(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*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

 

 

(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*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

 

(2) H.P. LOVECRAFT – CHTHULU MYTHOS

 

Does any other literary fantasy or SF mythology have the pre-eminence, or even more so capture the paranoid modern zeitgeist, as Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos?

Lovecraft took the worldview of modern science and turned it into a source of cosmic horror, creating that genre of fantasy or SF horror.

“His famous cosmology, created almost single-handedly, did not celebrate science and progress, but was instead full of otherworldly monsters and blind, raving deities…all of his work resonates with the terror of the newly-discovered magnitude of the universe…Einstein’s theory of relativity opened a door into teleportation, time travel, and alien geometry, and radically altered peoples’ notion of space-time itself, while the discovery of pre-Cambrian fossils and Wegener’s then-new-and-controversial hypothesis of continental drift brought the notion that the Earth was far older than previously believed…All of this was subtly addressed in Lovecraft’s stories of alien horror, and of the remains of ancient civilizations lost to the abyss of geological deep time”.

Our science and technology are but a candle held up to the storm – worse, as developed by writers using the Cthulhu Mythos such as Charles Stross, they may actually draw the notice of entities that were best left not noticing us (and tend to drive us mad if we notice them). Or, as Stross observed elsewhere, it was a potent metaphor for such terrors as Cold War fears of nuclear warfare – as almost otherworldly forces of destruction lurking beneath the surface ready to be unleashed by unfeeling beings.

Although in fairness, Cthulhu is taken out by a steamship to his head in his original appearance in The Call of Cthulhu. Try doing that with pre-industrial technology.

TV Tropes observes how Lovecraft’s cosmic horror is an inversion of the philosopher Leibniz’s optimism “that the entire world could be described by reason, and that this is the best of all possible worlds”. For Lovecraft, “each new discovery only increased humanity’s knowledge of its own ignorance and insignificance, encouraging a nihilistic atmosphere, and this is perhaps the central theme of Lovecraft’s incisive fiction”. Interestingly that same comparison between Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds” and Lovecraft’s horror in James Morrow’s Blameless in Abaddon.

Lovecraft didn’t coin the term Cthulhu Mythos for his mythology – for that matter, I’m not sure how consistent or systematic his mythology was throughout his works. He was all about the vibe of it, with details changing between individual works. However, aptly enough, his creation had a life of its own, as developed and used by other writers, as encouraged by Lovecraft himself.

TV Tropes stated the premise of the Cthulhu Mythos best – “Humanity exists within a small flickering firelight of sanity and reason in a cold and utterly senseless universe full of ancient and terrible things with tentacles and too many eyes. Our science doesn’t properly describe the workings of the universe – ignorance really is bliss because even trying to understand the horrid truth of reality will surely drive you to madness. Our planet was owned by all manner of unknowable alien beings long before we crawled out of the primordial muck, and guess what? They want it back, which means doing a little pest control…”

It is for this mythology that Lovecraft ranks the second top spot of my special mentions – and more generally that he is “is considered perhaps both the greatest and most notorious of all American horror fiction writers, rivalled only by his idol Edgar Allan Poe”.

Fortunately, his mythology transcends Lovecraft himself, as there’s the matter of that notoriety – which remains for somewhat problematic reasons. There’s also the quality of his writing, with the style or execution of his prose often falling short of the dark grandeur of his cosmic horror – Lovecraft was notorious for his purple prose, and enthusiasm for more archaic expressions such as eldritch.

And then there is the fact that “much of his work is informed by a powerful fear and disgust for anything outside the limited sphere of an urban White Anglo-Saxon Protestant of his time” – or more bluntly, he “was “afraid of everything that wasn’t his home town of Providence, Rhode Island”.

Even so, his Cthulhu Mythos remains definitive for me of fantasy in general. As I noted in my previous entry, if I was to simply fantasy down to just two elements, it would be a fusion of fairy tale and the Cthulhu Mythos. Come to think of it, that’s not a bad description or tagline for The Lord of the Rings – fairy tale meets Cthulhu Mythos. If only Tolkien had written that essay…

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT CTHULHU-TIER?)

