Cover art 2013 Vintage edition

(6) STEPHEN KING –

SALEM’S LOT (1975)

Hail to the King! Stephen King, that is. One of the most iconic and prolific writers of our time. Lines and scenes from his work reverberate throughout popular culture, albeit particularly driven by cinematic or screen adaptations. His prose is vivid and visceral – indeed, the only books that have given me bad dreams, something which generally only occurs from the direct visualization of movies. In short, I am that Constant Reader to which King addresses his Author’s Notes.

As for which book to select for this entry, I considered It, a book that not only has its own individual mythos and is an important part of King’s overarching mythos, but also encapsulates and symbolizes King’s mythology. It traces its shapeshifting eldritch entity of evil in its favorite shape of Pennywise the Clown, as well as its lair and hunting ground, the town of Derry in Maine, and its opponents, the Losers’ Club through multiple and overlapping layers. However, I just can’t give it the spot for this entry because of its narrative missteps –and yes, I’m talking about THAT scene, which I prefer to mentally omit from the novel. There’s also The Talisman, written with Peter Straub – the closest King came to an epic fantasy in the style of The Lord of the Rings, across the United States as it overlaps with a multiverse.

Funnily enough, I went back to one of his first novels. I was tempted to choose his first novel, Carrie, but ultimately I went with King’s version of Dracula in Maine – Salem’s Lot.

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Creative Education 2008 hardcover edition cover art

(5) SHIRLEY JACKSON –

“THE LOTTERY” (1948)

Like the Awards named after her, Shirley Jackson is known for stories of psychological suspense, horror and dark fantasy, ever so subtly bubbling to the surface of our world. This is amply demonstrated by her most famous story “The Lottery”, and indeed, in her collection of stories, named for it – The Lottery and Other Stories. One might consider the nature of her stories as fantasy to be arguable, but as I said, the fantasy in her stories is a subtle intrusion into our world – maybe mundane, maybe magical. The Lottery and Other Stories bore the subtitle The Adventures of James Harris, for a recurring figure in the stories of that collection, who may or may not be supernatural – he certainly seems to be a daemon lover or Dionysian force, complete with his retinue of maenads (who can then take over people’s apartments by sheer force of persuasion).

As for “The Lottery”, it has an ambience of dark fantasy to it – set, it seems, in an alternative United States. One in which small American towns casually celebrate an annual festival in much the same way as any other annual event – a lottery which the winner does not seem eager for the prize (and indeed vociferously protests its unfairness), but which the townsfolk insists on giving to her. Because, you know, the crops and harvest depend on it. Cue the stones…or in the words of John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn – “Who are these coming to the sacrifice?”

Of course, the story’s power is in its symbolism, resonant of so many images of the dark underbelly of American society, or the American Dream. After all, it doesn’t take too much to imagine something like the Lottery – perhaps not so blunt of course, but still, you know…

As newscaster Kent Brockman referred to it in an episode of The Simpsons, it is a chilling tale of social conformity – and not, much to Homer’s disappointment on checking it out of the library, a guide to winning the lottery.

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Cover Penguin classics edition published in 2003 – the edition I own

(5) MARY SHELLEY –

FRANKENSTEIN (1818)

“It’s alive!”

Wikipedia proposes that “Frankenstein is one of the best-known works of English literature”. I don’t know – in my opinion, it is, and it isn’t.

It isn’t because much of Frankenstein in popular culture or imagination comes not from the novel but from its cinematic adaptations, particularly the 1931 film directed by James Whale, such as my opening quote and indeed the whole mechanics – or dare I say it, the ‘electrics’ – of the creation of the monster.

That creation isn’t really the primary source of horror in the novel, so the novel is somewhat vague about it and indeed mostly skips over it to get to the main point, the conflict between the monster and its creator – or rather, the horror of the creator at his creation (or creature).

So that whole process of the monster “as a composite of whole body parts grafted together from cadavers and reanimated by the use of electricity” is not so much in the novel. I seem to recall hints of electricity or ‘galvanism’ (albeit perhaps more as influences on the novel than in the novel itself) but the novel is understandably coy about the details of the monster’s animation or reanimation other than it being part of the discovery of a previously unknown scientific “elemental principle of life”. For that matter, there are definitely explicit references to alchemy and magic, but these are also explicitly dismissed as possible mechanics for the creation of the monster.

Not only does much of Frankenstein in popular culture or imagination originate from elsewhere than the novel, but there’s substantial parts of the novel that tend not to find their way into adaptations, let alone popular culture or imagination. There’s the whole focus on Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, which is also implausibly what the monster uses to learn to read – although that’s simply one part of the implausibly contrived way the monster learns language at all.

