Low Fantasy

I disagree with Wikipedia, then. I don't think setting is as central to the distinction as they make out.

High fantasy - overt magic/fantastic elements, whether that means dragons, wizards, folkloric non-humans (elves, dwarves, etc), parallel worlds or whatever. Usually set in an invented world, although modern-world urban fantasy often has "hidden realms" full of high-fantasy beings.

Low fantasy - low-key or minimal magic. No mythical beasties; any non-humans are within the bounds of scientific plausibility. Can be any setting, but if zero magic then it must be set in an invented world or it doesn't qualify as fantasy :)

There's a lot of confusion between high fantasy and epic fantasy, because the latter often falls into the former category. Epic fantasy is nearly always set in an invented, pre-industrial world, but its key feature is the global scale of its conflicts. ASOIAF is unusual in being a relatively low-fantasy incarnation of epic fantasy.

Anya, can your characters travel to our world, or do you just mean that the technology/culture level is analogous to our own?
 
Paul Kearney's 'The Ten Thousand' has no magic that I remember, uses ancient greek technology/warfare but is set in the imaginary world of Kuf.

The book blurb refers to fantasy. I doubt any marketeer would be happy describing a book as 'low fantasy' on its jacket.

Great book by the way.
 
Low fantasy - low-key or minimal magic. No mythical beasties; any non-humans are within the bounds of scientific plausibility. Can be any setting, but if zero magic then it must be set in an invented world or it doesn't qualify as fantasy :)

Mine has no magic and is set in our world. I'm still calling it fantasy. (Was mentally calling it paranormal fantasy or urban fantasy* but I'm only on chapter four so not too fussed about the technicalities yet!)

Personally, I've never heard of 'low' fantasy. Or 'high' fantasy, for that matter. :eek:

*but contains no vampires, werewolves or zombies.
 
Anya, can your characters travel to our world, or do you just mean that the technology/culture level is analogous to our own?


The only travel between our world and their's was at divine intervention several generations ago. (I did like a Noah and the ark style story with a spaceship).

The technology is similar to our own. I haven't recreated Earth either so some things are different. They do have computers, electricity, things to play music on, motorised boats, limited vehicles etc Because of widespread bird shifting ability air travel was later, and came about as a byproduct of trying to get into space. Lack of hydrocarbons made some things slower etc
 
Mine has no magic and is set in our world. I'm still calling it fantasy. (Was mentally calling it paranormal fantasy or urban fantasy* but I'm only on chapter four so not too fussed about the technicalities yet!)

Personally, I've never heard of 'low' fantasy. Or 'high' fantasy, for that matter. :eek:

*but contains no vampires, werewolves or zombies.

Sounds like you might have to call it "interstitial" then :)

I don't think "high fantasy" or "low fantasy" are marketing labels - they're more like lit-crit terms used to categorise books in terms of their tropes. I suspect you might come across them if you read a lot of pro reviews, as I tend to (yep, I subscribe to Locus) :eek:
 
it's a good one Mouse - the subgenre for the fantasy that is not quite any other subgenre :)

I've given up and just calling it fantasy. If I call it anything else some readers get upset about my main character wearing jean.
 
Interstitial fantasy. Ha. All right, it sounds posh. ;)

No, just "interstitial" or "interstitial fiction". It's not a sub-genre of fantasy or SF, more WTF :)

I've given up and just calling it fantasy. If I call it anything else some readers get upset about my main character wearing jean.

True. There's a character in Steph Swainston's books who wears jeans, but her writing is labelled "New Weird" (which <sarcasm-alert>basically seems to mean "throw a load of random tropes in and use lots of big words"</sarcasm>)
 
Umm I'll accept weird :) ... It's not very literary though ... at least I hope not. I'm less bothered now, I was misinformed it needed to be narrowed down for my covering letter. However I am now curious about how it gets narrowed down - I'm off to start a new thread rather than derail this one too much.
 
I get that it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but as someone who grew up on soft SF I actually prefer low fantasy to the fireballs'n'dragons school of high fantasy - which is one of the reasons I've delayed reading the rest of ASOIAF :)

I believe I was discussing this with IBrian in a thread in the Steven Erikson forum ...

Anyway, it took me a little time to realise that I really don't like magic-driven plots, unless (maybe) the magic has very well defined rules and limits.

If the characters can create a great spell to solve any problem there's no tension! Also, I just have a very "empirical" world view -- if I can't even begin to verify things via my own experience (if it seems too superstitious or supernatural) I just can't suspend my disbelief.

Which is why I choose to write sci-fi, even though I typically prefer fantasy in terms of its character emphasis and style. In my own writing I make sure that everything seems "scientific" and could, most of the time, really happen.

My favourite fantasy is typically low on magic.
** I LOVE Guy Gavriel Kay, may he live a very, very long time, and write many more amazing books.
** Similarly, GRRM is amazing.

They're my top two, but others that are good for me have been Joe Abercrombie and Paul Kearney (mentioned above).

Please, someone, find me another Guy Gavriel Kay!!! Wouldn't that be amazing.

Anne, thanks, I'll check out Ellen Kushner (as well as The Alchemist of Souls).

Coragem.
 
Have you read any Tim Powers? His stories tend to have underlying magic and mysticism that draw heavily on historical superstitions rather than being D&D-style "spells".

I would recommend "The Drawing of the Dark" if you like strongly historical novels. It's about an Irish mercenary who finds himself working in a bierkeller in Vienna in 1529, on the eve of the attack by the Ottoman Empire. His job is basically to guard the enormous vat of beer in the basement...

