Prologue: Something About Dragons

Roughly the number of books I'm planning on reading for this project.

Welcome, everyone to Something About Dragons, a blog/podcast about the history and development of fantasy literature in the 20th century. I am your host and scribe, James Hedrick, and, if you are a frequent visitor to Middle Earth or Westeros, Narnia or Lankmar, Kyrnn or Anhk Morpork, you’re probably in the right place.

In true fantasy fashion, I thought it best to start Something About Dragons with a prologue! Some exposition to get us started. Our next episode/post will get us into the heart of our endeavor – stories about dragons and secondary worlds and magic.

But today, Something About Dragons begins with a prologue.

Not a temporal prologue, mind you. I will not be offering my credentials, since I don’t have any. Nor will I be regaling you with the sordid tale of how I became a fantasy fan in the misty depths of the 1980’s and 90’s (Short version: I was a precocious kid who liked magic and elves and lived in the middle of nowhere; it’s neither complicated nor interesting). I will also not be covering some of the Gothic and Romantic tales of the 19th century that foreshadowed the later genre of fantasy, early stuff by folks like Sarah Coleridge or George MacDonald or William Morris.

This prologue is more…thematic. I want you to know what you’re getting into. This is a show about the history and development of 20th Century Fantasy Literature. There’s a lot stuffed into those four words. Let’s unpack them a bit, shall we?

First, this show will examine fantasy literature, as a genre: its history, growth, and development. We may – at times – bleed into other speculative fiction genres: horror, science fiction, etc. But, honestly, covering just the history of twentieth century fantasy literature can only be described as a quixotic undertaking, much less all of speculative fiction. Fantasy is a genre that includes, without stretching the definition too much: Peter Rabbit and Tyrion Lannister; Roland Deschain and Moriaine Damodred; Elric of Melniboné and Tarzan of the Apes.

To tackle the breadth of the genre, we’re going to approach fantasy as a “fuzzy set” rather than a genre with strict boundaries, borrowing the approach from Brian Attebery – one of the genre’s preeminent scholars – and his 1992 book, Strategies of Fantasy. Which is a fancy way of saying, we’re going to take a broad approach to the genre because, to quote another fantasy scholar, Franz Rottensteiner “there are more manifestations of the fantastic than can easily be accommodated under any single theory (1978)”. Just as an example, your modern grimdark fantasy leans more than a little on horror tropes. Similarly, mid-century fantasy leans heavily toward sci-fi “influenced” space fantasy, otherwise known as fantasy-gussied up with some sci-fi to make it sexy (looking at you, Dune). Children’s fantasy crosses over with fairy tales, what do you do with vampires and zombies – can’t have YA or urban fantasy without’em – and, well, magical realism exists. Does taking a broad approach mean that we have to cover Michael Moorcock and Gabriel Garcia Marquez?

I’m going to hedge a bit by butchering that famous quote from the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and simply say, “I know it when I see it.”

More specifically, we are far more likely to cover Terry Brooks than Haruki Murakami, but we’re going to examine portal fantasy, sword and sorcery, science fantasy, urban fantasy, anthropomorphic animals, grimdark, high fantasy, low fantasy, middle fantasy, slightly below average fantasy, etc. I'm trying to mostly avoid science fiction/space opera - there's a fair bit of overlap through the 1950's - but we’re going to bleed into what some folks might not immediately identify as “fantasy”. For example, I'm planning on covering Tarzan, but likely not Burroughs' Barsoom/Mars novels. In fairness, there's hardly any science in Barsoom, but I think one set of tales – Tarzan – is more influential on fantasy literature than the other, particularly during the early pulp era, and not in ways that are entirely positive (Burroughs was an unapologetic promoter of eugenics; we’ll get into it).

More practically, there are lots of podcasts about science fiction, but far fewer about fantasy. Other people do sci-fi better than I could, so I’m going to try and stay within my fantastical lane, but it’s a pretty big lane, and we’re going to swerve around a bit.

Also, when I say fantasy literature, I’m primarily talking about English-language fantasy literature, mostly by necessity, as I’m depressingly monolingual (at least, in my ability to read anything more complex than The Cat in the Hat). To the greatest extent possible, I am going to drop in relevant and interesting fantasy literature from other countries, beyond the usual stuff like Grimm’s fairy tales or The Odyssey, which are, more or less, part of fantasy’s historical cannon. To give you an idea, I have plans to do a supplemental podcast eventually covering the links between fantasy literature and specifically Latin American magical realism (though the early German stuff ties into some early fantastical works as well). One, because there are real parallels there, and two, because I just really enjoy Gabriel Garcia Marquez & Jorge Luis Borges.

