The A to Z of Fantasy Literature

by Stableford, Brian M.

  ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA (1830–1894). British poet, sister of the pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Strikingly atypical of her work is the long poem Goblin Market (1862), which poses as a moralistic fairy tale although its account of the redemption by sisterly

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  love of a girl unwise enough to consume “forbidden fruit” is easily de-codable as a fervent erotic fantasy. Her other long fantasy poem, The Prince’s Progress (1875), is an account of an errant prince whose impatient bride-to-be dies of frustration when he is delayed too long on the road. Her prose tales, including “The Story of Nick” (1857), “Hero”

  (1865), and the long hallucinatory fantasy that opens the collection Speaking Likenesses (1874) are equally moralistic, although their stern-ness similarly seems to overlie deep anxieties.

  ROWLING, J. K. (1965– ). British writer. The series she began with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997, aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) and extended in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000), and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), with two books still to come, became the best-selling books of their era throughout Europe and the United States. The series blends the traditional British boarding-school story with the American high-school horror story—in which metaphorical modeling of the hormonal dramas of adolescents had evolved from crude B

  movies like I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), through Stephen King’s Carrie (1976), to the 1990s TV series Buffy the Vampire-Slayer—and embeds the amalgam in an archetypal heroic fantasy cast (unusual, for a children’s fantasy) as an expansive series.

  In the mundane sphere, Harry Potter is the despised and abused

  ward of the revolting Dursley family, but at school he is an apprentice wizard marked for greatness, having turned the tables on the vile Lord Voldemort—the slayer of his parents—while still in his cradle.

  He and Voldemort are now engaged in a desperate race against time; while Harry learns to use his gradually maturing magic, Voldemort slowly regains his power and influence, losing a series of preliminary skirmishes while apparently preparing to precipitate a magical Armageddon that only Harry can prevent. Two volumes of “nonfic-

  tional” spinoff are Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander (2001) and Quidditch through the Ages by Kennilworthy Whisp (2001).

  The astonishing commercial success of the Harry Potter series in-

  evitably sparked a boom in magical school stories, ranging from the imitative series comprising The Magickers (2001), The Curse of Arkady (2002), and The Dragon Guard (2003), by “Emily Drake” (Rhondi Vilott Salsitz), and Jenny Nimmo’s Charlie Bone series to E. Rose

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  Sabin’s conscientiously cynical A School for Sorcery (2002) and its prequel A Perilous Power (2004).

  RUSCH, KRISTINE KATHYRN (1960– ). U.S. writer and editor active in various genres (refer to HDSFL). With her husband, Dean Wesley Smith, she founded the innovative small press Pulphouse, and she edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1991 to 1998.

  The White Mists of Power (1991) is a bardic fantasy. The Gallery of His Dreams (1991) is a sentimental/timeslip fantasy. The young heroine of Heart Readers (1993) must apply her empathic talent to the salvation of a kingdom. In the Fey series, comprising Sacrifice (1995), Changeling (1996), Rival (1997), The Resistance (1998), and Victory (1998), is-landers seek refuge in an invisible fortress before turning the tables on invaders. The Black Throne series, set in the same milieu, comprises The Black Queen (1999) and The Black King (2000). In Fantasy Life (2003), a family in Oregon protects mythical sea creatures. Rusch used the byline “Katherine Grayson” on a number of “paranormal romances,”

  including Utterly Charming (2000), Thoroughly Kissed (2001), Completely Smitten (2002), Simply Irresistible (2003), and Absolutely Captivated (2004).

  RUSHDIE, SALMAN (1947– ). Indian-born writer resident in Britain from 1961 until he relocated to the United States after spending years in hiding because of a fatwa issued against him by Iran’s Ayatollah Khome-ini on the basis of false rumors that the vivid religious fantasy The Satanic Verses (1988) was blasphemous. Grimus (1975) is an elaborate Orphean fantasy. In Midnight’s Children (1980), 1,001 children born at the moment of India’s independence obtain magical talents; similar marginal fantasy elements with a magical realism ambience are employed in Shame (1983) and The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995). Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) is a children’s portal fantasy in which the young hero must retrieve the power of story for purposes of re-enchantment. The Ground beneath Her Feet (1999) is another Orphean fantasy. The collection East, West (1994) includes a few fantasies.

