Fantasy authors and list making

Portions of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #150 (April, 2009).

There was a recent snap poll conducted on Twitter by Dr Dimitra Fimi that asked the question, "if I asked you to name the 3 best Fantasy authors of all time EXCLUDING #Tolkien, who would you list?"

She had some very good reasons behind asking the question, and I encourage you to go to her blog to read up on those here. "Best" is a big word, at least in my opinion.  Too many people answer with their favorite authors, but I've always argued there is a big difference between taste and quality. Mostly because there are many extremely well written works that simply are not to my taste.  On top of the quality/taste trap, how do you judge the works value as art? How truthful is it to the human experience? How much does that matter to its artistic merit?  These are long debated questions, and they make answering her question difficult indeed, IMO. 

I didn't try! I was made aware of the poll on John Rateliff's superb blog, Sacnoth's Scriptorium.  In his blog entry on the subject, he asked folks to answer a slightly different question, "Who are your three favorite fantasy authors (excluding Tolkien)? Or, if it's easier to choose, what are your three favorite fantasy books (again excluding Tolkien)?"

That is an easier question, since the only criteria is the readers own personal enjoyment - though I still found it difficult to limit myself to three!

Of course the striking aspect of the poll is that it starts by excluding Tolkien. There are a few iconoclasts who down play his influence or call him "boring" but at this stage no one who has studied the field at all can deny his overwhelming influence. As Dr Fimi points out, his influence in fact warps discussion of the debate, making it difficult to properly assess other authors in the genre. 

She points out all the different authors mentioned, how often, ect, and Rateliff extrapolates the top 33 for commentary of his own in a second blog post. I was surprised at how many of the top 33 I hadn't read yet, and by how few "sword & sorcery" authors were on the list - I feel like it is a very 21st century list, and it would have looked very different in the 1990s. 

My own answers, to Rateliff's question, of course broke the rules.  

Favorite Author:  1. Susan Cooper   2. Mary Stewart  3. David Eddings (tie) & 3. Lloyd Alexander (tie)

Favorite novels: 1. The Belgariad (its one novel, not a seires, IMO)  2. The Grey King by Susan Cooper  3. The High King by Lloyd Alexander

Favorite Series: 1. Thieves' World series 2. The Dark is Rising series 3. The Merlin trilogy

'Favorite' is the key. These are based on my taste, not on quality.

Such lists are always useful, back when I wrote the book review column, "Off the Shelf" for Knights of the Dinner Table magazine I did a list article myself.  My list was ranked as ‘most important’ because of the literary quality of their work, or their influence upon the genre. "Important" is very different from "best" or "favorite", not that any of these lists are super important, they are a thought exercise, a useful way of thinking about the world. But they are also prone to abuse, some people get so caught up in list placement and definitions they forget these are all great works or authors to start with. 

I've added the list below, with commentary after some entries in italics, I wrote this article in 2009 and I wouldn't make all the same choices today that I made in 2009.  

20. Ed Greenwood

            Ed Greenwood’s writing is far more enthusiastic than it is literary, and he often devolves into pulp clichés… yet he is the creator of what was once the most popular fantasy role-playing and novel setting in America.  The influence of the Forgotten Realms may not have always been benign on the fantasy genre, but no one can argue it was not extensive.  And for sheer fun and gracious openness with fans, no one can top Greenwood. 

 I'm not sure he would make the list if I wrote this today.  I might include Mary Stewart or Mary Renault instead.

19. Lord Dunsany

            His writing is quirky and his plots often feel incomplete, but listing Lord Dunsany as an ‘influence’ has become the fashion for the more pretentious modern day writers of fantasy.  If more of them had actually read his simple yet complex work the fantasy genre would be richer indeed.

Not sure my snarkiness is fair here.  

18. Andrew Offutt

            Offutt is one of the true old guard of the genre, and as fine a sketcher of character as you will find anywhere (read “Shadowspawn” in Thieves’ World).  Yet his influence stems primarily from his role as editor of the long lived Swords Against Darkness anthology series.  He kept alive the sword and sorcery short story for new generations, and for that we owe him profound thanks. 

I think today I might replace him, though I am not quite certain with who. Perhaps Robert Apsrin & Lynn Abbey for creating the shared universe concept. 

17. Terry Brooks

            His first book, Sword of Shannara has been unjustly called a mere Tolkien pastiche; it is more accurately a true homage.  He has moved beyond that to become one of the most consistent best sellers in the genre.  But his work has become more challenging to the reader, not less, over the years.     

I don't really like his work, aside from Elfstones of Shannara, but even as a negative influence hard to ignore him, IMO.  

16. Laurell K. Hamilton

            Many traditional fantasy fans might recoil at including her on the list, but Hamilton’s works have had a large impact on what gets published in the fantasy genre.  No other writer has made the ‘supernatural detective’ motif more popular.  The first four Anita Blake books especially virtually recreated the motif; do not allow the controversy over the later works to prevent you from examining those first four.    

I prefer Jim Butcher's work, but she is more influential, I believe. 

15. Marion Zimmer Bradley

            She brought feminism to fantasy and empowered a new generation of female writers to break down the doors in this famously male dominated genre. Her historical interpretations are usually flat out wrong, but as a work of imaginative fiction the Mists of Avalon is rich, complex, and well worth reading. 

Bradley has been "cancelled" in the years since, IMO for very good reason as she appears to have engaged in and abetted sexual abuse of multiple children.  Still, I would probably keep her on the list, albeit in a lower position. She absolutely was a pioneer in the field. She is a classic case of art versus artist, and many of her tales include problematic themes as well, you can't easily separate her writing from her sins.  

14. Ursula K. Le Guin

            Few writers have mastered the art of saying so much with so few words.  The initial Earthsea trilogy is perhaps a third the size of The Lord of the Rings and yet she packs into that tale as much mythical resonance, personal growth, and spiritual meaning as Tolkien imparts.  Her influence is not as wide as she deserves, few works make you better for having read them, A Wizard of Earthsea is one of them.

