The A to Z of Fantasy Literature

by Stableford, Brian M.

  BULWER-LYTTON, EDWARD (BARON LYTTON OF KNEB-

  WORTH) (1803–1873). British writer and politician who was plain Edward Bulwer until he inherited his mother’s estate, Knebworth, and added her surname to his. He wrote numerous fantasies in his youth, including ponderous allegories, many of which he published while editing the New Monthly Magazine; these stories included Asmodeus at Large (1832–33; book 1833) and items collected in The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834) and The Student (1835).

  Bulwer was a highly significant writer of occult fantasy (refer to HDHL), following the tentative Godolphin (1833) with a novel whose aborted serial version, Zicci (1838), was eventually reprinted in book form despite the fact that it had been completely rewritten as Zanoni (1842). An enormously influential Rosicrucian romance, Zanoni won its author a reputation as an esoteric scholar that moved Eliphas Lévi to make a pilgrimage to Knebworth. Bulwer repaid the compliment by

  making some use of Lévi’s ideas in the famous haunted house story

  “The Haunters and the Haunted” (1859; aka “The House and the Brain”) and A Strange Story (1862).

  Bulwer became more protective of his reputation once his political career took off, toning down the occult elements of the utopian romance The Coming Race (1871) and issuing the book anonymously. His son

  56 • BUNYAN, JOHN

  Robert (1831–91), who used the pseudonym Owen Meredith as well as

  signing himself the Earl of Lytton, also wrote a feverish occult fantasy, The Ring of Amasis (1863), whose concerns foreshadowed those of karmic romance.

  BUNYAN, JOHN (1628–1688). British Calvinist preacher. He wrote a spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding (1666), while imprisoned for his evangelical endeavors; its substance was dramatically transfigured in the allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come (first part 1678–79). A landmark text of British Christian fantasy—it was one of the most widely read texts in the English language, at least until 1900—its imagery has exerted a considerable influence over the structure and equipment of quest fantasy, where the imagery of the Slough of Despond, Doubting Castle, Vanity Fair, and so forth

  echoes resonantly. The Holy War (1682), an allegory in which the city of Mandoul has to be liberated after its seizure by Diabolus, was less successful, so Bunyan reprised his original performance by writing the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress, in which Christian guides his family along the route he had scouted out, thus facilitating their passage; it was added to reprints from 1684 onward.

  BURDEKIN, KATHARINE (1896–1963). British writer who published the wide-ranging historical fantasies The Burning Ring (1927) and The Rebel Passion (1929) and the children’s fantasy The Children’s Country (1929) under her own name (contracted to Kay Burdekin in U.S. editions) before adopting the pseudonym Murray Constantine for two sf novels (refer to HDSFL) and the allegory The Devil, Poor Devil! (1934).

  In the last-named, the Devil wakes from dormancy to find his influence on the wane, not because of Christian opposition but by virtue of the emergence of rationalism, personalized as “the Independent.”

  BURGESS, ANTHONY (1917–1993). British writer who made occa-

  sional forays into fantasy. The Eve of Saint Venus (1964) recycles a common motif of erotic fantasy as a melancholy farce. Beard’s Roman Women (1976) is a sentimental fantasy in which ghosts recall lost opportunities. A Long Trip to Teatime (1976) is a quirky children’s fantasy. In Any Old Iron (1989), Excalibur is displaced from Arthurian fantasy into the modern world for satirical purposes. Enderby’s Dark Lady; or, No End to Enderby (1985) echoes the life of William Shakespeare. A few fantasies are included in the collection The Devil’s Mode (1989).

  BYATT, A. S. • 57

  BURGESS, MELVIN (1954– ). British writer for children whose work has often proved controversial because of its determined treatment of

  “adult” themes. Fantasization assists this mission in many of his works without compromising their realism, as in the elements of animal fantasy in The Cry of the Wolf (1990), the accounts of witchery in the historical fantasy Burning Issy (1992), and the timeslip component of An Angel for May (1992). Fantastic elements take on a symbolic role in The Earth Giant (1995), whose eponymous figure is released from the bow-els of an uprooted tree, and in Tiger, Tiger (1996), which is based on a fake Oriental myth. The futuristic Bloodtide (1999), based on the Nordic Volsunga saga, is set in the ruins of London. The Ghost behind the Wall (2000) is an unusual account of haunting. Lady: My Life as a Bitch (2001) is a witty and uncompromisingly robust theriomorphic fantasy.

