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Grandmothers of Fantasy Fiction
Nyki Blatchley has a great follow-up at Fantasy Faction to Leo Elijah Cristea’s previous post on the “grandfathers” of fantasy, highlighting classic female fantasy writers (up to about 1980) from Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley to Marion Zimmer Bradley and Anne McCaffery. He concludes,
Today, whatever inequalities still remain, fantasy written by women is too common to need any special note. It’s unlikely, though, that this would have been possible without pioneers like Shelley, Nesbit, Moore, Norton, LeGuin, Bradley and the rest. They deserve to be honoured for what they made possible, as well as for the classic quality of their works.
As with the aforementioned post from Cristea, this one is definitely worth a read.
The Simonside Dwarves
The Fairytale Traveler gives us the run-down on the dwarves of England’s Simonside Hills. There have been legends—strongly influenced by Norse mythology, apparently—of nocturnal, not-very-nice dwarves in this northern part of England since at least the thirteenth century, and some believe they played a role in Tolkien’s depiction of the wicked dwarves of the Iron Hills.
The Evolution of Fantasy Fiction
Leo Elijah Cristea has traced the roots of fantasy fiction, the “Grandfathers of Fantasy” as he calls them, in a brilliant essay at Fantasy Faction. In a single post, he gathers up everything from mythology to faery tales to Poe and Lovecraft and Tolkien and Eddings, showing how they all relate to one another in a vast fantastical “tree of life.” One of my favorite sections:
The ancestor of fantasy is mythology; fantasy’s great-uncle, thrice-removed, is the art of faerie tale; but fantasy’s true grandparents are the fantasists who crafted dreams, speculative realities, and visions of distant worlds, whether by means of the gothic, the early fantastic, or uncanny commentary on the future. Fantasy’s grandparents are far, far older than Tolkien, Eddings, Brooks, or Martin.
Due to our unswervingly human need to label, there are more subgenres of fantasy than you could shake a whole forest of ancient oaken sticks at. Helpfully, our predecessors were quite happy to call anything that didn’t mimic whole reality, fantasy. They were right, too. Anything that doesn’t fit into the neat little frame, within which the finite possibilities of our world sit, is left out, branded fantasy. Of course (and this won’t be the first time I’ve flirted with the admission of stating that I believe in what should probably not be believed in) the small grey areas outside of this accepted, built and well-maintained frame are what fuel a fantasist’s speculation—or at least, that’s how it used to be.
Imagine living and writing in the times of Mary Shelley, or Poe, or John Polidori and his Vampyre, imagine not having all the facts staring at you, and imagine not seeing the world broadcast at you on the news every day. Imagine the itch to write, to learn, to dream, to explore—to speculate.
This is where fantasy proper first appeared.
It’s well worth the time to read it all.
The Face of Bigfoot?
Monster-hunter Rick Dyer claims he shot and killed Bigfoot — because that’s what you do when you find a shy, rare creature — and is now touring the country with its dead body. Today he released this picture of his Bigfoot trophy.
Over at Cryptomundo, Craig Woolheater has been following the Dyer saga. He notes much more even-handedly than I would that this face doesn’t quite resemble other images that Dyer has released of this Bigfoot. Hmmm, could this be faked? Sorry, cryptid fans — I’m going to go with “yes.”
Read more at Cryptomundo and judge for yourself.
Creatures in the Mist by Gary R. Varner
One of my Christmas presents this year was a copy of Gary R. Varner’s Creatures in the Mist: Little People, Wild Men and Spirit Beings around the World, A Study in Comparative Mythology. At less than 200 pages, the book is only slightly longer than the title, and I’m finding a very good read about faeries, mermaids, giants, and other mythological creatures and their striking similarities across many lands and cultures.
Although Varner is an academic type, this book is written at a very accessible level. Despite a few editorial miscues, I’m finding it to be a very enlightening read. Varner highlights broad themes–for example, the connection between faeries and children, both positively via their associations with childbirth and negatively because of the whole child-stealing thing–that keep showing up in myths from all over the world.
I’m less than halfway through, but I can definitely see this being the sort of book I keep coming back to as I wonder about mythological creatures and their cultural significance.
