During lockdown I’ve been reading even more than usual – and looking back over my Kindle intake for the last 13 weeks, I see that a surprising amount of it is fantasy. I use the term to embrace novels that may be classified also as paranormal, speculative fiction, time travel, alternative history, steampunk or even science fiction.
I was telling a friend this and he looked rather shocked. “You must have been desperate,” he said.
He shuddered. “Oh romance!” he said. (Actually he said something rather crisper than that, and I found it funny and shouldn’t have, so I’m not sharing.)
I conscientiously did not take umbrage. (And a lot of it was not at all romantic, anyway.) But it set me thinking.
Why Read Fantasy?
My mother just couldn’t understand it. “But it’s not real,” she said.
I pointed out that neither was Anna Karenina. And I knew she’d wept buckets over that, because she told me so herself. “Yes,’ said my mother unanswerably, “but Anna Karenina might have been lots of people. Nobody was or is ever going to be a Tolkien dwarf.”
Then she shouted up the stairs, “When are you going to do your homework?”
The subtext clearly was terrible waste of time.
Fantasy and Folk Lore
There were 12 of them in various colours, the first Blue the last, The Lilac Fairy Book. As well as other journalism, translation, historical monographs and studies, Lang produced an impressive assortment of other stories, including The Arabian Nights
Lang was one of the Renaissance men of late Victorian England – a classicist, an historian, interested in literature, religion and also psychical research and, above all, folk lore.
Taking Fantasy Seriously
I was a straightforward child. I didn’t expect to meet a wicked fairy queen or a duplicitous genie on the bus to school,
But I suspended disbelief for the duration of the story. I knew that something real was happening here.
Fantasy and The Enemy
But what if mankind was just too afraid? And with justification?
In childhood we dread monsters under the bed. Saying that it is irrational, doesn’t banish the fear. And fear drives – or impedes – action.
Tolkien, who served in France during the First World War, turned the horrors of the devastated battlefield into Mordor. Sauron is the great enemy, with all the characteristics of the mediaeval devil combined with Milton’s Satan. And that is allied to the terrifying ability to sway the cleverest and bravest like the most guileful twenty-first century PR guru.
The reader knows, throughout all three volumes, that this is a war which we may well lose. And if we win, it will be at terrible cost.
The violence comforts the children enormously.
Violence is one of the things that fantasy is still allowed to show as Not Always A Bad Thing.
Fantasy and the Rescuer
Incidentally, this wiped out one of the great tropes of romantic fiction for 200 years or more, with the wave of a gender politics wand.
This is true, even in for instance, Georgian and Regency novels, where a wife genuinely had no legal identity and was effectively her husband’s property. Perfect opportunity for Sir Galahad, you might think. But we modern readers still recoil.
But in a fantasy novel, if the author constructs the world carefully, he/she can create room for a rescuer that won’t offend 2020 sensibilities.
I have found some wonderful rescuers over the last three months. A whole legion of them in Patricia Briggs’s werewolf saga, the Mercy Thompson books and the linked series Alpha and Omega. (OK, I binge read her.)
And what surprising things people can do, with a bit of belief, a dash of kindness and a lot of luck.
Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley, The Queen’s Wing by Jessica Thorne, The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley, The Untied Kingdom by Kate Johnson (woman versus Autocorrect is just the first battle with that one. You try googling it !) The Unlikely Ones by Mary Brown, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin…
Fantasy in Fire and Hemlock
The story is based on the ballad of Tam Lin. (see the Child Ballads for assorted versions) which in turn is related to Thomas the Rhymer. A parallel world of inexplicable characters of power and strange limitations is there right from the start. The reader travels through as much of a fog as do the characters.
But the sense of something huge, perceived only out of the corner of the eye, is there too.
As in Tolkien. the hero can only win by losing.
The rescuer is not at all a traditional champion. Indeed, at the start of the book, she is a child and shown as both vulnerable and without many resources. But she is courageous and a truth teller and these qualities help her to muddle her way through in the nick of time.
