Edward James

The Cambridge companion to fantasy literature

Fantasy is a creation of the Enlightenment and the recognition that excitement and wonder can be found in imagining impossible things. From the ghost stories of the Gothic to the zombies and vampires of twenty-first-century popular literature, from Mrs Radcliffe to Ms Rowling, the fantastic has been popular with readers. Since Tolkien and his many imitators, however, it has become a major publishing phenomenon. In this volume, critics and authors of fantasy look at the history of fantasy since the Enlightenment, introduce readers to some of the different codes for the reading and understanding of fantasy and examine some of the many varieties and subgenres of fantasy; from magical realism at the more literary end of the genre, to paranormal romance at the more popular end. The book is edited by the same pair who edited The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (winner of a Hugo Award in 2005).

Science fiction from 1980 to the present

It is, to begin with, a problem in perception. The nature of sf during the last two decades of the twentieth century can be seen as a classic figure-ground puzzle. One angle of perspective on the era gives us a vision of the triumph of sf as a genre and as a series of outstanding texts which figured to our gaze the significant futures that, during those years, began to come to pass. But under a second angle of perspective, the high profile of sf as a shaping vision becomes indecipherable from the world during these years: in this perspective, sf gradually burned through the categories that gave it the defining potency of genre, and became fatally indistinguishable from the world it attempted to adumbrate, to signify: which is a way of saying, to differ from. Both perspectives, after the nature of figure-ground puzzles, co-exist. This chapter can be understood to adhere to both perspectives. Much happened in the two decades between 1980 and 2000. The sf readership broadened and diffused; no longer could it be claimed (a claim only made in any case with any plausibility about some forms of American sf before 1980) that sf was primarily read, or could be profitably written for, adolescent males. Written sf was increasingly presented in the form of books, while magazines declined. Written sf itself lost its unquestioned status as the default form of the genre; indeed, many consumers of sf ideas and iconography now accessed that material solely through film, television and computer gaming, without in fact actually reading sf at all.

Marxist theory and science fiction

Marxism, science fiction and utopia Marxist theory has played an important role in sf criticism, especially in the last third of the past century. Since the 1960s, many of the most sophisticated studies of sf have been either explicitly Marxist in orientation or influenced by Marxist concepts adopted by feminism, race-criticism, queer theory and cultural studies. Although relatively few critics and writers in the genre have been avowed adherents of Marxism, sf and the closely related genre of utopian fiction have deep affinities with Marxist thought in particular, and socialist thought in general. In its simplest terms, sf and utopian fiction have been concerned with imagining progressive alternatives to the status quo, often implying critiques of contemporary conditions or possible future outcomes of current social trends. Science fiction, in particular, imagines change in terms of the whole human species, and these changes are often the results of scientific discoveries and inventions that are applied by human beings to their own social evolution. These are also the concerns of the Marxist utopian and social imagination.

Tolkien, Lewis and the explosion of genre fantasy

J. R. R. Tolkien said that the phrase ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit’ came to his unconscious mind while marking examination papers; he wrote it on a blank page in an answer book. From that short sentence, one might claim, much of the modern fantasy genre emerged. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings (1954–5) (henceforth LOTR ) looms over all the fantasy written in English – and in many other languages – since its publication; most subsequent writers of fantasy are either imitating him or else desperately trying to escape his influence. His hold over readers has been extraordinary: as is well known, and to the annoyance of literary critics, three major surveys of public opinion in Great Britain around the turn of the millennium placed him as the ‘author of the century’ or his book as the most popular work of English fiction, beating Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice into second place. In 2004, Australians and Germans both voted LOTR their nations favourite book. LOTR has been translated into all the worlds major languages; and film director Peter Jacksons loving re-creation of Tolkiens world (2001–3) is the most profitable trilogy in cinema history, grossing nearly three billion American dollars. The fantasy novels of C. S. Lewis – in particular his so-called ‘Space Trilogy’ (1938–46) and the seven Narnia books (1950–56) – have not had quite that impact, but have nevertheless reached a large audience, and, as Lewiss status as a Christian writer continues to grow, so that audience expands. The Narnia sequence has become one of the best loved and most enduring series of fantasies for children, currently reaching a wide cinema audience: the first three adaptations were released in 2005, 2008 and 2010, and the fourth is in planning: it is The Magician’s Nephew , based on the sixth book which Lewis published.

