Finished reading: Fantasy: A Short History by Adam Roberts. An outstanding survey. I’m amazed first of all by how many fantasy novels Adam has read, especially among the hyper-prolific and hyper-expansive post-Tolkienian set. Hundreds of thousands of pages, I imagine. The chapter on “Children’s Fantasy” is a particular highlight for me, but Adam is also notably brilliant on
- fantasy as a kind of displaced vision of Catholicism as seen by a Protestant culture
- similarly, Walter Scott’s medievalism as a predecessor and template for fantasy
- William Morris
- Michael Moorcock
- Jack Vance
- Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
- John Crowley’s Little, Big
I just wish he could have gone on longer about some of this stuff, but that’s what his various blogs are for. 📚