fantasy – Page 19 – Wis[s]e Words

M. John Harrison recommends

Published on April 15, 20092 Comments

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”’.

McAuley on the essential fortyfour fantasy novels

Published on April 10, 2009

As a sequel to his list of fortyeight essential science fiction titles, Paul McAuley has now revealed a similar list of fortyfour essential fantasy and horror titles and he’s asking for help to bring the list up to fifty. Like the other list, it is to be used in teaching a creative writing class or something like that and there’s a not quite arbitrary cutoff year of 1984. Bolded are the ones I read, struck through the ones I don’t think belong. Notice by the way that both lists start with the same book.

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus MARY SHELLEY 1818
Tales of Mystery and Imagination EDGAR ALLAN POE 1838
A Christmas Carol CHARLES DICKENS 1843
Jane Eyre CHARLOTTE BRONTE 1847
The Hunting of the Snark LEWIS CARROLL 1876
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ROBERT LOUIS STEPHENSON 1886
The Well At The World’s End WILLIAM MORRIS 1896
Dracula BRAM STOKER 1897
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary MR JAMES 1904
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things LAFCADIO HEARN 1904
The Wind in the Willows KENNETH GRAHAME 1908
Jurgen JAMES BRANCH CABELL 1919
A Voyage to Arcturus DAVID LINDSAY 1920
The King of Elfland’s Daughter LORD DUNSANY 1924
The Trial FRANZ KAFKA 1925
Lud-in-the-Mist HOPE MIRRLEES 1926
Orlando VIRGINIA WOOLF 1928
~~The Big Sleep~~ RAYMOND CHANDLER 1939
The Outsider and Others HP LOVECRAFT 1939
Gormenghast MERVYN PEAKE 1946
Night’s Black Agents FRITZ LEIBER JR 1947
The Sword of Rhiannon LEIGH BRACKETT 1953
Conan the Barbarian ROBERT E HOWARD collected 1954
The Lord of the Rings JRR TOLKEIN 1954-5
The Once and Future King TH WHITE 1958
The Haunting of Hill House SHIRLEY JACKSON 1959
The Wierdstone of Brinsingamen ALAN GARNER 1960
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase JOAN AIKEN 1962
Something Wicked This Way Comes RAY BRADBURY 1963
The Book of Imaginary Beings JORGE LUIS BORGES 1967
Ice ANA CAVAN 1967
One Hundred Years of Solitude GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ 1967
Earthsea URSULA LE GUIN 1968-1972
Jirel of Joiry CL MOORE collected 1969
Grendel JOHN GARDNER 1971
The Pastel City M JOHN HARRISON 1971
Carrie STEPHEN KING 1974
Peace GENE WOLFE 1975
Gloriana, or the Unfulfill’d Queen MICHAEL MOORCOCK 1978
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories ANGELA CARTER 1979
Little, Big JOHN CROWLEY 1981
The Anubis Gates TIM POWERS 1983
The Colour of Magic TERRY PRATCHETT 1983
Mythago Wood ROBERT HOLDSTOCK 1984

Like his science fiction list, this is interesting as it both shows a fairly consistent take on fantasy and horror, consistent with the earlier list, as well as some strong clues to his own influences. There’s a lot of pre-Tolkien British fantasy/weird fiction on the list, quite a few recognised literay classics as well as a fair smattering of intelligent genry fantasy, again mostly pre-Tolkien, and finally the sort of fantasy equivalent to New Wave science fiction like Moorcock’s Gloriana.

It’s cutoff date means it misses a fair few important writers I would’ve put on my list (Glen Cook, Steve Brust, Mary Gentle, Steve Erikson, George R. R. Martin), as does its bias against genre fantasy (Stephen Donaldson for one). The one writer that really jumps out at me however, that fits the mood of the list is Avram Davidson, whose collection Or All the Seas with Oysters should be on it, as it’s an excellent collection by a master of the American fantasy tradition at the peak of his powers.

