Sunday, February 11, 2018

Tad Williams and the Rise of Epic Fantasy



Tad Williams: The Dragonbone Chair (1988)


I suppose that one advantage of the TV series Game of Thrones is that you no longer have to bother to try to explain to people what epic fantasy is.



George R. R. Martin: Game of Thrones World Map


Before that, only J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy could be said to have really broken through into popular culture, and - certainly before Peter Jackson's films - he was more the prototype and progenitor of the form than simply an example of it.



William Morris: The Roots of the Mountains (1890)


Of course, Tolkien himself would probably have pointed out how varied his sources actually were. William Morris is the principal one. Such prose romances as The House of the Wolfings (1889) and its sequel, The Roots of the Mountains (1890), gave Tolkien a good deal of his method and tone.



E. R. Eddison: The Worm Ouroboros (1926)


Then there was E. R. Eddison - The Worm Ouroboros (1926), above all. And, in a more relaxed and satirical vein, Lord Dunsany and James Branch Cabell.



Lord Dunsany: The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924)


There was a time in the late 80s and 90s when I read a great many such books (and found some unexpected fellow-fans, too: Prof. D. I. B. Smith of Auckland University's English Department, my erstwhile MA supervisor among them - my PhD supervisor Colin Manlove, too).



Colin Manlove: The Fantasy Literature of England (1999)


I never read much of Terry Pratchett or Stephen Donaldson, who were both loudly proclaimed - rather unfairly, in retrospect - as Tolkien's heirs in the 1970s (the former has enjoyed a bit of a revival of late with the very entertaining TV miniseries The Shannara Chronicles).



So who did I read back then? Here are a few of their names:

  • Louise Cooper (The Time Master Trilogy, 1986-1987.)



  • Louise Cooper: The Initiate (1986)


  • Cecilia Dart-Thornton (The Bitterbynde Trilogy, 2001-2002)



  • Cecilia Dart-Thornton: The Ill-Made Mute (2001)


  • Raymond E. Feist (The Riftworld Saga)



  • Raymond E. Feist: Magician (1982)


  • Robert Holdstock (The Mythago Cycle, 4 vols: 1984-1998)



  • Robert Holdstock: Mythago Wood (1984)


  • Guy Gavriel Kay (The Fionavar Tapestry, 3 vols: 1986-1988. )



  • Guy Gavriel Kay: The Summer Tree (1986)


  • Patricia A. McKillip (The Riddle-Master Trilogy, 1976-1979)



  • Patricia A. McKillip: The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976)


  • George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire, 5 vols: 1996-2011)



  • George R. R. Martin: A Game of Thrones (1996)


  • Graham Dunstan Martin (The Soul Master, Time-Slip & The Dream Wall, 1984, 1986 & 1987)



  • Graham Dunstan Martin: The Soul Master (1984)


  • Michael Scott Rohan (The Winter of the World Trilogy: 1986-1988)



  • Michael Scott Rohan: The Forge in the Forest (1987)


  • Tad Williams (The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Trilogy: 1988-1993)



  • Tad Williams: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (1988-93)



Some of the examples in the list below include all of the principal, Tolkien-inherited ingredients: division into a trilogy; the presence of elves, dragons, and/or otherworldly creatures; a threat from some source of 'darkness' - generally in the North; a lost heir or 'chosen one' who has to set all to rights, possibly with the help of some ring, sword, or other talisman.

So far so banal. But then there are the exceptions: the genuinely original takes on the fantasy genre. Take Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood, for example. His basic notion of a wood that resists visitors is an excellent one, but combined with the discovery that (like the Tardis) this wood is bigger on the inside than the outside, and - in fact - has no effective limit in time or space, since it constitutes a kind of repository for the collective mythological memory of mankind, as far back as the last Ice Age, the working out of his story has a peculiar resonance and even symbolic truth to it.

Michael Scott Rohan takes the idea of the Ice Age more literally, and tries to recreate the vanished kingdoms of an era before the Mediterranean flooded, and when vast areas of land were laid bare by the glaciers.

