Nineteen forty-seven saw publication of the first Avon Fantasy Reader, edited by Donald A. Campbell and Palmer were quite different as editors, but they created markets for stories that were lighter or less horrifying than those in Weird Tales and its imitators, and not beholden to pseudo-scientific rationalizations that grounded the science fiction in Astounding and Amazing magazines. Campbell, and Fantastic Adventures, edited by Raymond A. In 1939, two pulp magazines were established that helped readers see fantasy as its own category, separate from both weird/horror and science fiction: Unknown, edited by John W. Soon after 1945, fantasy solidified into a publishing category. However, the separation also makes sense in the context of what was happening culturally in the middle of the twentieth century. There are practical reasons for this separation: we knew it would require two books to offer an acceptable selection of the body of work we wanted to draw from, and we wanted those books to be balanced in size and scope. Modern fantasy, then, begins with the end of the war. We defined classic fantasy as stories from the early nineteenth century up to the end of World War II in 1945. The defining moment of fantasy is the encounter with the not-real, no matter how slight, and what that moment signifies. Sometimes it is the entire world and sometimes it is the slight distance from reality that allows a writer to bring our reality into focus in a meaningful way. For us, the defining moment of fantasy is the encounter with the not-real, no matter how slight, and what that moment signifies. But every anthology needs criteria for selection, for inclusion and exclusion. Only the most narrow and specific genres can be defined with precision, and fantasy is one of the broadest genres imaginable, if it even qualifies as a genre and not a mode, tendency, tradition. We distinguish fantasy from horror or the weird by considering the story’s apparent purpose: fantasy isn’t primarily concerned with the creation of terror or the exploration of an altered state of being frightened, alienated, or fascinated by an eruption of the uncanny.Īrgument over the details of this broad definition could go on for hours, days, lifetimes. As with The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, we have worked from a simple concept of what makes a story “fantasy”: any story in which an element of the unreal permeates the real world or any story that takes place in a secondary world that is identifiably not a version of ours, whether anything overtly “fantastical” occurs in the story. Introduction copyright (c) 2020 by VanderMeer Creative, Inc.įantasy is a broad and various category that on the one hand can feature fire-breathing dragons and on the other can be as quiet as a man encountering a strange plant. The following is the introduction to The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, to be published by Vintage Books on July 21, 2020. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
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