Speaking of allusions or references, most adaptations – and even contemporary editions of the book – tend to drop the Shelley’s subtitle and subtext, the modern Prometheus.

Or that the whole novel itself is epistolary, with the framing device that it is written as a letter by the captain of an Arctic discovery ship to his sister – who firstly recounts the surprisingly detailed tale told to him firstly by the Victor Frankenstein dying from exposure to the Arctic ice after being found by him or his crew, and secondly by the monster when the latter pops in for an epilogue. For that matter, this whole ending by icy showdown in the Arctic between the monster and his creator tends to be replaced in popular culture or imagination by the fiery end at the hands of the village mob from the 1931 film.

And yet on the other hand it is “one of the best-known works of English literature” because of that very influence within popular culture and imagination that has seen plot details from the novel displaced by its adaptations. After all, the details may differ but the core concept or premise, basic plot, and themes remain the same – “infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, it has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular culture, spawning a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays”.

Its influence is such that it is often argued to be the first work (or trope maker) of science fiction – such as by Brian Aldiss in his history of SF, Billion Year Spree.

Not bad for the first novel of a teenaged girl who wrote it in a private competition with the two leading poets of the day, her future husband (and then partner) Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, to see who could write the best ghost or horror story – and who clearly won, given the novel’s influence and adaptations. Interestingly, the runner-up was neither Percy Shelley nor Lord Byron, but fellow guest Jonn Polidori with the first published modern vampire story in English, “The Vampyre” (albeit working from a fragment of a story from Byron).

You probably know that Frankenstein is not the name of the monster but of his creator, Victor Frankenstein – the archetype of scientific hubris, or more proverbially, the mad scientist – although the two tend to be conflated in name.

You also probably know the basic premise and plot. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl – no, wait, I mean, boy makes monster, boy rejects monster, and it doesn’t end well from there. Actually, there’s also the traditional boy meets girl plot in there but that doesn’t end well either, thanks to the crossover with the boy makes monster plot – as well as the boy makes girl for monster and boy rejects making girl for monster plot.

One of the ambiguities of the novel is making the monster may not be so bad of itself, it’s that Victor is the archetypal deadbeat dad who skips out to the store for some cigarettes and never comes back, because he is so horrified by the monster’s appearance. Hey pal, you made it! Funny that its appearance never bothered you throughout the lengthy process of making it until after you brought it to life. Perhaps all the subsequent pain could have all been avoided if he had made his monster less, well, monstrous, and more, you know, attractive? You know, in the style of Rocky from Rocky Horror Picture Show – or for that matter, how the Bride of Frankenstein tends to be depicted in adaptations.

Anyway, after he is so superficially abandoned, the monster rises to his own villainy with a murderous rampage. Okay, so murderous rampage is something of an overstatement, since he kills one person, Victor’s brother, William (and an innocent servant girl is hanged for the crime). He approaches Victor in truce, seeking Victor create a female companion for him. Victor initially does so, then destroys her as he fears a race of monsters. (Really, Victor? Come on – show a little imagination, man. You could always create her without ovaries. Or make the monster a male companion). The monster renews his rampage with a vengeance, or more vengeance anyway – killing Victor’s close friend and then Victor’s bride Elizabeth. In her bed on their wedding night – admittedly a nice villainous touch. Victor’s father dies of grief, as was the fashion at that time. Victor then pursues the monster to the Arctic for his own vengeance but fails miserably and freezes instead. The monster then mourns his creator, perhaps because he realizes he will now have nothing to do, and vows to destroy himself.

Thus, the monster wastes his potential as a Romantic Age Hulk. His character is somewhat different from his iconic film appearance, not least because he is sensitive and emotional – like an emo Hulk without the smashing. He is also highly articulate and literate, indeed having read Paradise Lost – clearly no good could come of that. Even so, he is as iconic as his creator – an enduring influence in theme, when not directly adapted in name or image. In his personal study of horror, Danse Macabre, Stephen King considered Frankenstein’s monster (along with Dracula and the Werewolf) to be an archetype of numerous horror figures in fiction, in a role he referred to as “The Thing Without a Name”.

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Apparently, not one but two films were adapted from Leiber’s short story – one in 1967 and one in 1995, with this as the poster for the latter. I’ve never seen it so I don’t know if it’s any good or lives up to its blurb as the best horror film of the year. I suspect not.