Interesting that in Fimi's quick poll she so thoroughly dominated as the best fantasy author excluding Tolkien.  I don't know that I totally agree but her work is unquestionably excellent and I cannot think of anyone BETTER, though there are some I enjoy more personally.  

13. Neil Gaiman

            It’s cliché to argue that comic books are a serious art form, but in the fantasy genre they have seldom been taken seriously as original works; they are perennially adapting from published novels.  Gaiman created serious, thoughtful fantasy tales that make full use of the comic forms possibilities, and limitations.  Few writers since Tolkien have shown they understand Fantasy is Mythology, and how powerful that is.  Gaiman is one such writer. 

I think I'd argue now that he is more influential for what he says about fantasy then for his own writing.   

12. Gary Gygax

            His novels are terrible but few writers have brought fantasy to life as completely as Gary Gygax.  He is the great Marxist of the fantasy genre, taking the stories and giving them lock, stock, and barrel to the fans to twist and turn to their heart’s content.  Thanks to Gygax we can all create worlds and slay dragons. 

I was kinder here then I would have preferred. Many people know me as a rather constant critic of Gygax - I found his Dragon magazine editorials infuriating then and just as arrogant today. And much of the arrogance is undeserved, he is a bad, not merely mediocre but actively bad, fantasy writer, he appeared incapable of sharing credit or taking blame and I think Dungeons and Dragons would have been far better off had he quietly retired around 1982 or so.  But regardless, his influence is undeniable and the influence of Dungeons & Dragons is even more obvious today then it was in 2009.  

11. Robert Jordan

            He doesn’t always match the breadth of his ambition but Robert Jordan dared to examine the full context of the ‘Wheel of Time.’  I find his world too bleak for my taste, but book shelves don’t lie: Jordan dominated fantasy in the ‘90s and the ‘00s.  A large, complex cast that draws his readers in on a personal level while dragging them through cosmic struggles and world wars is the anchor of his style and who can argue with success?

I'd certainly leave him out today.  His influence seems to have disappeared. 

10. Michael Moorcock

            “This sword here by my side don’t act the way it should...” Blue Oyster Cult’s paean to Moorcock’s famously conflicted hero shows how fantasy was beginning, even in the ‘70s, to creep into the broader culture.  Elric of Melnibone is a tragic hero in the true sense.  You may find his doom and gloom annoying, but don’t deny it’s compelling.  He brooded before brooding was hip, and showed us elves could be evil and cruel… and named Melniboneans. 

Moorcock still seems to matter.  He even made Fimi's list.  

9. Fritz Leiber

            Who doesn’t want to be Fafhrd or the Grey Mouser?  Leiber’s terrible twosome are the fantasy genre’s response to historical fiction’s ‘Three Musketeers’ and suffered not at all for being two less. But beyond providing us the greatest fantasy buddy story since Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Leiber also shows us the best city in fantasy fiction.  Every fantasy city after Lankhmar is Lankhmar, with a different name. And his heroes’ tales are presented in some of the finest prose in the genre.  A true great. 

Should be higher on the list. 

8. H. P. Lovecraft

            You can trace his influence through fantasy like a sibilant whisper threading through the cerebral cortex of the genre’s finest minds.  Lovecraft’s impersonal take on horror, his conviction that some things man was not meant to know, and his incredible talent for atmosphere cemented his individual mark on the genre.  Yet he also acted as the center piece to a long-distance group of American ‘Inklings’ who created the sword and sorcery genre in the pages of Weird Tales and similar magazines.  If Cthulhu waits dreaming, he at least found a worthy oracle to keep his memory alive during the wait.

Lovecraft's influence never seems to wane.  

7. C.S. Lewis

            Lewis’ fiction is heavily influenced by his Christianity; it detracts from his writing as much as Lovecraft’s atheism detracts from his work.  But solid, respectable, accomplished Lewis shows that serious people can and do address serious subjects through fantasy.  If nothing else, the famous theologian has left us a powerful counter-argument to those who attack the genre on religious grounds. 

After last summer's Lewis "deep dive" I'm even more convinced of his influence. At least two fantasy series that have been adapted for the screen, His Dark Materials, and The Magicians basically exist because he infuriated their authors so much they had to write book length replies.  I think his work will long out last their's. 

6. Robert E. Howard

            Dark and tormented, Howard’s work was a primal scream against civilization.  His mighty thewed barbarian is one of the most memorable characters in literature, yet the form of his stories had an even greater impact on the genre.  His prose is powerful and his themes robust, his short stories are powerful sprints compared to the novelistic marathons we are so used to today.  And yet in his few short stories Howard told tales as riveting as any twelve volume genre work available today.  Like Lord Dunsany, he is fashionable to list as an influence. And like Dunsany, the genre would be stronger today if his influence were as pervasive as claimed.

Which is more influential, Howard, or the false image of Howard that so many of his testosterone-poisoned fanboys have? 

5. Edgar Rice Burroughs

            Few writers have exploited their characters as successfully as Burroughs.  His many Tarzan and John Carter of Mars novels highlight the possibility of the serial as a novel form for fantasy fiction.  His work is pulp fiction at its best… and at its worst. 

I think most fantasy genre scholars wouldn't include him in the genre, seeing his work instead as a precursor, but i don't see a meaningful distinction between his works and fantasy.  

4. Bram Stoker

            One novel made Stoker’s reputation, and deservedly so.  He never wrote anything else half as good, but Dracula had a profound impact on both the horror and the fantasy genres.  Indeed, in their mutual fascination with the undead these genres meet.  Dracula is the model of the mystical antagonist.  It is a powerful work that transcends genre and transformed into a true cultural artifact.

Like Lovecraft, he was an even bigger influence on the horror genre but he impacted fantasy writing nonetheless. 

3. J.K. Rowling

            She burst on the scene and has been credited with saving reading and the entire publishing business.  And she deserves it.  Her world building skill is evident in every carefully chosen detail across the seven novels, her understated British humor shines in the carefully crafted names, and her magic system is sublimely logical and rigidly true to itself. And through this detailed, believable world her vivid characters follow a complex, satisfying plot.  Very few writers have dealt with subjects so deep in a satisfying way for children.  It is fashionable to dismiss her work; frankly those who do so only exhibit their own ignorance.  Rowling is the real deal, and quite possibly the greatest fantasy writer since Tolkien.  

