What do we mean when we say historical fantasy?
I’ve just realised I use it to mean several distinct things at different times.
There’s alternate history fantasy, like John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting and Vonda N. McIntyre’s The Moon and the Sun, and Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy books, which is like standard alternate history except that magic exists and some magical event changes the timeline.
There’s filed-the-numbers-off-history fantasy like Guy Kay’s The Lions of Al-Rassan and Lois Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion and Daniel Fox’s Dragon in Chains, where there’s a secondary fantasy world closely based on the events and culture of a real historical period and place.
Related to that there’s the kind of fantasy where characters magically go from a point in real history into a secondary world. Harry Turtledove’s Videssos cycle would be an example, so would Katherine Kerr’s Deverry books. These can be seen as a scaling up of the kind of fantasy where a small group of people find themselves in a fantasy world, but in Kerr’s books in particular you have a large group from a historical culture and history going on from there.
There’s historically-infused fantasy like Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman’s The Fall of the Kings and Daniel Abraham’s The Long Price Quartet and Sarah Monette’s Doctrine of Labyrinths which is a secondary fantasy world that’s informed by a real understanding of actual history without being a direct echo of any particular thing. Linking these three things here like this makes me want to call this Shakespearean fantasy, because these are stories that much more closely resemble Shakespearean tragedies and histories than they do sub-Tolkien fantasy or actual history. (I’d put the Song of Ice and Fire here too, except that it continually hints that Winter is Coming and its going to be epic when it does.)
There’s Tim Powers: he deserves a category of his own. In all his books he takes weird historical events and makes up fantastical explanations for them. Books like Last Call and The Anubis Gates are clearly demonstrating a demented genius in pulling history together so it makes sense sideways. I don’t know if I’d call them historical fantasy, but I’m not sure what else to call them.
Then there’s steampunk fantasy, like Ian MacLeod’s The House of Storms, and Michael Swanwick’s Dragons of Babel where there’s industrial revolution and magic, and it’s definitely magical and it’s definitely using history, but it doesn’t fit with any of the other kinds of books.
Then there’s the kind that’s furthest from history, where it’s really just non-epic secondary world fantasy, where it’s historical because it’s on a historical one country scale rather than a world destroying epic quest type sub-Tolkien scale. There isn’t any real world history involved, just the history of that world. This is the most removed from history, but this is where I have most seen the term used.
So: have I missed any kinds? What do you usually mean when you use the term? Is it a useful term to keep using?
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
Tim Powers is indeed a mad genius. I love his “sideways” histories — Last Call, The Anubis Gates, Expiration Date, Declare… The thing I enjoy most about his work is his ability to construct absolutely believable magic systems. When I read a Powers novel, I find myself saying, “Oh, yeah, of course magic works this way.”
I imagine historical fantasy as being best described by Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It’s set in the past, in a history much like ours but with subtle (or great) fantastical differences.
Morgan Llewelyn would be another good example of a historical fantasy novelist with her books such as Druids and Lion of Ireland.
I tentatively agree that Guy Gavriel Kay is historical fantasy, though I’ve never really thought of fantasy set in a historical setting similar to our world but clearly other worldly as such. That seems to open the field a lot larger than I’d previously imagined.
Toryx: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell belongs in the same bit of the list as The Dragon Waiting.
Morgan Llewellyn is an example of a different kind — in what I’ve read of hers has she’s doing retellings of mythology or historical events, as novels. You could consider some of her books historical novels and others historical fantasy, depending how fantastical they are. On Raven’s Wing is definitely fantasy, The Horse Goddess closer to straight history. (Getting things wrong does not make something fantasy.)
I’d limit historical fantasy to ‘behind the scenes magic’ in real history.
Tim Power’s _The Anubis Gates_ is a good example.
Mercedes Lackey has a series set in England prior to Queen Elizabeth’s reign that involve two rival courts of Faere. One court is defending then Princess Elizabeth. The other court feeds on human misery and thus is supporting ‘Bloody Mary’.
Judith Tarr has also some fantasy stories that are actual history with ‘behind the scenes magic’.
While there’s plenty of good fantasy that use historical settings as models for fantasy worlds (Barbara Hambly does this) that’s different from having an actual historical setting for the fantasy story.
