{"id":9291,"date":"2011-10-27T06:30:24","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T17:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=9291"},"modified":"2011-11-04T11:37:16","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T22:37:16","slug":"encountering-fantastic-worlds-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/10\/27\/encountering-fantastic-worlds-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Encountering Fantastic Worlds: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

On September 12 I was at a Writers’ Tea Party—does that phrase immediately make you think of Mad Hatters and March Hares, and dormice in teapots? It has that effect on me (just a little bit \ud83d\ude09 ) but in fact it was a very nice tea party, supporting a local library (always a worthy cause imho) and if you want the full breakdown you can read all about it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But cutting to the chase, in my presentation (the bit that came ahead of all the delicious home baking and conviviality of the actual tea party) I began my talk with\u00a0 the moment when an eight year old girl first opened up a book in which another girl stepped through the back of a wardrobe and into a snowy wood, illuminated by a solitary lamppost.<\/p>\n

The book, of course, was CS Lewis\u2019s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe<\/strong><\/em>, and the scene probably one of the most well known in both Fantasy and Children’s literature. But I still remember the sheer wonder and delight of that moment, when together with the character of Lucy I first encountered the lamp-post\u2014and a moment later met the faun, Mr. Tumnus, with his umbrella and armful of Christmas presents.<\/p>\n

Talking about it got me thinking about all the fantastic realms that exist in SFF and some of the other worlds that have sparked the same sense of joy and possibility for me. But as soon as I did that I realised that there are so many<\/em>—both in Kids\/YA and tales for older readers, as well as the worlds and universes of SF and those that are clearly Fantastic—and realised that I probably had another short series by the tail.<\/p>\n

Since Narnia sparked this train of thought I resolved to start with some of my favourite Kids\/YA realms and quickly decided that:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>D <\/strong>is for Damar<\/strong>—the Damar of Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword<\/strong><\/em> (as opposed to The Hero and the Crown<\/em>, which has always seemed like a completely different<\/em> world)<\/p>\n

I still vividly recall my first encounter with The Blue Sword<\/em> and Damar—not just the physical description of a dry and sandswept desert realm, but the sense that I had stepped into an alternate Raj, where the colonists talk of Home and the names, such as Istan, are reminiscent of the north of the Indian subcontinent.<\/p>\n

The Damar of The Blue Sword<\/em> also encompasses a wonderful juxtaposition between the 19th century technology of Daria, the greater part of Damar colonised by the Homelanders, and kelar<\/em>, the wild magic of indigenous Damar that causes firearms to misfire. Damar is in part medieval and tribal, but is saved from a one-dimensional comparison between modernity and magic by the heart of the kindom, a sophisticated stone city. Another aspect of Damar that appealed to me was the three-way tension between the Homelanders and the Old Damarians, who are both human despite their differences, and the demons and demon-infused humans of the lands further north.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>E <\/strong>is for Earthsea<\/strong>. I don’t think any discussion of fantastic worlds in Kids\/YA lit would be complete without consideration of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea. The world, a series of archipelagoes scattered across ocean, is established in A Wizard of Earthsea<\/strong><\/em>—and captured my imagination from the initial image of Gont’s mountain rising from the sea, to the detail of Roke, the Mage’s Isle with its college and Isolate Tower, to ruined islands like Pendor. The vast tracts of uncharted ocean in both east and west are just as much part of the world, as are the perilous dragons’ islands far to the west.<\/p>\n

Typically for a Le Guin ‘verse, the physical world does not exist in isolation from its cultural and metaphysical characteristics. Every island has its differences, both physical—the savage Kargads are white-skinned and yellow-haired, the people of Iffish and the East Reach have black skins—and also cultural. Le Guin’s world is infused by its magic, based around naming, patterns between the natural and metaphysical realms, and an awareness of equilibrium. The world is expanded in later books, but it is in the first that the essence of what makes Earthsea is charted.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>E<\/strong> is also for Elidor,<\/strong> the dark realm from Alan Garner’s book of the same name. One thing that struck me as I searched for a cover image, was how few even begin to do justice to the terrifying darkness of the world that Garner created—a darkness that seized my imagination as a child and has remained with me ever since. The mythology of the world is Celtic, and Elidor a world that is being consumed by darkness, with only one stronghold remaining. But one of the most powerful aspects of the book’s world building is Garner’s juxtapositon of Elidor with a dark, industrial Manchester of static electricity and the rubble left by World War 2 (although as I recall, the story takes place a generation later.) Looking back, I can see that Elidor was my first introduction to dark fantasy, with elements of the story verging on horror. It was also the first Fantasy I read where the alternate, fantastic realm not only overlapped but aggressively intruded into our world—in a way that heralded urban fantasy.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>G <\/strong>is for Graveyard<\/strong>, as in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

This is a far more recent read, but I love the world that Neil Gaiman has created within an English graveyard—both the physical world of the tombstones and surrounding town, but also the graveyard’s denizens, from a Roman soldier through to a young woman drowned as a witch. And then there are the more mythic characters—Silas (the mentor and guardian of the boy, Nobody, who has been adopted by the graveyard’s ghosts), whom we recognise as a vampire, and his ally, Miss Lepescu, a werewolf.<\/p>\n

But perhaps my favourite part of the world Neil Gaiman has created comes in the fifth chapter, when the denizens of the graveyard and the citizens of the town celebrate the festival they call the Macabray (aka Danse Macabre)—the one special night when the living dance with the dead …<\/p>\n

“Rich man, poor man, come away,
\nCome to dance the Macabray …”<\/em><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

—
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So there you have it, five of my favourite worlds of Children’s\/YA Fantasy: Narnia, Damar, Earthsea, Elidor, and the Graveyard. I will be back soonish with some of my favourite worlds from adult Fantasy and also Sci-Fi’. But in the meantime, I’d love to know some of your favourite Kids\/YA worlds—though only if you’d like to “share”, of course! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

—<\/span><\/p>\n

To read the second instalment of this “Encountering Fantastic Worlds” series, looking at the first three of my favourite adult fantasy worlds, click here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the second three, plus ‘honourable mentions’, are now here.<\/strong><\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On September 12 I was at a Writers’ Tea Party—does that phrase immediately make you think of Mad Hatters and March Hares, and dormice in teapots? It has that effect on me (just a little bit \ud83d\ude09 ) but in fact it was a very nice tea party, supporting a local library (always a worthy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epicfantasy","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9291"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9535,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291\/revisions\/9535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}