 

 

(1) FAIRY TALES

 

“Fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already because it is in the world already…What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of (evil). The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St George to kill the dragon” – G.K. Chesterton

Unfortunately, the term fairy tale tends to be used dismissively for stories only for children – although the best children’s literature arguably speaks to all ages – or even pejoratively for obvious fanciful falsehoods or “happily ever after” wishful thinking.

To that, one could argue that such preconceptions don’t even apply to those stories commonly called fairy tales, except in their modern incarnations, particularly their modern cinematic and television adaptations. Perhaps such preconceptions might be avoided by one of their alternative names – of which my favorites are wonder tales or the German term marchen – but the term fairy tale is too deeply ingrained in popular consciousness or imagination.

Whatever the name, a fairy tale is a “short story that belongs to the folklore genre” or a “specific type” of fantastic folktale. Ironically, not many fairy tales actually feature fairies – the fairy in the name of fairy tale refers more to fairy as a place or setting, the fairy lands or otherworlds of folklore and mythology but taking on a more generic meaning as a place of magic. Such stories do indeed typically feature magic and enchantments as well as “mythical or fanciful beings”, fairies or otherwise, although some stories such as Bluebeard don’t have any explicit magic or supernatural elements.

“Fairy tales were originally intended for all ages, but for a long period of time, they were only written or presented as children’s stories”, particularly in their cinematic adaptations by Disney. Many fairy tales were extraordinarily dark in their original form – some to the point of verging on horror – and some remain so in their modern versions, even if only by way of lingering hints or subtext. Ironically again, there is a countervailing trend within popular culture to revert fairy tales to their darker and edgier roots – or to subvert them as more adult deconstructions (or reconstructions), as well as parodies or satires (or the trope of “fractured fairy tales”).

The demarcation between fairy tales and legends or fables can be fuzzy. Fairy tales tend to be distinguished from legends by some degree of belief in historicity or veracity for their events, location or people. By contrast, fairy tales tend to be more timeless – “once upon a time” – and set in their own space distinct from our own world. Fables tend to focus more on the moral of a story as their definitive element.

“Fairy tales are found in cultures all over the world” and with “widespread variants”, but “only a tiny handful of them are widely known in modern culture”. They have a span to match their geographic scale – “many of today’s fairy tales have evolved from centuries-old stories that have appeared with variations, in multiple cultures around the world”. Fairy tales in literary form are relatively modern, mostly evolving from their predecessors in oral form or tradition. This makes “the history of the fairy tale…particularly difficult to trace because often only the literary forms survive”, but even so some fairy tales may date back thousands of years to the Bronze Age or the beginnings of civilization and writing itself.

“What fairy tales do share is a distinct and consistent set of narrative conventions. They usually take place “once upon a time”, in a setting that’s familiar but usually broadly generic, with few (if any) references to real people, places or events…typically told in an extremely spare and laconic style, using archetypical characters and locations”. That style was cited by Italo Calvino as a prime example of “quickness” in literature.

JRR Tolkien famously used the term for literary fantasy, including his own, in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” – an essay well worth reading for its philosophy of literary fantasy and Tolkien’s own writing. Like others who have pointed out that even traditional fairy tales tended not to involve fairies as such, Tolkien defined fairy tales as “stories about the adventures of men in Faerie, the land of fairies, fairytale princes and princesses, dwarves, elves, and not only magical species but many other marvels”. However, by either definition of fairy tale, it is worth remembering that Tolkien’s definitive literary fantasy, “The Lord of the Rings” (and even more so “The Hobbit”), would qualify as (extended) fairy tales – with elves, dwarves, goblins and trolls that have all been regarded as types of fairies.

Indeed, fairy tales remain definitive for me of fantasy in general – if I were to simplify fantasy or at least my tastes in it down to just two elements, it would be as a fusion of fairy tales and my next special mention entry.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT ONCE UPON A TIER?)

