Archives for January 2007

This is the first in a five-part series on the ‘Fantasy Big Bang’ of 1977. You can find the other parts of the series here:

2. Lord of the Rinky-dink
3. Hero and fool
4. All roads to nowhere
5. Lost tales, unattained vistas

Somewhere or other, I suppose, there are people who would claim that some fundamental change or progress has overtaken the field of ‘high’ or ‘epic’ fantasy in the last thirty years. I suppose they must exist, because nowadays there is no claim so foolish that somebody cannot be found who will make it. In the same way, a century ago, there were those who claimed that England was not ruled by an oligarchy, and it was to these that G. K. Chesterton made his inimitable answer:

It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day’s newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same people. In one paper he would have found a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. In the other paper he would find a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. If this is not being governed by families I cannot imagine what it is. I suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic coincidences. —What’s Wrong with the World [Read more…]