Saturday, January 1, 2011

The 10 Greatest Works of Fantasy Fiction: An Annotated Reading List

Here’s my first attempt at generating a short reading list of the greatest fantasy literature in English. The specific purpose of this exercise was to identify the ten most fundamental books and story cycles that define our current conception of fantasy as a genre. I selected ten items in order to make reading these books a simple endeavor over a one-year time span. If you aim to slip one of these books per month into your reading queue, by the end of 2011 you should have a good foundation in fantasy fiction.
I should also say that this list is as much for me as it is for you. I have read much, but not all, of this material. Many of these works were chosen because they were repeatedly cited as being influential by acclaimed 20th century fantasy authors. I also included my own judgments in terms of what works I saw as being truly fundamental – that is, which works played a major role in defining motifs, clichés, and themes that have persisted and now define the fantasy genre. I provide brief justifications for my choices after the list.

Another thing I’ve included is a brief discussion of honorable mentions that didn’t make the list. Comments arising from reading lists almost always focus on why certain stuff was omitted. I welcome this discussion, and will kick it off myself! Feedback is invited!

NOTE: Many of the comments on this post concern the fact that Lord of the Rings isn't included. Please recall that the purpose of this list is to highlight works that established the fantasy genre as we know it today. Fellowship of the Ring was published in 1954 - 30 years after King of Elfland's Daughter, and almost 100 years after Phantastes - and was primarily influential on writers of the late 20th century. By the time Fellowship was published adult fantasy was already a fully mature genre, and while LotR may arguably be one of the best works of fantasy fiction, it was also highly derivative and offered very little that was new to the field.

The List (in chronological order):

1. George MacDonald – Phantastes
2. Andrew Lang – The Blue Fairy Book
3. H. Rider Haggard – Eric Brighteyes
4. William Morris – The Well at the World’s End
5. William Hope Hodgson – The Night Land
6. Lord Dunsany – The King of Elfland’s Daughter
7. E.R. Eddison – The Worm Ouroborus
8. Robert E. Howard – Conan (story cycle)
9. Clark Ashton Smith – Zothique and Hyperborea (story cycles)
10. Fritz Leiber - Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (story cycle)

The Justifications:

1. George MacDoanld – Phantastes (1858)
MacDonald was one of the first British authors to write fairy tale fiction for adults, and his book Phantastes arguably represents the beginning of "fantasy" as a genre. MacDonald was a major direct influence on virtually all Victorian-era fantasy writers, as well as later popular authors like Tolkien. His fiction was heavy with symbolism and metaphor. The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and Lilith (1895) were also major groundbreaking works, but I recommend Phantastes because of its early date.

2. Andrew Lang – The Blue Fairy Book (1889)
Lang was an academic who specialized in hunting down and translating fairy tales and rewriting them for modern audiences. His series of colored Fairy Books (e.g. Blue Fairy Book, Red Fairy Book, Green Fairy Book, etc.) were hugely popular and were drawn upon by contemporaries (Morris, Haggard, etc.) who integrated fantastic themes into their own adult fiction.

3. H. Rider Haggard – Eric Brighteyes (1889)
Haggard was a victorian adventure novelist who primarily wrote fiction set in colonial Africa. Eric Brighteyes is a powerful and gritty viking fantasy that was influential in terms of establishing strong nordic flavor in much subsequent English fantasy. Haggard was a friend and correspondent with British academic fantasists such as Lang.

4. William Morris – The Well at the World’s End (1896)
After George MacDonald, one of the first writers to treat fairy tale themes in the format of adult literature. Morris was a prolific writer and produced many fantasy novels. I selected The Well at the World’s End following Lin Carter’s editorial recommendation for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

5. William Hope Hodgson – The Night Land (1912)
I would call this the single most important work of weird fantasy. The Night Land is set on a future Earth millions of years in the future after the sun has expired. All remaining humans are confined to a gigantic pyramid located in a pitch-black wasteland surrounded by weird supernatural aliens, giants, night hounds, and other monsters. The Night Land was unprecedented for its time and was heavily borrowed from by C.A. Smith and H.P. Lovecraft. While it might be too weird and genre-defying to be labeled as genre fantasy, I credit The Night Land for being a major trailblazer in terms of presenting fantasy (1) in a post-civilized setting (i.e. dying earth genre), (2) dripping with cosmic horror, and (3) incorporating scientific themes.

6. Lord Dunsany – The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924)
This is the one book that is probably most responsible for the motifs we take for granted in what we now call high fantasy. Nations of human-like elves, magic swords, etc.

