The A to Z of Fantasy Literature

by Stableford, Brian M.

  SERIES. Sequels and series are of particular importance in fantasy, because the extrapolation of existing stories is an elementary form of story generation in oral culture, which was carried over into various kinds of fantasy literature based in myth, legend, and folklore. Homer’s Odyssey is a sequel to the Iliad, and much Greek drama carried forward

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  the stories of heroes who fought at Troy. It is not entirely clear why early tragedies were grouped into trilogies, but Aristotle’s Poetics pointed out that all stories have a natural tripartite pattern, in which the introduction, body and conclusion of the story have distinct functions to fulfil—an item of wisdom that remains fundamental to modern movie scriptwriting theory.

  The natural tendency of stories set in the secondary world of “once upon a time” to extend into series usually gives rise to “expansive” series in which the careers of characters undergo profound changes. Commercial genres, by contrast, tend to be organized around endlessly repeatable narrative formulas, which give rise to “segmental” series like those typical of crime fiction, in which crime fighters are confronted with a potentially infinite sequence of antagonists to be outwitted, out-fought, and ultimately defeated. Although the basic formula of commodified fantasy is, in a sense, the extrapolation of the crime fiction formula to its logical extreme, in which the antagonist is the embodi-ment of a pure evil that threatens an entire world, it is not conducive to repetition; this is one of the reasons why the most common “unit” of genre fantasy is the multivolume “miniseries.” When genre fantasy first took root in the commercial arena such miniseries were usually trilogies, but later recruits became more inclined to plan on a larger scale—J. K.

  Rowling’s extrapolation of Harry Potter’s career over seven volumes is a conspicuous example. Unplanned series like C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series typically struggle to maintain forward momentum and often resort to the incorporation of prequels.

  The fantasy subgenres most conducive to segmental serialization are heroic fantasies that employ relatively modest antagonists—especially sword and sorcery adventures modeled on Robert E. Howard’s Conan series—and humorous fantasies of a chimerical stripe. Fantasized detective stories mimic the crime fiction formula most slavishly but are marginalized in consequence. All these kinds of series are, however, subject to the pressure of melodramatic inflation, which continually pushes them toward some sort of confrontation with an ultimate adversary, and they lack the grandiosity that is a key element of the appeal of immersive fantasy. The evolution of commodified epic fantasy has necessitated a considerable reduction in the power typically attributed to dark lords and more reliance on the strategy employed in naturalistic

  “family sagas,” which repeat cycles of individual maturation and personal success by moving through the generations of a dynasty—a strat-

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  egy that is more easily workable in fantasy worlds, where the pace of social change tends to be glacial, than it is in historical fiction. The close association between genre fantasy and genre science fiction has, however, encouraged some writers of series fantasy—notably Terry

  Pratchett—to incorporate the spirit of sf’s “expansive” series wholeheartedly into their work, resulting in a steady increase in secondary worlds that become more progressive as they become more elaborate.

  SEUSS, DR. (1904–1991). Pseudonym of U.S. writer Theodore Seuss Geisel, whose verses for children imported something of the nonsense tradition of Edward Lear but leavened it with strong does of sentimentality and moralizing. To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937) is a straightforward championship of childhood imagination, but The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1938), The King’s Stilts (1939), and Horton Hatches the Egg (1940) began a trend of increasing surrealism that climaxed in such works as Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1949), Horton Hears a Who (1954), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957), and the books starring The Cat in the Hat (1957), in which a careful restriction of vocabulary was taken to extremes in Green Eggs and Ham (1960). Dr Seuss’s Sleep Book (1962) is his most wide-ranging fantasy project. Elements of political satire crept into some of his later books, including The Lorax (1971) and The Butter Battle Book (1984).

  SEVERANCE, CAROL (1944– ). U.S. writer based in Hawaii. Hawaiian legends form the background to the trilogy comprising Demon Drums (1992), Storm Caller (1993), and Sorcerous Sea (1993), in which a retired warrior is obliged to go back into action against exotic forces until his children can take up the cause.

  SF. See SCIENCE FICTION.

  SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM (1564–1616). English poet and playwright.