(It's not as silly as it sounds - Powers is more wryly humorous than laugh-out-loud funny)
 
Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian books may fit the 'low' criteria
 
Some writers are drawn to fantasy because it allows them to play at worldbuilding pre-industrial cultures similar to historical ones but not constrained by historical reality. A story like that doesn't need magic. The first volume of A Song of Ice and Fire has practically no overt magic in it*, and it's one of the most popular fantasy books of the last couple of decades.

This is an interesting point that I hardly have ever thought about. In my book, the civilization that is more like the Roman/Byzantine empire is trying to stop a multi ethnic invasion force from civilizations that I try to make similar, but not alike, that is more closer to the ancient celts fighting alongside another ethnic group that is more akin to the mongols/huns.
 
I agree with Anne that wikipedia got this wrong (shocking!).

To me, at least, in addition to limited use of magic, low fantasy implies a certain grittiness. Abercrombie, Martin, and Lynch are the three authors that come to mind for me. Stuff that's pretty grounded in the ugliness of the world in some way or another.

I've never really thought of Guy Gavriel Kay as a low fantasist (to coin a term), because even his light on magic stuff (certainly things like Tigana and Fivonavar are pretty much text book high fantasy) seem to float above the grimness that somebody like Abercrombie revels in. That's not a criticism of him at all, there's an elegiac quality that runs through all his work, even things like Under Heaven that don't feature magic to any great degree at all. I find that very affecting, but that's a strain that comes very much from the Tolkien and doesn't have anything at all to do with low fantasy as I understand it.
 
I think one potential problem we're seeing here with the terms High fantasy and Low fantasy is that the words "high" and "low" themselves carry so many connotations (such as grittiness and grimness in the case of "low") that people inevitably and understandably bring with them when adding them to "fantasy". I do this myself -- when I think "high fantasy" the first image that comes to mind is shiny armour, sparkling dragons and flags, and I'm sure that comes from an association of "high" with "noble", when in this case it should really only mean the degree of fantasticality (if such a word there be).
 
but HB, I think you're exactly right... low and high fantasy carry with them connotations beyond the degree of fantasticality (a lovely term by the by). I think all that baggage exists because it is, in fact, part of the definition.

I'd submit that something like Brent Weeks' Night Angel Trilogy, with more then its share of magic, is much more nearly low fantasy then something like Under Heaven which is very nearly magic free (though, come to think of it, Under Heaven is likely more properly termed historical fantasy). That's all about the world view, not a simple quantifying of fantastical elements.
 
I think all that baggage exists because it is, in fact, part of the definition.

On reflection, I think you're probably right, except that the baggage exists as part of an "unspoken" definition -- and the trouble is, if the baggage varies from person to person, how do we know we're speaking about the same thing?

But I agree (again, on reflection), a simple quantifying of fantastical elements doesn't really cut it.
 
Some writers are drawn to fantasy because it allows them to play at worldbuilding pre-industrial cultures similar to historical ones but not constrained by historical reality.

This is exactly what has turned me off fantasy, and writer like Kay and Kearney are at the heart of it. If a "fantasy" novel is being used as little more than a vehicle for recreating past cultures the author finds interesting, then there's no point to me reading it. I'd just as soon read a book that tells me about that real culture and learn something useful in the process. I can imagine my own stories just fine past that.

I mean seriously, isn't Europe's history of warring clans and conquest interesting enough that it doesn't need to be dressed up with fake names, a random wizard, and a good made up set piece or two?
 
This is exactly what has turned me off fantasy, and writer like Kay and Kearney are at the heart of it. If a "fantasy" novel is being used as little more than a vehicle for recreating past cultures the author finds interesting, then there's no point to me reading it. I'd just as soon read a book that tells me about that real culture and learn something useful in the process. I can imagine my own stories just fine past that.

I mean seriously, isn't Europe's history of warring clans and conquest interesting enough that it doesn't need to be dressed up with fake names, a random wizard, and a good made up set piece or two?

I think that's like saying there's no reason to read fiction about contemporary times when we could just read newspapers. To me it's about the story. If Kay wants to create an analog of reconquista Spain to tell the story he wants to tell that's fine by me.
 
Interesting point. As someone who has written a (seemingly unpublishable) novel set in a souped-up Renaissance, I really had to stop and think about this.

My response is that Europe probably isn't quite good enough. Why? I suspect many people see historical periods (especially far-away ones) as caricatures, which are often wrong. The questing knight riding his barded warhorse alone across the world simply didn't happen. Nor, except for one or two people, did the Renaissance scholar/artist/engineer exist - but both of these images cast a long shadow, and it would be interesting if they did. So it becomes necessary to use fantasy to allow them to exist, rather than lie about history in a bad historical novel.

Also, fantasy stories don't have to be set in the periods they resemble - Rohan isn't in the Norman or Viking age, although the films make it look like a cross between the two. But they can be set in the mythological background of those times. A story in a mock-medieval world might draw on chivalric myth, which was the fictional background of that time. Similarly, a fantasy that reflected the English Civil War might involve divine intervention and witchcraft, since those seem part of the mindset of those days. (As an aside, it seems to me that one of the problems with steampunk is that it can involve shuffling a rather small pack of cards, each one a little myth: Dracula, the difference engine, airships etc). I don't think that's messing with history, but using the myths of different times as a springboard. It may be that good fantasy uses history or myth the way SF uses science - but then I don't think there is much good fantasy, or at least not much that's really innovative.

That said, it's easy to get wrong, and you have to do at least enough research to convince a casual reader with a bit of knowledge. In fact, what I don't like, unless it's done with real gusto, is the sort of everything-goes fantasy, where bronze-age barbarians fight halberdiers while wizards learn their trade in 1950's boarding school.
 

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