Fearsome Journeys (The New Solaris Book of Fantasy)

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FANTASY. FANTASTIKA. CALL it what you will, almost any story can be made to fit within its boundaries and, like many of its finest texts, it’s almost impossible to pin down or to define. As John Clute and John Grant rightly pointed out in their essential The Encylopedia of Fantasy, fantasy is “a most extraordinarily porous term, and has been used to mop up vast deposits of story which this culture or that – and this era or that – deems unrealistic.” Trying to home in on a usable definition, they wrote that:

A fantasy text is a self-coherent narrative. When set in this world, it tells a story which is impossible in the world as we perceive it; when set in an otherworld, that otherworld will be impossible, though stories set there may be possible in its terms.

That definition sets out ground rules without clarifying much. A fantasy is a story set in a world where impossible things happen. Like fantasy itself, it’s romantic and appealing but more than a little hazy at the edges. In fairness to Clute and Grant, they go on to devote a lengthy entry and, eventually, an entire encyclopedia to defining and understanding fantasy.

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