This winter, I took an online class on the fantasy genre, taught by Jo Walton & Ada Palmer, FFAC10106, The Anatomy of Fantasy, Graham School, U Chicago. It was a companion to last year’s science fiction class. [Winter Protocols]
My plan was to have the class serve as two-months of inspirational chorus leading to a short story. Didn’t happen. Partly, my continuing inability to think in a fictionally-compatible fashion. Partly, feeling punk when I was supposed to producing purple prose.[Leaping Around The Swamp]
What did happen is that the plan leaked all over the rest of the non-equine posts: photography, non-fiction, art. Bottom line, no story, but lots of other fantasy posts.
Speaking of being sick, I would have liked to do more with many of the posts. There was a lot of ‘Okay, good enough. Gets the idea across.’ For example, I would have like more than six examples on the fantasy book map.
Fantasy Photo Posts
[Fantasy Setting, Giant’s Chair, Photography]
[Passage To Elsewhere, Fantasy Photography]
[Strange Growths, Fantasy Photography]
[Portal Fantasy II, Photography]
This was the hardest section to come up with ideas. Well yes, fiction but I always have trouble with fiction. This was the hardest one to tailor to the topic at hand. What is fantasy in photography? How do I find it before next Friday?
That’s one reason I used two posts from one place, even though that contravenes my basic premise of ‘Go somewhere, do something’. I was discovering that it was difficult to ‘Go somewhere, do something, AND find a theme.’
Fantasy Fiction Posts
[The Not So Shoddy Lands, Fiction Fragment]
[The Fae in NYC, Fiction Fragment]
[Where Is Fantasy Found? A Prepositional Prose Poem]
[The Ripples of the Rings, An Internet Trawl, Non-Fiction About Someone Else’s Fiction]
The last was the one that was supposed to be the fully realized short story. As of the Wednesday before, I had nothing. I admitted defeat and went with the link fest.
Fantasy Non-Fiction Posts
[Recommending Fantasy Books]
[Memories of Personal Relationships With Books, Non-fiction]
Recommending Books was gonna be a thoughty essay on the fantasy genre. The cold snap occupied too much of my brain that week. [Phase II]
Fantasy Art Posts
[Fantasy Lettering, D is for Dragon, Graphic Design]
[F is for Fantasy, Emoji Art]
[Origami Dragon, Paper Art]
[Fantasy Map, Graphic Design]
Other Dragon Posts
Not planned, but apropos.
[DragonCat, Guest Art] & [The Art of Framing, DragonCat Gets New Home]
[Parade Art, Guest Photos]
[Month of the Dragon, State of the Fitness]
Tidbits
Links & things that came up during class, but did not make it into a post.
“Genres are where fears pool.” Mythopoetic Scoitey: Interview with Daniel Abraham – Posted on July 01, 2011 by Edith L. Crowe.
Upcoming book Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Jo Walton and Ada Palmer (Macmillan scheduled for 2024), AP: Trace Elements.
JWBooks: What Makes This Book So Great.
Copper skinned wizard, “He (Ogden, and by extension the MC) was a dark man, like most Gontish-men, dark copper-brown.” Reactor: How Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea Subverts Racism (But Not Sexism), Bellot, 2018. Colorful book Reviews: Rant About #coverfail in Earthsea 2020.
In the dragon museum video, one of the speakers points out that dragon is combination of lion, eagle, & snake, which are three of the four Hogwarts crests. [DragonCat]
At least two people in class had never read The Lord of the Rings. Me, first thought: How is it possible that a science fiction & fantasy reader could NOT have read this? Me, upon reflection: Back when I read it in the mid-70s, we didn’t have much choice. We all read the same books because there were so few. The fantasy genre is different now, thanks in no small part to TLOTR.
Frazetta Mueum: Frazetta’s Lord of the Rings Portfolio. Seven images. It’s a sales page, but one can enjoy the images for free.
Coda
It was fun to a unifying project for posts. Perhaps I will do it again with another theme, as long as it inspires rather than increases the workload.
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 
Thank you for reintroducing me to science fiction/fantasy. And Ada Palmer and Jo Walton. And Scintillation. And John Scalzi…….
Joan
“Weak as women’s magic” put me right off back in the day. Ursula K. Le Guin regretted that and tried to make up for it, but the gender roles in her stories were never what interested me. Le Guin was a generous soul, but for feminism in SF, I looked to other authors. I wanted stories where gender was not the determining factor in character and conflict. I wanted to read about worlds where gender was irrelevant to destiny. Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamsnake is a favorite for post-feminism.
SF – You’re welcome. The field is vast! Room for everyone!
~~~
Women’s magic – I missed the sexism the first time around at age 10. Boy, did I slam into it 50 years later.
Interesting. Good to get this far with this genre. Science fiction hasn’t been much a draw for me, ever, although I once read “Hobbit” because there was a segment of society involved in my MA thesis in photojournalism, that wanted to create a Hobbit world.
Glad to miss out on the sexism, but not surprised as I think most sci-fi writers are male, and creating fantasy worlds.
I admire the writers who do it. Like all good writing everywhere, it looks like it takes — same as the directions to Carnegie Hall — practice, practice, practice. MM