Although I stand firmly against her views on transsexuals, I also stand by this view of her work. She and Lucas are the only "authors" whose work has impacted generations of people on the same deep, massive level as Tolkien. Really, the top three stand alone, IMO, on that count. 

2. George Lucas

            Lucas is not a writer of novels or short stories, yet his influence on fantasy has been immense.  Star Wars yanked fantasy into the mainstream by dressing up mythology in the trappings of space opera.  I am a fan of all six movies, others prefer to dismiss the later works but you cannot dismiss the pervasive cultural influence of his creation.   The Force is with him indeed.

I still stand by this.  He is easily dismissed by people who ignore what he was doing with the films, or simply lack the education to recognize it. But set that aside, even if none of that mattered, his influence on the fantasy genre would be immense because he popularized  Joseph Campbell's monomyth, the "Hero's Journey" and made it the template that virtually all fantasy authors have since tried to emulate.  Perhaps that is for the worst, the monomyth has been (properly IMO) slammed by scholarly critics, but regardless, you have to search hard to find a book in the fantasy genre NOT based on that template.  

1. J.R.R. Tolkien

The Professor is the obvious choice for the top position.  No one has come close to exceeding Tolkien’s skills as a world builder; Middle Earth remains the finest example of the art.  It is rich in detail yet broadly conceived with a documented, cohesive history which spans eons.  Yet transcending the detail is the literary quality of his tales.  The style and tone is often at odds with modern tastes, but I say the fault lies in modern taste.  Frodo, Beren, Turin – Tolkien’s characters are indelible archetypes yet heart-breakingly individual. Tolkien’s work feeds the mind and the soul, and then repays repeated, careful readings; that is a rare gift.  Thank goodness for the Oxford Don and his love of elves and hobbits. 

I think I'll end this here.  I have no further comment on Tolkien himself. I'd love to hear what folks think of my choices, and how they might answer the questions themselves.

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

The Mabinogion Tetralogy

The Mabinogion Tetralogy is a four novel series by Evangeline Walton, all based on the Welsh Mabinogion, or myth cycle. It comprises Prince of Annwn (1974), The Children of Llyr (1971), The Song of Rhiannon (1972), and The Island of the Mighty (1936).

I've read translations of the Mabinogion and found it very difficult going, but I've read in several places that these are the most appropriate novelizations of the Mabinogion. I've long wanted to read the series, as I am generally a fan of well done novelizations of mythic tales, but they were not easy to get a hold of. I finally put them on my Amazon wish list and my wife and kids got them for me this year for Christmas and my birthday, 

Walton does not disappoint, the work is fresh and interesting, but sticks fairly closely to the tale, simply putting it in terms the modern reader can better understand and filling it with scholarship that explains the culture that produced it. But that makes the tale seem very dry, and it is anything but that! From the very beginning it is filled with sex, violence, sacrifice, political intrigue, and even some fairly deep metaphysics.

Walton limits herself to the four Branches of the Mabinogi that form the Mabinogion's core, leaving out the various tales and romances that are also present in the extant copies left to us. 

She starts with "Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed", the first of the four Branches, in Prince of Annwn.  Her tale follows the original in a seemingly straight forward way, starting in media res, as Pwyll meets with Arawn, Lord of Annwn, and in some sense a personification of Death. 

At first, I found it hard to deal with Arawn, as I was used to viewing him as a villain on par with Sauron as depicted in Lloyd Alexander's masterful Chronicles of Prydain; seeing him in a more benevolent role here is jarring, even though my knowledge of Welsh mythology prepared me for it.

Pwyll encounters and fights, sort of several mythological creatures, including possibly a tarrasque, based on a Celtic scuplture.  She ties the work in here with several other mythologies, especially some Near Eastern, and hints at the coming of Christianity.   

Reading this first was interesting, it was the last of Walton's Tetralogy written, thought it covers the first Branch and these branch are internally chronological.  I was surprised by how much religious and political commentary Walton fit into the work. She was an early feminist and that permeates all of the work. She was also raised a Quaker, and I doubt if that explains the hostility to Near Eastern Religions, including Christianity, that is also apparent in this book. Oddly, she also left out the final third of the "Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed", which dealt with the birth and early childhood of Pryderi, Pwyll's son with Rhiannon

Next was The Children of Llyr , which covers "Branwen ferch Llŷr", the second Branch. This work was very different from the first book,  somewhat more down to earth, though clearly still in the world of myth and folklore. The stories start to look less like a fairy tale and more like an epic fantasy.  The Sons of Llyr make excellent protagonists, flawed but endearing, and the antagonists are very human, with redeeming qualities that grant them humanity despite their horrific choices.

But what really sets this work apart is the constant sense of impending, unavoidable doom. The work devolves, especially at the end, into true horror, getting nearly as depressing in places as Frodo's march through Mordor, but without the high purpose and sense of hope that lie at the foundation of Tolkien's work.

The center of the novel is the struggle for a mysterious magical Cauldron which grants the king who possesses it great military power, but at a truly horrific cost to his kingdom. It is truly powerful - and the tale cannot conclude without resolving the Cauldron's fate. Like Tolkien's One Ring, then, the Cauldron is not a true McGuffin (a story object whose only real purpose is to drive the plot). Indeed, it is very like the Ring, in both power and its persistent corruption of those who encounter it. 

The third book is The Song of Rhiannon, covering the "Manawydan fab Llŷr."  This work starts very evocatively, as Manawydan and Pryderi return from the disastrous war with the Irish.  The third branch is generally titled after Manawydan, but Walton chooses to title it after Rhiannon, and includes the tale of Pryderi's birth here rather then in the first novel as it appears in the first Branch of the Mabinogi.  Rhiannon is a focus of the tale, but Manawydan is the point of view character. I found him fascinating, definitely my favorite character in the series to date and the closest thing to a recognizably moral character. 

