The tools of Magic Realism have appeared within the genre as well, as writers like John Crowley, Gene Wolfe, Megan Lindholm, and Charles de Lint—to name but a few—use fantastical elements within a tale as a way of illuminating both the dark and the bright of modern life. In an interview on fantasy in Locus magazine (April 1992), Ellen Kushner commented:
Now my generation, we’re all hitting late thirties to mid-forties. Our concerns are different. If we stick to fantasy, what are we going to do to fantasy? Traditionally, there’s been the coming-of-age [novel] and the quest which is the finding of the self. We’re past the early stages of that. I can’t wait to see what people do with the issues of middle age in fantasy. Does fantasy demand that you stay in your adolescence forever? I don’t think so. Tolkien is not juvenile. It’s a book about losing things you loved, which is a very middle-aged concern. Frodo's quest is a middle-aged man’s quest, to lose something and to give something up, which is what you start to realize in your thirties is going to happen to you. Part of the rest of your life is learning to give things up.
Adult fantasy as a distinct publishing genre came into existence in the late sixties and early seventies with the republication of Tolkien’s Middle Earth opus, and the novels published under the Ballantine Sign of the Unicorn imprint. Without ignoring the fact that there are always new young writers and new young readers coming into the field, the genre as a whole is indeed coming into a more mature age in the 1990s. It is up to us—readers, writers, publishers, booksellers—to determine whether age means growth or decay, and to define the field in the years to come. My guess is that the best fantasy fiction will share the same qualities as the best of literature as a whole—for we are one branch on that tree, not a different or lesser tree altogether. As we move toward the changes the twenty-first century will bring, and the need for myth and fiction to address them, I suggest we keep in mind Annie Dillard’s reflections on The Writing Life:
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? . . . What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.
Fantasy at its best is a dream from which we wake refreshed, enlightened, or transformed. It takes us away from the world we know only to return us to it again with a deeper understanding of its dark shadows, and a clearer vision for its wonders.
In 1992, despite cutbacks by the larger publishers, there was no scarcity of fantasy fiction; a large number of dreadful-to-excellent fantasy novels appeared and disappeared on the bookstore shelves. A number of the most intriguing novels were published outside of the fantasy genre—which is a change from past years when the genre publishers were providing the most consistent publication opportunities for innovative magical fiction. Yet the genre lists of 1992 should not be ignored, for they have provided several potential award-winners as well.
The following list is a baker’s dozen of well-written, entertaining works showing the diversity of the fantasy form. While I can’t claim to have read every work of fantasy published here or abroad, I hope that through my experiences working as an editor with writers and artists across this country and England I can lead you to some books you might have overlooked or some new authors whom you might enjoy. These are books no fantasy lover’s shelves should be without:
The Haunting of Lamb House by Joan Aiken (St. Martin’s Press). A haunted house where Henry James once lived provides the setting for a literary ghost story by one of Britain’s most distinguished writers.
Lord Kelvins Machine by James P. Blaylock (Arkham House). This witty, eccentric Victorian story has elements of fantasy, horror, and science fiction and thus defies easy classification. Blaylock is a true original, and one of the finest writers in the fantasy field.
The Gypsy by Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm (Tor). Two of the field’s best writers team up in a dark contemporary fantasy/mystery woven with elements of Hungarian folklore.
Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys by Francesca Lia Block (HarperCollins). This was published as Young Adult fiction, but don’t let that put you off. Set in the same punk-fairy-tale Los Angeles as Block’s Weetzie Bat and Witch Baby, this novel shows that her books just keep getting better and better.
The Goblin Mirror by C. J. Cherryh (Del Rey). Cherryh—an award-winning writer in the science fiction field—creates a rich imaginary-world fantasy with a Slavic touch in her latest novel (which, I should note, is not a part of her recent “Russian fantasy” series).
The War of Don Emmanuels Nether Parts by Louis de Bernieres (William Morrow). Although written by a British writer, de Bernieres’ novel reads like Latin American Magic Realism a la Marquez, set in an imaginary Latin American country full of magic . . . and thousands upon thousands of cats.
Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman (Putnam). Hoffman, author of mainstream novels such as Seventh Heaven, Fortunes Daughter, and Af Risk, has written a wonderful contemporary novel with ghostly elements, set in a small Florida town.
The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison (Gollancz, U.K.). British writer Harrison is a master of subtle, pervasive fantasy woven into the fabric of contemporary stories. This book is his best yet, the one we’ve all been waiting for.
A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay (Crown). Canadian writer Kay is one of the better craftsmen working in the traditional fantasy mode. In this new novel he evokes the flavor of a mythical twelfth-century France.
The Mountain Made of Light by Edward Myers (Roc). An intriguing, old-fashioned lost-race novel set in the Andes in the 1920s by a talented new writer in the field.
The Famished Road by Ben Okri (Cape, U.K.). Nigerian writer Okri won the 1992 Booker Prize for this marvelous, magical tale of modern Africa told from the point of view of a “spirit child.”
Last Call by Tim Powers (William Morrow). Powers brings Arthurian myth (in the form of the Fisher King and his heir) to the gangsters of modern Las Vegas in this strange, funny, and brilliant novel. (It’s also available from Charnel House in a beautiful limited edition.)
Divina Trace by Robert Anton Wilson (Overlook Press). The history of a small West Indian island is told through the tale of a child who “was born a man, but above the cojones he was a frog.” Utterly delightful.
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen (Tor). This extraordinary book is a tour de force, weaving fantasy in the form of the fairy tale Briar Rose (the Sleeping Beauty legend) through a contemporary tale about a young American journalist, and a historical tale about the horrors of World War II.
Two additional books that aren’t fantasy, but rather are about the makers of fantasy, are also highly recommended:
Was by Geoff Ryman (Knopf). A modern realist novel about the real Dorothy Gale in Kansas, brilliantly intercut with narrative exploring the growth of the Oz legend.
Love’s Children by Judith Chernaik (Knopf). A clever and fascinating epistolary novel about Mary Shelley and her circle from the time the novel Frankenstein was begun in Geneva to the winter in which it was finished in Italy two years later.