Articles with the Tag M. John Harrison

Comment of the Day – Canonical Edition

fantasy
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M. John Harrison on building a new fantasy canon:

Lewis Hamilton would be my pick for the World Fantasy Award this year. A well crafted YA fiction, it’s packed full of thrills & spills: the story of how one talented boy’s aspirational dream turns into a nightmare and then back into a dream and then back into a nightmare again and then back into a dream again and then… It lacks the feelgood appeal of Obama! But I think, in the end, it’s more original. After all, Hamilton didn’t steal his shoutline from Bob the Builder, a UK TV series for very young children.

M. John Harrison recommends

fantasy
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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”’.