The feminist subtext in this book is very strong as Rhiannon makes several interesting choice regarding her bedmates, and the matriarchal nature of the "Old Tribes" is on full display. The politics she adds to the work are interesting but how accurate her view of ancient Welsh or Celt culture and society is I can't say.

Walton's novel was published in 1974, the Fleetwood Mac song came out in 1975; it was not based on Walton's novel and I doubt Stevie Nicks had heard of the novel or its title when she was writing the song. Nonetheless it is remarkable how well the song fits the Rhiannon of the Mabinogion.

The Island of the Mighty is the fourth and final book in Walton's series, covering the fourth branch, "Math fab Mathonwy", of the Mabinogi.  Despite being the title character of the Branch, Math is not the protagonist. Instead the protagonists are Gwydion and  Lleu Llaw Gyffes, Math's heirs.  

Gwydion especially is the protagonist but he is really an anti-hero, which I found shocking (though Arawn's characterization should have warned me), because, as mentioned with Arawn above, I associate him with Gwydion the battle leader in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series, where he is something of an Aragorn figure, very noble and wise. Here, Gwydion is handsome, charming, intelligent, but also arrogant, demanding, and over-all, very hard for modern readers to like. It doesn't help that he makes morally questionable decisions again and again. He generally suffers consequences for his bad choices, however, which always help humanize a character. 

Pryderi does appear in the opening chapters, he is the only character to appear in all four Branches, but shifting the focus away from Pwyll and his family is a bit shocking, though completely true to the original text.

There is a LOT more feminist politics in this work, so much that I am shocked it was published in 1936, Walton was very ahead of her time. There is just so much to unpack here on body autonomy, the nature of life, parenthood, self-will... it's an engrossing novel, but it is impossible to read it and not ponder these issues.  Much of this, of course, is straight from the original text of the Mabinogi, but she coul have easily chosen to downplay it or rationalize it way, removing the ethical and philosophical implications. Instead, Walton puts them front and center in her tale, demanding the reader consider these questions. Her sheer intellectual integrity on this point is impressive.

Her one weakness as a writer lies in the fight scenes, they are always truncated and simple and se doesn't seem capable of painting a picture of the fight. In contrast, magic, dialogue, and inner turmoil are her métier.  The final scene of Arianrhod was moving and effective, a prime example of well she wrote scenes of magic. The end of the tale is also moving, in part because the final 'duel' was a very one-sided affair so she could work around her weakness on fight scenes by focusing on the interplay of the characters. 

None of that really mattered, I found this work a fitting conclusion to the series, and the series as a whole certainly lived up to its hype.  I feel like I have a far firmer grasp on Welsh mythology then I had before, and a deeper understanding of Western culture broadly.  

Though she started writing in the first half of the Twentieth century, Walton didn't become known until the second half. She first published The Island of the Mighty  in 1936, as "The Virgin and the Swine" but the work received little notice, she later started a trilogy on Theseus only to find Mary Renault beating her to the punch with a master-work. She didn't become well known until her Mabinogion Tetralogy was published by the Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy series (we certainly owe that series a great deal!).  In the Seventies her work received the acclaim it deserved, she won several awards, and more of her work has since been published, I certainly intend to track down novel Witch House and her Theseus novel, The Sword is Forged.

Her home-grown feminism is well established, I wasn't shocked to discover a 2013 doctoral dissertation on the topic, "The Daughters of Modron: Evangeline Walton’s Feminist Re-visioning of the Mabinogi."

Walton herself was a scholar, although home-schooled and self-taught her mastery of Celtic literature is clear.  It is especially obvious in "Celtic Myth in the Twentieth Century" published in Mythlore (Vol. 3, No. 3, 1976), it is apparent from context that this was a lecture she gave, most likely at a convention or conference but my cursory search hasn't determined when and where exactly. 

In that lecture, Walton notes the lack of morality in the Mabinogion and how oddthat is to modern eyes, the quote seems an excellent place to end this essay:

"In mythology you never find our modern preoccupation with good and evil—a preoccupation that doesn't seem to have made us noticeably good yet. And perhaps you find it least of all in the Celtic. Yeats says—this time in his Celtic Twilight—that fantasy and caprice would lose the freedom which is their breath of life if they were to unite with either good or evil."

Post-script:  This post is not particularly detailed, of course, regarding the Mabinogion Tetralogy.  If you are looking for a more in-depth look that really delves into the various mythologies and plots in the novels, the four blog posts found here on The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head are very well done, though I found the over-all blog organization a bit confusing.

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

Lovecraft & Racism

So there is a new series on HBO called Lovecraft Country based on a novel of the same name by Matt Ruff. It has attracted a great deal of interest because Weird fiction generally, and Lovecraft specifically, has been fashionable the last decade or so.  This interest tends to run in spikes with Lovecraft, but it seems particularly to get traction now because Lovecraft's racist beliefs and writings alongside his general influence on the horror genre makes him a prime target.

Once something is a prestige HBO series, the topics involved are bound to get attention, as happened to Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow when it was a plot point in the first season of HBO's True Detective. Multiple online magazines started dissecting Lovecraft, his themes, and his racism.  Slate, for example, has four different articles on the new series.  None of  them were very insightful, nor were they written by Weird fiction specialists.  

Vox produced "Lovecraftian horror — and the racism at its core — explained", Not as thoughtful as I had hoped when I started to read it, but a decent take nonetheless. It treats fanzines and magazines as if they were the same thing, which is lazy writing (and makes me think perhaps Wikipedia* was the primary source of research for this journalist) and it does give short shift to defenders like S.T. Joshi, I have my own problems with Joshi's work, but he's definitely the world's leading Lovecraft scholar, he is a person of color, and his thoughts on this topic deserve a great deal of consideration.

Joshi's take on Lovecraft's racism appears in the middle of this article (and elsewhere, the man is as prolific as Lovecraft himself). he can also be heard in this podcast and his views specifically about the Lovecraft Country HBO series are discussed here. Joshi is too committed to Lovecraft study for us to take his absolution of Lovecraft's racism completely at face value, but he definitely gets one thing right that the Vox article gets wrong - racism permeates many of his works, but it is not the point of his work. The horror of mankind's utter cosmic inconsequence is the most important theme for Lovecraft.