(4) FRITZ LEIBER –

“THE GIRL WITH THE HUNGRY EYES” (1949)

Fritz Leiber rocked my fantasy world, as he did the world of literary fantasy in general, even if he is sadly overlooked in the genre now. I guess that’s the fate of most fantasy writers that aren’t the current thing or aren’t named Tolkien. There’s also Leiber’s love of cats, chess, and theater – which are all fun to see pop up in his stories like playing the fantasy nerd equivalent of a drinking game.

Anyway, there simply is too much Leiber to choose from for its influence on me or the genre. There’s his novels, of which the standout is The Big Time – an SF novel of time war, as in two sides fighting a mysterious cosmic war against each other across time and space by changing history on each other (or the Change War as they call it). It’s even more intriguing as much of the vast cosmic backstory is only dropped in hints or remains mysterious (even when Leiber set a few other stories in the same universe). Indeed, the entire novel is set in a kind of cosmic waystation (in the titular Big Time, outside Little Time or the space time of our universe constantly being changed by the war), once again evoking Leiber’s love of theater both in the story (as the waystation is for rest and relaxation) and for the story itself as it is easy to imagine it as a stageplay. It is strikingly multi-layered, as the story extends through time and space as a cosmic backdrop yet effectively takes place entirely within the one “room”, albeit a room somewhat like the Tardis.

However, it’s his stories that effectively made his reputation as well as his influence for me or the genre – stories that largely created or inspired at least two sub-genres of fantasy. There’s his most famous creations, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, an adventuring duo of unlikely heroes in the world of Newhon (or “no when” backwards) and the city of Lankhmar – defining many of the tropes of the so-called sword-and-sorcery or heroic fantasy subgenre. However, it is his short stories that largely created or inspired the genre of contemporary fantasy – that is, adapting fantary or horror tropes to the setting of our contemporary or modern world.

It was a close call for this entry with my runner-up story – “The Man Who Never Grew Young”. This story is not so much contemporary fantasy but a parable all of its own, although not unlike the time changing science fiction of The Big Time – the narrator lives in a world recognizably our own, but one in which history and time are now running in reverse, such that people do indeed grow younger, “born” into existence from the grave and ultimately going back to the womb before disappearing into time. Although as the title suggests, the narrator himself is mysteriously unaffected by this part of the time reversal – never growing younger although history is still going backwards all around him. I particularly like the hints, at least in my perception, that this has come about from some terrible weapon deployed in a war in the future – which has of course become the distant past to the narrator – such that time itself was broken and reversed.

However, I have to give this special mention entry to the story that has remained and resonated with me ever since I read it – which definitely is one of his stories of contemporary fantasy – and that is his modern vampire story with a twist, “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes”.

“She’s the smile that tricks you into throwing away your money and your life. She’s the eyes that lead you on and on, and then show you death. She’s the creature you give everything you’ve got and gives nothing in return. When you yearn towards her face on the billboards, remember that. She’s the lure. She’s the bait. She’s the Girl”.

RATING:

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The map of Fantasyland in the book and also part of the satirical deconstruction of fantasy tropes. It may also look oddly familiar

(3) DIANA WYNNE JONES –

THE TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND (1996)

Following on from Dungeons & Dragons and the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, this is the third of my top three or god-tier entries that are all effectively encyclopedic reference works for the genre of fantasy, whether informally as for the rulebooks of Dungeons & Dragons or formally as for the Encyclopedia of Fantasy. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland leans more to the formal reference work of the latter arranged in alphabetical order, but with a twist – its meta-fictional premise that it is a tour guide to “Fantasyland” as the generic setting of pretty much all fantasy. The creators of fantasy stories are the “Management” of Fantasyland and their stories are “tours” for their audiences, so the book is in the style of a tourist guidebook, albeit a fictional parodic one – hence the title, adapted from the popular Rough Guide series of tourist guidebooks at the time.

The end result is a Devil’s Dictionary deconstructing the tropes or cliches of the fantasy genre – such as entry on elves, which has lodged itself deep in my psyche ever since such that I have never quite been able to look at the elves in The Lord of the Rings the same way again.

