That could explain why science fantasy has been largely superseded by the Tolkien/Game of Thrones/Witcher variety, in which the settings are more-or-less identikit medieval Europe. Likewise our own Abraxas setting.Īs science fantasy stories are set in ‘exotic’ civilizations, there’s usually a lot of world-building. I call it science fantasy because I don’t seem any intrinsic difference between those planetary stories and, say, Lin Carter’s Thongor books, which are set on a lost continent in Earth’s distant past but still have all the familiar elements. Swords, princesses, mystic powers, and high adventure – the familiar ingredients of Star Wars, but drip-fed rather than delivered by fire hose. That has some tropes you’ll see recurring: human operative dropped into a more primitive world with just a few bits of kit to give him some magic powers. Outliers here (I can’t resist a digression) include Arthur Landis’s Camelot novels, which I basically agented to Don Wollheim back in the early ‘70s. Then it can shade off into Flash Gordon territory, if the natives fully understand their advanced devices, or Tekumel, where the remnants of ancient technology are rare and thought of as magic. Sometimes, as in Vance’s Planet of Adventure series, the indigenous civilization has technology of its own. Usually spacefaring humans arrive – or better still, get stranded – on a planet at an ancient or medieval level of technology. Farah Mendlesohn & Edward James, A Short History of Fantasy The pseudo-medieval warfare with bows and arrows and swords is frequently reminiscent of medievalist fantasy, but this is also a space in which some writers explored American notions of the primitive, mapping the mythology of the American West on to the plains of another planet.’ ![]() ‘Planetary romance is a sub-genre of science fiction that has a close relationship with fantasy in the sense that the cultures that are described are very frequently pre-industrial. ![]() Genre is slippery, so bear with me, but technically those books belong to what is now defined as sword-&-planet or planetary romance: There was no looking back – or forward – from that point on. You know how a duckling follows the first thing it sees when it hatches? Ten-year-old me discovered fantasy through Mike Moorcock’s Mars books and A Planet Called Krishna by L Sprague de Camp. ![]() It was Empire of the Petal Throne, not D&D, that hooked me on roleplaying, and the reason for that is I was into sword-&-sorcery and science fantasy rather than the Tolkienesque strain of epic fantasy that caught on through the late 20th century.
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