jeregenest

I’ve been contemplating John Grant’s
Gulliver Unravels: Generic Fantasy and the Loss of Subversion in light of my recent readings. If you haven’t read this article, I think you should. I consider it one of the best summaries of what’s wrong with fantasy out there. I’m sure there is as good criticism out there on the web, but for some reason this remains one of my touchstones.

In recent discussion it occurs to me that a lot of the books we’re talking about are set on earth, whether in a nebulous “now”, a might-have-been-past, a slight alternate or a perhaps future (and al sorts of variations around those).

princeofcairo mentioned he liked the term occult fantasy because it encompasses appropriate historical novels, his example was Lisa Goldstein’s Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon, and I think most people reading my livejournal could thing of a bunch more (might be worth a post of its own sometime).

Which brings me to a problem I’m having with historical fantasy in general lately, if you can ignore the history and it’s a straight fantasy tale no different from any other piece of generic fantasy than why bother? For me historical fantasy, and by extension, occult fantasy has to need to be set on our world to work, that by its use of vermisilitude (or some semblance there in) it makes a better story. Crowley’s Little, Big (one of the greats) works because it is set within the real world. Set the same story in FantasyLand and it’s just not that effective.

This is probably one of the reasons crypto-thrillers usually don’t work in a fantasy setting (and it has been tried), not enough oomph to the background.

Where am I going? No where in particular, just thinking aloud in light of my recent readings -- I still should do a review of the latest Crowley novel now that I’ve had time to think it over.