However, by necessity, the bulk of the show is going to focus on American and British authors and books. Fantasy literature – as a mass market genre – has been fairly Anglocentric and insular (as most American/British cultural exports of the 20th century have been, see also “rock'n'roll”). More recent fantasy fiction (mostly in the last couple decades) has seen an incredible expansion of non-anglophone authors, stories by and about people-of-color, etc. And I want to be clear that I use the word “expansion” purposefully here, because those authors, readers and stories were always there. There are just more of them, largely due to a weakening of systemic barriers, and they are more prominent in the last couple decades as fantasy readership has diversified.

And we WILL include those stories and those authors. But, I have placed the starting point for this podcast in 1900. The bulk of what is preserved and remembered from the early history of the genre is, perhaps inescapably, mostly white, male, and cis. There is an innate problem here of telling a comprehensible literary history about a time with substantial systemic barriers while trying to minimize supporting those barriers. Which is a long way of saying, I’m going to be as inclusive as I possibly can while acknowledging that the genre hasn’t always been so.

BUT, if you, as a listener and fan have any recommendations for expanding our horizons and incorporating more non-English, inclusive fantasy stories, please, please, please let me know. Seriously, send me an email: somethingaboutdragonspod@gmail.com. Let’s talk. I want to learn, I want to provide the best history of the genre possible, and fantasy is, at its best, a genre that embraces all of humanity and beyond.

Second (I think), the 20th Century. A bit misleading. I’ve already mentioned at least four 19th century authors, several mythological texts, and I hope to continue this podcast into the 21st century and talk about fantasy literature over the last couple of decades. As I said, fantasy literature has really blossomed over the past 20-ish years. The fandom has expanded; writers and stories have gotten more diverse. Big budget movies (thanks, Peter Jackson!), some of the best fantasy writing in history (looking at you, NK Jemisin), and probably the biggest expansion of the genre since the late 60's/early 70's feminist revolution. Someone should really take a horizontal view of fantasy literature since the turn of the century.

However, my interest is in tracing how we got to this explosion in fantasy literature, without being teleological about it. Where did the modern genre start (without straying into teleology)? Where did it come from, and how did we get here?

So, in the next proper episode of the podcast, we’re starting in 1900 with that most beloved of portal fantasies: The Wizard of Oz.

Why 1900, you ask?

Because it’s a nice, round, arbitrary number?

But seriously, there is plenty of pre-20th century fantasy we could talk about, even leaving aside the mythology and epic, from The Princess and the Goblin to Phantasmion to Frankenstein. Even the earliest books we’ll cover as part of the podcast have earlier antecedents: Oz was strongly influenced by Lewis Carroll’s work, Tarzan is basically pulp fiction Jungle Book, and the Tarzan sequels are essentially rewrites of King Solomon’s Mines.

However, more substantively, the 20th century really marks the beginning of the rise of mass market fantasy as a genre. The merging of Victorian children’s literature, where fantasy was largely relegated during the 19th century, with Gothic popular fiction (like Poe and others), and cheap pulp paper really kick starts fantasy literature as the commercial genre we know and love. Instead of isolated or scattered popular novels with fantastic elements, we begin to see the tropes and commonalities of fantasy literature as an independent literary genre emerge post-1900.

Capitalism. It’s basically because of capitalism.

Plus, I really don't want to read Alice in Wonderland or Frankenstein again, and you can’t make me. There are a lot more obscure gems of the 20th century that deserve a deeper look, and there are better folks than me to talk about 19th century fantastic literature. People with literature degrees and whatnot. I reserve the right to do a supplemental episode though.

Third (ish), fantasy literature mostly means primarily fantasy novels, particularly after we get through the first half of the century.