7. E.R. Eddison – The Worm Ouroborus (1925)
This is the first fantasy epic set in a complex fully-imagined world with a substantial historical timeline. Interestingly, this work used the term “Middle Earth” long before Tolkien did.

8. Robert E. Howard – Conan (story cycle, 1932-1936)
The Conan story cycle is the best work by this undisputed innovator of the gritty "swords & sorcery" approach to fantasy. These American pulp stories are famous for their lurid violence, sex, weirdness, and evil wizardry.

9. Clark Ashton Smith – Zothique and Hyperborea (story cycles, c. 1930s)
These story cycles, by a poet-turned-writer, were notable and influential for how they incorporated weird, creepy, and cosmic themes, ala Hodgson, into fantasy settings. Smith wrote in a beautiful prose style that presaged major late 20th century writers like Jack Vance.

10. Fritz Leiber - Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (story cycle, beginning 1939)
I argue that Leiber’s story cycle represents the ultimate culmination of the previously listed nine works in terms of representing what most people consider to be modern genre fantasy. It is remarkable how these stories from the 30s and 40s feel completely modern in terms of pacing, themes, and characterization.

Honorable Mentions:

Edgar Rice Burroughs – A Princess of Mars (1912): Burroughs popular swashbuckling planetary romances were generally influential on American pulp writers of the early 20th century. Science fiction writers tend to cite Burroughs as a major influence more than genre fantasy writers, however.

H.P. Lovecraft – Short Stories (1917-1935): Lovecraft is one of the undisputed masters of supernatural weird horror fiction. Many stories features wizards and witches in modern settings, although his writings typically aren’t considered fantasy. Lovecraft’s approach to cosmic horror and atmospherics influenced many subsequent fantasy writers, but I believe that the most important innovations in this respect came from Hodgson.

David Lindsay – Voyage to Arcturus (1920): This bizarre supernatural interplanetary fantasy was far ahead of its time, but received little recognition when it was originally published.

Hope Mirrlees – Lud-in-the-Mist (1926): Although this book is considered a classic by modern readers, I’ve seen little indiciation that it was influential or well-known when first published. Mirrlees is also interesting for being the only woman on the reading list, sadly.

J.R.R. Tolkien – The Hobbit (1937): This book, while not particularly innovative, was a huge critical and commercial success when it was released. Most of The Hobbit's importance is derived from how it popularized fantasy among younger audiences.

T.H. White – The Sword in the Stone (1938): White’s literary realist interpretations of the Arthurian legends set the tone for most subsequent work in this major fantasy subgenre.

Jack Vance – The Dying Earth (1950): A masterwork by one of the greatest stylists in fantasy. Vance set the standard in creativity, prose quality, and conceptual content for fantasy writers of the late 20th century.

31 comments:

  1. I love the idea, but of course I've got to ask: Why no The Lord of the Rings? Even if you don't like Tolkien, it's hard to take a top 10 greatest works of fantasy fiction list seriously without it. It more than fits your criteria of "works [that] played a major role in defining motifs, clichés, and themes that have persisted and now define the fantasy genre."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Why no The Lord of the Rings?

    First of all, I'm not a Tolkien hater. As a matter of fact I just re-read the entire text of The Hobbit aloud to my family. I like LotR and The Hobbit quite a lot!

    Of course I considered LotR for the list. But I had a difficult time thinking of any major aesthetic innovations the series made that hadn't already been made decades earlier by writers like Eddison or Dunsany. Really, by the mid-1950s most of the stuff in LotR was a (high-quality) rehash, in my view. If you have specific arguments for why LotR should be included, I'd love to hear them. Seriously...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would include Lord of the Rings because of its importance as a synthesis of various disparate themes that might first have been presented elsewhere, but never in such a unified manner.

    Tolkien's goal with LotR was to create a British mythology that was previously lacking; although Arthurian legend is often associate with Britain, it was not truly British but French.

    Also I think the depth and richness of detail that made up Middle Earth was, at the time, unique and truly innovative. I don't think any previous fantasy had ever constructed such an elaborate and detailed setting as this, and it set the standard for all modern fantasy worlds that followed.

    Since I mentioned it, I would suggest that Mallory's Arthurian tales might hold a place of honour in the great works of fantasy fiction. They were certainly influential.

