Following is my review of the last half of A Treasury of Fantasy. Part I is here. Part II here.
The Wood Beyond the World. William Morris. This is not my first Morris novel, though it is, perhaps, my favorite thus far. Morris continues to employ deliberately archaic language, as one might expect. I still appreciate it, yet it often lends itself more to telling rather than showing. Thus it functions in two ways as a sort of throwback to earlier romances.
Morris doesn’t seem to have had an ending in mind when he commenced his tale of Walter Goldings, scion of a rich merchant house and troubled by an unfortunate marriage to a faithless wife. With his father’s blessing, Walter takes ship to foreign ports to start afresh. Before embarking he witnesses a Dwarf, a Lady, and a thrall Maid boarding another ship. A shipwreck on a distant shore — in which is the titular Wood Beyond the World, a title that seems possess no relevance or import beyond sounding cool — leads him to encounter the strange trio again. Adventures ensue.
The positives:
Walter’s old man deserves mention. He kindly acquiesces to his son’s request to roam and offers to deal with the fallout that must inevitably arise from the failed marriage. Walter gets a report of his father’s death from the resulting battle with the house of the (ex) wife. That report includes this ice cold line: “Yea, in his bed he died; but first he was somewhat sword-bitten.” Somewhat sword-bitten. Stellar.
It was refreshing to shift from the Victorian moralizing of MacDonald in the prior novel to the gray, situational ethics of Morris, including thinly veiled sex. And more, we have a protagonist actively pursuing his interests rather than observing events befall him. “…Walter…deemed…that it was little manly to be as the pawn upon the board, pushed about by the will of others.” (pg. 306.)
The negatives:
Morris seems to have either gotten bored or forgot where he was going with the story. To employ an apt idiom, he failed to stick the landing. The ending doesn’t follow from any established acts or foreshadowing. Loose ends are left flapping in the breeze. The island or continent of the “Wood Beyond the World” while introduced in a fashion encouraging hopes of solid, consistent world-building, turns into an out-of-left field fairy tale land of unlikely happy endings at odds with prior descriptions of the place. And the intriguing, ambiguous hints concerning the nature of Walter’s love interest (the Maid, who turns out to be an impressively quick-witted, steel-nerved conniver) never really lead anywhere. A missed opportunity, there. The insinuations that she was misleading Walter, pursuing schemes of her own, could have been explored. Still, a short novel worth reading.
The Master Key. L. Frank Baum. The title has the following subheadings: An Electrical Fairy Tale. Founded upon the Mysteries of Electricity and the Optimism of its devotees. It was written for boys, but others may read it.
As one might expect from Baum, this is one is a children’s story. It might easily be classified as science-fiction rather than fantasy but for Baum’s utter disinterest in the actual science and the conceit that all the novel inventions are given to the protagonist by an accidently summoned genie, the Demon of Electricity. The inventions are interesting and it is fun to consider them from the perspective of a century and a quarter later. Did Baum foresee tasers or the internet accessible in the palm of your hand? Of course not. But one can’t help comparing the gadgets he proposed with what actually exists today. The episodic adventures are ones I would have thoroughly enjoyed when I was, say, twelve. The action and plucky courage of the boy hero would have appealed to me. I’m not sure how well it fits into this particular collection. And the ending irritated me; Baum and I would not have seen eye-to-eye on technology, humanity, and individual freedom.
The Doom that Came to Sarnath. H.P. Lovecraft. A classic. I have written about it before here.
Swords of the Purple Kingdom. Robert E. Howard. The anthology is really finishing up strong. Kull! I don’t think I’ve reviewed this one before. Usually it is a Conan story that ends up in these anthologies, not King Kull. This one is compact, fast-paced, and features all the elements you want from a sword-swinging Howard fantasy: villainous subterfuge, evil magicians, a plucky damsel, feats of strength, courageous heroes facing courageous foes in blood-drenched battle. What’s not to like?
The Rule of Names. Ursula K. Le Guin. An Earthsea short story written in the charming style of The Hobbit or, say James P. Blaylock’s Balumnia novels. The twee language and setting belie the rather dark end, though it is an end that isn’t hard to see coming from the get-go. I’m not the world’s greatest Earthsea fan, but this is a good story.
So, A Treasure of Fantasy provides an interesting progression covering about a thousand years of the evolution of fantasy. What selections would you have made to fulfill the same brief; that is to provide exemplars of the styles and trends of fantasy fiction over the course of Western Civilization from circa 1000 AD? I haven’t sat down and drafted my own selections. But I think I might swap out Phantastes for The Castle of Otranto and perhaps trade The Master Key for Jurgen.
Now, on to the announcement and book-hawking portion of the post. I will be a panelist at Orycon this year. If you happen to be in PDX the weekend of October 18-20 drop by and say hello. My schedule is as follows (title, room, date/time):
Reading. Grant. Oct. 18 4:00.
Essential Fantasy Novels. Morrison. Oct. 19 1:00.
Sword and Sorcery 101. Morrison. Oct. 19 2:00.
Fantasy Before Tolkien. Morrison. Oct. 19 5:00.
Pulp Fantasy! Morrison. Oct. 20 1:00.
Looks like I’ll become well acquainted with the Morrison room. If you’re interested in giving any of my stuff a look before then, why not pick up the four-volume set of Semi-Autos and Sorcery?