The A to Z of Fantasy Literature

by Stableford, Brian M.

  and consistent appeal of fantasy’s commodifiable formulas. The most obvious of those formulas are the epic trilogy and the sword and sorcery action/adventure story, with the former dominating the marketplace by sheer mass as well as sales potential; children’s fiction tends to employ simpler formulas but has reduced more subgenres to commodifiable entities, including timeslip fantasies and (in the wake of J.

  K. Rowling’s Harry Potter) fantasies of magical education. Best-selling writers of commodified fantasy for adults include Terry

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  Brooks, David Eddings, Raymond E. Feist, Robert Jordan, Katherine Kerr, and Terry Goodkind.

  CONSTANTINE, STORM (1956– ). British writer. Her early work was hybrid/science fantasy (refer to HDSFL); the series comprising The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit (1987), The Bewitchments of Love and Hate (1988), The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire (1989), and continued in The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure (2003) and The Shades of Time and Memory (2004), extrapolates the affectations of contemporary Gothic subculture and its associated lifestyle fantasies. The floridly fanciful and darkly erotic fantasies Hermetech (1991), Burying the Shadow (1992), Sign for the Sacred (1993), and Calenture (1994) are similar in inspiration but more adventurous. The trilogy comprising Stalking Tender Prey (1995), Scenting Hallowed Blood (1996), and Stealing Sacred Fire (1997) is an apocalyptic/angelic fantasy. The Chronicles of Ma-gravandias trilogy comprising Sea Dragon Heir (1999), The Crown of Silence (2000), and The Way of Light (2001) is an enterprising epic fantasy with spinoffs that include the title novella (1999) and other items in The Thorn Boy & Other Dreams of Dark Desire (2003). The collections Three Heralds of the Storm (1997) and Oracle Lips (1999) also include some fantasies. Constantine collaborated with Michael Moorcock on the multiverse fantasy Silverheart (2000).

  CONTE CRUEL. A short-story genre that takes its name from an 1883

  collection by Villiers de l’Isle Adam, although previous examples had been provided by such writers as Edgar Allan Poe. Some critics use the label to refer only to non-supernatural horror stories, especially those that have nasty climactic twists, but it is applicable to any story whose conclusion exploits the cruel aspects of “the irony of fate.” There is a conte cruel element in many traditional folktales, lovingly extrapolated by many 19th-century writers in that vein, including Hans Christian Andersen, Jean Lorrain, and Oscar Wilde.

  One way in which many modern fabulations seek to emphasize the fact that the velvet glove of fantasy is being used to clothe the iron fist of conscientious scepticism is by careful provision of climactic subversive twists typical of the conte cruel; expert practitioners include John Collier and Donald Barthelme.

  CONTE PHILOSOPHIQUE. A term employed by Voltaire to describe his fiction, which consisted of satirical fabulations ironically subversive of popular delusions. It is arguable that all fantasy that aspires to

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  intellectual seriousness must partake of this kind of relevance, but the term is usually reserved for iconoclastic works; earnest exercises in metaphysical fantasy and existentialist fantasy that are illustrative rather than combative are certainly philosophical but do not qualify as contes.

  Voltaire cast “The Princess of Babylon” as an Arabian fantasy and

  “The White Bull” as a biblical fantasy; those subgenres continued to play host to a considerable number of conte philosophiques. Many art fairy tales belong to the subgenre, especially those with a decadent gloss; some notable examples can be found in the works of Richard Garnett and Laurence Housman. Academic philosophers who have published collections of contes philosophiques include L. P. Jacks, in Among the Idolmakers (1912) and All Men are Ghosts (1913), and Bertrand Russell, in Satan in the Suburbs (1953).

  CONTEMPORARY FANTASY. All fantasies set in the present rather than the past or future are contemporary, but the term “contemporary fantasy” is usually used in a narrower sense that sets aside many portal fantasies and those intrusive fantasies in which the magical entity is a blatant anomaly. Thus narrowly defined, the subgenre focuses on works in which the mundane world is fantasized in a more pervasive but less obtrusive fashion, usually by positing an elaborate secret history running alongside the one reported in the newspapers and experienced by most people. Although much contemporary fantasy employs remote rural settings where the effects of thinning have been less corrosive, a good deal of recent work is cast as urban fantasy in which supernatural entities either live as outcasts in decaying inner cities or adopt polite masks in order to live in suburbia.

