Welcome to the non-fiction ‘Warthog Blog’ section of the Warthog Report, where I write about different subjects as they interest me. If you’re a subscriber and just want other parts of the newsletter, you can adjust which segments you receive here. Let’s talk about old books.
As I said in an earlier post, I’ve been interested in reading more of what I call classic fantasy. This term is a bit nebulous, some would put mythological works in there but I don’t count those, in fact what I’m looking for could be described as the link between mythology and modern fantasy, so it can’t be mythology itself.
My reason for this is to place the genre as a whole in wider context, it’s good to stay current, but historical knowledge is also important and leads to richer writing. I don’t want to get so deep into this that I forget about modern fantasy, which is a genuine concern as I tend to be a very picky reader when it comes to books (but tend to think quite a bit about what I do read).
Naturally what I’m looking for is the things I haven’t read yet, so that discounts Tolkien, C.S Lewis, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The latter two I could read more of, but for Tolkien I haven’t just read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, I’ve read The Silmarillion, Children of Turin, Beren and Luthien, even The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun as well his translations of Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl. There’s more Tolkien to read, but in terms of broader genre understanding I have a good idea of Tolkien.
Tolkien is however a good example of why it’s important to actually engage with older foundational works instead of relying on pure osmosis. If you judged Tolkien based on those who cite him as an influence you’d get the impression Aragorn was the main character of The Lord of the Rings, he isn’t and the fact that he isn’t is part of the whole point.
But how to identify what authors to read for this? Well that’s simple, look at who fantasy authors present and past have name dropped as their influences, something that can be easily found with some searching. There is an entire wikipedia article on William Morris’s influence on Tolkien, and in a letter Tolkien specifically names Morris’s books The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains as influences.
Tracking down a common trope to the work that helped codify its current form can help as well. Looking into how mana, a Polynesian religious term, became common fantasy terminology brought me to Larry Niven, whose use of mana in his books is essentially the reason why mana is the name of the finite spellcasting resource in fantasy video games.
The inspiration for how magic works in Dungeons & Dragons is hidden in plain sight with the term Vanacian magic. The term is named for Jack Vance, whose Dying Earth series was the inspiration for the spell slot system. You can see another nod to Vance in Dungeons & Dragons by rearranging the letters of the name Vecna.
There were also works I already knew I needed to read before I got on this track. Conan the Barbarian is a character whose name people just know even if they know nothing about him, Elric of Melinboné is less well known but I knew him without trying to all the same. On an author rather than character level I was also already aware of and interested in Lord Dunsany and his constructed mythology in The Gods of Pegāna, which you can tell I already got to from the fact that I wrote about it.
But Dunsany brings up an interesting question when you look at who was influenced by him, as he is a notable influence on the works of Lovecraft. Genres are in many ways fake, and I don’t think there’s anything stopping horror and fantasy from describing the same work.
Backtracking from Lovecraft by following the origin of the name Hastur also leads to The King In Yellow by Robert Chambers, and from there to the short stories Haita the Shepherd and An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce. This is one branch I have now explored and what I found was both rewarding and not at all what people will lead you to expect, some of the short stories in The King in Yellow are completely normal romances.
Following names also led me to The Hyberborean Cycle by Clark Ashton Smith. I would have found it through the connections to Lovecraft and Robert E Howard regardless, but I recall my attention first being brought to it through a video on an RPG never released in English. The video maker realized he had made a translation error by not recognizing that a character in the game was named for a character in The Hyberborean Cycle.
General research by simply following links on wikipedia pages for authors rounded out my list with the Zimiavian trilogy by E.R Eddison and Jurgen by James Branch Cabell. Peter and Wendy, the novel adaptation of the Peter Pan play by the playwright himself, was also on my list and then promptly read. It’s a sadder book than you would expect.
And after building out this non-exhaustive but decently sized list, I then proceeded to get sidetracked by reading The Maltese Falcon and various non-reading activities. I was never one for set schedules. But this ‘journey’ will be more enjoyable if I don’t force it and take my time. These books aren’t going anywhere.