The A to Z of Fantasy Literature

by Stableford, Brian M.

  (1954) were reprinted as The Wall of Serpents (1960, aka The Enchanter Completed). The first two volumes were misleadingly reissued as The Compleat Enchanter in a 1975 omnibus, to which the third was added to make up The Intrepid Enchanter (1988, aka The Complete Compleat Enchanter); more items were subsequently added by de Camp and others. Pratt also collaborated with de Camp on The Land of Unreason (1941; exp. 1942), in which an American tourist in Britain is carried off as a changeling by drunken leprechauns; The Carnelian Cube (1948), which features a further series of alternative worlds; and the tall tales collected in Tales from Gavagan’s Bar (1953; exp. 1978).

  Pratt’s solo works include two earnest immersive fantasies that attempted to rescue that kind of work from the action-adventure slant it had taken on in the sword and sorcery fiction of Robert E. Howard

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  and his successors. The Well of the Unicorn (1948, initially bylined

  “George U. Fletcher”), which borrows its setting from Lord Dunsany, is a bildungsroman in which magic plays a marginal and largely symbolic role. The Blue Star (1952 in Witches Three, separate edition 1969) is even more realistic in its narrative method and political fantasy elements, but Pratt was forced to publish it himself and was persuaded that there was no point in making further attempts; he did not live to see the boom in heroic fantasy that brought his works back into print.

  PREHISTORIC FANTASY. Most literary accounts of prehistoric life attempt a naturalism that entitles them to be considered sf (refer to HDSFL), even if the means of their recovery involves a frame of visionary fantasy assisted by notions of “race memory” or reincarnation. Prehistoric fantasies in which humankind’s ancestors are credited with modest psychic powers are classifiable as a hybrid/science fantasy. There is, however, a significant residue of prehistoric fantasy that features working magic, most of which is extrapolated from Frazerian or theosophical scholarly fantasy; much sword and sorcery fiction is set in imaginary prehistorical periods, as are Atlantean fantasies and some biblical fantasies. An interesting subcategory consists of stories in which prehistoric events are juxtaposed or interwoven with much later events in order to display some kind of eternal recurrence; examples include Henri Barbusse’s Chains (1925), Gerald Bullett’s Marden Fee, and Alan Garner’s Red Shift. Fantasies that feature blithely imaginary prehistories include Norman Douglas’s In the Beginning and some of the items in Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics and T zero.

  PREQUEL. An addition to a series set before the first-published item.

  The supplementation of series with prequels is particularly important in immersive fantasy, not only because increasing the detail of secondary worlds often involves filling in their history but because stories set in secondary worlds often attain quasi-apocalyptic climaxes that restricts the scope for further development in the direction of the future.

  PRICE, E. HOFFMAN (1898–1988). U.S. writer best known for horror fiction (refer to HDHL), although much of the pulp magazine work sampled in Strange Gateways (1967) and Far Lands, Other Days (1975) has strong elements of Oriental fantasy and sincerely based theosophical fantasy. His association with H. P. Lovecraft’s circle—he collaborated with Lovecraft on “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”

  (1934)—is reflected in a decadent stylistic gloss that he reapplied to his

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  favorite themes in The Devil Wives of Li-Fong (1979) and The Jade Enchantress (1982), which also have elements of astrological fantasy.

  PRICE, SUSAN (1955– ). British writer of dark fantasies for young adults who made her debut with The Devil’s Piper (1973). The Ghost World trilogy comprising Ghost Drum (1987), Ghost Song (1992), and Ghost Dance (1993) features shamanistic magic. In Foiling the Dragon (1994), a poet is kidnapped on behalf of a dragon king. In the couplet comprising Elfgift (1995) and Elfking (1996), a half-breed heir triumphs over opposition but has to defend his position. The Sterkarm Handshake (1999) is a historical fantasy set in the 16th century in which borderers battle elves from the 21st century; A Sterkarm Kiss (2004) is a sequel.