The fact is, this is a difficult subject. Lovecraft was a racist, plain and simple. Lovecraft wrote thousands of letters to dozens (at least) of correspondents. Many letters espoused racist viewpoints but the man at 16 or 17 was not the same man when he died. Nor had he been totally redeemed. 

Consider Lovecraft himself, he was a man with no power or wealth and no prospects for attaining either.  He was a man who lived such extreme poverty that poor nutrition undoubtedly contributed to his early death, he had a very unhappy life - some bitterness is to be expected, and that it was often misplaced should surprise none of us. Though the banality of it is disappointing in someone so imaginatively gifted otherwise.

He was also a prolific author, who wrote scores of tales over his short lifetime. Some, but certainly not all, of his work is permeated by his racism (especially his earlier works). and it is no simple matter to determine that beyond obvious examples like those mentioned in the article. 

As the Vox article notes, a bust of Lovecraft was originally given to winners of the World Fantasy Award, perhaps because the first award was given at the convention in 1975 held at Providence, Rhode Island and that convention's theme was Lovecraft's circle of fellow writers. I approve of changing the the award myself. I always thought it was in poor taste to make it an individual's bust in the first place, especially when that person is more a horror then a fantasy author, and while influential in the genre, no one could argue he was the most influential fantasy author by a long shot. The Hugo and Nebula awards are far more appropriate - a rocket ship and a transparent block with a glittering nebula respectively. 

Simple hatred for Lovecraft is an easy cop-out, but it is hardly intellectually sound. Neither is claiming he was "of his time" and ignoring or literally white-washing his racism. The proper way to deal with it is to wrestle with it, and thankfully many new writers are. 

Ruthanna Emrys is one new author doing just that, her Innsmouth Legacy series, especially Winter's Tide, the first novel, turns all of Lovecraft on its head, not only addressing his racism, but equally importantly, IMO, challenging his central thesis that atheism is fact, but also existentially terrifying. It's far from a perfect book - her protagonist is a bit too perfect - but her world-building is superb. 

Of course, Matt Ruff's book, and the HBO series, are also doing the same thing as Emrys. I'm looking forward to reading the book (I'm afraid I'm not interested enough in the series to pay for HBO). 

"Cancelling" Lovecraft would be incredibly counter-productive, his work is too foundational. But the entire point of fiction is to engage in it, to challenge and reply to it. Lovecraft isn't an answer, he is a question.

* Yes, I often link to Wikipedia articles. It is often (not always) a decent place to start. Not so much for its content, as for its bibliographies and references.  I never link to a poor Wikipedia page, and i don't use it as a source.  But if its got a solid summary and good references on a subject, then I happily direct folks to that entry. 

This is harder then I had thought!

 I knew that the key to getting my blog to take off would be regular content, but that has been more difficult then I expected to produce. Probably because I've turned each entry into a sort of long-form article.  Which is fine in theory, but in practice it just introduces all of the issues that cause the writer's block I am prone to. I have 11 draft blog entries saved, in vary stages of completeness, for this reason!

I really need to work on interspersing those longer articles with short snippets of thought.  So, this is one of those. 

Some Works of C.S. Lewis

Portions of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #141 (July, 2008).


This past summer I decided to return to C.S. Lewis and examine his writings more closely, especially the fantasy genre books I had not read before or had only read once. C.S. Lewis is best known as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, but that series of very Christian children’s fantasy novels was only a very small part of his literary output. Lewis is also well known as an Oxford don, the central member of the ‘Inklings’ literary society, and a prolific and popular Christian theologian. Lewis has never been my favorite Inkling, and prior to this summer I had mixed feelings about my then favorite book of his,The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. It was an interesting summer as I read several works on the Inklings as well as his own works in order to get a better handle on Lewis, and his place in the fantasy canon.

I started by looking at two books putting Lewis in context with the Inklings, the legendary, loose fellowship of writers at Oxford during the 1930s and 1940s who produced some of the most important fiction and non-fiction of the 20th century. Both of the Inklings books placed C.S. Lewis as the center of gravity for the Inklings, and provided a wealth of biographical detail. First, I read a classic of fantasy literature scholarship, The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends by Humphrey Carpenter. Carpenter is bit more reserved and discrete as a biographer then many desire in our current tabloid age, but I believe his biography of J.R.R. Tolkien is still the best there is. This work has been equally free of salacious gossip and nonsense, though unsparing in pointing out the faults of his subjects. He talks a great deal more of Williams and Lewis and the other Inklings then he does Tolkien, which is natural since he has an entire other book on Tolkien.

I then read The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip Zaleski & Carol Zaleski. It was very interesting to get a different take after Humphrey Carpenter's work, it was more detailed all around, and more balanced covering all of the members of the Inklings. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was sad when it ended. I was especially happy at the Owen Barfield & Warnie Lewis coverage, which explained better then other works I've read why they were Inklings and how they fit into the group. I'd like to read works by both of them, but they can be difficult to find. I'm especially keen on Warnie Lewis, who wrote histories.

(My most glaring gap in my Inklings reading is Charles Williams, who is often seen as the most influential after J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. His work is hard to find, I started All Hallow's Eve once in the 1990s but had to return it to the library before I was finished and never got back to it.)

Lewis' best known work, the Chronicles of Narnia certainly had an impact on the fantasy genre, though not so large an impact as his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, or sword & sorcery author Robert E. Howard. The Chronicles are not Lewis’ only contribution to the fantasy genre. He also wrote the ‘Space’ or ‘Ransom’ Trilogy, inspired initially by an agreement with Tolkien that there were not enough space-travel or time-travel stories of the sorts that they liked.  Tolkien’s time travel story was never completed, but Lewis completed his space travel story. And he produced other fantasy fiction through out his life, always heavily influenced by his Christianity and his love of mythology. Beyond his fantasy fiction, Lewis wrote a great deal of poetry, criticism, theological fiction, and popular theology; he was an extremely prolific writer.