(The reason I struck out The Big Sleep is not that it’s a bad book, but it’s neither fantasy nor horror in my opinion.)

Cry of the Newborn — James Barclay

Published on January 4, 2009

Cover of Cry of the Newborn

Cry of the Newborn
James Barclay
819 pages
published in 2005

James Barclay is not a writer I had heard of before I got this book out of the library. The backcover blurb sounded interesting and the frontcover sported a quote by Steven Erikson, one of my favourite fantasy writers, so while the first few pages I sampled were a bit dull I thought I’d take a chance. The library also had the sequel, but I didn’t put that one up as this was big enough already; I could always get it next time. But I don’t think I will. Erikson’s blurb said that Cry of the Newborn was “a most extraordinary and impressively ambitious novel”, but in reality it was just a bog standard epic fantasy novel. Not a bad novel by any standards, competently written certainly, but nothing special.

[…]

The second objection is more fundamental. The world Barclay has created is presented as if the Concord is a force for good, described in terms which argue that the Estorian hunger for empire is not driven by base motives, but out of a noble desire to create order and stability. Trouble is, I don’t buy it. Looking at it objectively, the Concord is just not that nice, happily waging wars of conquest only to then suck the conquered countries dry for further conquest, not to mention the enrichment of the Estonian elite. Sure, by author fiat there’s little of the cruelity on display practised by real world empires like the Roman or British Empire and it’s even fairly gender neutral, with the current ruler of the Concord being a woman, and with various viewpoint characters being female soldiers and officers, but this is just window dressing. I just could not see the Concord as the good guys, or help root for the supposed baddies, who after all only wanted to live in peace in their own country. Fantasy is a somewhat conservative, some would even say reactionary genre and I can overlook some of the more …odious… assumptions in a given novel if the story is right, but not this time.

Deadhouse Gates – Steven Erikson

Published on March 29, 2008

Cover of Deadhouse Gates

Deadhouse Gates
Steven Erikson
941 pages
published in 2000

Deadhouse Gates is the second book in Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen epic fantasy series of ten projected volumes. Whereas the previous volume, Gardens of the Moon had a severe case of everything but the kitchen sink plotting, this is much more focussed. Of course, it’s still a 900+ pages epic fantasy brick with several interlocking storylines, not all of which are wrapped up in this installment. You have to expect a certain amount of complexity.

This second book of the Malazan cycle takes place on a completely different continent from the first, with a largely new cast of characters, some of which are however related to the people we got to know in Gardens of the Moon. The central story revolves around a religious revolts on the subcontinent of the Seven Cities, one of the oldest conquests of the Malazan empire. For decades there has been a prophecy doing the rounds about the return of the Whirlwind, which would cleanse the Seven Cities and drive the Malazan out of the continent. Now it has started and most of the Seven Cities, apart from the capital of Aren have fallen.

Vellum – Hal Duncan

Published on March 24, 2008

Cover of Vellum

Vellum
Hal Duncan
501 pages
published in 2005

It’s rare that you get to read a book about which you can genuinely say that you’ll either love it or hate it. Usually this phrase is just hype, an attempt to make a book seem more controversial than it really is. Most books just bimble along without evoking either great hatred or great love in their readers. Vellum however is not such a book. It is genuinely a book you’ll love or loathe becauses, depending on your feelings, it’s either an incredibly stylish tour de force remaking of the fantasy novel, or self indulgent bloated nonsense, with glitzy prose masking a story devoid of any meaning. Myself, I can find some sympathy for both readings.

Hal Duncan is a new author; Vellum his first published novel. He seems to fit in loosely with that generation of fantasy writers that includes China Miéville, Justina Robson, Jeff VanderMeer and Susanna Clarke. I must admit he only appeared on my radar last year, when his
name cropped up on various science fiction blogs, which is why when I saw this book in the library I took a gamble on it. A gamble that paid off, fortunately. Vellum is an ambitious book, both in the story it tells as in how it tells it, that almost manages to fulfill its ambitions.