The Elf-Thirst for Waters Beyond the World

In time past, I have attempted to define of science fiction, sometimes in earnest (I call science fiction the mythology of a scientific age) and sometimes not.

Specifically, I was wondering what in the world made the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake a fantasy book? This led me to wonder how any genre was defined.

To answer, let us (as befits this genre) quest upon a journey, tarrying often. In the silver ship of memory, let us sail the Nonestic Ocean of fantasy, starting in the mists of the past. I lived through the latter stage of the Tolkien revolution in SFF, what scholars will someday call the “Lin Carter” period. During this period, circa 1976-1977, the feast of fantasy was thin, and everyone who had read anything in the field had likely read everything in the field.

1. The three or four great island-chains of fantasy seen on the maps of those days consisted of the Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander, the Earthsea trilogy by Ursula K. LeGuin. The Dark is Rising sequence of Susan Cooper deserves honorable mention, as does A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L’Engle.

All of these are far famed enough to have been honored (or abused) by big or small screen adaptations. With no condescension meant, let us call these Children’s Fantasies, for in those days, the fantasy reader haunted the children’s section of the library, since that was where the fantasy was.

2. Lin Carter at Ballantine books changed that by introducing the pre-Tolkien authors of this strange and perilous genre. Far from the island chain of Middle-Earth, Narnia, and Earthsea, loom oddly shaped mountain-isles, mist-hidden, no two alike. Let me list a few choice names, to stir your fond memories, O Reader:

• THE WORM OUROBOROS, E.R. Eddison

• GORMENGHAST, Mervyn Peake.

• A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, David Lindsay.

• THE LAST UNICORN, Peter S. Beagle.

• THE KING OF ELFLAND’S DAUGHTER, Lord Dunsany

• THE WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD, William Morris

• LUD-IN-THE-MIST, Hope Mirrlees

• VATHEK, William Beckford

• LILITH, George Macdonald

• THE BROKEN SWORD, Poul Anderson.

• THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, G.K. Chesterton

• THE THREE IMPOSTORS, Arthur Machen

• THE NIGHT LAND William Hope Hodgson

• THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST, H. Rider Haggard

• THE CHILDREN OF LLYR, Evangeline Walton

• KAI LUNG’S GOLDEN HOURS, Ernest Bramah

• THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH, H.P. Lovecraft

• XICCARPH, Clark Ashton Smith

(ADD LATER: because my term pre-Tolkien led to misunderstanding, let me explain I do not mean this authors lived or published before Tolkien chronologically. They are ‘pre-Tolkien’ thematically, their works uninfluenced by the great magnetic attractor of the Lord of the Rings. They draw from an earlier strata of inspiration. None of these use the trope of the pseudo-medieval fantasy quest: in none of the books listed above is there a Dark Lord.)

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.