passed to participant clients.
Spiritualist seances became a significant form of confidence trickery, investigation into which provided an important boost to the development of private detective agencies, a significant sideline to the careers of stage magicians like Harry Houdini, and a core activity of the Society for Psychical Research, founded in England in 1882 (its investigators—including the physicists William Crookes and Oliver Lodge—
proved more gullible than their U.S. counterparts). The regular exposure of fraud did not prevent mediumship from becoming one of the most
popular modes of 20th-century lifestyle fantasy or a popular subject of credulous literary fantasy. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s (1844–1911) series comprising The Gates Ajar (1868), Beyond the Gates (1883), The Gates Between (1887), and Within the Gates (1901) were among the most popular pioneering examples of the subgenre. Its best sellers included Letters from Hell (tr. 1884, bylined “L.W.J.S.”), Mrs. Oliphant’s account of A Little Pilgrim (1882), and Camille Flammarion’s Urania (1889). U.S.
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mediums sometimes claimed to be channeling the posthumous works of writers—O. Henry and Frank Stockton were both credited with collections of this kind—but only confirmed that literary ability dies with the flesh.
Violet Tweedale’s The House of the Other World (1913) was well timed, in that the heavy losses of the early months of World War I greatly increased the appeal of spiritualism in Britain, launching a new boom—led by Elsa Barker’s Letters from a Living Dead Man (1914)—
that captured the interest and faith of numerous literateurs, most notably Rudyard Kipling, H. Rider Haggard, and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Once the U.S. joined the war, such series as Julian Hawthorne’s began appearing in the pulp magazines; the manifestation of ectoplasm and messages spelled out by planchettes on ouija boards became staples of popular fiction thereafter. Propagandistic intent tends to override the imaginative ambition of credulous spiritualist fantasy, often reducing its literary quality to insignificance, but examples that retain a measure of aesthetic interest include Doyle’s The Land of Mist and Aldous Huxley’s Time Must Have a Stop (1944). Notable cautionary tales include Stuart Cumberland’s The Vasty Deep (1890), Richard Harding Davis’s Vera the Medium (1908), and Ronald Knox’s Other Eyes than Ours (1926).
As the 20th century progressed, spiritualist mediums often became
comic figures, as in Alan Griffiths’ Spirits under Proof (1935; aka Authors in Paradise); a significant archetype was provided by Madame Ar-cati in Noel Coward’s play Blithe Spirit (1941), an example that continues to echo in such novels as Elisa de Carlo’s Strong Spirits (1994). The most sophisticated sector of modern spiritualist fantasy consists of historical fantasies that place the fad in its true cultural context; examples include Melissa Pritchard’s Selene of the Spirits (1998), Sarah Waters’s Affinity (2000), Kathleen Karr’s Playing with Fire (2002), and Richard Matheson’s Come Fygures, Come Shadows.
SPORTS FANTASY. Sporting success is one of the most common conjurations of daydreams, at least among males, and it is hardly surprising that it extends into wish-fulfillment fantasy in such stories as Dave Luckett’s The Best Batsman in the World, or that such fanciful desires are mocked in humorous works like Robert Marshall’s golfing comedy The Haunted Major (1902) and Maurice Richardson’s The Exploits of Engelbrecht (1950), in which the vertically challenged hero embarks upon a highly unlikely series of sporting enterprises. There is, however, a further dimension to sports fantasy, by virtue of the fact that a sport
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may symbolize a set of values—not merely “sportsmanship” but also
competitive commitment—and “national sports” thus become available for allegorical use in commentaries on the moral condition of a society.
The most abundant literature of the latter kind deals with baseball in America, key examples being W. P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, Michael Bishop’s Brittle Innings, Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association Inc. J. Henry Waugh, Prop., Nancy Willard’s Things Invisible to See, Michael Chabon’s Summerland, and Darryl Brock’s timeslip fantasies If I Never Get Back (1990) and Two in the Field (2002). This too lends itself to parody, in such works as Douglass Wallop’s The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (1954, aka Damn Yankees)—a humorous Faustian fantasy that became a Broadway musical and that makes an interesting contrast with Harold Hobson’s use of cricket in The Devil in Woodford Wells (1946).
Imaginary sports, participation in which requires magical skills, occasionally feature in fantasy fiction; the most notable is J. K. Rowling’s quidditch.