 

 

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 former – for those classic fantasy books or works that have iconic status or recognition within popular culture and imagination.

 

“Fantasy isn’t just a jolly escape: It’s an escape, but into something far more extreme than reality, or normality. It’s where things are more beautiful and more wondrous and more terrifying.” – Terry Gilliam

Exactly what it says on the tin – counting down my Top 10 Fantasy Books.

In effect, it runs parallel to my Top 10 Literature list, albeit there is quite the fantasy overlap in that list, in that this is my top ten list of fantasy literature. Comics tend to be fantasy or SF – at least the ones I like – but I have a separate Top 10 Comics list. Similarly, I like many fantasy or SF films or TV series, but they have their own top ten lists.

But what is fantasy?

Magic is often seen as or argued to be the defining feature of fantasy, not least by me.

Which prompts to mind this quotation from TV Tropes – “Fantasy: it’s stuff with magic in it, not counting psychic powers, or magic from technology, or anything meant to frighten, or anything strongly religious, or the technology behind the magic that is magitek, or — where did that clean-cut definition go?”

Fictional genres can be notoriously difficult to define or difficult to distinguish from other fictional genres, with the two looming largest – and closest – to fantasy being science fiction and horror, with all three often being classed within the category of speculative fiction.

Again as per TV Tropes – “While the core of the fantasy genre is clear enough, there is no succinct definition that encompasses it all. The boundary with science fiction is notoriously ambiguous and the boundary with horror is often no less fuzzy.”

Indeed, I will note where science fiction or horror loom large or close to the fantasy for my entries.

That core of the fantasy genre is often defined as high fantasy – fantasy set in a so-called secondary world or world other than our own, even if linked to or evolving into our own in some way. Hence the counterpart of fantasy set in our own world is often defined as low fantasy. These distinctions within the genre of fantasy, usually classed as sub-genres of fantasy, intrigue me even more than the distinctions between fantasy and other genres – and fantasy sub-genres are worthy of their own top ten.

Whether in its core of hard fantasy or in other sub-genres, fantasy tends to be defined as such by common features or themes. And yes – magic or supernatural elements is the primary feature or theme, but not always. There are fantasy works with low or no magic.

Secondary worlds are another common feature or theme, as are imaginary beings or creatures – here be dragons! – and what TV Tropes calls the appeal to a pastoral ideal.

Anyway, here are my Top 10 Fantasy Books – or my Top 10 Fantasy Literature.

 

 

(10) LEV GROSSMAN –

THE BRIGHT SWORD (2024)

 

As usual, this is my wildcard tenth place for most the newest entry of enduring interest, typically as best of the present or previous year – in this case published in 2024.

Lev Grossman isn’t a wildcard entry as I previously read The Magicians trilogy – which in a nutshell, combines a dark adult version of Hogwarts with a dark adult version of Narnia, Brakebills University and Fillory respectively.

In The Magicians, magic is dangerous. And it costs, usually in sacrifice or profound loss. That’s whether it’s the curriculum of spells in Brakebills University or other sources of magic elsewhere. To paraphrase Hemingway, magic tends to break everyone (although most of the magicians are somewhat broken in the first place) – but those that will not break, it kills.

The Bright Sword brings something of the same theme to Arthurian epic – or more precisely post-Arthurian epic:

“The first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium, The Bright Sword is steeped in tradition, complete with duels and quests, battles and tournaments, magic swords and Fisher Kings. It’s also a story about imperfect men and women, full of strength and pain, trying to reforge a broken land in spite of being broken themselves”.

Aspiring knight Collum arrives at Camelot to prove his quality for the Round Table – two weeks too late, as King Arthur has died at the Battle of Camlann with only a handful of Arthur’s knights left, the self-professed dregs of the Round Table.

 

SF & HORROR

 

Not much SF overlap but perhaps just a touch of dark fantasy or horror in some of the supernatural antagonists (and Merlin!)