“Elves appear to have deteriorated generally since the coming of humans. If you meet Elves, expect to have to listen for hours while they tell you about this – many Elves are great bores on the subject – and about what glories there were in ancient days. They will intersperse their account with nostalgic ditties (songs of aching beauty) and conclude by telling you how great numbers of Elves have become so wearied with the thinning of the old golden wonders that they have all departed, departed into the West. This is correct, provided you take it with the understanding that Elves do not say anything quite straight. Many Elves have indeed gone west, to Minnesota and thence to California, and finally to Arizona, where they have great fun wearing punk clothes and riding motorbikes”.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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St Martin’s Press, hardcover 1997 edition – the edition I own

(2) JOHN CLUTE & JOHN GRANT –
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASY

The best single reference work concerning fantasy fiction in all media – even better now that it is online, although sadly, not updated like its companion and predecessor The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

However, that it is not updated does not detract from its greatest strength as a reference work and influence on me personally, which is not so much its entries for individual authors or works, but its compilation of fantasy themes and tropes, including its classification of fantasy subgenres. Many of these are compiled as entries under an evocative or striking phrase, many of which in turn were invented by the editors – one notable example being ‘thinning’, for the gradual loss of magic or vitality from the world.

Others include the descriptive term for one of my favorite subgenres of fantasy – posthumous fantasy, a fantasy set in the afterlife. The latter is more usually styled as Bangsian fantasy, named for John Kendricks Bangs who arguably codified or pioneered it as a modern fantasy subgenre – but often leads to confusion with its more conventional use for fiction or in this case fantasy published after an author’s death when I casually use the term posthumous fantasy elsewhere.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Cover – Conan the Barbarian #1 comic (October 1970), by Barry Smith and John Verpoorten, also used as the cover of the original comics omnibus Volume 1 published by Titan Books in February 2025 (fair use). Note once again the classic Conan pose

TOP 10 FANTASY BOOKS

(SPECIAL MENTION: CULT & PULP)

I’ve ranked my Top 10 Fantasy Books but fantasy is too prolific – and phantasmagorical – a genre to be confined to a mere top ten books or even my usual list of special mentions.

Instead, I have two lists of special mentions – one classic and the other cult and pulp.

This is obviously the latter – for those fantasy books or works that don’t quite that iconic status or recognition within popular culture and imagination of my classic special mentions but I like them anyway!

That or they’re an enduring influence on me despite (or perhaps because of) their “cult & pulp” status.

Cover Penguin Classics paperback edition 2003

(4) BRAM STOKER –

DRACULA (1897)

Dracula is THE vampire, synonymous with vampires and vampirism in popular culture and imagination.

My love of vampire fiction – in literature, in film or television, in comics and in every other media in which vampires appear – originates directly from Dracula, as I read it in early childhood. It may be tame by standards of modern cinematic horror, particularly given its style as an epistolary novel, but it literally gave me nightmares as a child. Of course, it probably didn’t help that I read it when I was home from school sick with fever – and I still remember it in terms of fever dream.

There is a whole host of vampiric or ‘vampire adjacent’ beings or creatures in folklore and mythology, going all around the world and back to the dawn of history or beyond, as well as an incredible dense “folklore for the entity known today as the vampire” that “originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century southeastern Europe”.

And yet almost all of it pales (heh) in comparison to the archetype of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which effectively supersedes its predecessors in folklore, except to the extent it adapted them – and even then most people remember it by Dracula rather than the original folklore.

Vampires tend to be superpowered by nature and Dracula even more so, as his book codified the definitive vampire tropes in fiction. In adaptations, he has also been freakishly hard to kill, at least permanently. He can shift shape, most impressively into mist or dust in moonlight – passing through the smallest cracks and virtually teleporting. He can also command animals – and the elements. In short, he was potentially a Dark Lord to rival Sauron – indeed, it wouldn’t be too hard to recast Dracula as The Lord of the Rings, substituting Transylvania for Mordor and the Brides for the Black Riders (only much s€xier). Kim Newman did something of the sort with his Anno Dracula series, where Dracula bests Van Helsing and vampirizes Queen Victoria to rule the British Empire. Or at least, he might have done if he’d had any sort of plan in Stoker’s book beyond picking up British chicks – but then that’s just how he swings, baby.

Speaking of the Brides, they’re never referred to as such or the Brides of Dracula in the novel itself – that came later in other media and popular culture – but instead are referred to as the sisters. Nor are they portrayed as married to him or in any other relationship to him – their names as well as “the origin and identity of the Sisters, as well as the true nature of their relationship with Count Dracula, is never revealed”.

They were, however, written as hot, and they have been portrayed that way ever since in imitations or adaptations, something they use to bewitch their victims such as Jonathan Harker or those who seek to stake them such as Abraham van Helsing, albeit both narrowly survive or resist their bewitchment. One wonders why Dracula even leaves his castle at all, let alone for England, when he could just hang with the Brides – although in fairness it seems that his grand plan in England was to replicate the Brides. It amuses me that Dracula’s supernatural invasion of England ultimately involved not much else.