    I would be interested in hearing your opinions of your list after you've read all the works on it; whether your readings confirm the placements or if you would make some revisions.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, I would say that Tolkien with Middle-Earth did something no other author had done previously (or has done as successfully since): Develop an entire system of language and mythology, from which he told the story of The Hobbit and the war of the ring and other tales. Middle-earth also provides a mythology for England, which was largely lost with the Norman invasion of 1066.

    Every book written since LOTR has had to deal with its presence. So much of fantasy since its publication has been a slavish imitation or a direct reaction.

    LOTR can be read as a warning against unbridled modernity and progress; as a bridge between pagan beliefs and Christian faith; as a statement about the pervasiveness of war (Tolkien was a veteran of WWI and lived and wrote as WWII raged about him); about the importance of alliances over unilateral actions, and about the corruptive influence of absolute power.

    Finally, LOTR is a popular and critical colossus and continues to be held up as the standard for all works of fantasy. It's been voted in many polls as the best book of the century by general readership, the amount of academic scholarship devoted to Tolkien dwarfs that of any other fantasy author, and it has spawned a trilogy of movies that won an academy award for best picture, among other awards.

    Tom Shippey in J.R.R. Tolkien, Author of the Century, and Karen Haber's Meditations on Middle-Earth (a series of essays by a number of fantasy/SF greats, including George R.R. Martin, Orson Scott Card, Ursula K. Le Guin, Raymond E. Feist, and Terry Pratchett) demonstate with much more eloquence than I Tolkien's continued impact on fantasy and on their development as writers. I recommend both.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I found The Night Land a struggle, and ultimately abandoned it unfinished. I liked the concepts, but the writing style didn't agree with me. Ditto with Ouroborus. I'm also not a fan of Conan, but I acknowledge the impact of these authors.

    OTOH I'm a big fan of Lovecraft, Vance, Tolkien and Leiber. I would include Burroughs and Smith as influences. White's Arthurian series was fun, but I don't know if I'd include it. What about Alice in Wonderland? And Poe? Andre Norton and Poul Anderson, or are they too recent?

    ReplyDelete
  6. The only reason I could see excluding LotR is if the list were intentionally meant to preclude it, as I noticed every work on your list does. Even Lieber published his first F&GM story prior to the mass market edition of LotR. What of Fletcher Pratt' "The Blue Star"? LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea?

    I would also quibble over George MacDonald making the list. His works, like Carrol's Alice story were not true fantasy as they took place in dream realms. William Morris was the first to create a fantasy that took place within a created world, and he did so in The Wood Beyond the World. MacDonald, along with The Blue Fairy book belong on a roots of fantasy reading list, along side the Prose Edda, the Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer.

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Sean & Brian: Thanks for your thoughtful comments! If I were to include LotR on the list or the Honorable Mention roll, what work you suggest I remove?

    I would include Lord of the Rings because of its importance as a synthesis of various disparate themes that might first have been presented elsewhere, but never in such a unified manner.

    I agree with this. I think this may be the best argument for including LotR.

    Also I think the depth and richness of detail that made up Middle Earth was, at the time, unique and truly innovative.

    Somewhat true, but I'd argue Eddison was far enough along on this front to seriously diminish the uniqueness of Tolkien.

    Since I mentioned it, I would suggest that Mallory's Arthurian tales might hold a place of honour in the great works of fantasy fiction.

    Good call!

    Develop an entire system of language and mythology

    While Tolkien has undoubtedly done the best work on this front, C.S. Lewis' Old Solar language was published almost 20 years before LotR.

    Middle-earth also provides a mythology for England

    Sean mentioned this too, but I don't understand what it means. Could you clarify?

    Every book written since LOTR has had to deal with its presence. So much of fantasy since its publication has been a slavish imitation or a direct reaction.

    This is an idea I've heard repeated over and over again, but I still don't totally buy it. When I read late 20th-century hack fantasy (Eddings, etc.) it seems more like a stylistic imitation of earlier authors like Fritz Leiber or Poul Anderson with Lord Dunsany themes thrown in. Modern hack fantasy does not remind me of the fairy tale themes, anglophilia, and retro-lit prose of Tolkien.

    Tom Shippey in J.R.R. Tolkien, Author of the Century, and Karen Haber's Meditations on Middle-Earth... I recommend both.

    Cool, I'll have to check out these books!

    ReplyDelete
  8. The only reason I could see excluding LotR is if the list were intentionally meant to preclude it

    I did not have the intention of precluding LotR per se, but my list certainly reflects my opinion that our current concept of fantasy as a genre was almost completely mature before 1950.

