Any fantasy you like, so long as it's medieval

But that can be any world, so long as it has room in it for magic. So why do people assume, if you tell them a book is a fantasy, that it is full of wizards and dragons and women in long dresses, set in some misty Celtic kingdom where knights in armour still ride into battle on horseback? Ursula LeGuin, in her essay Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons? sums up the dismissive attitude of the non-reader of fantastic literature as "Dragons and hobbits and little green men — what's the use of it?". I don't agree with that attitude: I just regret that a single type of fantasy has come to represent the whole of the genre in so many people's minds.

Some of the best fantasies are of this type: it's not surprising that (as the reference to hobbits suggests) most people, if they were asked to give an example of the genre, would suggest The Lord of the Rings. It is a monumental creation and a great book, and some of its most stirring moments come from its attachment to the heroic values of a lost age: but so do some of its worst flaws. Ursula LeGuin herself has written about wizards and dragons - indeed, the dragons in her wonderful Earthsea trilogy are, as far as I am concerned, the definitive dragons - and although the geography of Earthsea is not that of our world, its level of technology can be described as medieval. And the ultimate proof that fantasy is identified with a medieval setting of some kind is the fact that that is what Terry Pratchett chooses to satirise in the Discworld books!

One of the few fantasy series that can rival Pratchett's success, measured in terms of sales, is J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Perhaps it is significant that both Pratchett's and Rowling's books are humorous, but while Terry Pratchett points out the joke from within his fantasy world, Rowling's humour stems from the juxtaposition of her magical world with the mundane world of the Muggles, the non-users of magic. There are some nice touches: the magician who is fascinated by such arcane, non-magical devices as the telephone and the internal combustion engine, in exactly the same way as we Muggles are fascinated by magic. But this is a rare example of Rowling considering what it might actually be like in a world where magic existed. More often, she stops short at the outer trappings of that medieval cliché of a fantasy world; you can recognise the magicians in her books, for example, because they always wear robes, even to play Quidditch (a very energetic game, rather like polo, b ut played on broomsticks)! For a more imaginative account of what a magician's education might be like, not in the monastic School for Wizards on Roke, but in our own world, at some time in the twentieth century, look out for Diana Wynne Jones's Charmed Life and Witch Week, due - indeed, overdue - for re-publication soon.

With both of these authors, there is some uncertainty whether their books should be shelved with adult fantasy or with children's fiction; and perhaps this is significant. In the no-man's-land between the genres - and children's fiction is also, in its own way, genre fiction - the rules do not apply, and the narrative is less subject to assumptions, conscious or unconscious, about what fantasy really is. In as far as the distinction has any meaning, such books are not "genre-free", mainstream fiction; they are cross-genre. They have strengths which appeal to readers of both genres, but are less popular with publishers and bookshops, who favour straightforward, easily classified books.

Where, for example, do you shelve a novel set in a city so realistically depicted that anyone who knows Newcastle-upon-Tyne will recognise it at once? A deeply corrupt city run by a single family, who are quite unscrupulous in imposing their will? It sounds like a hard-boiled crime novel; except that in Chaz Brenchley's Dead of Light, and its sequel Light Errant, the ruling family have magic powers, each cousin with his own particular "talent", so that no-one can stand against them as long as the night lasts. This is a whole new area for lovers of fantasy to explore - if they can find the books, which are most likely hidden among the more conventional vampire yarns in the horror department. Chaz Brenchley pulls off the same cross-genre trick again in Dispossession, an absorbing mystery about a man who wakes up to find himself in hospital, having lost three months' worth of memories - three months in which he has abandoned his girlfriend, married a complete stranger a nd gone to work for the biggest crook in town. The only thing about his life that doesn't seem strange to him is that his best friend is an angel - literally.

Chaz Brenchley is the genre writer's genre writer. He has written everything from crime to romance to children's books to fantasy. Not just the contemporary "dark fantasy" of the books described above, but classic medieval fantasy, with knights on horseback defending a besieged castle. I have to declare an interest here: I liked his Outremer series so much that I built the website. Tower of the King's Daughter and Feast of the King's Shadow are medieval fantasy with a twist; they are not set among the misty mountains of Celtic legend, but under the glaring sun of Outremer, the territory beyond the sea won by the Crusaders in the Holy Land. It's a period whose history is pretty fantastic, even before you start to consider what sort of magical beings might inhabit that kingdom; not the familiar dragons and elves, but djinni and 'ifrit. And the characters who have to deal with these terrifying creatures, with the politics of the wa r for control of Outremer, and with their own loves and lives as well - these characters are not the stock figures of the genre.

Maybe it all comes down to this: there are some writers who are truly and personally inspired by the traditional medieval setting of fantasy, and it would be wrong for them to abandon it. But there are writers for whom the magic kingdom (with the sign on the gates that says "Magic Kingdom") is the first cliché that comes to mind, and they people it with the first hero that comes to mind going through the same old adventures... And there are readers who love the old legends so much that they obtain pleasure even from this third-hand, third-rate version of them. But I'd rather read books whose authors have thought first-hand, for themselves, about what magic is, and what the world might be like if magic really existed in it, and how it might affect the people in that world. That's my definition of imagination, of fantasy...