  BURROUGHS, EDGAR RICE (1875–1950). U.S. writer best known for his creation of a powerful modern hero myth in the sequence of pulp magazine serials begun with Tarzan of the Apes (1912; book 1914). The Return of Tarzan (1913; book 1915), The Beasts of Tarzan (1914; book 1916), The Son of Tarzan (1915; book 1917), Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (1916; book 1918), and the tales of Tarzan’s youth collected in Jungle Tales of Tarzan (1919) fleshed out the myth. The series grew repetitive thereafter, and many of its elements are by other hands—although those unauthorized by his estate were quickly suppressed. The character continued his adventures in many other media, especially cinema and comic books.

  Much of Burroughs’s other work is formulated as sf (refer to HDSFL), although the definitive planetary romance series begun with A Princess of Mars (1912; book 1917) and its various analogues are exercises in blithely uninhibited action-adventure fantasy similar in spirit to the Tarzan novels. The others include the lost race stories The Cave Girl (1913–17; book 1925) and The Land That Time Forgot (1918; book 1924), and a series launched with At the Earth’s Core (1914; book 1922) set in Pellucidar, a world within the hollow earth. Burroughs remains one of the most widely imitated writer ever to set pen to paper; his influence on the sword and sorcery subgenre was immense.

  BYATT, A. S. (1936– ). British writer. The long title story of her collection of five art fairy tales, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (1994), is an Arabian fantasy. Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice (1998) includes

  58 • BYRON, LORD

  more items in a similar vein, most notably the novella “Cold.” Some of the stories in Sugar and Other Stories (1987) and The Little Black Book of Stories (2003) feature ghosts. Possession: A Romance (1990), the two novellas in Angels and Insects (1993), and Babel Tower (1996) flirt with fantastic devices but sternly refuse commitment; The Biographer’s Tale (2000) is more ambiguous.

  BYRON, LORD (1788–1824). British poet. He was the most significant pioneer of English romanticism and the inspiration of the “Byronic”

  pose, whose extreme versions qualify as lifestyle fantasy by virtue of suggestions of diabolism. The psychology of the pose was mapped out in the quasi-autobiographical Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18), the Faustian Manfred (1817), and the unfinished Don Juan (1819–24).

  Forced into exile by accusations related to his sex life, Byron met up with Mary and Percy Shelley in the Villa Diodati in Switzerland, where a night of fevered discussions inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819); the latter added further fuel to the demonization by Gothic fiction attempted by Lady Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon (1816), although the notion that Byron was the prototype of the Gothic villain is ridiculous, given that the fad was over before he shot to fame.

  – C –

  CABELL, JAMES BRANCH (1879–1958). U.S. writer who became

  briefly notorious when Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice (1919) was labeled obscene on account of its humorous use of erotic symbolism. The Cream of the Jest: A Comedy of Evasions (1917) had already reflected sarcastically on the absurdities of contemporary prudery. Both works are part of an inordinately complex and varied series chronicling the history, influence, and genealogy of a legendary hero, Manuel; its fantasy elements are mostly set in the imaginary French province of Poictesme.

  The other major fantasies are Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances (1921), The
High Place: A Comedy of Disenchantment (1923), The Silver Stallion: A Comedy of Redemption (1926), Something about Eve: A Comedy of Fig-Leaves (1927), and the three stories in The Witch Woman (1948), which include “The Music from behind the Moon”

  (1926) and The Way of Ecben (separate publication 1929). There are

  CALVINO, ITALO • 59

  marginal fantasy elements in many others, although Cabell’s early neo-chivalric romances, including the items in Gallantry (1907) and Chivalry (1909) and the novel The Soul of Melicent (1913; rev. as Dom-nei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship, 1920), have no supernatural content.

  Cabell shortened his signature to “Branch Cabell” on the dream fantasy trilogy Smirt (1934), Smith (1935), and Smire (1937), collected in the omnibus The Nightmare Has Triplets (1972). His late work includes two notable historical metafictions, The King Was in His Counting-House: A Comedy of Common-Sense (1938) and Hamlet Had an Uncle: A Comedy of Honour (1940), with themes carried forward in the nostalgic fantasies The First Gentleman of America: A Comedy of Conquest (1942; aka The First American Gentleman), There Were Two Pirates: A Comedy of Division (1946), and The Devil’s Own Dear Son: A Comedy of the Fatted Calf (1949). Cabell’s wit was more polished and erudite than that of his contemporary Thorne Smith, but its subtlety and plaintiveness do not work entirely to its advantage.