Brazil and Hy Breasail
Might the nation of Brazil have been named after a mythical Island in the North Atlantic? The Celtic Myth Podshow lays out the theory:
So how did the country called Brazil end up with it’s name ? One theory says that Brazil was initially colonized by people coming from Viana do Castelo (in northern Portugal), and that through the knowledge of legends from the Celts in Galicia, they would have been aware of the lost continent of Brazil. And not only Columbus, but other early explorers from England knew about the lost land of Brazil. According to”The Island of Brazil”, a contemporary account written by William of Worcester (and published in the late 18th century) recalled that when word of a “new land to the west” reached Bristol in the late 1470s this was presumed to be Brazil. In 1480, a Bristol merchant John Jay outfitted at great expense an 80-tonne ship to sail to the island of Brazil, described as “a name often given in medieval European tales to a land far to the west of Ireland”. Setting sail in July 1480 from Bristol, Jay’s ship voyaged west, intending to “traverse the seas.” But the journey ended in failure. English crews had yet to master the new methods of astronomical navigation devised in Portugal and Spain: open, oceanic voyaging – as opposed to island hopping by way of Iceland and Greenland.
In the Welsh and Cornish myths, Bresal was a High King who made his home in the Otherworld “which is sometimes called Hy- or I-Breasal in his honor”. Like in the Irish myth, “His world is visible on only one night every seven years”. Thus, it is clear that the Celts of Galicia, Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and sailors from England all knew of the legend of the lost land of Brazil. Would it then be unreasonable to assume that when Portuguese explorers reached South America they mistakenly thought they had landed on Breasal’s world and named the land they discovered “Brazil” in his honour?
A contradictory theory sets the name in a different context:
Of course, it is possible that the name of the country called Brazil is not connected with the Celtic myth – but in my opinion this theory is not convincing. In this account, the word “Brazil” is derived from the Portuguese and Spanish word “Brasil”, the name of an East Indian tree with reddish-brown wood from which a red dye was extracted. The Portuguese found a New World tree related to the Old World brasil tree when they explored what is now called Brazil, and “as a result they named the New World country after the Old World tree”.
Quite interesting.
Ireland’s National Leprechaun Museum
File this away with the Cryptozoology Museum in Maine. According to Atlas Obscura:
By day, this family friendly museum is a lighthearted journey through the myths of the Emerald Isle. The exhibits include the history of the leprechaun from the first sighting in the 8th century to Walt Disney’s visit to Ireland, where he found the inspiration for his 1959 film, Darby O’Gill and the Little People. The tour includes rooms full of incredibly over-sized furniture and other optical illusions, as well as an exhibit that features rainbows and pots of gold after a rain shower. Still others reveal cautionary tales, like what happens when you try to catch a leprechaun and additional stories of mishaps and tragedy like the Children of Lir. The tour mixes predictable exploitation of the infamous little legend with mysteries such as Newgrange and other lesser known Irish myths. It ends in an all-too-bright gift shop full of tourist fare and glitter.
Congratulations to Neil Gaiman
Via Fantasy Faction:
Good news Fantasy fans: Fantasy has proven its place at the forefront of British Literature as Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane wins the public’s vote in The National Book Award. The Award’s subsequent Press Release makes for good reading:
Neil Gaiman became the author of Britain’s favourite book today, as his contemporary fantasy The Ocean at the End of the Lane was named Specsavers Book of the Year for 2013. Neil was crowned overall victor by the public in a vote comprising of winners from all ten categories from this year’s Specsavers National Book Awards.
Noteworthy is that Gaiman won the public vote by a considerable margin, beating substantial competition from the likes of Malala Yousafzai, Robert Harris, Kate Atkinson and David Walliams.
I Had Always Assumed Adult Beverages Were Involved
Apparently, some of those weird monsters from Dungeons & Dragons were made in China–literally! According to Tim Kask, a D&D play tester,
There once was an unknown company in Hong Kong that made a bag of weird animal-things that were then sold in what once were called dime stores or variety stores for like $.99. I know of four other very early monsters based on them.
Gary and I talked about how hard it was to find monster figures, and how one day he came upon this bag of weird beasts… He nearly ran home, eager as a kid to get home and open his baseball cards. Then he proceeded to invent the carrion crawler, umber hulk, rust monster and purple worm, all based on those silly plastic figures.
The one that I chose was known in the Greyhawk campaign as “the bullet” (for it’s shape) but had only amorphous stats and abilities, not being developed. Gary told me to take it home, study it, and decide what it was and what it could do.
Darrell J. Pursiful 