During her childhood and early adolescence he sends her helpful books – and they are heavily weighted towards fantasy. Five Children and It. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. The Sword in the Stone. And, of course, The Lord of the Rings.
She even builds a whole story, in which she stars as Hero out of Tolkien. She sends it to him. It won’t do. He writes back, “Use your own ideas.”
Someone else’s fantasy is only the start, you see. To make the magic work, you have to find your own.
Great post
So glad you enjoyed it, Amorina.
It’s been more than 40 years since I read Lord of the Rings and I haven’t read much fantasy since. This post has my mouth watering for more. It’s the season for it. As for monsters under the bed – they come in all guises. My daughter was terrified that Mr Tickle, with his long arms, was lying in wait under her bed.
I’m with your daughter every step of the way, Liz. Mr Tickle was definitely not one of the good guys. Just the thought of him still makes me shudder.
There are SO many really good fantasy writers – even apart from the giants that are Tolkein and Pratchett. You already mentioned Ursula Le Guin. I would add Anna McCaffrey, Roger Zelazny, and of course, Michael Moorcock in a heartbeat.
Great post! Thank you.
You are so right, John. I loved The Dragons of Pern when I first read them. And Restoree, one of Anne McCaffrey’s stand-alone stories, if I remember rightly, has always held its place on my bookshelf. Which is no mean feat, believe me. So many books, so little shelf space.
Favourite rider – Moreta!
I’ve read very little fantasy, Lord of the Rings, of course, and you introduced me to Diana Wynne Jones, but not much more. I might have to have another go… There was a Terry Someone, too, who wrote a mix of fantasy and reality, and Alan Garner and Robin Jarvis. So actually I’ve read more than I thought…
So glad you like Diana Wynne Jones, Lesley. She’s one of my all time favourites.
Was the Terry Something Terry Nation? He was a Dr Who scriptwriter as well and turned a lot of DR Who scripts into novels, I think. He also wrote a thing called Survivors, which was pretty much After the Pandemic. (Rather like the sequel someone wrote to The Day of the Triffids.) Not one to read at the moment, I feel.
If you read wonderful Alan Garner, did you come across Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising? Fabulous book, allegedly for children.
Ooo, good, don’t know Robin Jarvis. Have had a look and he’s gone straight onto my TBR list. Thank you.
Have read the Lord of the Rings & the Hobbit, but feel no need to ever reread them again. Not a ‘mainstream’ fantasy reader. Love Pratchett. Met Anne MacCaffrey once – invited her to speak at Herts LitFest – fascinating person and very modest, undemanding speaker. (Come to think of it, also invited TP to LitFest & he came & was lovely too)
Oh, I wish I’d heard Anne MacCaffrey, Louise. She wrote some cracking books.
As a writer of alternative history, I cannot understand why everything scifi and fantasy is so easily dismissed. Well written, it provokes, incites and lets your imagination travel to all kinds of imagined situations, times and characters. ‘What if?’ is one of the biggest questions we can ask of our world and ourselves.
Perhaps the ‘dismissers’ are scared of making that trip into an alternative reality and possibly facing questions they’d rather keep suppressed.
Interesting thought, Alison. I think you could be right. The moment you step outside the bounds of verifiable fact, I suppose you open the door to whatever comes. It may just include unreason and nightmares. And who knows how hard it would be to kick them out again?
A wonderful post — and you and the comments have mentioned many of my favorite writers of Fantasy.
I would like to add that “hard” science fiction often includes some fantasy elements. EVERYTHING about true space travel is still very much a matter of imagitnation with it’s own monsters under the bed and its own helpful faries and heros.
Hello Sue. So glad you enjoyed the post. It just touches the surfaces, really.
I agree with you about science fiction. Philip K DIck, for instance, one of my favourite writers (though never a comfort read) certainly has wild elements that come straight out of fantasy.
But then I think hard science must be more intensely emotional than the techno-heads sometimes want to admit.
Such a fascinating post and great comments. Thank you. I have The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern on my TBR list but you’re tempting me with so many other suggestions…