There exist mountains of good fantasy from the pulp magazines. Just the most obvious example: R.E. Howard’s Conan started out in Weird Tales. Another periodical, Wonder Stories, published work from a number of authors we’ll be examining. Clark Ashton Smith is a personal favorite fantasy author of mine. But, while the pulps were undoubtedly important, this really isn’t a podcast about the influence of pulp magazines on fantasy (someone should really do that podcast!). Science fiction and horror would likely be impossible to cover without discussing in detail the full influence of specific sci-fi magazines across the whole of the 20th century (think Campbell at Astounding/Analog, Hugo Gernsback at Amazing Stories, etc.). Even today, short fiction has more influence in sci-fi and horror than fantasy, though your mileage may vary. But, honestly, outside of the influence of Weird Tales specifically, the pulps inject fantasy with a jolt of energy throughout the late 20’s through about the mid-40’s, and then that era slowly fades and is replaced mostly by the mass market paperback and publishers like Gnome Press and Arkham.

Anyway, I think we can cover early 20th century fantasy short fiction with an approach that covers important authors and stories, such as Howard and Conan or CL Moore, rather than risk getting bogged down in the plethora of pulp and discussions of almost forgotten folks like author Seaberry Quinn. Though, if I’m being entirely fair, Quinn’s character Jules de Grandin does prefigure a lot of late 20th century urban fantasy, no matter how derivatively written. The short version, we’ll focus on important pulp authors during the pulp era, then switch back to specific novels, etc.

Fourth (I guess), how did I pick what I picked?

For those that are interested, our history of fantasy is going to be guided by readings and discussion of approximately 100 influential or important fantasy stories. To see where we’re going, my current list of pieces to read and discuss is available at www.somethingaboutdragons.com. The list represents a work-in-progress. I suspect I’ll add and subtract as we go on, depending on what titles I think best illuminate something about the history of the genre. Just for example, I’m still debating whether to include Abraham Merritt or if Clark Ashton Smith + R.E. Howard + C.L. Moore is enough early pulp. Again, I am absolutely open to suggestions. Feel free to send me any additions, subtractions, or oversights.

But, broadly, I’m looking at three main criteria: Influence, Innovation, and Interest.

Let’s look at the influence first. A good example is the first book we’re going to review, The Wizard of Oz. It’s unbelievably influential. Tolkien was known to have drawn on the book for inspiration. Narnia is basically the Catholic/YA version of Oz. Every fantasy author of the 20th century probably read Oz. The Judy Garland movie is believed to be the most watched film of all time! Super influential!

Innovative? That’s tougher. Oz definitely has a female protagonist that drives the story. But so did Alice in Wonderland, published 35 years earlier. Alice and Dorothy are basically the same character.

I’m being hyperbolic, but you get my point. Oz is also similar to Wonderland, or Fairie or a number of other fantasy worlds. It’s beautifully and richly realized, but Oz is less innovative than it is influential, less groundbreaking than it is significant. At least, on the surface 😊

Interesting. That’s the third criteria and basically my catch-all to include something if it interests me or makes a point. This is my show; you’ll have to endure my idiosyncrasies. Oz has some really interesting stuff about it. Baum’s mother-in-law was a suffragist and may have influenced Baum’s portrayal of certain characters. There are 14 Oz sequels by Baum alone, plus dozens more by other authors, particularly Ruth Plumly Thompson. We’re getting into real Robert Jordan territory here. There were touring musical versions, various stage and screen productions, and that movie in the 30’s with someone named Judy Garland. And Oz was published in 1900, so it nicely sets a bookend for the time we will cover. So, interesting, but it would probably be here anyway for being influential.

Interesting might be better explained by a book I intend to cover called Fevre Dream from some minor author, George RR Martin. It’s about vampires on the Mississippi in a steamboat. The description of steamboat life in the 19th century is fantastic. The depiction of slavery is…questionable. Mark Twain meets Laurel K. Hamilton? You should read it.

But it’s not a particularly influential book. There wasn’t a spate of vampire-centered Gilded Age tales following its publication. It wasn’t all that innovative. Really cool setting, nice prefiguring of the urban fantasy explosion, but you could skip it and still call yourself well-read in the genre.

But I think it’s an interesting look at pre-fame GRRM. He gives his take on a stock character – the vampire. It gives you a glimpse into his pre-Game of Thrones style and his twists on existing ideas (like, just as a for example, ice zombies).