  In The Bearwood Witch (2001), a girl with exotic ambitions teams up with a witch. The Wolf-Sisters (2001) and The Wolf ’s Footprint (2003) are historical theriomorphic fantasies. In The King’s Head (2002), a disembodied head found on a battlefield becomes a storyteller. Price’s short fiction is collected in Hauntings (1995), Nightcomers (1997), and Ghosts and Lies (1998).

  PRIESTLEY, J. B. (1894–1984). British writer. Many of the fantastic devices he used—including the timeslips he incorporated into his “time plays” Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937), and I Have Been Here Before (1937)—are on the margins of sf (refer to HDSFL), although Johnson over Jordan (1939) is an afterlife fantasy and An Inspector Calls (1945) is a straightforward moralistic fantasy.

  The novel Albert Comes Through (1933) is a satirical hallucinatory fantasy. The Thirty-first of June (1961) is a portal fantasy for children.

  The short stories collected in The Other Place (1953) are mostly fantasies.

  PRIMARY WORLD. A term derived as a logical consequence of the widespread use of the term secondary world to describe fantastic milieux. It is particularly relevant to portal fantasies, in which the story arc usually takes the protagonist from an ostensibly “real” world into a manifestly fantastic one and back again.

  PROMETHEAN FANTASY. In classical mythology, Prometheus (the name means “forethought”) was a Titan who might have been the pro-genitor of the human race, perhaps by molding the originals of the species out of clay. At any rate, he became the champion of humankind, persuading Zeus to accept partial animal sacrifices instead of whole

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  ones (leaving the meat to be eaten) and then stealing the fire of the gods for human use; as punishment, the gods chained him up and dispatched an eagle on a daily basis to rip out his constantly regenerated liver. The first story is reflected in Mary Shelley’s decision to call Victor Frankenstein “The Modern Prometheus,” but the theft of divine fire is more widely reflected in literature, and its metaphorical transfigurations constitute the exemplary core of the subgenre of Promethean fantasy, which is particularly significant in sf (refer to HDSFL). Percy Shelley appointed Prometheus as the hero of his pioneering exercise in disguised literary satanism Prometheus Unbound, and he is the central figure of John Sterling’s “Cydon,” Richard Garnett’s “The Twilight of the Gods,” and Karel Capek’s “The Punishment of Prometheus.” John Updike’s allegory The Centaur (1963) refers to his exotic tutelage. Other notable examples include Diana Wynne Jones’s The Homeward Bounders and Peter Verhelst’s Tonguecat (1999 in German; tr. 2003).

  PROPHECY. An account of future events rendered by an oracle or a divinely inspired individual. In religion, a prophecy functions as both promise and threat; it is a reassuring declaration that the obvious moral inequities of the present will one day be set right—usually by a rain of destruction from which only the righteous will be saved—and a warning to the effect that the wicked had better repent before the day arrives.

  The notion is paradoxical, in that its authority is tacitly based on a theory of inevitable destiny while its usefulness depends on the ability to act in such a way as to avoid disastrous outcomes; the fact that prophecies come true only if they are ignored is ironically observed in the legend of the Trojan princess Cassandra. A further complication is featured in the myth of Oedipus, whose father’s reaction to the prophecy that Oedipus would kill him sets off a chain of events leading to the

  prophecy’s fulfillment. The most reliable oracles—the one at Delphi being the best-known classical example—tend to cloak their utterances in such a way that their meaning is perceptible only after the fact, thus avoiding the possibility of negation while conserving a reputation for accuracy. Lifestyle fantasists with prophetic pretensions—most notably Nostradamus—tend to follow suit.

  Prophecies of various kinds play a leading role in fantasy. The

 
; prophetic reputation of actual dreams is recklessly overinflated, but literary dreams have a much better record. The same is true of literary oracles and all methods of divination; if workable magic is taken as the definitive feature of fantasy fiction, accurate divination is its first corollary.

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  The hand of fate is a powerful operator in most secondary worlds, working tirelessly to make sure that prophecies are fulfilled no matter what their recipients may do to avoid that fulfillment—although the attempts in question may be a significant generator of narrative suspense, and the manner of the final delivery may provide striking demonstrations of authorial ingenuity. Such narrative forms as the conte cruel thrive on the irony of prophecies fulfilled, although modern contes philosophiques often argue against the tyranny of fate and existentialist fantasies insist on the freedom of human choice, even within the most ferociously constrained circumstances.

