fantasies by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, the first featuring an alternate world based on the works of W. S. Gilbert.
The stories in The Possession of Immanuel Wolf and Other Improbable Tales (1981) are similar in spirit. A Cold Blue Light (1983 with Godwin) and its solo sequel Ghosts of Night and Morning (1987) are detective stories of an occult variety. Fantastique (1992) is a transfiguration of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (1830). The relationship between music and fantasy is further explored in the novellas assembled in Kaye’s anthology The Vampire Sextette (2001);
230 • KEARNEY, PAUL
The Dragon Quintet (2003) and The Fair Folk (2004) similarly consist of thematically organized novellas.
KEARNEY, PAUL (1967– ). Northern Ireland–born writer resident in Denmark before returning to Britain in 1998. The writer protagonist of The Way to Babylon (1992) is unblocked by a sojourn in the secondary world of his earlier books. The portal fantasies A Different Kingdom (1993) and Riding the Unicorn (1994) describe similar quests for re-enchantment. The Monarchies of God series, comprising Hawkwood’s Voyage (1995), The Heretic Kings (1996), The Iron Wars (1999), The Second Empire (2000), and Ships from the West (2002), is set in an alternative history and features a pioneering voyage across the Great Western Ocean to a magical New World, whose agents eventually return to transform the Old. The Sea Beggars: The Mark of Ran (2004) features a similarly epic journey in a dying world.
KEATS, JOHN (1795–1821). British poet who made prolific use of classical mythology in his deeply romantic poetry, as in Endymion (1818); its companion pieces “Hyperion” and “The Fall of Hyperion”
were left incomplete at his death (all of them are transfigured in a science-fantasy series by Dan Simmons). Poems (1820) features the similarly inclined “Lamia,” drawn—via Richard Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy—from the same anecdotal source as Théophile Gautier’s
“Clarimonde,” and exhibiting the same inversion of sympathy. Burton may also have provided the inspiration for the erotic fantasies “The Eve of St. Agnes” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” both of which
draw on the mythology of Faerie; the imagery of the latter poem—
augmenting that of its own source, Tam Lin—has been highly influential in modern fantasy.
KEIGHTLEY, THOMAS (1789–1872). British folklorist. Fairy Mythology (1828; rev. 1850; aka The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and Other Little People) is a massive syncretic survey of myths and legends relating to the supernatural beings routinely gathered together as fairy folk, and of their literary representations. It was written in association with the theoretically inclined Tales and Popular Fictions: Their Resemblance and Transmission from Country to Country (1834), which attempts to track and explain the diffusion and evolution of the fundamental beliefs and images. The former was sampled in John Sterling’s Athenaeum, for which Keightley also wrote essays on John Milton and classical mythology. Although its underlying thesis is a scholarly fan-
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tasy, Keightley’s work was a very useful compendium of lore for late 19th-century writers, and its echoes still resound in almost all modern fantasy dealing with Faerie.
KELLER, DAVID H. (1880–1966). U.S. writer best known for sf (refer to HDSFL and HDHL), although the hobbyist writing he did before his recruitment to the pulps was strongly influenced by James Branch Cabell. His equivalent of the biography of the life of Manuel was an imaginary history of the Hubler family, whose hypothetical ancestry was rooted in the French Hubelaires. Items from this patchwork appeared (long after being written) as The Sign of the Burning Hart: A Tale of Arcadia (1938) and two flirtatious exercises in literary satanism, The Devil and the Doctor (1940) and The Homunculus (1949). One item of a series of 15 short stories following a Cornish branch of the family appeared in Weird Tales in 1929, and 10 more were reprinted in 1969–71.
Keller wrote several erotic fantasies inspired by his interest in Freudian psychology, notably “The Golden Bough” (1935) and The Eternal Conflict (1939 in French; 1949).
KENNEALY-MORRISON, PATRICIA (1946– ). U.S. writer who signed herself Patricia Kennealy until 1994, when she appended the name of Doors singer Jim Morrison. Her major contribution to the genre is a hybrid science-fantasy series recycling elements of Celtic Arthuriana in a planetary romance framework; it comprises The Copper Crown (1985), The Throne of Scone (1986), The Silver Branch (1988), The Hawk’s Gray Feather (1990), The Oak above the Kings (1994), The Hedge of Mist (1996), Blackmantle (1997), and the prequel Deer’s Cry (1998).
