Talk:Fantasy author
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I would like to see JK Rowling removed from this list. Harry Potter is more just a good read, not really fantasy -- unless you want to add most childrens' books/authors to the list? For example -- Dr. Dolittle's adventures are truly fantastic, as is his ability to talk to animals...but are the Dr. Dolittle books fantasy? If you want to keep Rowling, I suppose you also want to keep Susan Cooper on the list? Her books take from both Arthurian tradition and Welsh mythology (and if Alexander is on the list, why not Evangeline Walton?). Since Walton's books are mostly translations of the Mabinogion, I wouldn't add her -- my $.02 JHK
I tend to think of 'fantasy' as any novel that unapolegetically violates then-current scientific knowledge. So anything that has magic or magical beasts I lump into this category. Harry Potter is definitely in this category (and others too).
This is opposed to science fiction, which at least tries to wedge in new laws of physics (or what have you) in a non-contradictory fashion. I can't, for example, conclusively disprove that hyperspace doesn't exist, because maybe we don't have the technology to interact with it yet.
Of course, it's this kind of thinking that causes me to lump most of what's in the SF category now into another category, like 'futuristic fantasy', since most SF authors don't have a firm enough grasp of current scientific knowledge. To each his own. -- ansible