  Subgenres in which prophecy is a central motif include astrological fantasies and such parallel endeavors as Tarot fantasies, and many apocalyptic fantasies. Notable examples including the vagaries of the Cassandra and Oedipus effects include John Buchan’s The Gap in the Curtain and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Firebrand.

  PSEUDONYM. A name adopted for the purpose of publication. Pseudonyms are of particular significance in fantasy literature; some of its authors—most notably Homer and Thomas Malory—are probably as

  imaginary as their products. Fantasy often requires the invention of hypothetical narrators such as François Rabelais’s Alcofrybas Nasier—

  who intrudes metafictionally into his own narrative—and Jonathan Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver. An element of imposture is necessary to such projects as the Gallandesque Tales of the Genii composed by an obscure English clergyman named James Ridley, who passed them off as translations by an ambassador to the Mogul Empire, Charles Morell.

  Horace Walpole used two layers of deception when he issued the moralistic/Gothic fantasy The Castle of Otranto as a translation by “William Marshal” of an Italian manuscript by “Onuphrio Muralto.”

  The practice of using pseudonyms has been greatly encouraged in

  modern times by pressure put on writers active in different commodified genres to use different names in order to avoid confusing reader expectations—thus Martin Millar writes fantasies as “Martin Scott,” Stephen R. Donaldson wrote mysteries as “Reed Stephens,” and Nora Roberts writes sf as J. D. Robb. Computerized stock control also leads bookstore chains like Barnes and Noble to order exactly as many copies of a

  writer’s latest book as the last actually sold, thus locking many bylines into a downward spiral that greatly encourages relabeling, after the fashion of Kate Elliott, Robin Hobb, and Michelle West.

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  PSYCHOLOGICAL FANTASY. Fantasy is a psychological phenome-

  non as well as a literary one, but fiction that deals with “fantasies” in the psychological sense is not usually considered part of fantasy literature—

  although there is an interesting marginal subset of texts focused on the politics of escapism. The point at which the ability to escape into private fantasy becomes supernaturalized is sometimes unclear, especially in accounts of fantasies produced by such mental aberrations as schizo-phrenia, paranoia, and multiple-personality disorder. Such subgenres as hallucinatory fantasy, delusional fantasy, and wish-fulfillment fantasy present numerous ambiguous cases. Wherever philosophical speculation and analysis begin to complicate or displace the horror aspects of such ambiguous texts, they tend toward the fantasy genre.

  Most philosophical and psychological models of the human mind

  tend to imagine it as fundamentally divided between “higher” powers of reason and “lower” impulses and appetites, the two being forever in conflict. A tendency to conceive of the “lower” elements as supernatural forces beyond conscious control, that the will is sometimes impotent to suppress, is one of the primary motivating forces of mythopoesis and hence of literary fantasizing; its effects can easily be seen in such subgenres as erotic fantasy and in the development of such motifs as the doppelgänger. Fantasies that consciously address or carefully allegorize questions of this sort lie at the core of the subgenre of psychological fantasy.

  The extrapolation of psychology into various schools of psycho-

  analysis is one of the most pervasive modern schools of scholarly fantasy. While the theories of Sigmund Freud feed the subgenre of erotic fantasy in such works as David H. Keller’s The Eternal Conflict, the ideas of Carl Jung have offered much more widespread inspiration, particularly the notion of a collective unconscious inhabited by “archetypes,” whose symptomatic images allegedly play a major role in shaping the motifs of myth, legend, folklore, dreams, and fantasy fiction.

  Jung’s list of archetypal images include the Mother, the Spirit, and the Trickster; folklorists, literary theorists, and anthropologists—notably Joseph Campbell—routinely place stereotypes like the Divine Child, the Unwilling Hero, the Wise Old Man, and the Enchanted Prince in this context.