KERR, KATHARINE (1944– ). U.S. writer. Most of her genre work belongs to a sequence set in the pseudo-Celtic kingdom of Deverry; its apparatus is augmented by motifs drawn from many other sources,
including karmic romance, as well as the stereotypical elements of commodified/epic fantasy. It comprises Daggerspell (1986), Darkspell (1987), The Bristling Wood (1989; aka Dawnspell), The Dragon Revenant (1990; aka Dragonspell: The Southern Sea), A Time of Exile (1991), A Time of Omens (1992), A Time of War (1993; aka Days of Blood and Fire), A Time of Justice (1994; aka Days of Air and Darkness), The Red Wyvern (1997), The Black Raven (1999), The Fire Dragon (2000), and The Gold Falcon (2004). She coedited the theme anthologies Enchanted Forests (1995) and The Shimmering Door (1996; aka Sorceries).
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KEYES, J. GREGORY (1963– ). U.S. writer who sometimes shortens his signature to “Greg Keyes.” The couplet comprising The Waterborn (1996) and The Blackgod (1997) is stereotypical commodified fantasy, but the sequence of science fantasies comprising Newton’s Cannon (1998), A Calculus of Angels (1999), Empire of Unreason (2000), and The Shadows of God (2001) is an enterprising alchemical fantasy set in alternative history. The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, launched with The Briar King (2003) and The Charnel Prince (2004), is a messianic fantasy with an alternative-history setting.
KILWORTH, GARRY (1941– ). British writer whose early work was mostly sf (refer to HDSFL). His many animal fantasies include Hunter’s Moon (1989; aka The Foxes of First Dark), Midnight’s Sun: A Story of Wolves (1990), Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares (1992), and House of Tribes (1995), in which the protagonists are mice. A trilogy more explicitly aimed at children, featuring The Welkin Weasels, comprises Thunder Oak (1997), Castle Storm (1998), and Windjammer Run (1999); he returned to that milieu in Gaslight Geezers (2001), Vampire Vole (2002), and Heastward Ho! (2003). Kilworth’s other children’s fantasies include The Wizard of Woodworld (1987), The Rain Ghost (1989), the collection Dark Hills, Hollow Clocks (1990), The Drowners (1991), Billy Pink’s Private Detective Agency (1993), the timeslip fantasy The Phantom Piper (1994), The Raiders (1996), The Gargoyle (1997), and Nightdancer (2002).
In the Shakespearean fantasy A Midsummer’s Nightmare (1996) the fairy court decamps from Sherwood to the New Forest. The Navigator Kings trilogy, comprising The Roof of Voyaging (1996), The Princely Flower (1997), and Land-of-Mists (1998), is based in Polynesian myth.
The couplet comprising Angel (1993) and Archangel (1995) is a melodramatic dark fantasy. Shadow-Hawk (1999) is based on legends of Borneo. The Knights of Liöfwende trilogy, comprising Spiggot’s Qu
est (2002), Mallmoc’s Castle (2003), and Boggart and Fen (2004), features a portal to a dark version of Faerie. Kilworth’s shorter adult fantasies include “The Ragthorn” (1991 with Robert Holdstock) and the surreal title story of Hogfoot Right and Bird-Hands (1993).
KING, GABRIEL. Collaborative pseudonym of M. John Harrison and Jane Johnson, employed for a trilogy of sophisticated animal fantasies comprising The Wild Road (1997), The Golden Cat (1998), and The Knot Garden (2000). See also JUDE FISHER.
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KING, STEPHEN (1947– ). U.S. writer best known for his best-selling horror fiction (refer to HDHL). There are elements of fantasy in the futuristic Dark Tower sequence—inspired by an image from Robert
Browning—begun with The Gunslinger (1982) and continued in The Drawing of the Three (1987), The Waste Lands (1991), Wizard and Glass (1997), Wolves of the Calla (2003), and Song of Susannah (2004), with The Dark Tower to come; Robin Furth’s Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: A Concordance, volume 1 (2003), is a guide. The quest fantasy King wrote with Peter Straub, The Talisman (1984)—to which Black House (2001) is a sequel—and his solo novel The Eyes of the Dragon (1985), aimed at younger readers, are more wholehearted fantasies. In-somnia (1994) has elements of metaphysical fantasy. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) is an account of healthy psychological fantasizing.
The A to Z of Fantasy Literature Page 39
