[egem]

Hello everyone, I'm new to the board. I'm writing what might be called a Fantasy novel, though I'm sure in the purest since it falls short of that goal. The character is divergent (i.e. 12 Monkeys). I'm looking for any novels that mix the imagination or a dream state with a Fantasy base? I guess it might be said that the reader is left not knowing if the Fantasy is real or unreal.

[kron]

It is not exactly fantasy but ... Fear by Ron Hubbard. If I am getting you right.

[Yobmod]

Life of Pi by Martel is very good (won the Booker), and the reader is left to decide if the story is realistically true, a complete fabrication, or an allegory. The protagonist Pi is marooned on a boat with a group of wild animals, and suffers through various wildly improbable, but maybe not impossible situations.

Was by Ryman does a similar thing. It parellels the story of the Wizard of Oz, but Dorothy is an abused child, and all the magical elements may simply be delusions.

The Unlimited Dream Company by Ballard may be surrealism (i can never remember the distinctions), but read like a contemprary fantasy in which the protagonist is clearly mad (and may be dead?) so all the miracles that occur could be figments of his imagination.

The Worm Ouroborus by Eddison and the Starmaker by Stapledon both start with a frame story that show that it is some kind of dream - but the dream aspect is quickly forgotten, so there isn't really much tension between the fantasy and 'reality'.

I can't think of many like this in the genre, but the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever follow the adventures of a man from the 'real' world in a fantasy land, which he thinks is a wish-fullfilment delusion, so he acts in ways that he wouldn't in the real world. (Nb this is not true of the second chronicles).

And Peace by Wolfe is one of my favourite books and is more magic realist than his other books - the protagonist may be a ghost or may not, and most or all of the 'magic' is featured as part of nested stories, not in the main plot, so can be taken as 'true' or allegorical or just fun stories.

Edit: Of course, if you read SF, there is PKD, most of whom's books explore the nature of delusion and reality (although not necessarily in realistic settings and usually involving drugs), particularly The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, etc.

[egem]

Thanks very much. I'll have the list in hand when I go to the bookstore.

[Ouroboros]

Try Jack Williamson's 'Darker than you think'. The protagonists perception of events gradually becomes more and more skewed, and the line between hallucinatinatory and real events is blurred. Available in the Fantasy Masterworks series.

[Randy M.]

Hello everyone, I'm new to the board. I'm writing what might be called a Fantasy novel, though I'm sure in the purest since it falls short of that goal. The character is divergent (i.e. 12 Monkeys). I'm looking for any novels that mix the imagination or a dream state with a Fantasy base? I guess it might be said that the reader is left not knowing if the Fantasy is real or unreal.

I also thought of Donaldson's first Thomas Covenent trilogy on seeing your message..

After that,
(sf) Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven (sometimes referred to as her Philip K. Dick book)
(fan) William Kotzwinkle's Fata Morgana
(fan) Jonathan Carroll's Bones of the Moon
(fan/horror) Jonathan Carroll's Voices of Our Shadow

Randy M.
(by the way, if you're willing to broaden out to include short stories, Philip K. Dick's "Frozen Journey" [which has been published under a different title, too] is also be of interest)

[Iskaral Pust]

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is the classic example of a reality vs fantasy story. Not actually fantasy (a ghost story, I suppose), it's still well worth a look.

[alison]

Funny, Iskaral Pust - I was just going to name that book, and you got there first... it's the classic psychological ghost story, just brilliant, because you never know what's really happened. I would love to write a horror story (or any story) that gloriously good...

[algernoninc]

"Winter Rose" by Patricia A McKillip - dreams made flesh and great prose, one of my favorites from 2 years ago