By RL Thornton: In a previous article on Evangeline Walton’s Mabinogion series, I celebrated the term of “literary fantasy.” In my mind, we who explore the realm of speculative fiction have let the concept lag in the post-Potter age. Somewhere down the road, authors and readers have bought into the Young Adult financial goldmine generated in the wake of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. As a result, our genre is now dominated by massive waves of fantasy and dystopian megaseries with suspiciously familiar sets of similarly gendered protagonists engaged in suspiciously familiar activities. In response to the Puppies’ attempt to render Our Beloved Genre identical to the Baen world, our current genre is self-similar in an entirely different way.
What we need to do is turn back and return to the ideals that came about Our Beloved Readers had in the past. We should be looking for quality fantasies and science fiction books with amazing prose styles, intriguing plots, and that challenge our preconceptions and make us think. That’s what “literary fantasy” is and should be. As a challenge to you and my fellow Filers, I include a list of selected novels from the past that deserve to be called “literary fantasy” and ask all of you to add other works that belong here. What do you think?
MY GENRE STANDARDS
- Susanna Clarke: Piranesi
- John Crowley: Little, Big
- Greer Gilman: Moonwise
- Elizabeth Hand: Waking The Moon
- Marlon James: Black Leopard, Red Wolf
- Robert Holdstock: Mythago Wood and Lavondyss
- Tanith Lee: Tales From The Flat Earth (Death’s Master, Delusion’s Mistress, Night’s Master, Delirium’s Mistress)
- Mary Gentle: Rats And Gargoyles
- Lisa Goldstein: Red Magician, The Dream Years
- R.A. MacAvoy: Lens Of The World series, Damiano series
- Patricia McKillip: A Song For The Basilisk and Alphabet Of Thorn
- Nancy Springer: Book of Isle series
- Michael Swanwick: Iron Dragon’s Daughter
- Jeff VanderMeer: The City of Saints And Madmen
- Walter Jon Williams: Metropolitan and City On Fire
- Gene Wolfe: Latro In The Mist
- Roger Zelazny: Amber series
THE ORIGINAL
- JRR Tolkien: Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion
PRE-TOLKIEN GEMS
- William Morris: Well At The World’s End
- E.R. Eddison: The Worm Ouroboros
- Lord Dunsany: The King of Elfland’s Daughter
- H.P. Lovecraft: The Dream Cycle (including The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadadth)
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To the pre-Tolkien gems, I’d add James Branch Cabell’s Poictesme novels — Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, etc.
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I’d also squeeze in at least a few of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories — maybe Swords Against Death or Swords in the Mist.
Hope Mirrelees’ Lud-in-the-Mist obviously qualifies, and is very much pre Tolkien. I dimly recall that it was serialised on BBC radio. Lin Carter revived it as part of the Ballantine fantasy imprint in 1970,. without the authors permission, which is a whole other story.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lud-in-the-Mist
ER Eddison was a contemporary of Tolkien, and an occasional Inkling. Tolkien admired his writing, but not his philosophical outlook.
Anything by Johnathan Carroll, especially “The Land of Laughs”
Thanks for the feedback. Here are a few more that I would add to my list:
Nicola Griffith: Spear
Ursula Le Guin: Earthsea series, Changing Planes
Aliette De Boddard: Obsidian And Blood trilogy
Theodora Goss: Snow White Learns Witchcraft And Other Tales
Tigana and The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente
Oh! Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus!
Avram Davidson belongs on that list for sure. “The Phoenix and the Mirror,” and “Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty.”
To note that he was greatly admired by Ray Bradbury should be entry enough.
Oh, and he has been described as possibly ‘the most literary’ writer in our field.
I’d include the writings of Graham Joyce.
There is a Bloomsbury adjacent-thread of literary fantasy in the 1920s from David Garnett’s “Lady Into Fox”, through Edith Olivier’s “Love Child” (1927) and Woolf’s Orlando (1928). Or a particular kind of English playing with medievalism and faerie in T.H. White’s “Sword in the Stone”, Naomi Mitchison’s “To the Chapel Perilous”, then Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “Kingdoms of Elfin”.
Mervyn Peake? Why not Kafka, Borges, Calvino?
Why not? I was focusing on relatively recent fantasy in my list. There’s plenty of room for them too. 🙂
Jack Vance Lyonesse series stands up there, and what about Ursulla Le Guinn? Also while some books may be marketed as “young adult”, such labels are in the minds and wallets of the publishers rather than the quality of the writing. Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy is stunning, as are the Alan Garner books.
Quality Fantasy – there’s never enough! Great list and recommendations so far. Pretty much EVERY book by Patricia McKillip, Gene Wolfe and Guy Gavriel Kay qualifies here.
Some additional recommendations, all quite excellent, and all quite literary! If I were to pick out just one to recommend, it absolutely would be Pale Fire!!
Beagle, Peter S. – The Innkeeper’s Song
Carroll, Jonathan – The Land of Laughs
Carter, Angela – The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Chesterton, G. K. – The Man Who Was Thursday
Chiang, Ted – The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate
Coover, Robert – The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.
Ford, Jeffrey – the Well-Built City trilogy
Frost, Gregory – Shadowbridge duology
Grossman, Lev – Magicians trilogy
Hansen, Brooks – The Chess Garden
Irwin, Robert – The Arabian Nightmare
Kadare, Ismail – The Palace of Dreams
Kotzwinkle, William – Fata Morgana
Kushner, Ellen – Swordspoint
Link, Kelly – Stranger Things Happen
Mitchell, David – Cloud Atlas
Moorcock, Michael – Gloriana, or the Unfulfill’d Queen
Murakami, Haruki – Kafka on the Shore
Nabokov, Vladimir – Pale Fire
Nazarian, Vera – The Duke in His Castle
O’Brien, Flann – The Third Policeman
Park, Paul – Roumania series
Pelevin, Victor – The Sacred Book of the Werewolf
Priest, Christopher – The Islanders
Rushdie, Salman – The Moor’s Last Sigh
Samatar, Sofia – A Stranger in Olondria
Saramago, Jose – All the Names
Saunders, George – Lincoln in the Bardo
Schulz, Bruno – The Street of Crocodiles
Silverberg, Robert – Majipoor series
Snyder, Midori – The Innamorati
Stewart, Mary – Arthurian series
Thomas, Scarlett – Our Tragic Universe
Valente, Catherynne M. – Orphan’s Tales duology
Vance, Jack – Lyonesse trilogy
Walker, Wendy – The Secret Service
Walton, Jo – Philosopher Kings trilogy
White, T. H. – The Once and Future King
Surprised I’m the first to mention this: The Last Unicorn
Additional thoughts:
I didn’t list Neil Gaiman because I’ve never highly regarded his novels compared to his best works with graphic artists.
Also, I need to read more N.K. Jemisin, especially the early series.
The two names not yet yet mentioned that immediately sprang to mind were Kazuo Ishiguro and M. John Harrison.
Thank you for mentioning Metropolitan/City on Fire. Someday we may get the third book yet.