  RUSSELL, SEAN (1952– ). Canadian writer. In The Initiate Brother (1991) and Gatherer of Clouds (1992), a mystically gifted mock-Oriental monk plays a messianic role. In World without End (1995) and Sea without a Shore (1996), an ocean voyage at the dawn of an Age of Enlightenment terminates on an unexpected island. In the River into Darkness couplet comprising Beneath the Vaulted Hills (1997) and The

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  Compass of the Soul (1998), the last great mage has all but eradicated magic when he meets opposition. The Swan’s War series, comprising The One Kingdom (2001), The Isle of Battle (2002), and The Shadow Roads (2004), is an epic fantasy.

  RUSSIAN FANTASY. The integration of Russian folklore into literature by such writers as Nikolai Gogol, Vladimir Odoevsky, and Ivan Tur-genev was considerably more phantasmagoric and philosophically complicated than the parallel patterns in Western Europe. Further examples can be found in the work of Fedor Sologub, sampled in The Sweet-Scented Name and Other Fairy Tales, Fables and Stories (tr. 1915). Although the Russian Revolution suppressed such materials—including

  the work of Mikhail Bulgakov—in the name of “socialist realism,” it continually crept back into examples of Russian sf (refer to HDSFL) and burst forth again after the collapse of communism in works by such writers as Yuri Buida, author of The Zero Train (1993; tr. 2001) and The Prussian Bride (1998; abr. tr. 2002), and Victor Pelevin, whose works range from The Life of Insects (tr. 1996) to Homo Zapiens (tr. 2002).

  Commodified fantasy rapidly became established, encouraging Russia’s Annual SF Writers’ Congress to institute a “sword award,” whose winners include Yuri Braider, Nikolai Chadovich, Andrei Lazarchuk, Mikhail Uspensky, and Evegny Lukin.

  RYMAN, GEOFF (1951– ). Canadian-born writer, resident in Britain since 1973. The Warrior Who Carried Life (1985) is an innovative quest fantasy climaxing in Eden. The Unconquered Country (1984; book 1986) is a surreal/hybrid/science fantasy. “Was . . .” (1992, aka Was) is a marginal sentimental fantasy drawing heavily on the imagery of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the history of the movie version starring Judy Garland. Lust (2001) is an erotic fantasy.

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  SABERHAGEN, FRED (1930– ). U.S. writer best known for sf (refer to HDSFL). The Empire of the East trilogy, comprising The Broken Lands (1968), The Black Mountains (1971), and Changeling Earth (1973, aka Ardneh’s World), is a hybrid/science fantasy, but the sequel trilogy comprising the Books of Swords (1983–84) reflects its origins as

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  a game scenario. The Books of Lost Swords series, comprising Wound-healer’s Story (1986), Sightblinder’s Story (1987), Stonecutter’s Story (1988), Farslayer’s Story (1989), Coinspinner’s Story (1989), Mindsword’s Story (1990), Wayfinder’s Story (1992), and Shield-breaker’s Story (1994), is similarly commodified.

  The Dracula Tape (1975) helped prepare the way for revisionist vampire fiction, casting the count as an altruist whose motives were disastrously misconstrued by Stoker’s superstitious protagonists; The Holmes-Dracula File (1978) continued the metafictional theme; some of the later volumes in the series are hybrid thrillers, but Holmes and Dracula got to
gether again in Seance for a Vampire (1994). A Sharpness in the Neck (1996) invokes Robespierre, Napoleon, and the Marquis de Sade.

  The Black Throne (1990, with Roger Zelazny) features Edgar Allan Poe. Merlin’s Bones (1995) is a far-ranging Arthurian fantasy. Dancing Bears (1996) is a theriomorphic fantasy. The Book of Gods series, begun with The Face of Apollo (1998), Ariadne’s Web (1999), The Arms of Hercules (2000), God of the Golden Fleece (2001), and Gods of Fire and Thunder (2002), began as classical fantasy but extended into Nordic fantasy.

  SALMONSON, JESSICA AMANDA (1950– ). U.S. editor and writer

  whose earliest publications were in the small press publication The Literary Magazine of Fantasy and Terror (1973), which she (then he) edited as Amos Salmonson. Her anthology series Amazons! (2 vols., 1979–82) and Heroic Visions (2 vols., 1983–86) are wholly or partly dedicated to sword and sorcery stories with female heroes; her own works in that vein include an Oriental fantasy trilogy, comprising Tomoe Gozen (1981; aka The Disfavored Hero), The Golden Naginata (1982) and Thousand Shrine Warrior (1984), and The Swordswoman (1982). Ou Lu Khen and the Beautiful Madwoman (1985) is a further Oriental fantasy.