  His early work includes a narrative poem recycling Ovid’s story of Venus and Adonis (1593). The status won for him by his plays as the single most influential figure in the history of English literature lent tremendous impetus to the imagery of his two classic fantasy plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c1595) and The Tempest (c1611), whose derivatives form the core of the subgenre of Shakespearean fantasy. The former, which foregrounds Puck as a commentator on the transactions of Oberon and Titania’s fairy court, had a uniquely powerful influence on literary

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  treatments of fairy mythology, while the latter’s central quartet of characters—the retired enchanter Prospero, his daughter Miranda, the captive sprite Ariel, and the monstrous Caliban—have become literary archetypes spawning countless derivative images.

  The witches featured in Macbeth (1606) may have been added by other hands, but that has not diminished their influence as literary models. The ghost in Hamlet (c1600) is of a kind that was already stereotyped, but the manner of its deployment helped to encourage the development of psychological fantasy. Other ready-made images that Shakespeare recycled include the elements of the classical fantasy Troilus and Cressida (c1602). Characters from non-supernatural plays who number among his most memorable creations—notably Falstaff,

  Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear and his Fool—also serve as archetypes for dozens of characters in fantasy literature.

  Notable examples of Shakespearean fantasy include Poul Ander-

  son’s A Midsummer Tempest, Tanith Lee’s Sung in Shadow, Tad Williams’s Caliban’s Hour, Rebecca Reisert’s The Third Witch (2001) and Ophelia’s Revenge (2003), Sophie Masson’s The Tempestuous Voyage of Hopewell Shakespeare, the title story of Robert Devereux’s Caliban and Other Tales (2002), Garry Kilworth’s A Midsummer’s Nightmare, and Deborah Wright’s The Rebel Fairy (2002). In Sarah A. Hoyt’s Ill Met by Moonlight (2001), a Dark Lady takes young Will into Faerie; All Night Awake (2002) and Any Man So Daring (2003) are sequels.

  Showcase anthologies include Shakespeare Stories (1982), ed. Giles Gordon, and Weird Tales from Shakespeare (1994), ed. Katharine Kerr and Martin H. Greenberg.

  SHARED WORLD. A setting used by a number of different writers, usually presented in an anthology or series. Collections of myths or folktales are shared-world projects of a sort, and that is one reason why so many writers felt free to add to them. Late 19th-century Christmas annuals sometimes featured stories with a common setting by different hands, and H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos established a significant precedent in the pulp magazines; the extension by other hands of such projects as L. Frank Baum’s Oz series and Robert E. Howard’s Conan series also provided key exemplars.

  Shared-world enterprises became firmly established in the market

  strategy of genre fantasy following the success of the Thieves’ World series developed by Lynn Abbey and Robert L. Asprin, whose many imitations and variants include Emma Bull and Will Shetterly’s Liavek

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  series, C. J. Cherryh and Janet E. Morris’s Hell series, and George R.

  R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. Such series are, by necessity, segmental and tend to exhaust their potential relatively quickly. All TV and game/tie-in fiction is, in effect, shared-world fiction; like shared worlds spun off from series created by a fa
mous author, such works are usually produced on the “sharecropping” principle by which the originator retains the intellectual property rights and keeps a considerable share of the books’ earnings.

  SHEA, MICHAEL (1946– ). U.S. writer. The picaresque fantasy A Quest for Simbilis (1974) borrows its central character and far-futuristic scenario from Jack Vance, but Shea substituted his own anti-hero in the adventures assembled in Nifft the Lean (1982), two of which feature journeys into a remarkably phantasmagoric underworld; the series continued in The Mines of Behemoth (1997) and The A’rak (2000), the latter remaining on the surface to present a more conventional sword and sorcery story. The Color out of Time (1984) is a contemporary sequel to H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Color out of Space,” and much of Shea’s subsequent short work is horror fiction, but In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985) is another extravagantly decadent far-futuristic fantasy leading into a bizarre underworld.

  SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE (1792–1822). British poet who was central to the development of the English Romantic movement. Queen Mab, A Philosophical Poem (1813) employs fairy mythology to celebrate the penetrative power of the imagination. Many of his poems employ the imagery of classical mythology, notably Prometheus Unbound (1820), which transfigures the elements of Promethean fantasy into an exercise in disguised literary satanism. He wrote the preface for his wife Mary’s classic Gothic fantasy Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) and wrote two Gothic novels of his own, although St. Irvyne (1811) is the only one with a supernatural element.