  CALDECOTT, MOYRA (1927– ). Pseudonym of South African–born

  writer Olivia Brown. The historical fantasy series comprising The Tall Stones (1977), The Temple of the Sun (1977), Shadow on the Stones (1978), and The Silver Vortex (1987) describes conflicts of magic based in rival Bronze Age religions. The trilogy comprising Son of the Sun (1986), Daughter of Amun (1989), and Daughter of Ra (1990) develops similar themes in an ancient Egyptian setting, with an element of

  karmic romance that is also manifest in The Lily and the Bull (1979)—

  in a Minoan setting—and the Arthurian fantasy The Tower and the Emerald (1985). The Celtic fantasies The Green Lady and the King of Shadows (1989) and The Winged Man (1993) are the most adventurous items in a series of recycled materials.

  CALVINO, ITALO (1923–1985). Italian writer who became a leading practitioner of fabulation, comparable in status with Jorge Luis Borges.

  He first ventured into fantasy in the sophisticated mock-chivalric romances translated as The Cloven Viscount (1952; tr. 1962) and The Non-Existent Knight (1959; tr. 1962), which were combined with the equally witty philosophical fantasy The Baron in the Trees (1957; tr.

  1959) in the omnibus Our Ancestors (1960; tr. 1980).

  Calvino broke new ground in the cosmological fabulations collected in Cosmicomics (1963; tr. 1968) and T zero (1967; tr. 1969, aka Time and the Hunter); he retained its literary method, albeit in a conspicuously

  60 • CAMPBELL, JOSEPH

  toned-down manner, in Invisible Cities (1972; tr. 1974), The Castle of Crossed Destinies (1973; tr. 1977), Mr Palomar (tr. 1985), and the incomplete Under the Jaguar Sun (1986; tr. 1988). Numbers in the Dark (1993; tr. 1995) is a posthumous assembly of fables, fragments, and other miscellaneous pieces.

  The novel translated as If on a Winter Night a Traveller (1979; tr.

  1981) is a convoluted metafiction exploring the complexities of the relationship between reader, texts, literary scholarship, and real life.

  Calvino compiled a massive compendium of Italian Folktales (1956; tr.

  1980) and a showcase anthology of Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday (2 vols. 1983; 1 vol., tr. 1997).

  CAMPBELL, JOSEPH (1904–1987). U.S. scholar. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) argues that all hero myths are fundamentally similar, deriving from the same archetypal “monomyth.” He anatomized its structure as the hero’s journey along a Road of Trials—whose challenges embody previously unrecognized aspects of his own unconscious mind. After negotiating these trials successfully, he obtains a trophy, which he offers on his return to his community so that it might enhance the lives of all. He generalized his procedure to the functional analysis of other kinds of myth in The Masks of God (4 vols., 1959–68), which asked that more attention be paid to the “living mythologies” of modern times.

  Campbell’s mythical formulas correlate very well with the formulas of commodified fantasy, partly due to the fact that some fantasy writers make conscious use of his ideas in planning and underpinning their endeavors, as did Michael Moorcock in his celebration of “the Eternal Champion.”

  CANADIAN FANTASY. Although David Ketterer’s history of Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy (1992) lists several early examples of French-Canadian fantastique and numerous similar supernatural fictions in English, he finds few examples of wholehearted fantasy earlier than Gwendolyn MacEwen’s occult/Christian fantasy Julian the Magician (1963). A subsequent modest increase in fantastic literary fiction, exemplified by Robertson Davies and W. P. Kinsella, was followed by the more assertive appearance of such specialists as the sophisticated epic fantasist Guy Gavriel Kay and urban fantasy pioneer Charles de Lint. The magazine On Spec provided a useful domestic genre market, and there was a dramatic increase in the production of Canadian sf (re-

  CPEK, KAREL • 61

  fer to HDSFL) in both English and French, perhaps stimulated by Canada’s awkward, economically marginal relationship with the United States.

  As in Australia, there was a considerable expansion of Canadian fantasy in the 1990s, exemplified by Kelley Armstrong, Terence M.