There actually is a term for what Powers does: secret history. That is taking historic events and interpreting them in an unusual way or finding non-standard causes. It applies best to books like Declare or The Stress of Her Regard, but you can view a lot of his work through that lens.
I think I would use the term historical fantasy strictly for fantasies with historical settings. Much of Powers probably fits here, as do The Dragon Waiting and Strange & Norrell. I’m less inclined to include stuff “with the numbers filed off” like Guy Kay and even less so for things which use historical models. All decent fantasy uses some historical models. (The Videssos Cycle crosses the line somewhat in the series involving the Roman legion getting zapped to Videssos, but calling them historical fantasy would be like claiming the Thomas Covenant books are modern or urban fantasy just because he comes from our world.)
I think of historical fantasy mainly as things that happen in our world’s history with some alternate twist including magic. That would include steampunk, lots of “fantasy of manners,” Novik’s Temeraire books, and others.
I think of retellings at the border of myth and history as a separate subcategory. You mentioned Llewellyn; I’d also include Mary Stewart’s Merlin books, the classic Once and Future King, and Mary Renault books like The King Must Die.
I don’t think I’d include the numbers-filed-off kind of books. Most fantasy in invented worlds have a historical feel of one kind or another, from the rather dull generic medieval to incredibly inventive variations. But I don’t think of it as historical fantasy particularly.
Mary Gentle’s “Ash: A Secret History”?
Howard Waldrop has written Tim-Powers-like “secret history”: for example “God’s Hooks!”. But where do you classify “Ike at the Mike”?
Alaynem: I classify “Ike and the Mike” and a lot of other Waldrop as “Gonzo”. (“Too weird to live and too rare to die”.) I think they belong more with tall tales than anything else.
Do you have any examples of your last category? Just curious — I’m not sure I get the difference between that and historically-infused fantasy.
A related topic — did you ever compile your list of “fantasies of manners”? I realized that a lot of titles I was putting in the “historical fantaay” category more properly belonged there.
(Of course, then you get things like Wrede’s MAIRELON books, which are more-or-less fantasy parodies of comedies of manners, dropped into an alt-historical setting…)
Avram Davidson not mentioned yet? For shame. “Peregrine: Primus” and “Secundus” are firmly in Jo’s first type of historical fantasy, with magic, a dragon, and the Central Roman Empire (as obviously there HAD to be something like that between the Eastern and the Western Roman Empires) torn between the multitude of Christian sects and remnants of pagan religions. Gloriously silly Latin jokes, a fine realization of how history is written, and generally pure, distilled, weapons grade awesomesauce.
OtterB: is The Once and Future King in quite the same category? Renault and Stewart are both trying to reconstruct a myth in the historical setting in which it might actually have happened (and of course a lot of people have done this for the Arthurian legend, most famously perhaps Marion Zimmer Bradley). But White quite deliberately does not put the Arthurian legend in the setting where it might have happened; he puts it in the setting where the best-known versions of it were written. Arthur is a Norman; his father ruled from 1066 to 1215; he himself rules, presumably, from 1215 to some time in the 15th century, since at the end he meets Thomas Malory; he also meets Robin Hood; and so on. It is a massively unhistorical fantasy in one way, though it is certiainly based on or inspired by history.
AnotherAndrew, I admit I didn’t look closely enough to see that distinction. Perhaps White’s is a different category altogether, or perhaps it’s on a continuum somewhere. If you say that historical fantasy has a jumping-off place in real history, then you can say that some books jump much further than others.
On the trashy side, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series relies on magical time travel, though has few fantasy elements in the historical part. (Yes, I’ll admit I read it – and Twilight!) I’d say it’s historical fantasy, but don’t think it quite fits into the categories you described.
Can historical fantasy be written altering the history as it sounds different,…..
OtterB: I like your description, “I think of historical fantasy mainly as things that happen in our world’s history with some alternate twist including magic.”
How would anyone on this thread define Deborah Harkness’ work? The first book in her trilogy has vampires, witches, and daemons and takes place in present day. The second book time travels to Elizabethan England and has the two main characters (one a witch, one a vampire) meeting up with actual important figures of the period–Shakespeare, Marlowe, John Dee, etc. The witch has to go back in time to learn how to practice white magic.