  SHEPARD, LUCIUS (1947– ). U.S. writer whose works include sf (refer to HDSFL) and horror fiction. His major fantasy project is a trilogy of novellas comprising The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule (1984), The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter (1988), and The Father of Stones (1988), in which the immobile body of a gigantic dragon is carefully explored by its human neighbors. Most of his other relevant works are set in remote regions of the world where fantastic encounters catalyze subtle transformations of character; they include the title stories of The

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  Jaguar Hunter (1987) and The Ends of the Earth (1989), and the novella Kallimantan (1990). The vampire novel The Golden (1993) is set in a symbolic edifice several orders of magnitude larger than Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. Louisiana Breakdown (2002) is a subtle Faustian fantasy involving the small town of Grail. Colonel Rutherford’s Colt (2003) is a dark fantasy featuring the eponymous weapon. Two Trains Running (2004) collects items inspired by the urban legend of the secret society of Freight Train Riders of America.

  SHERMAN, DELIA (1951– ). Japanese-born U.S. writer and editor.

  Through a Brazen Mirror (1989) incorporates an ingenious feminist element into a recycled version of a traditional ballad. The Porcelain Dove (1993) is a historical fantasy set in 18th-century France; its sexual politics are similarly adventurous. Sherman wrote an “Introduction to Interstitial Arts” for Terri Windling’s Endicott Studio website and collaborated with fellow Endicott associate Ellen Kushner on The Fall of the Kings (2002).

  SHERMAN, JOSEPHA (?– ). U.S. writer. The Shining Falcon (1989) and The Horse of Flame (1990) are sentimental fantasies based in Eastern European folklore. Similar elements are deployed in the children’s fantasies Child of Faerie, Child of Earth (1992), Windleaf (1993), and Gleaming Bright (1994), where they are syncretically fused with elements of Celtic fantasy that are displayed in purer form in A Strange and Ancient Name (1993), King’s Son, Magic’s Son (1994), and the Prince of the Sidhe couplet, comprising The Shattered Oath (1995) and Forging the Runes (1996). Son of Darkness (1998) is a contemporary fantasy. Sherman has also contributed to several shared-world enterprises, written tie-ins, and compiled several anthologies, including A Sampler of Jewish-American Folklore (1992) and Rachel the Clever and Other Jewish Folktales (1993). Merlin’s Kin (1998) recycles stories of magicians.

  SHETTERLY, WILL (1955– ). U.S. writer and proprietor of the small press Steeldragon Press. He created the Liavek series of shared-world anthologies with his wife, Emma Bull, and contributed to a similar series devised by Terri Windling. Cats Have No Lord (1985) is an offbeat quest fantasy; its sequel, The Tangled Lands (1989), reveals that the scenario is a computer-generated fantasy world. Witchblood (1986) features a hidden community of witches. Dogland (1997) is a quasi-autobiographical historical fantasy.

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  SHIEL, M. P. (1865–1947). Montserrat-born British writer. He was the most conspicuous British exponent of decadent style, extravagantly displayed in the exotic detective stories collected in Prince Zaleski (1895) and the items in Shapes in the Fire (1896), including the Poesque “Xélucha” and “Vaila” (abr. as “The House of Sounds”), the fantasy of reincarnation “Tulsah,” and the erotic fantasy “Phorfor.”

  Most of his nonmimetic fiction is sf (refer to HDSFL), although there is a substantial element of experimental religious fantasy in a loosely knit futuristic trilogy comprising The Lord of the Sea (1901), The Purple Cloud (1901), and The Last Miracle (1906); the middle volume is an apocalyptic fantasy that transfigures the biblical stories of Adam and Job. The fantasies in The Pale Ape and Other Pulses (1911) tend toward horror fiction. This Above All (1933, aka Above All Else) is a Christian fantasy investigating the contemporary situations of individuals gifted with immortality by Jesus.