  Green, Tanya Huff, Sean Russell, Geoff Ryman, Sean Stewart, and Michelle West, and by Matthew Hughes’s Swiftian satires Fools Errant (1994) and Fool Me Twice (2001), Ann Marston’s Rune Blade trilogy (1996–97) and Sword in Exile trilogy (1999–2000), Rebecca Bradley’s Lady in Gil trilogy (1996–98), Fiona Patton’s sword and sorcery series begun with The Stone Prince (1997), Yves Menard’s The Book of Knights (1998), Dennis Jones’s epic House of Pandragore series (1999–2001), Marie Jakober’s historical fantasy The Black Chalice (2000), Thomas Wharton’s historical fantasy Salamander (2001), Ursula Pflug’s portal fantasy Green Music (2002), Stephanie Bedwell-Grime’s angelic fantasy Guardian Angel (2003), and Janet McNaughton’s historical fantasy An Earthly Knight (2004). Immigrants who assisted this flow included Jack Whyte, the Scottish-born author of the Arthurian Camulod Chronicles, and the Ethiopian Nega Mezlekia, author of The God Who Begat a Jackal (2002).

  Showcase anthologies featuring Canadian fantasy include Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic (2003) and Open Space: New Canadian Fantastic Fiction (2003), edited by Claude Lalumière.

  CANAVAN, TRUDI (1969– ). Australian writer and artist, the longtime art editor of the magazine Aurealis. In her picaresque Black Magician trilogy, comprising The Magician’s Guild (2001), The Novice (2002), and The High Lord (2003), a monopolistic guild recruits a talented woman fortunate enough to have a close friend in the Thieves’ Guild.

  C

  PEK, KAREL (1890–1938). Czech writer. Much of his fantastic fiction is sf (refer to HDSFL), although the novels translated as The Absolute at Large (1922; tr. 1927) and Krakatit (1924; tr. 1925) are hybrid texts. His pure fantasies include two satirical plays written in collaboration with his brother Josef (1887–1945), the celebrated Insect Play (1921; first tr. as And So ad Infinitum, aka The World We Live In) and Adam the Creator (1927). The Mother (1938; tr. 1939) is a Brechtian solo work in which the dead return. He wrote numerous

  fantastic short stories, including some of those translated in Money and Other Stories (1929), Tales from Two Pockets (abridged 1932;

  62 • CARD, ORSON SCOTT

  1994), Fairy Tales (1933; rev. as Nine Fairy Tales, 1990), and Apocryphal Stories (1949).

  CARD, ORSON SCOTT (1951– ). U.S. writer best known for sf (refer to HDSFL). His first fantasy, Hart’s Hope (1983), focuses on the nullifi-cation of magic rather than its use. His major fantasy project is the messianic Alvin Maker series, set in a magic-infected alternative history in which the American Revolution never happened; it comprises Seventh Son (1987), Red Prop
het (1988), Prentice Alvin (1989), Alvin Journey-man (1995), Heartfire (1998), and The Crystal City (2003), with further volumes to come. Treasure Box (1996) is a dark fantasy. Enchantment (1999) is a timeslip fantasy in which classic fairy tale motifs are darkened by their Russian setting but lightened by a humorous edge. Card’s short fiction, including some fantasies, is collected in Maps in a Mirror (1990). He edited the anthology couplet Dragons of Light (1980) and Dragons of Darkness (1981).

  CAREY, JACQUELINE (1964– ). U.S. writer. Her nonfictional study of Angels: Celestial Spirits in Legend & Art (1997) provided some inspiration for Kushiel’s Dart (2001), a complex alternative history fantasy with religious and erotic elements. It is set in Terre d’Ange, with an angel-descended population that takes a Dionysian attitude to sex; the heroine is an “anguissette” who derives ecstatic pleasure from pain; Kushiel’s Chosen (2002) and Kushiel’s Avatar (2003) are sequels.

  Banewreaker (2004) began a new sequence.

  CARROLL, JONATHAN (1949– ). U.S. writer whose work is a highly distinctive subspecies of dark fantasy (refer to HDHL). Fantastic elements, which often seem flagrantly contradictory, routinely erupt into his sentimentally inclined plots with startling abruptness and surreal effect. In The Land of Laughs (1980), two academics researching a beloved writer of children’s fantasies discover the strange corollaries of his creative power. Guilt feelings are exotically dramatized in Voice of Our Shadow (1983). Bones of the Moon (1987) features escapist dreams infected with hidden threats. Sleeping in Flame (1988) incorporates a bizarre transfiguration of a fairy tale. A Child across the Sky (1989), Black Cocktail (1990), and After Silence (1992) are more obviously horrific, but fantasy elements are central to the equally disturbing Outside the Dog Museum (1991) and From the Teeth of Angels (1994).