I’m thrilled to have a guest post by science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick to share with you today—and to be giving away a copy of his new SFF collection! His previous work includes the World Fantasy Award–winning novella “Radio Waves” and the additional stories collected in Tales of Old Earth; the collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow, which includes the Hugo Award–winning short story of the same name; and the Nebula Award–winning novel Stations of the Tide.
His latest book, The Universe Box, is described as containing “tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend.” Containing an introduction by the author and 19 short stories total—including two brand new ones!—this came out in trade paperback and ebook earlier this month. More information on the book and how to win a copy is below, along with the essay “A Thumbnail History of Twentieth-Century Fantasy” by Michael Swanwick!
About THE UNIVERSE BOX:
Discover the vast worlds and pocket universes of Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide), the only author to win science fiction’s most prestigious award five times in six years. In his dazzling new collection, the master of speculative short stories returns with tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend. With two stories original to this collection, Swanwick aptly demonstrates with poignant humor why he is widely respected as a master of imaginative storytelling.
[STARRED REVIEW] “Five-time Hugo Award winner Swanwick (Stations of the Tide) swirls together myth and science in this wildly inventive collection.
—Publishers WeeklyIn engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous. An aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves), sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible.
Table of Contents
Introduction
“Starlight Express”
“The Last Days of Old Night”
“The Year of the Three Monarchs”
“Ghost Ships”
“The White Leopard”
“Dragon Slayer”
“The Warm Equations”
“Requiem for a White Rabbit”
“Dreadnaught”
“Grandmother Dimetrodon”
“The Star-Bear”
“Nirvana or Bust”
“Reservoir Ice”
“Artificial People”
“Huginn and Muninn—and What Came After”
“Cloud”
“Timothy: An Oral History”
“Annie Without Crow”
“Universe Box”
A Thumbnail History of Twentieth-Century Fantasy
by Michael Swanwick
Every history of fantasy I’ve read—and there are far from enough of them—starts at some carefully-chosen literary work in the distant past and proceeds to trace a line of influence and inevitability from that point to the present moment.
But I was there. I saw it happen. And I’m here to tell you that they all got it wrong.
Fantasy was born the day a neolithic spear-fisher exclaimed, “Did you see the size of the one I missed?” held hands apart, and on impulse doubled the separation. In that instant, storytelling was born. Fantasy has been an essential element of it ever since.
But modern fantasy—by which I mean fantasy as a thing apart, a genre—began the day the Ace Books legal-but-unauthorized edition of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy hit the streets. The excitement this caused cannot be exaggerated. Editor David Hartwell reported that entrepreneurs laid down blankets on Harvard Square piled high with pyramids of paperbacks and sold them all the same day.
I was in high school, but my sister Patty, attending nursing school in Manhattan, sent home a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. I stayed up all night reading it. The next day, I launched a long, quixotic attempt to write the stuff myself.
Not coincidentally, I began frantically searching for more books like the trilogy.
As did every publisher in New York City.
Nobody, it transpired, was writing like Tolkien. So publishing houses reissued early twentieth century fantasies. Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, and Robert E. Howard’s Conan books rose from the grave. In a drugstore spinner rack in Richmond, Virginia, I saw a paperback cover obviously meant to evoke the trilogy. It was E. R. Eddison’s Mistress of Mistresses. I asked my mother for a loan so I could buy it. To my intense embarrassment and the visible amusement of the pharmacist, Mom examined the book to make sure it wasn’t smut.
The gold standard of these reissues was Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy line, edited by Lin Carter. Carter was a terrible writer, but a reader/fan possessed of a deep knowledge of forgotten fantasy. He restored to print 65 books, including Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique, Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist, several James Branch Cabell volumes, and Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword. More regrettable (but how many fantasies were there to be mined from the past?) were works by George MacDonald and William Morris better suited for scholars than readers. A generation of writers was kindled by them.
They were not, however, numerous enough to satisfy compulsive readers. So, many writers (again, me included) shifted loyalty from fantasy to science fiction.
This was not the betrayal it looks like.
Long before Tolkien, there were natural fantasists with no market for their work. They found workarounds. Some wrote Arthurian fantasies, which could be sold as historical novels. Others wrote romantic novels involving ghosts or time travel. Many found science fiction.
Alien worlds could look a lot like the lands of fantasy. Mars could substitute for Faerie.