 

RATING:

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

 

 

(9) WILLIAM BROWNING SPENCER –

RESUME WITH MONSTERS (1995)

 

Great Cthulhu in a cubicle!

Yes – we’re talking a light fantasy evocation of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

Spencer delightfully combines a playful comedic style and observational humor to fantasy themes, as in Resume with Monsters, which combines the Cthulhu Mythos with satire of the corporate cubicle drone workplace.

Philip Kenan may not be the most reliable narrator of his experience as a worker in dead-end office cubicle drone jobs – between bouts of therapy and his unrequited quest to win back his ex-girlfriend Amelia, although he saved her (and quite possibly the world) from some…thing at their mutual previous employment (“the Doom That Came to MicroMeg”). Now he is routinely alert to signs of otherworldly incursions at his workplace.

Or perhaps he is simply lapsing into mental breakdown or outright insanity, symptoms of his obsession with H.P. Lovecraft’s “monsters” (his therapist noting that Lovecraft “was not in the pink of mental health”). An obsession born of his father’s own obsessive narration to him of the stories of Lovecraft, identifying it with the ‘System’ – “don’t let the System eat your soul”. An obsession that Philip Kenan tries to keep at bay by the equally obsessive emotional talisman of his own Lovecraftian novel, “The Despicable Quest”, which he has been constantly rewriting over twenty years until it has swollen to two thousand pages. Or perhaps all of the above.

It has a special resonance for those, like myself, who have always suspected a connection – nay unholy collusion! – between the soul-destroying corporate workplace and the soul-destroying dark entities of the Cthulhu Mythos. In my own experience as corporate cubicle drone, I suspected that the mind-numbingly boring files simply could not exist for their own purpose but had to have a more substantial and sinister purpose in inducing a receptive state or lack of resistance to otherworldly invasion. Of course, I was too smart for them, as I simply didn’t do my files…

 

SF & HORROR

 

It’s the Cthulhu Mythos – of course there’s an overlap with SF and (cosmic) horror!

 

RATING: 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

*

 

 

(8) JAMES MORROW –

GODHEAD TRILOGY (1994-1999)

 

Religious and philosophical satire clothed in absurdist Vonnegutian fantasy – Morrow takes the Nietzschean theme that God is dead and makes it flesh, literally in the form of a two mile long corpse – or Corpus Dei – in the Atlantic Ocean.

This is the premise of the trilogy as a whole – particularly the opening of the first novel, Towing Jehovah. God is dead and the Vatican charges Captain Anthony Van Horne to tow the Corpus Dei with a supertanker to the Arctic Circle, to preserve it from decomposition, for possible resuscitation or at least for time to ponder the theological questions of the Deity’s death.

My favorite is the second of the trilogy, Blameless in Abaddon, where theodicy is made flesh – theodicy being the theological study of the problem of evil or suffering in the manner of the biblical Book of Job. It turns out that there’s life in the old God yet – and He’s about to be prosecuted in the World Court for the suffering of His Creation.

In the third book, The Eternal Footman, the last remnant of the Corpus Dei, God’s grinning skull or Cranium Dei, is in geosynchronous orbit over Times Square and Western civilization is collapsing as a people become ‘Nietzsche positive’ with their awareness of impending death (literally embodied in their own double or ‘fetch’).

 

SF & HORROR

 

Not really – it’s pretty much pure absurdist fantasy, although that’s not uncommon in works that are nominally SF.

 

RATING: 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

 

(7) CHRISTOPHER MOORE –

PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING (1992)

 

Christopher Moore is a writer of comic contemporary fantasy, who has combined the narrative voice (and Californian geography) of John Steinbeck and the comic absurdist fantasy of Kurt Vonnegut.

Like other writers, Moore has constructed his own storyverse, with its focus in California (Moore himself lives in San Francisco) and particularly the sleepy town of Pine Cove. Sleepy that is, until invaded by supernatural or othe forces such as Godzilla (the fantastically named Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove) or near-miss zombie apocalypses (The Stupidest Angel).

