FUTURES 1110 FUTURES ultimately doom the genre. was this tragic flaw, we learn, that would apparent ties to our own continuum. It worlds,“secondary creations” nowith ity of these fictions took place in invented when he focuses on the fact that the major lect. He makes a particularly telling point fiction are cogent and exhibit a keen intel themes, tropes and styles of this kind of Lord Dunsany. McCafferty’s analysis of the MacDonald, William Hope Hodgson and works of such forgotten authors as George lowsits haphazard development thein romances”WilliamofMorris.Hefol Victorian period, the specifically “prose or“Morrisian Fiction” latethe toback of what he terms “Heroic Epic Fantasy” is as dead as the epistolary novel. of a minor genre of fiction that nowadays primer on the roots and brief efflorescence This portion of his study forms a useful straight and narrow in impeccable fashion. thetoProfessor hew McCaffertydoes Atwood and Weinbaum. of such living masters as Bester, Sterling, ars cannot, after all, compete with the likes and avoid speculative avenues. We schol to more scholarly tools and approaches, literary history should restrict themselves seriously seeking to examine matters of professorsButjournals.canonical and today’s bookstores, cinemas, classrooms encompassing literature that so dominates in fact is one of the main tools of that all- is suitedperfectly to science fiction, and knows, this mode of thought experiment ‘What if?’ Of course, as any literate person do with their time than fruitlessly to argue have academics Some nothing better to Nature Reviewed by Thomas Brightwork for (University of Syrtis Major Press, 2011) by Professor L. McCafferty Heroic Epic Fantasy Is So Rare Making a Case for Morrisian Fiction: Why Paul Di Filippo The magic of the written word. A science-fiction fantasy andblackmagic”not was beto fiction foray into what McCafferty labels “blades Phoenix on the Sword’. But this abortive cerning a barbarian named Conan: ‘The con story onlyandonepublished his 1932, the famous writer Robert E. Howard the magazine eruptions of such fiction, most notably in of the pulp magazines, there were minor In the twentieth century, during the era Professor McCafferty traces the birth For the first half of his book, however, . Weird Tales . For instance, in ©

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M tion. And all his energies in that direc hero Doc Savage, and turned exploits of the pulp science — was tapped to pen the Texasonhis 105 ranch lamentably early age of died just last year at the repeated. Howard — who however, went hand in hand, the litera and slur. Technology and science fiction, ‘Escapism’ them. tauntwith a became riotic refusal to face tough facts and deal of shirking one’s duty, of a wilful, unpat tions” held no allure: they seemed to smell hard reality. Tales set in “secondary crea the minds of both writers and readers on Campbell among them? — concentrated ars, C. Lewis, J. Tolkien and a visiting Jos. which wiped out so many promising schol ties as the Nazi fire-bombing of Oxford, calamity — can anyone forget such atroci intervened. The dire events of that global writers did not prosper. serve as a centre for their efforts, Morrisian committed editor or dedicated venue to bard, Leiber and Brackett. But without a pulps: works by de Camp and Pratt, Hub eggs in the pages of various science-fiction fiction, cropping up like occasional cuckoo sporadic and limited incursions of such was founded by the same fellow.) Lovecraft’s Yankee Ice Cream Company, (Yes, that beloved national institution, non-literaryintocareer.himselfa the next year, sending Lovecraft H. editorshipof inexpert the that the majority of citizens experienced sional sports. International polls revealed countries — coming to overwhelm profes both domestic and between friendly rival competitivewith Knowledge— Bowls Science education flourished at all levels, struction of nuclear fusion power plants. mining, macro-engineering and the con enterprises as space exploration, undersea was concentrated on such shared human tion Renaissance, all the world’s attention risian writers. During the post-conflagra became even less hospitable for the Mor the Western–Soviet détente, conditions military-industrial complex. admittedly, with no little allegiance to the the modern, scientific path of progress — utopian laboratory to explicate and inspire ture serving as a playful and entertaining, a c With the end of war, and the advent of Then, of course, the Second World War saw decades subsequent The several m P. i l Lovecraft, went bankrupt l a n

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A l l r - i g h t s r e s e r v e d ------utmost He continues to review for various venues. Bodhisattva Paul Di Filippo’s new novel, hideous norm. where such a sordid state of affairs is the and has actually seen a warped timeline Collider’s Multiversal Viewing Scanner, gained illicit access to the Large Hadron one almost suspects the good professor has issues of the day and solve them — that wolves, rather than creatively face the real and battles between vampires and were of schools for wizards, omnipotent rings and endlessly protracted multivolume tales their heads, ostrich-like, into overblown scenario — a world in which readers stick McCafferty’s portrayal of this ridiculous tion. So morbidly and upsettingly vivid is have become a best-selling mode of fic on clichéd supernatural entities — could nological living conditions; and a reliance pression of the harsh crudity of pre-tech feudalism; deliberate ignorance and sup gressiveprivileging of monarchies and the laws of physics and retrocosmology; sistic Messianic beliefs; contravention of world into good and evil; infantile narcis delusions; crude bipolar divisions of the and repugnant blend of megalomaniacal by which Morrisian fantasy — an unlikely nita. He spins out an improbable scenario history and into a speculative terra incog Professor McCafferty goes off the rails of does to this day. ing to dominate the literary world as it still perfect embodiment of it, eventually com had dawned, and science fiction was the challenges. The Age of the New Frontiers daily their lives, careers their and civic with zest and satisfaction It is at this point in his narrative that , will be available in spring 2010. NATURE

| Vol 465 Roadside | 24 June2010 ■ ------

Jacey