As a literary genre, fantasy is one of the oldest and most recent. Although modern fantasy only began to be recognised as a distinct genre in the late twentieth century, thanks largely to the popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien and his imitators, its roots can be traced back millennia. […]
Fantasy is at once a relatively recent and extremely ancient genre. Although it only became recognised as a distinct genre in the twentieth century thanks to writers like J. R. R. Tolkien and his followers, there’s a case for calling some of the oldest literature in the world – from […]
‘The Rule of Names’ is a 1964 short story by the American science-fiction and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018). Le Guin’s literary style is rightly praised as being several rungs above the usual style found in science fiction, and ‘The Rule of Names’ is an early example of […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews an early example of ‘gritty’ epic fantasy It was the late, great Terry Pratchett who observed that most modern fantasy is just rearranging the furniture in Tolkien’s attic. And many innovations within the genre have tended to use […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle salutes the master of heroic fantasy and one of his most curious novels Like many people, I came to David Gemmell through Legend, his 1984 debut which would go on to become a classic of modern fantasy literature, and […]