As for which Moore novel is my personal favorite, there’s some tight competition – such as the Bloodsucking Fiends vampire love trilogy set in San Francisco, A Dirty Job psychopompic thriller also set in San Francisco (which crosses over with Bloodsucking Fiends) or anothe fantastically named novel, The Island of the Sequined Love Nun (stepping outside the main Californian venue of his storyverse to the Micronesian Island of the Shark People).

However, I’ll go with his debut novel, Practical Demonkeeping, in which Pine Cove is invaded by a demon and its weary summoner:

“The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and “roads” scholar Travis O’Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor facade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.”

 

SF & HORROR

 

Not so much in this book and Moore predominantly keeps to fantasy but he occasionally dips a toe into SF in his books, as with the Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove.

He dips more than a toe into horror or dark fantasy, as with this book and his vampire books.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

*

 

 

(6) JOE LANSDALE – THE DRIVE-IN TRILOGY (1988-2005)

*

Joe Landsale is a genre-hopping self-branded mojo storyteller so Texan his books positively drawl. His fantasy is never purely fantasy, as he writes books and stories (and comics!) in a number of genres, often at the same time. Westerns, of course – although he is from east Texas – but often of the Weird West, horror or so-called splatterpunk, mystery, suspense and thrillers.

A good introduction to Lonsdale is his short stories, which are particularly difficult to pin down in genre. I mean, how do you classify “Bubba Ho-Tep” (subsequently adapted into film starring none other than the Chin himself, Bruce Campbell) – in which an aged Elvis Presley and a black JFK battle a soul-sucking mummy in a nursing home? (No, seriously – Elvis Presley, having swapped with a double to opt out of fame. Not sure about JFK though – he claims the Conspiracy swapped his mind into his present body. Even Elvis is skeptical). Or his post-zombie apocalyptic “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks”? “Frequent features of Lansdale’s writing are usually deeply ironic, strange or absurd situations or characters”. Indeed.

And perhaps none more bizarre than my introduction to Lansdale and still my favorite, although it is a little intense (if by intense you mean insane) – his 1988 book The Drive-In, or for its full title, The Drive-In: A ‘B’ Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas. It starts as a normal summer Friday night horror movie marathon at the Orbit Drive-In in Texas. And then it becomes the horror-movie marathon, as they are trapped by a demonic grinning comet in the drive-in, beyond time in an eternal night – seemingly at the whim of the dark gods of B-grade movie horror, who lend a hand to all the base humanity on show with a little (or a lot) of some monstrosity of their own, with the Popcorn King.

Don’t eat the popcorn. It’s watching you.

A sequel – The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels – followed shortly after in 1989, with a third book (Drive in 3: The Bus Tour) in 2005 rounding out the Drive-In Trilogy.

 

SF & HORROR

 

As I said, genre-hopping – so this trilogy and Lansdale in general straddle the lines between fantasy, SF and horror. This trilogy leans heavily into horror – or splatterpunk.

*

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(5) ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY –

SHADOWS OF THE APT / TALES OF THE APT (2008 – 2018)

 

Like my previous entry, this entry particularly resonated with me as reflecting my own unwritten story idea involving the same premise – but then Adrian Tchaikovsky went ahead and wrote it. And it’s awesome.

I have always been fascinated by insects, so one of my unwritten story ideas involved high fantasy with insect-people. They were essentially human, but with the skin or hair coloring of their insect species, as well as other physical attributes that did not radically alter their otherwise human appearance – wings for example (in the style of the butterfly or other insect wings occasionally depicted on fairies), perhaps antennae and so on.

I imagined the insect-people as essentially divided up into realms according to the three great species of social insects – bees, ants and wasps, although there would be different realms of each (corresponding to different sub-species or types). Each of these realms would also include other thematically similar insect-peoples – for example, bee-kingdoms (or more precisely, bee-queendoms) would include other pollinating insects, such as butterflies.