SPRINGER, NANCY (1948– ). U.S. writer. The Book of Suns (1977) was revised as the second element of the commodified series of sentimental fantasy comprising The White Hart (1979), The Silver Sun (1980), The Sable Moon (1981), The Black Beast (1982), The Golden Swan (1983), Wings of Flame (1985), and Chains of Gold (1986). The Sea King trilogy, comprising Madbond (1987), Mindbond (1987), and God-bond (1988), is similarly inclined. The contemporary fantasy The Hex Witch of Seldom (1988) brings similar material closer to home, as does the combative anti-religious fantasy Apocalypse (1989), which prepared the ground for two flamboyant exercises in literary satanism, Damnbanna (1992) and Metal Angel (1994).
Springer produced two children’s fantasies, Red Wizard (1990) and The Friendship Song (1992), before achieving a further breakthrough in the exuberantly uninhibited psychological fantasy Larque on the Wing (1994), which confirmed her situation at the genre’s cutting edge. The Blind God Is Watching (1994) is a dark fantasy about a monstrous Frog Boy. Fair Peril (1996) is a contemporary fantasy in which a divorced writer’s daughter is seduced into Faerie after she refuses to oblige a frog prince. I Am Mordred (1998) is a revisionist Arthurian fantasy, to which I Am Morgan le Fay (2001) is a prequel. Sky Rider (1999) is an offbeat ghost story. In Plumage (2000), people are seen as birds with the aid of magic mirrors. Springer’s short fiction is sampled in Chance and
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Other Gestures of the Hand of Fate (1987) and Stardark Songs (1993).
She edited an anthology of fairy tales about frogs, Ribbiting Tales (2000).
STACKPOLE, MICHAEL A. (1957– ). U.S. game designer and writer.
The Dark Conspiracy trilogy, comprising A Gathering Evil (1991), Evil Ascending (1991), and Evil Triumphant (1992), is dark fantasy. Once a Hero (1994), A Hero Born (1997), An Enemy Reborn (1998, with William F. Wu), and Eyes of Silver (1998) are unorthodox heroic fantasies. Talion: Revenant (1998) is a fantasy of frustrated revenge. The Dark Glory War (2000) is a military fantasy, as is the DragonCrown War Cycle, comprising Fortress Draconis (2001), When Dragons Rage (2002), and The Grand Crusade (2003).
STARRETT, VINCENT (1886–1974). U.S. bibliophile and writer best known for homages to and pastiches of Sherlock Holmes. His enthusiasm for the work of Arthur Machen led to his publishing two samplers of Machen’s work. He was an early contributor to Weird Tales, some of his work in that vein being sampled in Coffins for Two (1924) and The Quick and the Dead (1965). In the episodic bibliophilic fantasy Seaports in the Moon: A Fantasia on Romantic Themes (1928), various literary figures obtain temporary custody of a draft from the fountain of youth but never manage to take advantage of it. More short fantasies are collected in The Escape of Alice and Other Fantasies (1995), volume 7 of
“The Vincent Starrett Memorial Library,” published by George Vander-burgh’s small press The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box.
STASHEFF, CHRISTOPHER (1944– ). U.S. writer. The planetary romance The Warlock in Spite of Himself (1969) launched a series of chimerical/science fantasies continued in King Kobold (1969, rev. as King Kobold Revived) and The Warlock Unlocked (1982), supplied with a prequel in Escape Velocity (1983) and further extended in The Warlock Enraged (1985), The Warlock Wandering (1986), The Warlock Is Missing (1986), The Warlock Heretical (1987), The Warlock’s Companion (1988), The Warlock Insane
(1989), The Warlock Rock (1990), Warlock and Son (1991), M’Lady Witch (1994), Quicksilver’s Knight (1995), and The Warlock’s Last Ride (2004). A spin-off series featuring the original protagonist’s son includes A Wizard in Bedlam (1979), A Wizard in Absentia (1993), A Wizard in Mind (1995), A Wizard in War (1995), A Wizard in Peace (1996), A Wizard in Chaos (1997), A Wizard in Midgard (1998), The Spell-Bound Scholar (1999), A Wizard and a
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Warlord (2000), A Wizard in the Way (2000), and A Wizard in a Feud (2001).
The Wizard in Rhyme series, comprising Her Majesty’s Wizard
(1986), The Oathbound Wizard (1993), The Witch Doctor (1994), The Secular Wizard (1994), My Son, the Wizard (1997), The Haunted Wizard (2000), The Crusading Wizard (2000), and The Feline Wizard (2000), is stamped from a very similar mold, as is the Star Stone couplet, comprising The Shaman (1995) and The Sage (1996). Stasheff assisted in the revival of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s Harold Shea series, coediting The Enchanter Reborn (1992) with de Camp and contributing Sir Harold and the Monkey King (separate publication 1993).
His short fiction is sampled in Mind Out of Time (2003).