    This is why excellent later work by authors like Ursula K. LeGuin, Poul Anderson, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Fletcher Pratt were not included. I just don't think the magnitude of key innovations in these authors' works exceeds that of any of the titles on the list.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Nice, I need to keep an eye out for some of these

    ReplyDelete
  10. I found The Night Land a struggle, and ultimately abandoned it unfinished. Ditto with Ouroborus.

    Yes. Sadly, I think these authors' strange prose stylings, which I personally love, have dissuaded a lot of readers from appreciating their work.


    White's Arthurian series was fun, but I don't know if I'd include it.

    Interesting. Maybe I'll replace White with Mallory...?


    What about Alice in Wonderland? And Poe? Andre Norton and Poul Anderson, or are they too recent?

    Carroll and Poe: not "fantasy enough" to make the list of 10. Norton & Anderson: Too recent (see previous comment).

    ReplyDelete
  11. This is just my opinion of course, but it seems as though you're placing a lot of emphasis on being first to the starting line. Being first at anything, especially as archeology and scholarship improve, is largely meaningless. So much of modern fantasy is built on ancient archetypes and myths.

    So what if William Morris came before Tolkien? The Prose and Poetic Edda were composed long before Morris set pen to paper. And then we can start looking at works like Beowulf or the bible or Gilgamesh, and the appellation "first" becomes meaningless.

    As Sean Robson pointed out above, what matters is what you do with these elements, your synthesis of these ancient sources, and the work you create from them. I would argue that the reason that Tolkien is a household name and Morris is not is that LOTR is ultimately a more ambitious and successful piece of literature than The Well at the World’s End, as it creates a far more detailed, and rich, and convincing secondary world.

    Heroic fantasy was established before Tolkien, and probably would have continued without him, but what I'm trying to argue is that he did it better than anyone.

    Again, this all my opinion, and it's fun to argue. I love all your choices, but I would have to put Tolkien in the top 10.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ooh, a 10 Greatest Works of Fantasy Fiction that *doesn't* include The Lord of the Rings? You're a brave man.

    That said, I have zero quibbles with any of your choices, save for Lang, and that's purely because I haven't read his work, and so can't formulate an opinion. I can understand Kilsern's reservations with MacDonald, but ultimately I think his work does indeed count.

    I'm especially cheered to see Howard put above Tolkien for once: even though I love both author's work, far too often Tolkien is presented on some order of magnitude above Howard, so it's refreshing to see REH get in the top ten and Tolkien in the Honourable Mentions (even if I wholeheartedly agree with Brian, and think LotR does deserve consideration in a Top Ten.)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Sadly, I don't think I've read any of these, unless "The Well at World's End" is part of the Well World series, which I doubt. I think those would probably be too science-fiction, to make it onto a top ten fantasy list.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hmmmm, interesting list and one that anyone interested in modern fantasy writing and RPGs should try to read through. That being said, I think the criteria was a bit too vague to be useful. What exactly do you mean, 'greatest'? Greatest writing? Greatest story? Greatest influence on genre? Yourself and others have noted the list is skewed towards the early history of fantasy, so I think 'Greatest early influence in the fantasy genre' would have been more apt.

    More than the omission of Tolkien, I am finding the absence of Michael Moorcock much more glaring. Although it is fashionable to rip into Moorcock for Epic Pooh and the gaudy resurrection and raping of the Elric franchise, in those early days in the 1970s Elric was a breath of much needed fresh air in the dusty tomb of Tolkien and Dunsany. A cursory glance at OD&D just shows how deep this impact was, as is any reading of fantasy thereafter. Although I also enjoyed Corum and Jerry Cornelius, it was Moorcock's moody albino antidote to Howard's barbarian that broke the mold and simultaneously created its own confining archetype of brooding antihero. Although Elric has ultimately doomed us with endless Drizzts and sparkly vampires, its early beneficial effect on the genre cannot be understated.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I appreciate the subjective spirit of the exercise and don't really have any beef with the selections, as they're not too far off from what I'd have picked. But I'm a bit of a crank. :)

    ReplyDelete
  16. THANKS for this, GREAT post. I grew up on Tolkien, T.H. White, and all the post-Tolkienists like Brooks, Eddings, et. al. This list is exactly what I've been looking for.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I think LotR introduced the "band of folks on a very important mission" which was slavishly imitated, at least for a couple decades. While I haven't read them all, what I remember of a lot of the books on your list was a person/persons crossing over into fantastic lands, and the witnessing of those lands was the point. Again, it's been a while but I'm thinking Phantastes, Arcturus, Ouroborus, and Night Land especially.