As for antagonists, one was spoilt for choice – flies or locusts as marauding hordes (the Locust Horde!), various parasitic insects (fleas, mosquitoes and so on) as blood-sucking bandits or brigands, arachnids such as spiders or scorpions as monstrous figures. However, I imagined the most dangerous and recurring antagonists as the fourth great species of social insects – termites. In fairness, I didn’t get much beyond imagining the various insect-people societies, although I did imagine my main protagonist as a mantis warrior.

And then I found Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt series, which effectively does just that – a high fantasy set in a world of insect-‘kinden’, humans who have adopted some of the characteristics of their insect-types (or arachnid-types) through their magical Art from the dangerous and giant fantasy insects (or arachnids) of this world. Ant and beetle kinden dominate the so-called Lowlands (not surprisingly, given the sheer prevalence of those insect species in our world).

Even more intriguingly, it is a world in which magic is being replaced by science – an industrial revolution by the technologically Apt peoples of the title, matched by a political revolution, in which the more mundane but Apt ants and beetles have ousted the more magically-minded moths and mantises (although mantis warriors are still legendary). However, the antagonists are not termites, but the growing and ruthless Wasp Empire.

Of course, Tchaikovsky is a little too fond of spiders for my arachnopobia (even if spider girls are notoriously hot) – a fondness that extends across his fantasy or SF works, not just the spider-kinden in this series. Perhaps because Tchaikovksy is secretly a spider himself, or maybe a man-shaped swarm of spiders, without a shred of normal human arachnophobia to show for it.

So – damn you, Adrian Tchaikovsky, for conceiving and executing your insect fantasy first, in such an epic series! And I love it!

 

SF & HORROR

 

Tchaikovksy straddles both fantasy and SF genres – his Hugo Award-winning Children of Time series is an example of the latter but of course also features his beloved spiders.

For that matter, Shadows of the Apt has more than a touch of SF to it – and on occasions I almost thought it had a similar premise as the Children Time series with human (and arthropod) space colonists. Setting aside those thoughts, it was interesting to have a fantasy world increasingly eschewing magic for industrialization and technology.

And it wouldn’t take too much tweaking to adapt his premises to horror. Because, you know, spiders – perhaps not to Tchaikovsky who loves them, but to an arachnophobe like myself.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

*

 

 

(4) GARTH NIX –

THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM (2003 – 2010)

 

Cosmic fantasy by an Australian writer.

Creation is coming undone – not just the universe, but the entire multiverse, is slowly falling apart into Nothing in the absence of its Creator, the Architect. And at the center of it all, the cosmic structure called The House, divided up into seven domains or worlds by its seven most powerful denizens, the Morrow Days.

But the Architect left his Will (in more than one sense of the word) and where there’s a will, there’s a way – for mortal Rightful Heir to the Keys to the Kingdom, the aptly named Arthur Penhaglion, who has to ascend all seven domains of The House to reclaim the Will and the Keys to the Kingdom from each Morrow Day – Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, Drowned Wednesday, Sir Thursday, Lady Friday, Superior Saturday and Lord Sunday.

Also somewhat reminiscent of the cosmic fantasy of one of my favorite webcomics – Kill Six Billion Demons

 

SF & HORROR

 

Definitely overlaps with multiverse SF – not so much horror, except perhaps for occasional elements.

 

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(3) JOSEPH FINK & JEFFREY CRANOR –
WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE (2012 – PRESENT)

 

“A friendly desert community, where the Sun is hot, the Moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale.”

Surreal horror and humor podcast styled as a community radio broadcaster in an American desert town – although my familiarity with it is more from the novels, which served as my introduction to the Night Vale setting, a desert town where all conspiracy theories are real as well as other urban myths and other surreal fantasies.

In other words, a fantasy and conspiracy kitchen sink setting, where the laws of time and space and nature in general don’t apply, or at apply only spasmodically. The citizens of Night Value simply roll with it, accepting surreal fantasy side by side with mundane reality.

