By now, even those who’ve never seen the inside of a Harry Potter volume have nevertheless likely heard of the series’ tendency toward darker, more mature elements as it progresses. Where Harry once frolicked in themes of magic, fantastic discovery and fanciful escapism in The Philosopher’s Stone, as the final entries hit the markets, he now struggles with political intrigue, murder and – dare it be considered – the emergence of romantic relationships between characters.
The magic, myth and release from reality are all still there, but Harry’s growing up as his renowned series progresses, and indeed, J.K. Rowling’s storylines can be seen as somewhat of a representative summary of the evolution of her chosen genre.
The old with the new
The epics of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis continue to stand tall in the Fantasy community as two of its defining cornerstones, with their themes of sword-and-sorcery, mythic heroes crushing demonic villains, and epic quests all remaining prominent traits of most modern fantasy writers’ works.
That being said, contemporary writers have not sat idly in expanding the themes and parameters of their craft today. While some continue to uphold the style of what has come to be termed Traditional or High Fantasy, there is a new breed that has grown to prominence by forging titles that include themes likely to pale the face of anyone who previously assumed Fantasy was all knights and dragons, princesses and pixies.
Diversity through maturity
Take George R.R. Martin for example, author of the acclaimed A Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin’s is a world ruled by a viper’s nest of bickering feudal houses, whose maneuverings give rise to bloody war and ritual duels, political coups and assassinations, bribery, robbery, sexual affairs, rape and any number of other depraved ‘real world’ acts that would leave Scarecrow and Tin Man racing for the hills. There are knights, queens and dragons, but Martin’s often dismaying, always intriguing habit of killing off characters whose prominent roles would have made them ‘safe’ in other worlds strips even these traditional figures of their hallowed High Fantasy gilt.
Take also Steven Erikson and his Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, a chronicle of wars that span entire worlds and histories, with key characters ranging from gods to paupers, empresses to soldiers and fishermen to assassins. Erikson’s plots are truly expansive (to say nothing of his word-counts) and amid the blood, dust and smoke of a world darkened by conflict, it’s sometimes hard to pin-down an actual ‘hero’ or ‘villain’ as tradition might define.
Both of these writers fall into the category of what has been dubbed Political or Military Fantasy, in that their plotlines revolve more around human action and circumstance than magic, quest or the need for good to win-out in the end. Other broadenings of the Fantasy borders brought on by a more mature subtext include Urban Fantasy, which diverts from the traditional practice of creating an alternate world in favour of setting a Fantasy plot in our own (consider Wizard of the Pigeons, if interested in an example) and of course Horror Fantasy, which may have started as a cross-breeding between the two parental genres, but now appears to have grown into a fledgling subgroup all its own (Steven King’s The Dark Tower series stands large among such).
Ultimately, just as the five year-old’s face can be glimpsed in that of the twenty-five year-old later in life, the appearance of Fantasy has not so much changed as it has grown and matured. The wizards and warriors of old are still present and prominent as ever, yet now they stand in the midst of other figures – the peasant, the criminal, the soldier, the whore, the politician and the ordinary person with little to differentiate them from the reader, aside from finding themselves afflicted with a set of truly extraordinary circumstances, worthy only of myth and legend.
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