“Dracula is one of the most famous works of English literature and has been called the centrepiece of vampire fiction…the novel has been adapted many times. Count Dracula has deeply influenced the popular conception of vampires; with over 700 appearances across virtually all forms of media, the Guiness Book of World Records named Dracula the most portrayed literary character.”

And then you have all the themes, above and below the surface. I’ve already referred to Dracula’s supernatural invasion of England – which sees Dracula as an example of the invasion literature at the time, albeit the latter tended towards more mortal and mundane enemies. Dracula’s invasion also bears parallels to disease or plague – something made more explicit in the various films of Nosferatu, which was essentially Dracula with the serial numbers filed off. Throw in ethnicity (including Stoker’s Irish nationality), sexuality, religion or superstition, and science – and now we’re just getting started.

As I said in my previous special mention for Alice, Dracula’s dark fantasy or horror arguably dovetails with my definition of the modern fantasy genre as a fusion of fairy tale and Cthulhu mythos, with Dracula obviously towards the Cthulhu Mythos end of that fusion.

Indeed, one could propose a parallel definition of the modern fantasy genre as a fusion of Alice and Dracula, the former parallel to fairy tale and the latter parallel to the Cthulhu Mythos.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Cover of The Annotated Alice, combining both books, Penguin 2001 (the edition I own)

(3) LEWIS CARROLL –

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND / THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (1865 / 1871)

“Curiouser and curiouser”…

Few fantasies are as iconic as Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass (although the two books are often merged in popular culture) – which for simplicity I’ll conflate with their protagonist, Alice.

Through the vivid imagery or encounters of her adventures, as well as their potential symbolic allusions, Alice has lent herself readily to adaptation and popular imagination.

Allusions to Alice have earned their own trope on TV Tropes, which notes that the original novels can be associated with surreal or psychedelic fantasy, drug imagery (as in Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit), gothic horror and other aspects of Victorian England, such as steampunk.

As TV Tropes notes, “the name ‘Alice’, when used in a reference to Alice in Wonderland, therefore tends to be used for fantastical, ethereal characters or concepts, and that goes double if her last name is a variation on Carroll” (or Liddell – but more about that later). Other frequent references include white rabbits or going down the rabbit hole (as in The Matrix) – into a world of the hero’s journey that doesn’t conform to real world logic (and in which our heroine has to use intuition, a good heart, and an ability to acquire allies).

Not to mention white rabbits, cats and tea parties – or Mad Hatters. While we’re here, I should also note cards and chess as the premise for each of the settings in Wonderland and beyond the looking-glass respectively.

As for Alice herself, Lewis Carroll described her (when writing on her personality in “Alice on the Stage”) as “wildly curious, and with the eager enjoyment of Life that comes only in the happy hours of childhood, when all is new and fair, and when Sin and Sorrow are but names — empty words signifying nothing!”. I can’t think of a better – or more endearing – description than that.

For Carroll, there was, at least to some extent, a real Alice – Alice Pleasance Liddell, who inspired Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when she asked Carroll to tell her a story on a boating trip in Oxford. The extent to which his character can be identified with Alice Liddell is not clear (and the brunette Liddell certainly did not resemble the blonde illustrations in the original book by cartoonist Sir John Tenniel). However, there are direct links to Liddell in the books – they are set on her birthday and her half birthday six months later (with the corresponding age), they are dedicated to her and the letters of her name are featured in an acrostic poem in the sequel.

As Catherine Robson wrote in Men in Wonderland – “In all her different and associated forms—underground and through the looking glass, textual and visual, drawn and photographed, as Carroll’s brunette or Tenniel’s blonde or Disney’s prim miss…in novel, poem, satire, play, film, cartoon, newspaper, magazine, album cover or song—Alice is the ultimate cultural icon, available for any and every form of manipulation, and as ubiquitous today as in the era of her first appearance.”

Alice’s fantasy adventures arguably dovetail with my definition of the modern fantasy genre as a fusion of fairy tale and Cthulhu mythos, with Alice obviously towards the fairy tale end of that fusion – albeit Alice extends beyond fairy tale to logical and linguistic paradoxes, play, pun, and parodies. Although it is tempting to imagine an adaptation of Alice more towards the Cthulhu mythos end – some of the beings and realms she encounters in her adventures come close…

Indeed, I would also propose a parallel definition of the modern fantasy genre as a fusion of Alice and my next special mention entry.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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