  Salmonson’s short fantasies, many of a decadent stripe, are mingled with horror stories in A Silver Thread of Madness (1989), John Collier and Fredric Brown Went Quarrelling through My Head (1989), The Eleventh Jaguarundi (1995), and The Dark Tales (2002). The Mysterious Doom and Other Ghostly Tales of the Pacific Northwest (1992) recycles local folklore. A series of occult/detective stories is collected in Harmless Ghosts: The Penelope Penniweather Stories (1990) and Phantom Waters (1995). Mr Monkey and Other Sumerian Fables (1995) recycles the oldest known examples of fables.

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  A strong scholarly interest in 19th-century ghost stories, especially those by female writers—reflected in the anthologies Tales of Moonlight (1983), The Haunted Wherry and Other Rare Ghost Stories (1985), What Did Miss Darrington See? An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction (1989), and Tales of Moonlight II (1989)—led Salmonson to compile collections of the supernatural fiction of such writers as Hildegarde Hawthorne, Anna Nicholas, and Sarah Orne Jewett, much of

  which tends to the sentimental rather than the horrific.

  SALVATORE, R. A. (1959– ). U.S. writer, mostly of game/tie-in fantasies developing Dungeons and Dragons scenarios. Works not tied to such enterprises include the Chronicles of Ynis Aiellke, comprising Echoes of the Fourth Magic (1990), The Witch’s Daughter (1991), and Bastion of Darkness (2000); the Spearwielder’s Tale trilogy, comprising The Woods out Back (1993), The Dragon’s Dagger (1994), and Dragonslayer’s Return (1995); the picaresque Crimson Shadow trilogy, comprising The Sword of Bedwyr (1995), Luthien’s Gamble (1996), and The Dragon King (1996); and the dark fantasy Demon Wars trilogies, the first comprising The Demon Awakens (1997), The Demon Spirit (1998), and The Demon Apostle (1999), and the second Mortalis (2000), Transcendence (2002), and Immortalis (2003). Other Demon Wars novels include Ascendance (2001) and the prequel series launched by The Highwayman (2004).

  SAMPSON, FAY (1935– ). British writer. Her children’s fiction includes several fantasies, notably The Chains of Sleep (1981) and the Pangur Bán animal fantasy series comprising the stories in Pangur Bán: The White Cat (1983) and the novels Finnglas of the Horses (1985), Finnglas and the Stones of Choosing (1986), Shape Shifter: The Naming of Pangur Bán (1988), The Serpent of Senargad (1989), and The White Horse is Running (1990). Them (2003) is a messianic fantasy.

  Sampson’s work for adults includes a series of feminized/

  Arthurian fantasies featuring Morgan le Fay, collectively entitled Daughter of Tintagel, comprising Wise Woman’s Telling (1989), White Nun’s Telling (1989), Blacksmith’s Telling (1990), Taliesin’s Telling (1991), and Herself (1992). Star Dancer (1993) is a historical fantasy based on Sumerian mythology, featuring the goddess Inanna. In The Silent Fort (2003), druids resist the Roman invasion of Devon. The Island Pilgrimage (2004) is a love story with elements of religious fantasy.

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  SAND, GEORGE (1804–1876). Pseudonym of French writer Aurore Dupin, baronne Dudevant. The Devil’s Pool (1846; tr. 1847) is an ambiguous account of peasant life and superstition. The Naiad (1857; tr.

  1892) is a delusional fantasy cast as a legal case study. The allegorical aspirations of the Jules Verne–inspired hallucinatory fantasy Journey within the Crystal (1865; tr. 1992) also infected the stories she was prompted to write for her grandchildren, Tales of a Grandmother (1872–76; abr. tr. 1930); these include the quasi-autobiographical novella “The Castle of Pictordu,” the allegory of flight “Wings of Courage,” a heartfelt story of a frog princess (“Queen Coax”), and an account of the destruction of “The Giant Yéous.”

  SATIRE. A literary work criticizing collective or individual vices by holding them up to ridicule, usually by means of incongruous exaggeration.

  The term is derived from the “satyr plays” of Greek drama, which provided tragedy with its comedic complement and counterweight. The

  genre was soon taken up by poets and prose writers; in the latter

  medium, it often took the form of fantastic voyages culminating in images of exotic societies, as exemplified by Lucian, François Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, and many others. The artifice of satire was crucial to the development of self-conscious fabulation, beginning with the earliest fables; animal fantasy continues to boast such modern exemplars of the satirical fable as George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Visionary fantasy was also used for satirical purposes from an early stage.