Writers like C. L. Moore and Leigh Brackett wrote adventures which began with a brawny Earth hero riding away from the (never shown) spaceport on his eight-legged horse. Suddenly, an eight-legged snake causes the horse to rear, throwing its rider and losing his zap gun. From which point, he has to smite with sword and fist native Martians who are too proud to use Earthian firearms. Though not too proud to stab him in the back.
This sounds dismissive. But, often, the fantasists driven into SF by market forces were superbly talented. Science fiction learned from them. They, in turn, took from science fiction lessons which later, when they felt free to leave, they took with them. This was what Theodore Sturgeon would describe as syzygy—an exchange of genetic material without the intent of offspring.
Then came Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara.
Though criticized at the time as a slavish imitation of Tolkien, it was what publishers had been lusting after for years—proof that high fantasy could be created by living writers. And it made money. A lot of it.
At the same time, the broad scope of Lin Carter’s Adult Fantasy line meant that by comparing sales figures, it was possible to discover exactly what fantasy readers wanted. The numbers confirmed that the more like Tolkien’s work a book was, the better it sold.
A predictable result was the rise of the multi-volume fantasy series. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time ran to fourteen volumes, three of them, sadly, written after his death. And it was far from the longest such.
Meanwhile, any emerging writer who could slap together a plot involving dragons, elves, or other recognizable fantasy tropes could get published, even if the result wasn’t very well written. They didn’t have to be solemn tales of war and destiny either. I vividly remember a fantasy editor bragging about how much money she was making with what she condescendingly called “silly little fantasies.”
This is not to say that there weren’t artistically ambitious fantasists forty years ago. There were. But their work could be easily lost in a flood of merely publishable books.
For the first time in human history, there were enough fantasy books to satisfy even the most devoted reader. Some bookstores even put fantasy and science fiction on separate shelves, a division that resulted in many ironies of placement. (Where does Anne McCaffrey belong? Or Jack Vance?)
Earlier, if you will grant me permission to go back a decade or two, Dungeons and Dragons remade everybody’s expectations of fantasy. A Dork Tower cartoon made fun of how little magic there was to be found in The Lord of the Rings, imagining its gamers using Gandalf as a battering ram in response to that lack. Magic underwent an Industrial Revolution because gaming required lots and lots of the stuff to be playable. And this bled into fiction. In my own The Iron Dragon’s Daughter and its sequels everyone employed magic as casually as we do technology. To understand the literature, full credit must be given to the game.
Which is not to say that commerce trumped art. In the early 1980s, whenever I found myself chatting with newmade fantasists, I did my best to promote literary ambition, citing writers like Greer Gilman and Tanith Lee, whom they invariably admired. I have no idea if I made any difference at all. But with or without me, the fantasy realm expanded to include pretty much anything you can imagine. High or low, here or there, go to the store and you could find what pleases you.
Which brings us to the end of the century.
In the quarter century since then, fantasy has undergone further transformations. People of color, who long felt excluded from the genre, took their rightful places within it, often at the very front. Writers from other continents found a warm welcome in North America. Natural historical novelists (remember the natural fantasists who took refuge in science fiction?) found a safe haven in fantasy. And then…
But that is a story best left for a later essay. Perhaps to be written by you. But if not, then surely by somebody who loves fantasy with a passion equal to yours.
Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed science fiction and fantasy short-story writers of his generation, having received an unprecedented five Hugo Awards in a six year period. He is also the winner of the British Science Fiction and World Fantasy Awards. Swanwick’s stories published in such collections as Gravity’s Angels, Tales of Old Earth, and Not So Much, Said the Cat, have also appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including OMNI, Penthouse, Amazing, Asimov’s Science Fiction, New Dimensions. Swanwick’s novels include The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, a New York Times Notable Book, the Nebula Award–winner Stations of the Tide, the Darger & Surplus series, Dragons of Babel, and City in the Stars. His work has also been translated into more than ten languages. Swanwick lives in Pennsylvania.
Book Giveaway
Courtesy of Tachyon Publications, I have one finished copy of The Universe Box to give away!
Giveaway Rules: To be entered in the giveaway, fill out Fantasy Cafe’s The Universe Box Giveaway Google form, linked below. One entry per household and the winners will be randomly selected. Those from the US are eligible to win. The giveaway will be open until the end of the day on Friday, March 6. The winner has 24 hours to respond once contacted via email, and if I don’t hear from them after 24 hours has passed, a new winner will be chosen (who will also have 24 hours to respond until someone gets back to me with a place to send the book).
Please note email addresses will only be used for the purpose of contacting the winner. Once the giveaway is over all the emails will be deleted.