The first two books in the 'Ransom' trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and Perelandra (1943) resemble H.G. Well’s The First Men in the Moon and Edgar Rice Burrough’s A Princess of Mars in basic outline, but unlike those worthies they were not a political allegory. Instead, Lewis constructed the stories as theological allegory, in a manner similar to the Chronicles, which he wrote later. The final book in the trilogy, That Hideous Strength, takes place on modern Earth, and is very different in style and motif. Indeed, though it refers to the earlier books the story is self-contained and That Hideous Strength reads quite well as a stand alone novel. This is an odd trilogy, each of the three novels can nearly stand alone, and all three are very different in tone and style from the others. When I first encountered these books I read the first and the last, but never got around to the middle book.

Out of the Silent Planet (1938) is closest in tone and style to the work of Wells, it is nearly a pastiche, but its firm religious foundation and relatively lack of scientific detail keeps it just on the right side of originality. When I first read it I enjoyed it quite a bit, in large part because I was then quite enjoying Victorian science fiction and it scratched that itch. The alien cultures Ransom discovers are too 'perfect' and extremely alien. I can't quite decide if that is a good or a bad thing -- certainly aliens should be alien! But sometimes it seems they exist only to serve as set pieces for Ransom to view, in jokes, or moral lessons rather then as creatures in and of themselves.

I finally read Perelandra, the middle book in his Space trilogy, over the summer. I had avoided it because it didn't catch my interest, essentially, Ransom visits Venus where he meets Venus' Adam and Eve and witness' an alien 'Garden of Eden' tale with a different ending. Frankly, I found Perelandra boring, even a bit dull. There just is very little happening, just endless conversation and what little conflict and action there is stretched out until it becomes repetitive and boring as well. If you don't accept Lewis' basic assumptions on theology, gender, and the nature of man, it can seem rather nonsensical at times as well. Much of the tale is Lewis setting up an obvious straw-man for Ransom to demolish, the theology and philosophy is pretty elementary. But in the end he abandons even that one-sided argument. Lewis resolves the conflict between good and evil which lies at the root of the novel, through pure physical force rather then rationality or spirituality and he fails to make any sort of argument for why this is a satisfactory conclusion. Some people consider this one of his better novels, I believe, but for me it was a big miss.

(As a side note, in his blog James Cambias compared C.S. Lewis' works, especially the 'Ransom' trilogy, to the works of H.P Lovecraft. I thought it was very well written and observed. It has a different spin on Perelandra's ending then my own take and is worth reading.)

Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra have been called ‘Science Fiction’ but they are more properly described as fantasy fiction, since neither novel deals with realistic scientific or technological advancement and human reactions to it. By that standard, That Hideous Strength is quite firmly fantasy as well.  It details a climactic battle between the forces of Good and Evil as they play out in an English university town.  The forces of Evil are represented by the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments or N.I.C.E., an organization ostensibly devoted to removing the impediments of ‘red tape’ and ‘wrong ideas’ from the path of scientific progress.  In reality, the N.I.C.E. is controlled by fallen ‘eldila’ or angels, and devoted to the destruction of humanity (as distinct from the destruction of humans).

The forces of good are lead by Elwin Ransom, the protagonist of the first two novels but here the somewhat distant leader of the community at St. Annes, a small group formed to counter the agenda of the N.I.C.E.  As the members of N.I.C.E. represent the sort of academic and scientific personalities which Lewis believed most reprehensible and susceptible to corruption, those of St. Annes are the sorts he felt represented the very best of Britain and academia.

Interposed between these groups are the protagonists, Mark and Jane Studdock; a young married couple just beginning their academic careers and married life.  Their marriage is troubled in a very English, very quiet way, and the book’s epic struggle mirrors their marriage difficulties.

The book moves smoothly from academic politics to modern social behavioral modification and onto to modern Arthurian mythology in a manner common in many ‘modern’ or ‘urban’ fantasies today, such as The Dresden Files or the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe.  This was extremely uncommon when Lewis wrote the book, in 1943, but demonstrates the influence of the ‘spiritual thrillers’ and epic Arthurian poetry of Charles Williams, another of the Inklings. In fact in Merlin: The Prophet and his History Geoffrey Ashe identifies Charles Williams' Arthurian poetry and Lewis' That Hideous Strength as the beginnings of the 'New Matter of Britain' aka the 'historical Arthur' movement which is so common in modern Arthurian tales. (pages 204-207)

Lewis somewhat daringly set That Hideous Strength in the vague ‘near-future’ after World War II (it was written before the war had ended and published in 1945).  Indeed, one character remarks, “it’s almost as if we’d lost the war.” as the machinations of N.I.C.E. take on a tangible form and people are turned from their homes in the name of ‘progress’ (a scene similar in effect, if different in style, from Tolkien’s longer ‘The Scouring of the Shire.’)  The story is a harbinger of the immediate post-war literature centered on the theme of a dystopian future, such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Lewis’ prose is clear, poetic, and filled with learned allusions, as it is in all his works.  He alludes to questions of violence, sexuality, and perversion with a polite sense of decorum that modern American readers, accustomed to vulgarity and profanity, might find quaint or simply over-look. The book is, in essence, a well written, fictional example of the argument he makes in his theological/philosophical work of the same period, The Abolition of Man.  Readers who enjoy his Narnia work will find a distinct lack of humor and fun in this book, but those who found the first two ‘Ransom’ novels too exotic will find the more familiar post-war English setting far simpler to comprehend.

As I continued my exploration of Lewis' writings last summer, I turned to the Chronicles of Narnia works that could not remember, either because I had never read them, or only read them once and then forgotten them. As with many popular authors who revisit a popular setting and characters rather than beginning with a firm plan, there is some debate over which order to read the Narnia books in. (J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is an exception).  For Narnia, the question is, order of publication or chronological order.  I tend to prefer chronological order for most such questions, but it certainly is  question open to debate, you can find an excellent discussion of the question here.