“The news from Lake Wobegon as seen through the eyes of Stephen King”. Alternatively the Illuminatus Trilogy filtered through H.P. Lovecraft and crammed into one desert town. Or the surreal dream logic of David Lynch on crack or acid flashback (or both).

The Sheriff’s Secret Police along with all the other government surveillance agencies and spy satellites, Old Woman Josie surrounded by angelic beings all named Erika, the Glow Cloud (all hail the Glow Cloud!) and plastic pink flamingos that warp time and space.

And then you have the really dangerous entities and eldritch abominations – the car salesman loping like wolves through their yards, the mysterious hooded figures in the town’s forbidden dog park, the City Council (in the council building draped nightly in black velvet) and worst of all, the Library and its most dangerous part, the fiction section filled with lies…

 

SF & HORROR

 

As usual for fantasy kitchen sink settings, anything goes – even SF and horror.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(2) C.S. LEWIS –
NARNIA CHRONICLES (1950-1956)

 

“He’s not a tame lion.”

Yes, we’re talking about Aslan – the famous talking lion (whose name is Turkish for lion), the King of Beasts, the son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea and the King above all High Kings in Narnia. Aslan – present in all seven volumes of the Narnia Chronicles and voiced by Liam goddamn Neeson in the films. (If only they could have worked in his famous Taken speech into the films. Stay with me here – it absolutely could have worked, over the phone to the White Witch cajoling her to return Edmund).

To paraphrase Bob Marley, Aslan is iron like a lion in Zion, aptly enough, given his religious imagery. And yes, I know, that Aslan is, in the words of Robot Chicken, the Jesus allegory lion. But quite frankly, I can more readily identify as Aslanist – after all, the dude’s a talking lion with magic coming out his mane. Who wouldn’t be an Aslanist?

Although there are any number of protagonists to choose for heroes from the seven volumes in The Chronicles of Narnia, notably the child protagonists who find themselves drawn from our world (specifically England) to Narnia through magic portals – hence the description of the Narnia Chronicles in Wikipedia as portal fantasy. (My personal favorite remains the native Narnian – or Archenlander to be precise – Shasta from The Horse and His Boy, albeit all native Narnian humans ultimately originate from our world in the first place).

But really if one character both embodies Narnia and rises above the others, albeit not so much as protagonist but as the moving force behind the world – from singing it into being in the beginning to literally closing the door on it in the end – it’s Aslan.

And Aslan embodies the spirit of Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, those seven fantasy books that continue to inspire readers and remain among the most popular fantasy books or series, strikingly so for children’s fantasy books and explicitly Christian ones at that, although many readers remain unaware of the Christian themes.

Indeed, as my second place indicates, C.S. Lewis might be considered second only to my top place entry – with whom he was a close friend and colleague – as founding father (and leading theorist) of modern fantasy literature.

The books were published in anachronic order – that is, not in sequence in terms of their in-universe chronology, albeit with two of the books out of place, most famously with the book of Narnia’s creation being the second last book (and effectively as prequel to all preceding books). Some publishers or collections place them in chronological order but I’m a publication order purist, particularly for the prequel book.

Narnia might lack the same grandeur as Middle-Earth but for me it will always have a charm and place close to my heart, with these books as something of a recurring source of familiar comfort even as an adult. And so enchanting that after reading its Chronicles, what young reader doesn’t search wardrobes for other worlds? (Or hot White Witches with Turkish delight? Except I’ll pass on the Turkish delight). I know I still do…

 

SF & HORROR

 

No SF – although C.S. Lewis did venture into SF with his Space Trilogy – but it’s striking how much classics of high fantasy, such as this one, leans into dark fantasy or horror.

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(1) J.R.R. TOLKIEN –
THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1954)

 

One book to rule them all!