Anyway, those are the broad criteria for inclusion on the reading list for the podcast. We’ll be going in roughly chronological order, from 1900 all the way up to 2000 (and hopefully beyond). I highly recommend reading along. I think it will help you to understand aspects of what I’m talking about in the analysis since, and this is a biggie, I’m not going to swerve around spoilers. This project is meant to be a project about the history of the fantasy genre with critique and analysis. Not a series of spoiler-free book reviews. That means we’re going to have to discuss plot points. I encourage you to read along if you really don’t like spoilers.

Finally, fifth-ishly? A few housekeeping items.

Again, this is not strictly a book review project or book club. My purpose really isn’t necessarily to give you my opinion of particular works, so much as trace the development of the genre through specific works & authors, while identifying and discussing significant aspects of an author, story, or publication. The key artifacts for discussion are the stories the authors wrote, not necessarily the writers and creators themselves. So, yeah, for my sins, we’re going to cover Piers Anthony’s Xanth. We’re going to bathe afterwards and move on, hopefully never to mention it again.

Also, I strive to be inclusive, particularly with women writers. The genre was pretty dude-heavy during the 80s/90s doorstopper era I grew up in. Tor even let Terry Goodkind keep publishing. But women authors have been incredibly important to the genre since its inception, and I’m making a point to include and cover as many of them as possible. I would like to preemptively ask anyone who wants to bitch about this to do it somewhere else.

Series! I’m not doing whole series (for the most part) or multiple books by multiple authors. Again, generally. I am actually planning on doing multiple books by Dunsany, Moorcock, Ursula K Le Guin, and Zelazny, because I like them, because they’re important authors, and because you can’t stop me. Likewise, we’ll get Eye of the World (or Lord of Chaos because that’s my favorite, I haven’t decided) but not all 14 from Robert Jordan and Brian Sanderson because I want to finish this project before I need to quest for the Fountain of Youth myself.

Also, I tend toward the first book in a series. So, hopefully, folks might like what they hear, and can go read the rest of the Chronicles of Amber or whatever. It’s just a tendency though. If something else seems more illustrative, I’ll do that instead.

Finally, art and artist. Many fantasy authors are, as a friend of mine put it, “hugely problematic [word-I-can't-say-without-getting-an-“adult”-rating-but-is-four-letters-long-and-starts-with-'f']-wads.” He is not wrong. Just as an example, I can’t really talk about the rise of mega-fantasy best sellers without talking about The Belgariad and Pawn of the Prophecy. David and Leigh Eddings, the authors of those series, spent time in jail for child abuse in South Dakota in the sixties. I cannot imagine what you had to do to be convicted of child abuse in South Dakota in the sixties. Similarly, discussing feminist fantasy requires talking about Mists of Avalon, whose author, Marion Zimmer Bradley, at best enabled child sexual abuse and was almost certainly herself abusive. Lovecraft, as most folks know, was a massive racist, but I can avoid him mostly because there’s plenty of info out there for anyone interested.

Anyway, I don’t have a good answer for some of this, but the podcast will, again, focus primarily on the art, rather than the artist, and this isn’t a podcast about the moral failings of genre authors. But, issues like eugenics, fascism, and misogyny have had massive influence on the genre historically and continue to do so today, both in the stories and in the lives of authors and readers. We also aren’t going to ignore issues when they come up (again I’m going to foreshadow Burroughs here), and we will try and muddle through as best we can. I will try to be as sensitive and include content warnings as necessary.

Anyway, long story short, this is my own, fairly idiosyncratic look at the development of fantasy literature. Representative (I hope!) rather than comprehensive. We’ll cover approximately 100 fantasy books from 1900 all the way to 2000, picked based on their importance to the genre and how much I’m getting in kickbacks from the author. Again, if you’re interested, the current list of books we’ll cover is available at www.somethingaboutdragons.com. To let me know your suggested additions, subtractions, or to castigate me for oversights, email me at somethingaboutdragonspod@gmail.com.

And finally, I’d like to thank Keith Zizza, video game composer extraordinaire and creator of the intro and outro music for the podcast version of Something About Dragons. I wrote to Keith while I was still planning this project, asking about licensing music from an old video game he scored in the mid-1990’s, Lords of the Realm II. Well, the copyright wasn’t with Keith, but he graciously allowed me the use of other tracks in a similar style he had recently written, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Thank you Keith Zizza, a wonderful composer and first friend of the show.

Now, with no more gilding the lily and without any further ado, I invite you to read, listen, or grok Episode 1: The Wonderful Wizard of Pegana.