    It seems Tolkien took the idea of a fantastic world for granted and said, yes, but what is happening there. Which is probably just a more simplistic way of saying what was said above: language, history, mythology, and detail like never before. After Tolkien your chunky fantasy trilogy had to have a map and a constructed language.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Middle-earth also provides a mythology for England

    Sean mentioned this too, but I don't understand what it means. Could you clarify?


    (Paraphrasing some bits from Tom Shippey, who is the expert on this stuff): Native English tradition, following the Norman conquest and the Battle of Hastings, had been largely suppressed and replaced with French and Latin learning. Native English tradition was lost. As someone noted above the Welsh continued to tell tales of King Arthur, but those myths are inextricably tied with France.

    Tolkien hoped to (with The Silmarillion and his other foundational tales) piece together England’s lost myths and legends. In some early versions of The Silmarillion an early Anglo-Saxon was written in to “pass down” the stories. These myths were derived from words and scraps of phrases that Tolkien, a philologist and professor of Anglo-Saxon literature, discovered in old manuscripts and extrapolated upon using his knowledge of old languages.

    One example is the word earendel, which Tolkien encountered in an old English poem. There is no known definition of the word, but in the poem it is associated with an image of people in sorrow looking up from the darkness and hoping for rescue and light. It may have also been derived from Aurvandil, a companion of the norse god Thor. From these images and contexts (Christian and pagan) Tolkien created the myth of Eärendil the mariner who carried the morning star on his brow (aka, the Sun). Frodo later invokes his name in one of those great passages in Quenyan which help give LOTR its unparalleled depth and rootedness:

    "Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima!" translated as "Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!"

    These examples go on and on, from the elves to the derivation of Gandalf, whose name existed in a 13th century guide to Norse mythology.

    Thus Tolkien weaved together old myths and names and tales to create a coherent history of Middle-earth, which he considered to be our own earth in a pre-cataclysmic age. It's stuff that could have happened, but exist as lost, scattered echoes.

    ReplyDelete
  19. (Blogger keeps eating my response, and I'm thinking it may be too long, so here it is in two parts).

    Middle-earth also provides a mythology for England

    Sean mentioned this too, but I don't understand what it means. Could you clarify?


    (Paraphrasing some bits from Tom Shippey, who is the expert on this stuff): Native English tradition, following the Norman conquest and the Battle of Hastings, had been largely suppressed and replaced with French and Latin learning. Native English tradition was lost. As someone noted above the Welsh continued to tell tales of King Arthur, but those myths are inextricably tied with France.

    Tolkien hoped to (with The Silmarillion and his other foundational tales) piece together England’s lost myths and legends. In some early versions of The Silmarillion an early Anglo-Saxon was written in to “pass down” the stories. These myths were derived from words and scraps of phrases that Tolkien, a philologist and professor of Anglo-Saxon literature, discovered in old manuscripts and extrapolated upon using his knowledge of old languages.

    ReplyDelete
  20. One example is the word earendel, which Tolkien encountered in an old English poem. There is no known definition of the word, but in the poem it is associated with an image of people in sorrow looking up from the darkness and hoping for rescue and light. It may have also been derived from Aurvandil, a companion of the norse god Thor. From these images and contexts (Christian and pagan) Tolkien created the myth of Eärendil the mariner who carried the morning star on his brow (aka, the Sun). Frodo later invokes his name in one of those great passages in Quenyan which help give LOTR its unparalleled depth and rootedness:

    "Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima!" translated as "Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!"

    These examples go on and on, from the elves to the derivation of Gandalf, whose name existed in a 13th century guide to Norse mythology.

    Thus Tolkien weaved together old myths and names and tales to create a coherent history of Middle-earth, which he considered to be our own earth in a pre-cataclysmic age. It's stuff that could have happened, but exist as lost, scattered echoes.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I've been hearing about the books by William Morris, William Hope Hodgson and Lord Dunsany for year, I am going to have to read them. I wonder if they are available for the kindle.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I'd guess that they're Kindle-ready for free, as all of their fantasy works are in the public domain.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Hi there! Nice list. Please keep us posted!

    Quick questions to keep the thread going: why take the Blue Fairy Book and not the Brown, for example? Do you have a sense that Lang fired the big ammo early and was reduced to harvesting oddities as the series continued? What did he bring the table that Grimm, Aesop, Anderson and Perrault (all older so aligned with your "priority" criterion) didn't?