  The subgenre is prominent in children’s fiction—examples proliferated rapidly in the wake of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series—and in literary fiction employing fantasy materials, as in the works of Tom Robbins, Michael Chabon’s Summerland, and James A. Hetley’s The Summer Country (2002). Notable examples from genre fantasy include John Crowley’s Little, Big, Terry Bisson’s Talking Man, Marina Fitch’s The Seventh Heart (1997), Patricia Geary’s Living in Ether, Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s The Thread That Binds the Bones, and S. Andrew Swann’s The Dragons of the Cuyahoga (2001).

  COOK, GLEN (1944– ). U.S. writer in various genres, much of his work being hybrid/science fantasy. His early work is derivative of Oriental

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  fantasy; the Dread Empire sequence, comprising the trilogy Shadow of All Night Falling (1979), October’s Baby (1980), and All Darkness Met (1980), the prequel couplet The Fire in His Hands (1984) and With Mercy towards None (1985), and the sequels Reap the East Wind (1987) and An Ill Fate Marshalling (1988), is mostly set in secondary world societies based on China and India. The Western reaches of the same world come to the fore in the series comprising The Black Company (1984), Shadows Linger (1984), The White Rose (1985), The Silver Spike (1989), Shadow Games (1989), Dreams of Steel (1990), Bleak Seasons (1996), She Is the Darkness (1997), and Water Sleeps (1999), which feature hard-bitten mercenary soldiers trashing the imaginary territories of chivalric romance. The Swordbearer (1982) is a reaction to Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories; The Tower of Fear and Sung in Blood (1990) are similarly inclined exercises in sword and sorcery. He began an extensive occult detective series with Sweet Silver Blues (1987), whose eighth volume is Angry Lead Skies (2002).

  COOK, HUGH (1956– ). British-born New Zealand writer. His major genre project is a series of humorous fantasies, The Chronicles of the Age of Darkness, comprising The Wizards and the Warriors (1986; aka Wizard War), The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (1987; in 2 vols. as The Questing Hero and The Hero’s Return), The Women and the Warlords (1987; aka The Oracle), The Walrus and the Warwolf (1988; aka Lords of the Sword), The Wicked and the Witless (1989), The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (1990), The Wazir and the Witch (1990), The Werewolf and the Wormlord (1991), The Worshippers and the Way (1992), and The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster (1992).

  COOK, RICK (1944– ). U.S. writer. His fantasies fall into two series. The one comprising Wizard’s Bane (1989), The Wizardry Compiled (1989), The Wizardry Cursed (1991), The Wizardry Consulted (1995), and The Wizardry Quested (1996) transports a computer expert into a secondary world where his skills prove to be applicable to the theory of magic. In the other, comprising Mall Purchase Night (1993), The Wiz Biz (1997), and Cursed and Consulted: The Continuing Adventures of a Boy and His Dog (2001), a security guard is caught up in a violent struggle to control a portal to Faerie.

  COOKE, CATHERINE (1963– ). U.S. writer whose relevant works are carefully feminized Celtic fantasies, organized into two trilogies. The first comprises Mask of the Wizard (1985), Veil of Shadow (1987), and

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  The Hidden Temple (1988), the second The Winged Assassin (1987), Realm of the Gods (1988), and The Crimson Goddess (1989).

  COOPER, LOUISE (1952– ). British writer. The Tarot fantasy The Book of Paradox (1973) was marketed for adults, but most of her subsequent works have been aimed at teenagers. They employ commodified formulas but a
re inventively various. Lord of No Time (1977), whose background is an eternal conflict between Order and Chaos, was subse-

  quently expanded as the Time Master trilogy, comprising The Initiate (1985), The Outcast (1986), and The Master (1987), which was then supplemented by the Chaos Gate trilogy, comprising The Deceiver (1991), The Pretender (1991), and The Avenger (1992). The Star Shadow trilogy, comprising Star Ascendant (1994), Eclipse (1994), and Moonset (1995), is a prequel. Daughter of Storms (1996), The Dark Caller (1997), and Keepers of Light (1998) are set in the same milieu.

  The Indigo sequence, comprising Nemesis (1988), Inferno (1989), Infanta (1989), Nocturne (1990), Troika (1991), Avatar (1991), Revenant (1992), and Aisling (1993), is a dark fantasy about a reluctant but duty-bound demon hunter. Her other dark fantasies include The King’s Demon (1996), whose amnesiac hero has a vampire/doppelgänger; the series comprising Firespell (1996, aka Heart of Fire), Blood Dance (1996, aka Heart of Stone), The Shrouded Mirror (1996, aka Heart of Glass), and The Hounds of Winter (1996, aka Heart of Ice); Sacrament of Night (1997); Our Lady of the Snow (1998), with a heroine who sets out to avenge a murdered goddess; Storm Ghost (1998); and Demon Crossing (2002).