Cecilia Dart-Thornton relies more on traditional ballads and folklore to shape her own narrative, while Patricia McKillip contributes a beautiful, Ursula Le Guin-like clarity to her storytelling. So, while some of the authors may be a bit perfunctory in their prose-style, it's hard to fault them for richness of invention.

Of course, any fan of the genre will immediately point out how outmoded the above list is. So many new series have appeared since the late 1990s, when I stopped even trying to keep on top of them, that I couldn't begin to discuss them even if I had the knowledge. Rest assured that the presses of the world have been busy adding to the total through all the intervening years.

So why concentrate on Tad Williams in particular, then? Not because he's so much better than the others - though he's probably the most long-winded among them (the cover of The Dragonbone Chair describes it as "the fantasy equivalent of War and Peace", and I think it's as much its length as its narrative ambition the reviewer must have had in mind).

I guess I've chosen to feature him:
  1. because (pragmatically) he's one of the few fantasy writers I've actually made an effort to keep up with since I first starting reading him in the early 90s.
  2. because (theoretically) I believe him to be the author who's tried hardest and most consistently to experiment with different levels and concepts of reality: from the celestial cyberpunk of the "Bobby Dollar" books to the copyrighted virtual reality domains of the "Otherworld" tetralogy.
The fact that, after all that, he's come back round to his starting-place, and is beginning yet another trilogy set in his Tolkien-esque kingdom of 'Osten Ard' also says something telling about the epic fantasy genre, however. Its fans are loyal and supportive - but they also tend to be resistant to change.

Unlike SF fans, who've got used to having all their expectations upset within the first few lines of each new story, Fantasy afficionados like to have horses, staffs, goblins, and elves - or some reasonable variant on same - crowd in to greet them pretty early on, regardless of how each author has chosen to account for their presence (creatures of a remote, post-nuclear-apocalypse future in Terry Pratchett; remnants of the ancient Germanic world in J. R. R. Tolkien).

Anyway, here's a reasonably comprehensive list of his thirty years of publications to date. By Tolkien's standards (at least), his protagonists do have a tendency to whine and demand instant attention to their peevish demands at inopportune moments (whether or not this represents a divergent Old World / New World set of cultural expectations I leave others to ponder). For the most part, though, he does have the ability to immerse his readers fully in a strangely believeable set of very particular fantasy worlds, and I suppose that's all one can really expect of a writer in this rather inflexible genre.

For myself, I'm a little sorry that he hasn't persevered with his virtual reality world Otherland, or even his Edwardian themed fairyland in The War of the Flowers, but with such a rate of production, it's fair to say that there are probably plenty of such departures from type to be expected from him yet!

The Shadowmarch series was a bit of a disappointment, it must be said: adding little to his earlier work on Osten Ard. The fact that he's now resumed that series - with what success it's a little early to say, though one has to salute his determination to make his evil adversaries as full of complex motivations as his "goodies". There's clearly life in the old genre yet, though of course I fully expect to be deluged by a set of suggestions for new such works and authors who have emerged over the past twenty years or so, whom I really must read in order to claim any currency at all. Bring it on!





Tad Williams (2007)

Robert Paul Williams (1957- )


  1. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn:
    1. The Dragonbone Chair. 1988. Legend Books. London: Arrow Books Limited, 1990.
    2. Stone of Farewell. 1990. Legend Books. London: Arrow Books Limited, 1991.
    3. To Green Angel Tower. Legend Books. London: Random House Group, 1993.

  2. Tailchaser's Song. 1985. Legend Books. London: Random Century Group, 1991.

  3. [with Nina Kiriki Hoffman]: Child of an Ancient City. Legend Books. London: Century, 1992.

  4. Caliban's Hour (1994)

  5. Otherland:
    1. City of Golden Shadow. Legend Books. London: Random House UK Limited, 1996.
    2. River of Blue Fire. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown & Company (UK), 1998.
    3. Mountain of Black Glass. 1999. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown & Company (UK), 2000.
    4. Sea of Silver Light. 2001. An Orbit Book. London: Time Warner Books UK, 2002.