STEPHENS, JAMES (1882–1950). Irish writer. His most successful novel, The Crock of Gold (1912), is definitive of a quintessentially Irish strand of humorous and sentimental Celtic fantasy, which Lord Dunsany occasionally tried to recapture. Deirdre (1923), the mosaic In the Land of Youth, and the collections Irish Fairy Tales (1920) and Etched in Moonlight (1928) deploy similar materials in a muted and increasingly earnest fashion.
STERLING, GEORGE (1869–1926). U.S. poet associated with the Californian circle of Ambrose Bierce, who arranged publication of Sterling’s extravagantly decadent poem “A Wine of Wizardry” (1907) in Cosmopolitan, where it caused a storm of controversy; many readers and critics loathed it, but it exerted a powerful influence on Clark Ashton Smith, inspired Fritz Leiber, and was reprinted by Lin Carter as a manifesto for modern fantasy literature. Sterling’s other major fantasy work is the long narrative poem “Duandon” (1911), which is included in the performance repertoire of contemporary California poet Donald Sidney-Fryer. Sterling’s collections include The Testimony of the Suns (1903), A Wine of Wizardry (1909), The House of Orchids (1911), and Beyond the Breakers (1914).
STERLING, JOHN (1806–1844). British writer, one of the most important pioneers of fantasy fiction in Britain. He was an early coproprietor of the Athenaeum, using its pages for such experimental works as the visionary fantasy “Zamor” (1828) and the Promethean fantasy “Cydon” (1829). He interpolated more fantasies in the text of the novel Arthur Coningsby (1833) and contributed a series called “Legendary Lore” to Blackwood’s, including “The Palace of Morgana” (1837),
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“Land and Sea” (1838) and the allegorical fairy tale “A Chronicle of England” (1840). The series concluded with the novel “The Onyx Ring”
(1838–39), an earnest philosophical fantasy in which the protagonist undergoes a series of identity exchanges in search of the secret of happiness; a revised text appeared in the collection Essays and Tales by John Sterling (2 vols., 1848), ed. Julius Charles Hare.
STEVENS, FRANCIS (1884–?). Pseudonym of Gertrude Bennett, née Barrows, who wrote for the pulp magazines between 1916 and 1920 in order to support herself and her young children, giving it up as soon as her financial situation eased. The Nightmare (1917; book 2003) is a conventional adventure fantasy—the lost-race novella Sunfire (1923; 1996) must also have been apprentice work—but The Citadel of Fear (1918; 1970) is a dramatic dark fantasy anticipating themes and methods subsequently employed by A. Merritt and H. P. Lovecraft. The Heads of Cerberus (1919; 1952) equips a hybrid/science fantasy with an exotic portal fantasy frame. Claimed (1920; 1966) is another dark fantasy.
The psychological fantasy Serapion (1920; 2003) employs the doppelgänger theme. The 1919 title story of The Elf-Trap: Complete Short Fiction (2003) is a notable sentimental fantasy.
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS (1850–1894). Scottish writer, author of the classic moralistic fantasy Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1888), which was equally important to the history of sf (refer to HDSF) and horror fiction (refer to HDHL). The work assembled in New Arabian Nights (2 vols., 1882) is baroque but not supernatural; his other dark moralistic fantasies, including the ironic angelic fantasy
“Markheim,” are mostly to be found in The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables (1887). “Will o’ the Mill” features a personification of Death, while the title story is a hallucinatory fantasy partly written in Scottish dialect. Island Nights’ Entertainments (1893) recycles the Baron de la Motte Fouqué’s “The Bottle Imp” for the Samoans, among whom he had taken up residence; “The Isle of Voices” is likewise set in the South Seas.
STEVERMER, CAROLINE (1955– ). U.S. writer whose historical mysteries are bylined “C. S. Stevermer.” The Serpent’s Egg (1988) is a historical fantasy set in 16th-century Europe. Sorcery & Cecilia (1988
with Patricia Wrede) is a Regency romance spiced with magic; The Grand Tour (2004 with Wrede) is a sequel. A College of Magics (1994) describes an early 20th-century education in magic, whose rewards are
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further exhibited in A Scholar of Magics (2004). When the King Comes Home (2000) is a polished immersive fantasy in which the secondary world has a Renaissance ambience.
STEWART, MARY (1916– ). British writer whose major contribution to fantasy is the biography of Merlin contained in The Crystal Cave (1970), The Hollow Hills (1973), and The Last Enchantment (1979). The Wicked Day (1983) is an appendix detailing Mordred’s rebellion, and The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995) a detour into one of Malory’s many backwaters. Her other works include the marginal Gothic fantasies Touch Not the Cat (1976), Thornyhold (1988), and Rose Cottage (1997).
