![]() To those who have read King’s best works, it may seem comparatively ordinary and overly simple. Stephen King’s novella The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon is often overlooked as a great story in favour of more popular tales, and perhaps rightfully so. Long Nights, Dark Days: The Horror of Reality And in the world of postmodern, contemporary literature, there are few writers who seem to be able to utilise this form as well as Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. The power of this sub-genre is its ability to achieve, in many ways, the exact opposite of fantasy’s escapism, by creating stories with both a degree of the entrancing, otherworldly qualities that make fantasy so fascinating, and a sharp edge of reality that can unsettle and provoke the reader in a unique and distinctly special way. ![]() The other side of the coin – the side that sticks closer to reality and adds a layer of the fantastic to stir things up – is magical realism, an intriguing category of literature that is often difficult to define because of the complexities surrounding it. ![]() Game of Thrones: Compellingly and often brutally realistic, but worlds away from the one we inhabit today.ĭespite these elements of realism, however, all these stories are firmly set apart from the real world – our world – in terms of setting and internal logic. In addition, complex politics have emerged as key devices in works such as Robin Hobb’s Farseer novels, Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus sequence and of course George R.R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Realistic elements to the genre are nothing new – Bilbo Baggins smoked a pipe and Thorin had his own racial prejudices in The Hobbit. The world of Harry Potter was a magical mirror of our own. Yet perhaps there is more to magic, more to fantasy, than simply escapism. The power of the impossible, the power to bend the elements to your will, the power to do what cannot be done. Treasure troves of stories, full of beauty, epic adventure, and best of all, magic. It’s escapism at its best – entirely different worlds, with entirely different rules. Dwarves, dragons and djinn, heroes, hobbits and hags, goblins, ghosts and gods. But it is the fantasy novel in particular that has always captured a unique part of the imagination. What would fiction be without at least a little fantasy? The world of storytelling is a diverse one that ranges from emotionally complex tales of tragedy, to carefully paced political satire, to gripping and immersive whodunnits with pointy-moustached detectives. Neil Gaiman and Stephen King: The Power of Realism in Postmodern Fantasy
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