  6. The War of the Flowers. An Orbit Book. London: Time Warner Books UK, 2003.

  7. Shadowmarch:
    1. Shadowmarch. An Orbit Book. London: Time Warner Book Group UK, 2004.
    2. Shadowplay. Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown Book Group, 2007.
    3. Shadowrise. DAW Book Collectors No. 1500. New York: DAW Books, Inc., 2010.
    4. Shadowheart. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown Book Group, 2010.

  8. Bobby Dollar:
    1. The Dirty Streets of Heaven. London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 2012.
    2. Happy Hour in Hell. London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 2013.
    3. Sleeping Late on Judgement Day. London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 2014.

  9. Rite: Short Work. 2006. Burton, MI: Far Territories, 2008.

  10. A Stark and Wormy Knight: Tales of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Suspense. Ed. Deborah Beale. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2012.

  11. The Very Best of Tad Williams (2014)

  12. The Last King of Osten Ard:
    1. The Heart of What Was Lost: A Novel of Osten Ard. London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 2017.
    2. The Witchwood Crown. London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 2017.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi Jack,

fantasy books are my favorite books to read, also The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski looks interesting, that was made into a video game series, it seems to me people into fantasy like science fiction also. that was a interesting blog post though Jack.

regards Victor.

Richard said...

Hi Jack. Some paradoxes here for me as usual. Tad Williams was one of the many I had for sale either on my market on Saturdays or on abebook.com. Looking up the data base (more coincidence!) as I type I find I had 'Otherworld' and 'Caliban's Hour' for sale. But that hit me 'Caliban's Hour'! I had 'pulled' that when culling and sorting a couple of years ago. Then I realised that I did have one by Williams. The book fascinated me, but I didn't associate it with the other books and I had forgotten I had it until now. But I had a started it. The reference to The Tempest was a powerful pull. I was about to say I had read nothing by him...So re that book please don't tell me if it is a good one or not as I want to read it now!

Previous to that when Victor came here he brought the three movies of The Lord of the Rings. I hadn't, still haven't read the book. But Victor read it all and we watched the movies which three movies are three of the great movies indeed. I did read the Hobbit, and we saw the movie. The book esp. was very good.

I showed Victor some of the Sci Fi and fantasy I was boxing up to make room and he found a Terry Brookes. This lead to him reading, (he just said, 17 of his Shannara series! Meanwhile I got him to read both 'The Illiad' and 'Odysseus' which he liked as indeed it 'connects' with such fantasy. Don (and I also) liked Swift and Pope's works. 'Gulliver's Travels' is, in part, an amazing fantasy / satire...one of the great books surely. Also Milton's 'Paradise Lost' which Don Smith lectured on (I was looking forward to doing that paper for an MA, I had heard about Smith and his Paradise Lost before I went to AU in 1990...But that and in some ways Spencer's long poem with it's Dragons etc (albeit they are, I believe, meant to represent the catholic Church, and Elizabeth is probably 'The Faery Queen'); maybe that is stretching it. But there are many intersections between the genre.

Then, going into a bookshop in town about 3 weeks back I looked for books and Vic found a book by someone called George R R Martin. Neither of us knew the 'Game of Thrones' as neither now watch any television, but the book looked interesting. Then I found that he had indeed written that...but that book was a compendium of writings by Martin.

I went through a Sci Fi period years ago. I recall some names such as Aldiss, Heinlein (mainly they were short stories, many of which the theme etc of them and some else I still recall, and also I read some H G Wells etc) Writers who bought me back to that in recent times include Angela Carter and J G Ballard. Fantasy is everpresent in some way in all literature of course, including the Greeks, Ovid, probably the Chinese Japanese and of course The Arabian Nights and much else. Even some of the stories in Lermontov's 'A Hero of Our Time' and those of Gogol esp. set in his Ukraine are sometimes almost sheer fantasy laced with some real...

Of those precursors I have only The Book of Wonder by Dunsany, a battered 1918 version; and of Morris I have the 2 vol 'The Well at the World's End' and 'News From Nowhere'.

So I started thinking, 'Oh no, here we go again...' but then I realised how much I had read the more I thought of it. Even some of George Macdonalds stories and translations of stories for children are amazing. Really strange also is M John Harrison of 'Viriconium Nights' etc...