  SHINN, SHARON (1957– ). U.S. writer who also writes sf. The Shape-Changer’s Wife (1995) is a theriomorphic fantasy. The trilogy comprising Archangel (1996), Jovah’s Angel (1997), and The Alleluia File (1998) hybridizes sf and angelic fantasy; Angelica (2003) and Angel-Seeker (2004) continue the series. Summers at Castle Auburn (2001) is a paranormal romance; The Safe-Keeper’s Secret (2004) is similarly sentimental but not as stereotypical.

  SHORT FICTION. Because of the centrality of folktale derivatives—especially fairy tales—to the evolution of fantasy literature from the Renaissance to the 19th century, the histories of fantasy and the short story have been intimately and intricately entwined. The fantasy writers associated with the Romantic movements used French contes populaires and German märchen as their primary models, finding their synoptic format useful as a means of covering narrative ground economically, and the presence of an explicit or implicit teller invaluable as a vehicle of ex-pository explanation. Further variants of the conte—especially the conte

  cruel and the conte philosophique—were closely associated with fantasy from their inception.

  Some modern critics and writers—notably Angela Carter—have

  drawn a distinction between “tales” and “short stories,” reserving the latter term for naturalistic works that adapt the narrative methods of the novel to the depiction of thin “slices of life,” while claiming the former as the natural medium of modern fabulation. Even in the Romantic era,

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  however, the narrative techniques of märchen and naturalistic fiction were being fused in the German novelle, developed by Ludwig Tieck and Johann Musäus, and the French conte was soon supplemented by the nouvelle, although the distinction between the forms was never entirely clear and the English “novella” is usually taken as an indicator of intermediate length rather than a distinct form of narrative. At any rate, the novelle/nouvelle/novella has always had a particular appeal to writers of supernatural fiction, partly because it offers more scope than the conte/tale without taking on the full burden of naturalistic representation conventionally required by the novel.

  The spectrum of short fiction was further complicated by the development by Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire of “poems in prose,” which were hailed by J. K. Huysmans as the quintessential art form of decadent style. The further development of prose poetry gave rise to a tradition of brief, lyrical, and lapidary tales, to which early contributors included Richard Garnett, Rémy de Gourmont, Lady Dilke (author of The Shrine of Death [1886] and The Shrine of Love [1891]), and J. H. Pearce, author of Drolls from Shadowland (1893) and Tales of the Masque (189
4). Its ambience was carried forward into the works of Vernon Knowles, Frank Owen, and Donald Corley (1886–1955), author of The House of Lost Identity (1927) and The Haunted Jester (1931); it still echoes in such works as Jay Lake’s Greetings from Lake Wu (2003) and Green Grow the Rushes-Oh (2004) and Tim Pratt’s Little Gods (2003).

  SHWARTZ, SUSAN M. (1949– ). U.S. writer who also writes sf (refer to HDSFL). The trilogy comprising Byzantium’s Crown (1987), The Woman of Flowers (1987), and Queensblade (1988) is set in an alternative history in which the thriving eastern sector of the Roman Empire dominates the western sector in medieval times. Silk Roads and Shadows (1988) is an Oriental fantasy whose protagonists journey eastward from the historical Byzantium, which also features in Shards of Empire (1996) and Cross and Crescent (1997). Imperial Lady (1989

  with Andre Norton) is another muted Oriental fantasy; Shwartz also collaborated with Norton on Empire of the Eagle (1993), set in the pre-Christian Roman Empire, and edited the homage anthology Moon-

  singer’s Friends (1985). The Grail of Hearts (1992) features the Wandering Jew. Shwartz’s other anthologies include Hecate’s Cauldron (1982), two volumes of Arabesques (1988–89) featuring Arabian fantasies, and Sisters in Fantasy (1995).

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  SIEGEL, JAN (1955– ). British author born Amanda Askew, whose early works—mostly thrillers—appeared under her married name, Amanda

  Hemingway; they include the novella “The Alchemist” (1981). Prospero’s Children (1999) is an enterprising Atlantean fantasy; its sequel The Dragon-Charmer (2000) broadens its scope to embrace elements of afterlife fantasy and Shakespearean fantasy. Witches’ Honour (2002; aka The Witch Queen) takes a similarly syncretic approach to the hybridization of British, classical, and mythical materials. She reverted to the Hemingway byline in the Sangreal trilogy, launched with The Greenstone Grail (2004).