Clive Barker

Who’s Killing Fantasy? You Are!

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Orlando Bloom as Legolas
Too many elves?

I recently took my daughter to buy some books in a rather large UK book chain and was dismayed to discover that the Fantasy section had all but disappeared.

Whereas a decade or more ago it took up an entire wall, it’s now reduced to shelf space maybe eight feet long, if that. What’s worse, it’s no longer Fantasy: each work of imaginative fiction strains beneath the banner of Sci-Fi so that Tolkien shares space with computer game tie-ins.

While I’m always happy to see genre distinctions eroded (though I don’t see why it’s not all under a Fantasy banner) it made me realise just how low the genre has fallen in the public’s affections.

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Why Write a Fantasy Novel?

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Cover of "A Wrinkle in Time"
A Wrinkle in Time

This is a question I’ve thrown around in my mind like a ping-pong ball ever since I was old enough to understand what fantasy actually is (the literary genre, that is – I doubt anyone under the age of twelve needs any lectures on the power of the imagination and the hours of fun that can be garnered from a muddy ditch, an old branch, and a raggedy piece of cloth: PIRATES AHOY!).

There was never any doubt in my mind that I wanted to be a writer…or, more specifically, that I wanted to write. But as to why I chose the fantastic as my canvas, who can say? The Lord of the Rings no doubt played a part, as did Fahrenheit 451, A Wrinkle In Time, and numerous other novels which wriggled their way into my brain and nestled in the darkness, content in the knowledge that sooner or later the gouges they made on my psyche would become apparent.

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