    ReplyDelete
  24. it seems as though you're placing a lot of emphasis on being first to the starting line

    Absolutely correct! I don't think it's meaningless to give credit to the innovators where credit is due. I think creative works that push the boundaries often are endowed with a very unique and particular charm that later more "perfect" works don't have.

    In terms of Beowulf, Gilgamesh, etc. I explicitly stated this list was to cover literary works in English.

    LOTR is ultimately a more ambitious and successful piece of literature than The Well at the World’s End, as it creates a far more detailed, and rich, and convincing secondary world.

    No arguments from me on this one, but evidence still seems to suggest Morris and his pre-raphaelite colleagues played a much more important role in establishing the nature of modern British/American fantasy than Tolkien did.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Yourself and others have noted the list is skewed towards the early history of fantasy, so I think 'Greatest early influence in the fantasy genre' would have been more apt.

    Good point. This is why I left Moorcock and other post-1950 works off the list. In the 1960s and 70s there was an interesting flowering of styles that is beyond the scope of this list, which, as I described in the OP, focuses on works that established the motifs and themes that we use to define "fantasy genre".

    While Moorcock was a great innovator, I don't think he played as fundamental a role in this as the others on the list.

    ReplyDelete
  26. I think LotR introduced the "band of folks on a very important mission" which was slavishly imitated

    I thought of this too, but then The Hobbit and Three Hearts and Three Lions came to mind. You're right though, that LotR pushed the boundary on expectation of depth (and page count) of fantasy epics.

    ReplyDelete
  27. why take the Blue Fairy Book and not the Brown, for example?

    This was arbitrary - I just picked the first one that was published. I haven't read all the fairy books.

    What did he bring the table that Grimm, Aesop, Anderson and Perrault (all older so aligned with your "priority" criterion) didn't?

    As I said in the post, I focused on the English literary tradition. There is a lot of amazing fantasy from Germanic and Scandinavian countries I am trying to learn more about right now - a lot of this material which directly influenced the major Victorian and early 20th-century authors.

    In my view something Lang brought to the table was providing a tone and level of accessibility to fairy tales that may not have been well developed previously. He was also an active correspondent with British fantasy writers of the same period, and has been cited as being influential in this respect. I also admit I may have a personal bias towards Lang because I love his writing style - I regularly read his work during our family bed-time hour!

    ReplyDelete
  28. I have to admit that even though MacDonald's Phantastes is written in the nadir of Victorian English style -- not a compliment btw -- it is a seminal part of the fantasy literature tradition. And I appreciate that you've mentioned Clark Ashton Smith as a stylistic precursor to Jack Vance in there -- a connection that the later author downplayed. Personally I think it's a bonus and not a detractor that Vance's Dying Earth manages to recall the weird, wasted lands of Smith's Zothique. Though it does seem that Vance got it better in some ways -- in the same fashion that Thomas Ligotti has refined some of the themes and ideas expressed in Lovecraft's oeuvre.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Thanks -- raises the possibility of a follow-up, "the greatest fantasy literature translated into English." Now that I think of it, our "fantasy" genre may be largely an artifact of the Victorians and their descendants after all, whereas the Germans and French and other countries evolved differently out of their fairy tales. Just something for me to file for future reference probably.

    On the Lang front, I think what struck me with your choice of Blue was the fact that it has the greatest density of very popular stories that people recognize from Grimm, Disney and so on. The others get more "exotic" and obscure, so I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on what makes one fairy tale go huge and another stays dusty.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Absolutely correct! I don't think it's meaningless to give credit to the innovators where credit is due. I think creative works that push the boundaries often are endowed with a very unique and particular charm that later more "perfect" works don't have.

    That's true, but I think it's clear that Tolkien pushed the boundaries of a secondary world far beyond what Morris or MacDonald did--so far, in fact, that no other writer I know of since has managed to duplicate the feat.

    Also, being first is noteworthy, but it's really oranges and apples to "great." That's why you can't compare Lascaux to the Cistine Chapel. One occured much earlier and is certainly a worthy historic footnote, but was surpassed in art and craft and influence. The latter is therefore greater, as the title your post implies. Which is why Tolkien should be on a greatest works of fantasy fiction list. Again, just IMO.

    ReplyDelete
  31. I understand that Tolkien's Stuff might seem "played out" but J.R.R. clearly made his mark on the Fantasy genre.

    Also, Where's Elric?

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.