New Collection of Critical Essays about Modern Fantasy announced...

Farah Mendlesohn has announced that Cambridge University Press have commissioned a new collection of critical essays that sounds rather juicy indeed.

Farah tells us :

"After three years of discussion and more outlines than I like to contemplate, Cambridge University Press have commissioned a collection of essays on Modern Fantasy Literature which will be published in paperback and aimed at both students and fans.

However, this book is not currently anticipated as an addition to the Cambridge Companion series. This may yet change.

I'm very pleased with our line up so here it is, so you can drool and anticipate. Publication date is summer 2009.

Gothic and Horror Fiction  Adam Roberts
Nineteenth Century Fantasists  Gary K. Wolfe
The emergence of an American Fantasy Tradition  Paul Kincaid
The development of Children's Fantasy  Maria Nikolajeva
Tolkien and Lewis and the emergence of secondary world fantasy  Edward James
The post-Tolkien publishing boom  David Hartwell

Psychoanalysis and the Fantastic  Andrew M. Butler
Political Readings of the Fantastic  Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint
Structuralism and the Fantastic  Brian Attebery
Modernism, Postmodernism and the Fantastic  Wendy Pearson
Thematic Criticism  Farah Mendlesohn
Fantasy and the Metatext  John Clute
The Language of the Fantastic  Greer Gilman
Reading the Fantasy Series  Kari Maund
Reading the Slipstream  M. John Harrison

Quest Fantasies  W. A. Senior
Modern Urban Fantasy  Alex Irvine
Faerie and the Modern Fantastic  Elizabeth Hand
Dark Fantasy and Paranormal Romance  Roz Kaveney
Modern Children’s Fantasy  Charles Butler
Literary Fantasy and Magical Realism  Sharon Sieber
Historical Fantasy  Veronica Schanoes
Eschatalogical Fantasy  Graham Sleight"

If it's only half as good as The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction then this might well prove to be a must have.

Comments

[Steve]

Ooh ... classy - not a mention of Harry Potter in the TOC ;-)

[Jacob Martin]

I get the feeling that we need a book like this. I know I need it, looks like a solid read. As a modern fantasy writer, this could be useful for people I know who are interested in the development of my work, namely family and friends. If I can't convince them I have skills in writing, I can at least educate them about what I do.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I think it would be more inspiration than anything else. I've tried to write a couple of times but it's difficult as I come at it from the point of view of the critic (I start with subtext and come round to characters and plot last) but I'm sure it would be a good indicator of how complex and intelligent fantasy can be at its best.

[Jacob Martin]

It's hard for critics to write Fantasy because the critic tends to have more experience critiquing works of Fantasy rather than creating it. I'm sure you'll eventually find the right way to go about it, it took me years to figure out that I wanted to write satirical fantasy that wasn't parody but still had some serious things to say about modern life and how one can judge somebody as more human than somebody else.

Also, you have to have the right mindset to write certain types of Fantasy. I write about Changelings who exhibit human tendencies despite not being human, gained from the Human TV programs and Human media they encounter, which I write about as a young man with Asperger Syndrome. Asperger's sufferers were originally seen as potential Changelings way back when, so I identify with them. Plus nobody really has written much about Changelings, at least not from the point of view of an Asperger's person. At least I'm not writing Vampire porn, I predict that if I become successful, Changeling books will be where it's at in the next 20 years.

But you also have to have the willpower to write a Fantasy book. That's half the battle. I'm sure you could write lovely Fantasy books that make people think, despite your expressed dissatisfaction with the Fantasy genre you expressed in earlier blog posts. I guess good Fantasy relies as much on the motivation and wisdom of the Fantasy writer as their skills as a writer. The way I see it, a Magical society would treat Magic as science, much like Earth treats science as a path to technological advancement, rather than a deus ex machina.

Regards,
Jacob Martin