Yes, as Vic says, Sci Fi and fantasy and other genres interconnect. As he said, the world itself, seeming to be 'real', he finds weird. However as I said, we have to eat our breakfast! But, yes...if one thinks of it, it is strange that we even exist and so on...

Tad Williams and many others await our attention.

Dr Jack Ross said...

Thanks Victor & Richard,

Luckily Caliban's Hour is one of the (very few) by Tad Williams I haven't read, so I'll await with interest your verdict on it. It does sound interesting.

I think you might enjoy E. R. Eddison, who translated Norse sagas as well as writing fantasy novels: he was certainly a big influence on Tolkien and C. S. Lewis (though lacking their Christian convictions, which is also a plus for me).

I agree about the SF / Fantasy connection. So many authors write in both genres, and then there are books -- many of Le Guin's, for instance -- which seem to straddle the forms. I remember John Dolan telling me that what he would have wanted most would be to have another life as a pulp SF writer: I can certainly empathise with that ...

best, jack

Richard said...

I looked up Dolan (I know you mentioned him before) but I couldn't make head nor tale of what he actually does write. But I suppose that being a war nerd as Beecher was it (?) he is acting as a satirist...the case of the book of the supposed addict is also strange...it is amazing the fanatical, almost panicked lengths, people go to establish what they call "truth" when in fact the real problem in philosophy at least is knowledge which presupposes that something has to be true for there to be knowledge. What it all boils down to is that we can never know with any certainty what is true or not (whether it is true or not!). [And we haven't even started on trying to define truth itself, which I suspect, like defining God or not-God is impossible...but I drift into my hobby horse...]

I wonder if Dolan himself took a kind of Schadenfreudic and cynical amusement attacking an alleged plagiarizer when he himself was for some time it seems hiding behind an alias...but in any case it is isn't clear in his Wiki article what kind of books he writes or what his "game is". I suppose in the time of Swift and Sterne the demolition of lit. 'bashers' and 'bad guys' was a kind of Freudian substitute for burning, in one year I believe under King James, about 8000 alleged witches...the sin being the inability to get in the last word (by Swift's time)...]

E. R Eddison I don't know (him or whether I would read him with so much to read). The closest I got to Norse sagas was reading 'Karmic Traces' by Eliot Weinberger. But I will peruse said person.

But I must have a look at Le Guin. My mother read her and a number of other Sci Fi writers (sometimes reading almost all the books of each) although she read library books, it was her hobby, but she read all kinds of things, but mostly fiction, some plays, travel and as I say, Sci Fi.

Sci Fi-Fantasy is clearly here to stay, and I imagine Le Guin and others like Ballard straddle the genre. I toyed with reading V O Blum's (another pseudonym) 'Downmind' but I am recovering from 'Cider with Rosie' which I enjoyed immensely.

Tolkien and Lewis were Christians.* I know you turned away from all that. There seems to me to be no hint of such belief in their works (or is there, I haven't read much by either?) except the old conflict of 'Good and Evil'. Which is also in Star Wars and Macbeth and so on. But, as I just read, people really did believe in witches in Shakespeare's time. So Bill probably believed that a lot of things could be caused by such forces. Which makes the whole thing dubious: for if some power outside one makes one do things then we cant be said to be responsible for anything...and then there is the old old problem of free will...

Tolkien was, I believe, interested in pagan beliefs which I suppose he conflated with his Christianity, as maybe Lewis did also. He was a scholar of old literature and probably his ring is based on (or influenced by) the Niebelungelied and Wagner and so on. And the legends, and the ghosts, and the Grail etc etc

...are such figures as Dr Phil or Oprah Winfrey forces for evil or good?! I couldn't answer that myself. It could be an essay topic Jack! You could inflict it on those nasty students you describe in your novella!

*I read that in one pub they jointly met at, they would be heard in terrific and loud argument. This went on for some weeks or months, these vociferous heated exchanges until another patron asked what was their 'beef'. They turned on him with: "We are arguing about Dragons, of course."