  Portal fantasies became a significant medium of satire when the supply of terra incognita ran out, although much satire was also relocated in the narrative spaces of sf. Intrusive fantasy of the kind associated with F. Anstey has considerable scope for satire, exploited by many modern fabulators; key examples include Thomas Berger and James Morrow.

  Satire remains very evident in various fields of religious fantasy, especially infernal comedy. Erotic fantasy is also a fertile field for satire; mythological and legendary symbolizations of the erotic impulse are used satirically in the works of such writers as John Erskine and George S. Viereck.

  SAVAGE, FELICITY (1975– ). Irish-born writer resident in the United States. The Garden of Salt couplet, comprising Humility Garden (1995) and Delta City (1996), is a decadent fantasy featuring a rebellion against the rule of manifest gods. The three-decker novel Ever, whose individual volumes are The War in the Waste (1997), The Daemon in the

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  Machine (1998), and A Trickster in the Ashes (1998), is set in an alternative world in which demonic power has been domesticated and ingeniously exploited.

  SCARBOROUGH, ELIZABETH (1947– ). U.S. writer. The series comprising Song of Sorcery (1982), The Unicorn Creed (1983), Bronwyn’s Bane (1983), and The Christening Quest (1985) offers humorous versions of commodified formulas, as do the Arabian fantasy The Harem of Aman Akbar; or, The Djinn Decanted (1984), The Drastic Dragon of Draco, Texas (1986), and The Goldcamp Vampire; or, the Sanguinary Sourdough (1987). The Vietnam-set The Healer’s War (1988), by contrast, is an intense drama in which fantastic elements offer amelioration of the depths of desperation; a similar spirit is evident in Nothing Sacred (1991) and Last Refuge (1992), in which a Far Eastern refuge from the world’s troubles becomes a base for social renewal.

  Scarborough’s adventures in comic fantasy continued in the trilogy comprising Phantom Banjo (1991), Picking the Ballad’s Bones (1991), and Strum Again? (1992), in which the world-saving potential of folk music makes its practitioners the target of demonic attack. The heroine of the series comprising The Godmother (1994), The Godmother’s Apprentice (1995), and The Godmother’s Web (1998) is a magically talented social worker who finds that old fairy tale motifs still crop up with distressing regularity. The Lady in the Loch (1998) is a hybrid mystery featuring Walter Scott. Scarborough’s short fiction is sampled in Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (2003).

/>   SCHEHERAZADE. The ostensible narrator of Antoine Galland’s Arabian Nights, whose life depends on her storytelling expertise; the name is also rendered Shahrazad. She became an archetypal figure, her skill elaborately celebrated by many sympathetic writers, ranging from Paul Féval to John Barth and Isabel Allende. Her plight is reexamined in Barth’s “Dunyazadiad” and Githa Hariharan’s When Dreams Travel (1999), and her story is further extrapolated in Anthony O’Neill’s Scheherazade (2001) and Cameron Dokey’s The Storyteller’s Daughter (2002).

  SCHOLARLY FANTASY. The history of imaginative fiction cannot be adequately explained without taking note of the influential loop connecting literary fantasies with lifestyle fantasies and scholarly fantasies, a loop through which material circulates very freely; an innovation in any one field routinely infects the others. The problems of

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  defining fantasy literature and lifestyle fantasy are eased by the stratagem of identifying the operation of some kind of magic within a literary text and by the pretense of being able to work some kind of magic in a fantasized lifestyle, but scholarly fantasies are more various. Not all histories of magical beliefs are scholarly fantasies, although such materials are uncommonly amenable to fantastic extrapolation; on the other hand, it is by no means impossible to construct very fanciful hypotheses to

  “explain” perfectly mundane materials.

  Any work presented as nonfiction may legitimately be called a scholarly fantasy if it can be objectively demonstrated that the case made therein far exceeds the warrant of available evidence, especially if it employs fanciful “secondary elaboration” in an attempt to nullify counter-vailing evidence and logical contradiction. There are, inevitably, accidental elements of scholarly fantasy in many early works of scholarship whose authors were forced to depend on unreliable hearsay—including such historians as Herodotus and such natural historians as Pliny—or adventurous speculation, after the fashion of medical theorists and cosmological theorists. The most notable deliberate scholarly fantasy in classical literature is Plato’s invention of Atlantis, which was probably not intended to deceive, although subsequent propagandistic exercises—Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain is a particularly significant example—probably were; at any rate, scholarly fantasies rapidly became sophisticated in the artistry of deception.