Feminist theory and science fiction

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy builds girl. (Anonymous, ‘The Shortest Science Fiction Story Ever Written’) [I]t lifted her heart to think of the stories being written now, new stories, stories of the Free. That was why writing was so important. (Suzy McKee Charnas) Feminist reading Like most theoretical projects, feminist thought has generated a variety of conceptual models that, in turn, suggest particular reading strategies encompassing diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives. Many feminist scholars undertake humanist-oriented literary analysis, while the materialist critiques of Marxist and socialist feminists and the philosophical deconstructions of French feminists have posed challenges to such relatively straightforward reading practices. Some of the most powerful recent critiques of subject and gender construction have been undertaken by queer-feminists such as Teresa de Lauretis and Judith Butler (see Wendy Pearson and Helen Merrick in this volume). Other critical models, of particular interest in the context of sf, have been suggested by cyber-theorists such as Donna Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles, who are concerned with how developments in contemporary science and technology - for instance, advances in reproductive and communications technologies - are shaping and will continue to shape the lives of women.

The development of children's fantasy

Fantasy for children, similar to childrens literature at large, could not emerge until childhood was acknowledged as a separate and especially formative period in human life. However, while the Enlightenment primarily resulted in instructive works for young readers, Romanticism, with its interest for, on the one hand, folklore, and on the other, the child as innocent and untouched by civilization, provided rich soil for the first fantasy stories explicitly published for children, naturally children of the upper and middle classes. In handbooks of childrens literature, fantasy is frequently treated together with literary fairy tales, or under the misleading label ‘modern fairy tales’. E. T. A. Hoffmanns ‘The Nutcracker and the Mouse King’ (1816) is internationally acknowledged as the first fantasy explicitly addressed to children, since the protagonist is a little girl, the point of departure is the nursery, and many characters are toys. The child is, however, instrumental in the story, which rather involves the animated toy, the Nutcracker, and his quest for the princess in the fairy land. The connection between the Nutcracker, an enchanted prince, and the enigmatic old man in the real world is hinted at. Yet play and playfulness, associated with childhood, make this story different from Hoffmanns other fantastic stories, even though it carries many philosophical and ethical aspects far beyond a childs comprehension. Similarly, Carlo Collodis The Adventures of Pinocchio (1881), with its puppet as the central character, has always been considered a story for children, despite its narrative and moral complexity.

The languages of the fantastic

Any fiction – but above all a work of fantasy – is a world made of words, ‘A world,’ as Ursula K. Le Guin has said, ‘where no voice has ever spoken before; where the act of speech is the act of creation.’ There is no Middle-earth, no Dorimare that lies beyond a barrier, a veil of words; no window heaped with goblin fruit for sale. No ‘faery-lands forlorn’ exist unless the casement is the spell. The glass is language; and the glass is all there is. For the most influential of modern fantasists, that glass was a telescope, trained on origins. Etymon Fairy tale and philology have been entwined since Jacob Grimm first studied both, the linguistic root-stock inextricable from Briar Roses hedge. The sleeping beauty of the past awaits the scholar seeking it, undaunted by the thorns. Grimms study, etymology, derives from etymon : the true name of a thing, its first form. Origin is seen as authenticity; the eldest is most true. J. R. R. Tolkien conceived of Middle-earth as a reconstruction of a lost world. Philology, he thought, ‘could take you back even beyond the ancient texts it studied. He believed that it was possible sometimes to feel ones way back from words as they survived in later periods to concepts which had long since vanished, but which had surely existed, or else the word would not exist.’ He hung his mythology on these *-words – the asterisk marks conjecture – in the spaces between words, as if imagining his constellations from a scattering of stars.