  Cooper’s other young adult fantasies include The Thorn Key (1988); the theriomorphic fantasy The Sleep of Stone (1991); The Summer Witch (1999); the Mirror Mirror trilogy, comprising Breaking Through (1999), Running Free (2000), and Testing Limits (2001); Hunter’s Moon (2003); and Sea Horses (2003), which began a new series continued in The Talisman (2004). Her short fiction is sampled in The Spiral Garden (2000).

  COOPER, SUSAN (1935– ). British-born writer resident in the United States from 1963. She extrapolated the intrusive fantasy Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) into an elaborate sequence that gradually reveals itself to be an intricate Celtic fantasy richly infused with Arthurian elements; its young protagonists must aid an immortal Merlin as he is drawn into another battle in an eternal war between Light and Dark. The

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  continuation comprises The Dark Is Rising (1973), Greenwitch (1974), The Grey King (1975), and Silver on the Tree (1977).

  Seaward (1983) is a portal fantasy that lets its living protagonist into a peculiar afterlife. The Boggart (1993) and The Boggart and the Monster (1997) are contemporary fantasies, with an impish protagonist who feels out of place in Canada. In King of Shadows (1999), a timeslip enables a contemporary actor to perform with Shakespeare at the Globe.

  Green Boy (2002) is a hybrid/science fantasy with an ecological theme. Cooper’s work for younger children includes a recycled version of Tam Lin (1991).

  COOVER, ROBERT (1932– ). U.S. writer of literary fiction, whose excursions into sophisticated metafiction include the psychological/

  sports fantasy The Universal Baseball Association Inc. J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968) and the erotic fantasies “The Babysitter” (in Pricksongs and Descants, 1969) and Spanking the Maid (1982). The surreal novelette Aesop’s Forest (1986) was published back to back with Brian Swann’s The Plot of the Mice. Pinocchio in Venice (1991) is a heartfelt sequel to Collodi’s original in which the aging protagonist reverts to wood. In John’s Wife (1996), a spell is cast on a small town.

  Briar Rose (1997) is an ironically sentimental transfiguration. Ghost Town (1998) is a surreal western. The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (2002) features a clown-cum–porn star whose life in Cinecity is defined by his movies.

  COPPARD, A. E. (1878–1957). British writer. With the exception of his children’s fantasy Pink Furniture (1930), all his work was short fiction. His occasional fantasies are various and frequently enigmatic, the largest fraction being contained in later editions of Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (1921; exp. 1922); the title story is a sentimental fantasy.

  “Clorinda Walks in Heaven” is a bittersweet afterlife fantasy. “The Elixir of Youth” is a wish-fulfillment fantasy with an Irish setting that Coppard was to revisit in “The Gollan” and “Crotty Shrinkwin.”

  “Marching to Zion” is an allegorical/Christian fantasy. The bulk of his work in the genre is combined in Fearful Pleasures (1946; rev.

  1951).

  CORELLI, MARIE (1855?–1924). British writer, the most popular in the English language during the 1890s, in spite of the derision heaped upon her by contemporary reviewers. She was a dedicated lifestyle fantasist, transforming herself from mere Minnie Mackay (the adoptive and probably

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  natural daughter of poet Charles Mackay) into the psychically and artistically gifted character reflected in the narrator of her first occult fantasy, A Romance of Two Worlds (1886). The character, like the author, is unable to fulfill her potential until she achieves a crucial existential breakthrough, brought about in the novel by the Chaldean mystic Casimir Heliobas. Heliobas reappeared in Ardath, The Story of a Dead Self (1889), working miracles on behalf of a male protagonist similarly recruited to the company of the angels. The Soul of Lilith (1892) is a more orthodox occult fantasy.

  In The Sorrows of Satan (1895), the saintly novelist Mavis Clare is so indomitably incorruptible that even Satan falls hopelessly in love with her—an unsurpassable masterstroke of wish-fulfillment. Ziska, The Problem of a Wicked Soul (1897) is a verbose karmic romance. The Strange Visitation of Josiah McNason (1904) is a Dickensian Christmas book. The Young Diana; An Experiment of the Future (1918) is a romance of rejuvenation. The Secret Power (1921) retreads old ground.