Her children’s fiction includes The Little Broomstick (1971), featuring a school for witches; the offbeat astrological fantasy Ludo and the Star Horse (1974); and the timeslip fantasy A Walk in Wolf Wood (1980).
STEWART, PAUL (?– ). British writer for children. His fantasies include the timeslip fantasy The Weather Witch (1989) and the ecological parable Adam’s Ark (1990). With illustrator Chris Riddell, he produced the Edge Chronicles, comprising Beyond the Deepwoods (1998), Storm-chaser (1999), Midnight over Sanctaphrax (2000), The Curse of the Gloamglozer (2001), The Last of the Sky Pirates (2002), and Vox (2003), collectively an extravagant Odyssean fantasy set on the rim of a flat secondary world. Cloud Wolf (2001) is a spin-off from the series. Riddell also collaborated on Muddle Earth (2003), in which a wizard summons a schoolboy to be a hero.
STEWART, SEAN (1965– ). Canadian writer. Nobody’s Son (1993) begins where conventional quest fantasies end, tracking the consequences of claiming the promised reward. Resurrection Man (1995) is an intrusive fantasy in which magical leakage initiated by the Holocaust transforms the post–World War II history of the United States; The Night Watch (1997) and Galveston (2000) are future-set sequels. Clouds End (1996) is an offbeat doppelgänger story. Mockingbird (1998) is a contemporary fantasy in which social workers seize a witch’s child. Perfect Circle (2004) is a sophisticated ghost story.
STOCKTON, FRANK R. (1834–1902). U.S. writer. Stockton wrote many children’s fantasies, beginning with those in Ting-a-Ling (1870, aka Ting-a-Ling Tales), which features the novella “The Magical Music.” Many of his stories have a surreal edge that adds adult interest to some of the items in The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales
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(1887)—notably “The Griffin and the Minor Canon,” in which a cler-
gyman befriends an unfortunate monster—and The Clocks of Rondaine and Other Stories (1892), notably The Great Show in Kobol-Land (separate pub. 1891). The later collections Fanciful Tales (1894) and The Queen’s Museum and Other Fanciful Tales (1906) were mostly composed of reprints.
Stockton helped pioneer the humorous ghost story in the
United States, in such items as “The Transferred Ghost” and “The Spectral Mortgage” in The Lady, or the Tiger? and Other Stories (1884) and others in Afield and Afloat (1900), preparing the ground for such writers as John Kendrick Bangs. His other adult fantasies include the title novella of Amos Kilbright: His Adscititious Experiences, with Other Stories (1888), “A Borrowed Month” in The Christmas Wreck and Other Stories (1886, aka A Borrowed Month and Other Stories), “The Philosophy of Relative Existences” in The Watchmaker’s Wife and Other Stories (1893, aka The Shadrach and Other Stories), and various items in A Story-Teller’s Pack (1897). The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander (1898) is a facetious fantasy of immortality. The Novels and Stories of Frank R. Stockton (23 vols. 1899–1904) is definitive.
STODDARD, JAMES (1955– ). U.S. writer and musician, originally
“Jerry” Stoddard, whose early short fiction was bylined “James Turpin.”
In The High House (1998), a child loses the keys to a mystical dwelling that controls the balance of the universe and has doors to many worlds.
In the sequel, The False House (1999), a rival establishes himself therein and a crucial contest begins.
STOKER, BRAM (1847–1912). Irish writer best known for the classic horror novel Dracula (refer to HDHL), a pivotal text in the tradition of modern vampire fiction. His earliest publications, including “The Crystal Cup” (1872), were also horrific, as were his later short stories; some of the fairy tales collected in Under the Sunset (1882) also have a sinister edge. He could not repeat the success of Dracula, although The Jewel of Seven Stars (1907) attempted something similar with a mummy as the alien threat and The Lair of the White Worm (1911; restored text 1986) employed a femme fatale in a similar capacity. The Mystery of the Sea is an ambiguous occult fantasy.
STORR, CATHERINE (1913–2001). British psychiatrist and writer for children; her husband, Anthony Storr, also a psychiatrist, wrote
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an influential analysis of The Dynamics of Creation (1972). Her psychiatric interests inform much of her work, including Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf (1955) and The Adventures of Polly and the Wolf (1957), in which the Big Bad Wolf of fairy tales fails to adapt to 20th-century London, and the classic hallucinatory fantasy Marianne Dreams (1958; rev. 1964; aka The Magic Drawing Pencil). Her work for younger readers includes many recycled folktales and Bible stories, as well as such consolatory fantasies as Finn’s Animal (1994).
The A to Z of Fantasy Literature Page 60