  A straightforward dramatization of Jung’s ideas can be found in

  Keller’s “The Abyss,” but many modern writers of fantastic fiction use and modify Jungian schemes to organize and “explain” the patterns of

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  their fantastic devices; notable examples include Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood series and Charles De Lint’s The Wild Wood (1994).

  Other notable psychological fantasies include Nancy Springer’s Larque on the Wing, S. Andrew Swann’s God’s Dice (1997, in which a psychologist dreams of a fantasy world that anchors his various alternative selves), Helmut Krausser’s The Great Bagarozy (1997 in German; tr.

  1999), and Andrew Cartmell’s The Wise (1999).

  PULLMAN, PHILIP (1946– ). British writer. His Orphean fantasy Galatea (1978) was marketed for adults, but his subsequent work was redirected at the children’s market. Count Karlstein, or The Ride of the Demon Huntsman (1982) was the first of many to deploy elements of horror fiction. The Firework-Maker’s Daughter (1995) is an Oriental fantasy featuring an encounter with a goddess. Clockwork (1996) is a Faustian fantasy. He broke significant new ground in the best-selling series collectively known as His Dark Materials, launched with Northern Lights (1995, aka The Golden Compass), a striking immersive fantasy set in an alternative world where individuals’ souls are manifest as animal “daemons” whose shape fluctuates as their characters are formed in childhood but eventually settle into revealing stasis. The Subtle Knife (1997) places that world alongside ours in a multiverse where forces are gathering for a replay of the war described in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, while The Amber Spyglass (2000) extrapolates the trilogy into an exercise in literary satanism more wholehearted and melodramatic—though less explicit—than any previously launched into the adult market. Lyra’s Oxford (2003) is a spinoff novella. I Was a Rat! . . . or The Scarlet Slipper (1999) reexamines the story of Cinderella from an unorthodox angle.

  PYLE, HOWARD (1853–1911). U.S. illustrator and writer, most of whose work was for children, although A Modern Aladdin (1892) is an adult fantasy set in Paris. He recycled many traditional tales, including the series of Malory adaptations comprising The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903), The Story of the Champions of the Round Table (1905), The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions (1907), and The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur (1911). His original works include the collections The Wonder Clock (1887) and Twilight-Land (1894); the latter’s ostensible narrators include Faustus and Sindbad.

  Otto and the Silver Hand (1888) and Men of Iron (1994) are not fantasies but are of note because of their determined subversion of the illu-

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  sions of chivalric romance. The Garden behind the Moon (1895) is an allegorical/sentimental fantasy based in Pyle’s Swedenborgian beliefs.

  – Q –

  QUEST. A term that conflates two
obsolete meanings, one which refers to hunting, especially with dogs, and the other to a search for the truth (as in “inquest”). A quest thus becomes a search for a particular objective, whose attainment will involve some kind of revelation—a double meaning ideally suited to fantasy literature, where objects of search tend to be symbolic as well as material. Chrétien de Troyes’s grail is the cardinal exemplar; others include the well at the world’s end, the fountain of youth, fallen stars, and the philosopher’s stone. Because a quest is an intrinsically heroic enterprise, all quest fantasies are—or must eventually turn into—heroic fantasies, although not all heroic fantasies are quest fantasies.

  There is a sense in which quest fantasies proceed in the opposite direction to Odyssean fantasies, although the two subgenres are often fused—in the fashion reflected in the subtitle of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: or, There and Back Again—and heroic questors are required by Joseph Campbell’s monomythical formula to bring some token of their success home, even when they operate in immersive rather than portal fantasies.

  Quest fantasy lends itself readily to minimal plotting and is easily stretchable to enormous length. The rapid multiplication of commodified epic fantasies in which characters wander around hypothetical landscapes collecting magical objects prompted Nick Lowe to coin the term “plot coupons” for such items, by analogy with marketing enterprises in which consumers collect coupons until they have a set that is redeemable for some kind of “gift”—usually, in commodified fantasy, the salvation of the world. Examples of quest fantasy are very numerous; the most extreme include works by Paul Kearney, Paula Volsky’s The Luck of Relian Kru, and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (1988; tr.