What interests me, is that the four Narnia books which I needed to reread were the four in the middle for both reading orders, though I chose to read them in chronologically: The Horse and His Boy (1954), Prince Caspian (1951), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), and The Silver Chair (1953). I recall very clearly why those four were left behind. I was starting to find the series tedious, and I wanted to skip to the parts that most interested me. So, I had read the beginning, The Magician's Nephew (1955), which I still recall as a pretty good book that I rather enjoyed, as good in different ways as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). And I had read the end, The Last Battle (1956), which I did not enjoy very much, finding it more then a little blunt and clumsy.  Of course, what those three books shared was a focus on the 'deep magic', I found it handled well in the former two, an poorly in the latter.

So, I turned to the four books I had skipped before, starting with The Horse and his Boy. The work is clearly a bildungsroman, and very enjoyable if a bit short. It's weakness is the obvious deus ex machina which are not only apparent throughout the tale but then hammered into the protagonist as well, leaving no room for doubt (and without doubt there is no faith, in my opinion).

I moved on to Prince Caspian, which got off to a good start, but quickly began to feel rushed and formulaic. This work highlighted, for me, why Tolkien disliked the Narnia books. Lewis spends no time thinking about his world building, nor does he spend time developing his characters or plot lines. Prince Caspian himself is just getting interesting when we essentially abandon him and start all over. And Lewis missed a real opportunity to deal with the disparate view points of the resistance groups, dismissing the hags and ogres in a handful of pages.

I was even more disappointed in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I love sea voyage tales so I was most look forward to this of the four. But though the novel contains a few interesting set pieces, too often the issue or difficulty is simply resolved by Aslan intervening in some manner. Even Reepicheep, the most fully developed and interesting character, was grating by the end. When I compare this to The Odyssey, the sort of voyage tale Lewis was clearly trying to emulate, I'm dumbfounded, and the writing felt very rushed. A lost opportunity, really.

At last I read The Silver Chair. It was much better then the previous two, being more firmly an adventure story and less of a lesson plan. It benefited from better developed villains with comprehensible goals who were not simply defeated by Aslan fixing everything. Though the ending was lame sadly, but the Narnia portions of the work were quite good. I had to check my Appendix N listing from the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide, to confirm Lewis wasn't in there, because the scenes with the giants of Harfang, the Green Witch's underground kingdom, and the Marsh-wiggle all very reminiscent of various early AD&D adventures.

Having now fully examined Narnia, I'm afraid my opinion of it didn't improve much, Lewis' allegories are simply too blunt and obvious throughout, his theology too dogmatic, to allow the series to really impress. His world building is especially clumsy, which is sad, because there are many aspects (the beavers, the marsh-wiggles, & Reepicheep, for just three examples) that hint at the deeper, more complete work it could have been. It's telling, to my mind, that it is so popular with the fundamentalist Christian set. Despite Lewis' own history as an atheist and debater, these works do not encourage thought but obedience -- it is hard to imagine C.S. Lewis growing up to be the man he became if he had been reading the Narnia books as a child.

I capped of my summer of studying Lewis by reading Till We Have Faces (1956), Lewis' last novel, which retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche. From its excellent start it felt different from his other works, reminding me more then a little in its opening pages of Mary Renault's books (I especially love her Theseus books). That is high praise indeed, and since Lewis was notoriously susceptible to literary influences (That Hideous Strength was heavily influenced by the 'spiritual thrillers' of Charles Williams), I wondered if the resemblance was coincidence.

Of course, a little research revealed that though Lewis knew of Renault (one of Tolkien's Oxford students) and recommended The King Must Die (1958) to Roger Lancelyn Green in a 1958 letter (the year that novel was published) Till We Have Faces was published in 1956, the same year that Renault published the first of her historical novels. So the similar tones must be due to similar source material... and it makes sense that two former Oxford students retelling a Greek myth would produce work similar in tone!

I particularly loved this novel, it is work filled with doubt, but firmly looking at the 'deep magic.'  What is remarkable is that Lewis, who is not known for feminist thinking and is often accused of misogynistic tendencies, produces a thoroughly feminist protagonist from the sisters, who are the antagonists of the original myth. His protagonist and narrator, Orual, is the most developed and complex character I have found in his works. Intelligent, dutiful, powerful, yet blinkered, and convinced of her own ugliness. Many say it is Lewis' best work, and I certainly agree. This work is a masterpiece.

Unfortunately, Lewis’ reputation as a Christian apologist and The Chronicles of Narnia’s status as children’s literature sometimes wards off adult readers.  If you enjoy complex, well-written contemporary fantasy, and especially if you are interested in different take on the genre compared to today’s oft-used tropes, give his books, especially That Hideous Strength and Til We Have Faces a read.

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

Blogging the Nations at War II

Continuing my efforts to blog, chapter  by chapter,  The Nations at War: A Current History by Willis John Abbot, one of the first books to spark my love of history.

I used this image in my classes to show differences in how combat is portrayed.
Note how the Germans are a mass of menacing grey in the distance, only the
Canadians, heroic and resolute, are individuals on this modern battlefield. Also,
one of the few credited art works in this book, it was painted by W. B. Wollen. p32.

Right away it is obvious that graphic images in this work may not match the text surrounding them.  The opening page of the chapter faces a full page art piece depicting the Battle of Ypres, which will not be discussed in the text until Chapter III.

Each chapter begins with a small picture by its first letter,
often these show anachronistic images of soldiers,
as this image from Chapter II shows "A French Cuirassier", p33.

Each chapter opens with a heading listing the topics it will cover, in this case: THE INVASION OF BELGIUM - DASH UPON PARIS - PLAN OF GERMAN
CAMPAIGN - HEROISM OF BELGIANS - MARVELOUS EFFICIENCY OF GERMANS - FALL OF NAMUR - SIR JOHN FRENCH's RETREAT - GERMAN DEFEAT AT THE MARNE - PARIS SAVED.

Original caption: "The map shows approximately the extent of the
German advance to September 6, 1914. The heavy lines
with arrow-tips show in a general way the main
German advance; the heavily dotted lines, routes of
parallel, but lesser columns. All the territory between
the line touching Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and Amiens
and the main line was filled with German troops.
Raiding parties also reached Ostend and Boulogne." p35.

