M. John Harrison recommends

Some good fantasy:

• The House on the Borderland, 1908, William Hope Hodgson
• The Wind in the Willows, 1908, Kenneth Grahame
• The Great Return, 1915, Arthur Machen
• From Ritual to Romance, 1920, Jessie L Weston
• Nosferatu, 1922, dir FW Murnau
• Mr Weston’s Good Wine, 1927, TF Powys
• War in Heaven, 1930, Charles Williams
• The Green Child, 1935, Herbert Read
• At the Mountains of Madness, 1936, HP Lovecraft
• At Swim-Two-Birds, 1939, Flann O’Brien
• Fantasia, 1940, dir Walt Disney
• The Journal of Albion Moonlight, 1941, Kenneth Patchen
• That Hideous Strength, 1945, CS Lewis
• The Martian Chronicles, 1950, Ray Bradbury
• Mazirian the Magician, 1950, Jack Vance
• E Pluribus Unicorn, 1953, Theodore Sturgeon
• V, 1956, Thomas Pynchon
• The Incredible Shrinking Man, 1957, dir Jack Arnold
• The Vodi, 1959, John Braine
• The Alexandria Quartet, 1957-1960, Lawrence Durrell
• A Fine & Private Place, 1960, Peter Beagle
• The Stealer of Souls, 1963, Michael Moorcock
• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, 1963, Joan Aiken
• I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, 1964, Joanne Greenberg
• The Magus, 1966, John Fowles
• All Along the Watchtower, 1967, Bob Dylan
• Mooncranker’s Gift, 1973, Barry Unsworth
• The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, 1974, dir Werner Herzog
• Diamond Dogs, 1974, David Bowie
• Ritual Animal Disguise, 1977, EC Cawte
• Stalker, 1979, dir Andrei Tarkovsky
• The Bloody Chamber, 1979, Angela Carter
• The Fall of the House of Usher, 1981, dir Jan Svankmajer
• Mythago Wood, 1984, Robert Holdstock
• Halo Jones, 1984, Alan Moore & Ian Gibson
• Rain Dogs, 1985, Tom Waits
• Blue Velvet, 1986, dir David Lynch
• The Mortmere Stories, 1994, Edward Upward & Christopher Isherwood
• Jumping Joan, 1994, dir Petra Freeman
• Institute Benjamenta, 1995, dir The Brothers Quay
• The Voice of the Fire, 1996, Alan Moore
• Lost Highway, 1997, dir David Lynch
• Simon Magus, 1999, dir Ben Hopkins
• The Dream Archipelago, 1999, Christopher Priest
• Under the Skin, 2000, Michel Faber
• Ratchet & Clank, 2002, Insomniac Games
• The Carpet Makers, 2006, Andreas Eschbach
• Peter & the Wolf, 2006, dir Suzie Templetonv
• The Night Buffalo, 2007, Guillermo Arriaga
• Night Work, 2008, Thomas Glavinic

A great list and the best thing is that despite its variety and the hodgepodge of media represented here (books, comics, movies, even videogames) this still looks like a coherent whole, a list created from a (sub?)conscious aesthetic. If I could spot a theme here it’s of fantasy not as a creator of secondary worlds, independent of the real world, but of fantasy as a creative force playing with our own perceptions of reality. It’s also interesting to spot the omissions, partially deliberate as Harrison wanted to avoid ‘both the Tolkien-boomers and their Dark Other, the Peake “tradition”’.