  Corelli’s short fiction includes numerous fantasies, including a feverish account of The Devil’s Motor (1910) and items collected in Cameos (1896) and The Love of Long Ago, and Other Stories (1920).

  COVILLE, BRUCE (1950– ). U.S. writer, prolific in various genres of children’s fiction. His fantasies include the Magic Shop series, comprising The Monster’s Ring (1982; aka Russell Troy, Monster Boy rev.

  2002), Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (1991), Jennifer Murdley’s Toad (1992), Goblins in the Castle (1992), The Skull of Truth (1997; aka Charlie Eggleston’s Talking Skull), and Juliet Dove, The Queen of Love (2003). Other series include the Unicorn Chronicles, comprising Into the Land of Unicorns (1994) and Song of the Wanderer (1999), and the Me and Moongobble series, begun with The Weeping Werewolf (2004) and The Evil Elves (2004), which features educational trips to the Forest of Night in company with an eccentric wizard. Coville also recycled Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1994) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1996) for young readers. The Prince of Butterflies (2002) is an ecological parable. The Monsters of Morely Manor (2001) is a wide-ranging hybrid. Coville has edited numerous anthologies, the most relevant being A Glory of Unicorns (1998) and Half-Human (2001).

  CRAIK, MRS. (1826–1887). Married name of British writer Dinah Maria Mulock, most of whose books were initially issued anonymously. She made several notable contributions to the burgeoning field of children’s literature, including Alice Learmont: A Fairy Tale (1852), based in

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  Scottish folklore; the anthology The Fairy Book (1863); and the moralistic fantasies Little Sunshine’s Holiday (1871), The Adventures of a Brownie (1872), and The Little Lame Prince (1875). Avillion and Other Tales (1853) includes several fantasies for adults, including the novellas

  “Avillion,” a visionary fantasy about the Isles of the Blest, and “The Self-Seer,” whose protagonists trade viewpoints with their spirit doppelgängers; both novellas were reprinted in Romantic Tales (1859).

  CRAWFORD, F. MARION (1854–1909). Italian-born U.S. writer active in many genres, including horror fiction (refer to HDHL). Mr Isaacs (1882) is a marginal theosophical fantasy. The Witch of Prague (1891) is a more wholehearted occult fantasy featuring a femme fatale. With the Immortals (1888) features an inventor who finds a means of communicating with the dead. Khaled (1891) is an Arabian fantasy. Cecilia: A Story of Modern Rome (1902) is a wish-fulfillment fantasy spiced with karmic romance.

  CRAWSHAY-WILLIAMS, ELIOT (1879–1962). British military man

  and writer. He followed up the drama
s collected in Five Grand Guignol Plays (1924) and More Grand Guignol Plays (1927) with various novels, including the timeslip fantasies Night in No Time (1946), The Wolf from the West: Tracing the Glorious Tragedy of Glyndwr (1947), and the title story of The Man Who Met Himself and Other Stories (1947). The last-named also contains three visionary fantasies. Heaven Takes a Hand (1949) involves the Devil and Socrates in an inquiry as to whether humankind is still worth saving after Hiroshima.

  CRESSWELL, HELEN (1934– ). British writer, mostly for children.

  Her fantasies for younger children include the poetic When the Wind Blows (1966), with an allegorical quality that is subtly reproduced in The Night-Watchmen (1969), Up the Pier (1971), and the rite-of-passage story The Beachcombers (1972). The Bongleweed (1973), about an exotic plant with a fabulous nature invisible to adults, and the elegiac The Winter of the Birds (1975) are similarly inclined. The Secret World of Polly Flint (1982), Moondial (1987), and Stonestruck (1995) are timeslip fantasies in which children from the present must lend vital aid to counterparts in the past. The Return of the Psammead (1994) is a sequel to an E. Nesbit classic.

  CROSSLEY-HOLLAND, KEVIN (1941– ). British writer for children. He recycled many legends from chivalric romance and folktales, including

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  Havelok the Dane (1964), King Horn (1965), and The Green Children (1968). The Callow Pit Coffer (1969), The Pedlar of Swaffham (1971), and The Wildman (1976) deal enterprisingly with less familiar materials. His later work in this vein is mostly organized into a series of collections launched by The Dead Moon (1982) and extending to Enchantment: Fairy Tales, Ghost Stories and Tales of Wonder (2000), The Nightingale That Shrieked and Other Tales (2002), Why the Fish Laughed and Other Tales (2002), and Tales from the Old World (2003).