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Fantasy <span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span> Fantasy is a genre of imaginative fiction in which reality differs from our own through the operation of magic or the supernatural. Fantasy is often set in imaginary worlds or legendary times. Fantasy is contrasted with science fiction, which typically concerns itself with the impact of technology—especially future technology—on individuals and society, although the distinction may be blurred in the case of some works, and a hybrid form called science fantasy bridges the genres.
HistoryThe modern fantasy novel emerged in the prose romances of artist, poet, designer, and craftsman William Morris, whose The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains (both 1889), Wood Beyond the World (1894) and The Well at the World's End (1896) foreshadow the high fantasy of the mid-twentieth century with their medieval settings, mythic underpinnings, and quest structures. L. Frank Baum took a less romantic and more modern approach with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and its sequels, filled with strong female lead characters and a myriad of fantastical companions and adversaries as likely to be inspired by technology (Tik-Tok and the Wheelers, for example) as by folklore or mythology. Another branch of fantasy (dubbed sword and sorcery in the 1960s by Fritz Leiber) arose in the pages of the pulp magazine Weird Tales in the 1920s and '30s, especially in the stories of Robert E. Howard. A great resurgence of fantasy writing and publishing followed the astronomical genre and mainstream success of Ballantine Books' paperback editions of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s. Ballantine grabbed the tide with its Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series which reissued long-out-of-print fantasy novels of all stripes by Morris, E. R. Eddison, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, and James Branch Cabell, along with new works by Katherine Kurtz and H. Warner Munn, in fat paperback editions with introductions by Lin Carter. The growing popularity of roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons in the post–Tolkien 1970s heavily influenced a wave of fantasy writers through the 1970s, whose novels generally follow a formula of elves, warriors, and wizards on quests for various magical objects. In the 1980s, a new flavor of fantasy called mythic fantasy arose, heavily influenced by the tastes of editor Terri Windling (first at Ace Books and later at Tor Books). Mythic fantasy replaced the familiar heroic quest formula with stories drawing on fairy tales, folklore, and ballads, often emphasizing the inner battles of characters over outer battles with demons and dragons. A subset of mythic fantasy dubbed urban fantasy, typified by the works of Charles de Lint, Mercedes Lackey, and Windling's Borderland stories, places folkloric elements such as elves on the streets of contemporary cities; the stories often blend adolescent questioning of identity with rock or folk music and magic, earning them their nickname, elfpunk. At the turn of the twenty-first century, another mainstream fantasy revival accompanied the phenomenal worldwide success of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels and Peter Jackson's film versions of The Lord of the Rings.
SubgenresThe subgenres of fantasy overlap and mingle, but these distinctions are sometimes recognized:
See also:
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
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