The chapter opens by excoriating the Germans for the invasion of neutral Belgium & Luxemburg, quoting a speech by the German Chancellor: "We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law! . . . We were compelled to override the just protest of the Luxemburg and Belgian governments. The wrong—I speak openly—that we are committing we will endeavor to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is threatened, as we are threatened and is fighting for his highest possessions, can have only one thought—how he is to hack his way through." (page 33). It is remarkable how anti-German the book already was in 1915, let alone by 1917 after the United States had entered the war.

The book lays it on pretty thick regarding Belgium, claiming that it "suffered as no
nation has in modern times" and that "No other such record of national self-sacrifice is recorded in history", both dubious claims even in late 1914. (p37)

The German army is described as hyper-efficient throughout the work, "No army of all history ever took the field so splendidly
equipped with new and terrible engines of war as the armies of Germany, and particularly the Army of the Meuse in this

This drawing of a "Uhlan patrol surprised by Belgian armored car"
 wasn't good history but it captivated me as a child, and I still find
it fascinating. I was shocked to discover this was somewhat real!
The Belgians were the first to use armored cars in combat when
they converted civilian vehicles into the Minerva Armored Car and
employed them in 1914! 

campaign. Aeroplanes and dirigibles spied out the way, reported the positions of the enemy, the artillery the range. Motor cars carried soldiers swiftly from point to point and hurried light guns into action; heavily armored, they had their place on the line of battle, and marked with the Red Cross they carried the wounded to places of safety. Rapid-fire guns poured out streams of bullets like water from a hose, and were so compactly built that one could be packed on a horse, or carried on two motorcycles. Siege guns with a range of ten miles, of a calibre and weight never before thought capable of passage along country roads, were dragged by traction engines or by their own motors at a rate of eight miles an hour—guns that twenty years ago would have been useless in any field because of their immobility." (p34)

Many images in the chapter seem to have been chosen to represent this ideal of 'modern' war, but they look quaint and old-fashioned to our eyes. The vast majority of the forces on all sides were infantry, most transported remained drawn by horses, and the major difference between this battlefield and those of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 seems to be the vast number of troops involved.

Original Caption: "An Impromptu Registration. Refugees from Antwerp writing their names and addresses on a fence to let their friends know their whereabouts." (p41)

Most of the images in this chapter continue the theme of training and mobilization from Chapter I, and there are a lot of images of men marching (probably one of the easier images for photojournalists of the day to obtain.).

Other images highlight the refugees fleeing the Germn invasion, as well as some images of the defense of Belgium and France.

Descriptions continue of the German actions in Belgium, especially, "War has never been

more remorseless. In every town and village prominent men were seized as hostages and were relentlessly put to death if any citizen, maddened by the destruction of his property or insults offered to his womenkind, dared to attack the aggressors. The story of German atrocities in Belgium is not to be told here." (p42)

"All  that was left from the disaster. This dog cart and its 
contents were all that a once prosperous family saved from 
ruin." (p40) The images of dog carts really shocked me as a kid.
 The idea of dogs as draft animals was so foreign, outside of sleds!

Nonetheless, he includes a lengthy description the German taking of Louvain, Belgium by American writer  Richard Harding Davis, culminating in this chilling description: "Outside the station in the

public square the people of Louvain passed in an unending procession, women bareheaded, weeping, men carrying the children asleep on their shoulders, all hemmed in by the shadowy army of gray wolves. Once they were halted, and among them were marched a line of men. They well knew their fellow townsmen. These were on the way to be shot. And better to point the moral an officer halted

"On the road to safety. The dog is much used as a draught animal in 
Belgium, and many refugees were fortunate enough to get dog carts 
in which to escape." (p48)

both processions and, climbing to a cart, explained why the men were to die. He warned others not
to bring down upon themselves a like vengeance.
               As those being led to spend the night in the fields looked across to those marked for death they saw old friends, neighbors of long standing, men of their own household. The officer bellowing at them from the cart was illuminated by the headlights of an automobile. He looked like an actor held in a spotlight on a darkened stage.

"These are the real dogs of war. The Belgians use them to draw 

batteries  of Lewis guns." (p61) I would love to have this 

as a miniature for World War I Belgian forces!

               It was all like a scene upon the stage, so unreal, so inhuman, you felt it could not be true; that the curtain of fire, purring and crackling and sending up sparks to meet the kind, calm stars, was only a painted backdrop; that the reports of rifles from the dark rooms came from blank cartridges; and that these trembling shopkeepers and peasants ringed in bayonets would not in a few minutes really die, but that they themselves and their homes would be restored to their wives and children." (p46)

"Photograph taken amid bursting shells. This picture was taken under fire. The soldiers in the trenches were Belgians. (p50) I doubt this is truly under fire, as the soldiers all clearly staring at the camera, but it might be just before some action.

The chapter describes the German offensive falling short just outside Paris, but does praise the German commander for the disciplined retreat after the Marne, "In ultimate history it is not improbable that the fame of Von Kluck will rest quite as securely on his successful retreat from the Marne as upon his almost unopposed march upon Pans. The former was by far the more difficult test of his generalship. Caught between the hammer and anvil, outnumbered, with the morale of his army sorely suffering by the sudden transition from enthusiastic advance to precipitate retreat, he yet saved his army from the destruction which for a time seemed imminent."

"Desperate stand of British artillery against odds. During the Battle of Mons a German battery of ten guns surprised 
Battery L, Royal Horse Artillery, and killed most of its horses and men before it could get into action." (p59)
I believe this refers to the Affair of Néry, though it is a rather fanciful description of that fight, which was larger then described.

The chapter ends with a chronology of the period covered, from the start of the German invasion in early August through to French recapture of Rheims on 14 September. I loved these chronologies as a kid, because the chapters and pictures tended to flit about, and it was difficult, even with the maps, to always be clear on what was happening. Chronologies are a map of time, they made it so much easier to follow the tale, and I'm certain their inclusions in this book really inspired my love of chronologies, even today. Indeed, establishing a solid chronology is still one of my first steps when I set out to write a historical work.

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.