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings defined modern literary fantasy. Fantasy could well be classified as pre-Tolkien and post-Tolkien. Such is its influence that Tolkien has been identified as the father of modern fantasy literature or high fantasy, although of course there were many other writers of fantasy before (and apart from) Tolkien – perhaps most notably Robert E. Howard, writer of Conan. I particularly note Robert E. Howard, because I understand that Tolkien read and enjoyed the Conan stories – and because I couldn’t resist including George R. R. Martin, who came to The Lord of The Rings from those very different Conan stories:

“Robert E. Howard’s stories usually opened with a giant serpent slithering by or an axe cleaving someone’s head in two. Tolkien opened his with a birthday party…Conan would hack a bloody path right through the Shire, end to end, I remembered thinking…Yet I kept on reading. I almost gave up at Tom Bombadil, when people started going Hey! Come derry do! Tom Bombadillo!”. Things got more interesting in the barrow downs, though, and even more so in Bree, where Strider strode onto the scene. By the time we got to Weathertop, Tolkien had me…A chill went through me, such as Conan and Kull have never evoked”

Indeed, just as A. H. Whitehead stated that the western philosophical tradition could be generalized as being footnotes to Plato, so too might modern fantasy literature be generalized as sequels or epilogues to Tolkien – and Stephen King has done just that in his non-fiction study of horror Danse Macabre, attributing modern fantasy to a hunger for more stories about hobbits.

Much of the appeal of The Lord of the Rings is the depth of its world-building, or what Tolkien identified as his legendarium of Middle Earth. On the other hand, this can present as a flaw to more modern readers as a potential lack of pacing, or where world-building takes precedence to story. However, this is not surprising since the world-building was essentially Tolkien’s life hobby, from which the story revolved in recitations and into which Tolkien was not above shoehorning other ideas – the aforementioned Tom Bombadil for example, or The Hobbit itself to some extent, or as Hugo Dyson infamously exclaimed during one of Tolkien’s recitations, “Not another f…g elf!” (The same might have been said of yet another poem, song or verse).

However, I prefer the reaction of C. S. Lewis – “here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book which will break your heart”. Indeed, there are and it is. For me, I loved the depth of Tolkien’s world, one of the few fictional worlds I regard as real as our own (canonically, it is meant to be a mythic precursor of our own world) – or indeed, perhaps more real. Again, as George R. R. Martin wrote – “The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real…They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle Earth”

As for the story, like George R. R. Martin, I was enchanted and entranced – but unlike George R. R. Martin, from the very start in the Shire. The story itself should be well known to any reader (or viewer) of fantasy, and in any event is too complex to discuss in depth here, but can be summarized as the Quest to destroy the One Ring, the source of the Adversary or Dark Lord Sauron’s power. Its themes are the themes of humanity in any world – life and mortality, the corruption or addiction of power, courage and compassion, triumph against adversity and at the same time the sense of loss for those things lost in battle or passing from the world.

 

SF & HORROR

 

The Lord of the Rings is among the highest of high fantasies – but as the definitive work of modern literary fantasy has also proved highly influential for modern literary SF as well. And along with the Narnia Chronicles, it’s striking how much these two classic and definitive works of high fantasy also lean into dark fantasy or horror.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

 

 

 

 

TOP 10 FANTASY BOOKS (TIER LIST)

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

(1) J.R.R. TOLKIEN – THE LORD OF THE RINGS

Yeah – this is the big one, the book that defined modern literary fantasy AND shaped my world of fantasy forever.

(2) C. S. LEWIS – NARNIA CHRONICLES

(3) JOSEPH FINK & JEFFREY CRANOR – WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

 

If Tolkien and Lewis are my Old Testament of fantasy books, then Welcome to Night Vale is my New Testament.

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

(4) GARTH NIX – THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

(5) ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSY – SHADOWS OF THE APT

(6) JOE LANSDALE – THE DRIVE-IN TRILOGY

(7) CHRISTOPHER MOORE – PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING

(8) JAMES MORROW – GODHEAD TRILOGY

(9) WILLIAM BROWNING SPENCER – RESUME WITH MONSTERS

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER) – BEST OF 2024

 

(10) LEV GROSSMAN – THE BRIGHT SWORD