Historical Fantasy

[Tom Kalbfus]

No one mentioned Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson, that is definitely a fantasy novel set in an alternate world during World War II.

 

[Randy M.]

No one mentioned Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson, that is definitely a fantasy novel set in an alternate world during World War II.

(*slap*)

That's just me, whacking my forehead because I'd forgotten. I read it years ago, enjoyed it, and tend to completely forget to mention it whenever that would be appropriate. I would point out, though, that while WWII is history now, at the time OC was written it was a contemporary, if past, event.

This reminds me of other titles that more or less fit, though generally catagorized as horror:

The Keep by F. Paul Wilson. Wilson started as an s.f. writer -- Healer is an entertaining Heinlein-esque novel -- but this title put him on the best-seller lists for awhile. Pretty good story about vampire-like creatures who are actually a bit nastier and scarier than the usual vampire, attacking a crack Nazi regiment. There was a tepid movie with a good cast directed by Michael Mann.

A Werewolf in Paris by Guy Endore. Basis for a 1960s Hammer Studios movie starring Oliver Reed, The Curse of the Werewolf. Don't be put off by the title, it's not really as campy as that sounds; it's a serious look at how a lycanthrope would operate in one of the most populous cities in the world at the time of the Franco-Prussian war (1870s). There is some serious political commentary buried here -- I don't recall Endore preaching, more just contrasting the viciousness of the werewolf with the more general viciousness of mankind at war.

Other books, ones I haven't read, The Wolf's Hour by Robert McCammon, is a werewolf story that takes place during WWII. Also, Murcheston: The Wolf's Tale by David Holland (2000) -- I don't recall what I've heard about this other than that it's historical fiction.

Randy M.

 

[KatG]

The Keep -- can't forget that one! -- thanks Randy.

Manda Scott famously tackled Queen Boudica and the Celts in Dreaming the Hound, et. al.

Morgan Llywelyn – The Greener Shore -- series on the Druids

Sarah Hoyt -- Heart and Soul -- alternate Victorian England, somewhat satiric spy stories.

Galen M. Beckett -- The Magicians and Mrs. Quent -- invents an imaginary island nation off the coast of Britain in the 1800's.

Daniel Fox – Dragon in Chains – alternate feudal China, a nautical tale

Marie Brennan -- Midnight Never Come series -- 17th century, wars with humans and fae

Harry Turtledove is the king of alternate history. A lot of his novels and series have no fantastical elements and are alternate history SF. But a few do as he also writes fantasy, and are alternative history fantasy. The man is far too prolific for me to sort them all out, but if you know of a particular one that is fantasy, put it up.

Did somebody do Jo Walton's Black Ships about Troy already?

Debra Doyle & James Macdonald – Land of Mist and Snow -- alternate history fantasy, U.S. Civil War

Emma Bull -- Territory -- Tombstone, AZ in U.S. Old West

Traci Slatton -- Immortal -- Renaissance Italy

David Wellington -- 13 Bullets series -- vampires, U.S. Civil War

Francis Clark -- Waking Brigid -- immigrant girl in Georgia, U.S. Civil War

Paul Park -- Roumania series -- alternate 18th century Europe where alchemy works

Diana Paxson -- The White Raven -- famously tells the story of Tristan and Isolde in a historical context

Kij Johnson -- The Fox Woman -- I particularly like this novel, which is set in ancient Japan, about a fox who uses magic to enchant a human, based on Japanese mythology

 

[suciul]

Daniel Fox – Dragon in Chains – alternate feudal China, a nautical tale


Harry Turtledove is the king of alternate history. A lot of his novels and series have no fantastical elements and are alternate history SF. But a few do as he also writes fantasy, and are alternative history fantasy. The man is far too prolific for me to sort them all out, but if you know of a particular one that is fantasy, put it up.

Traci Slatton -- Immortal -- Renaissance Italy

Paul Park -- Roumania series -- alternate 18th century Europe where alchemy works

Daniel Fox in his "real name" persona has one crusade based series (Outremer) and one harem based series (Selling Water by the River)

Some of the more interesting fantasies of H. Turtledove are the recreations of WW 2 with magic and dragons instead of tanks and airplanes - Darkness in 6 volumes and the Ice Age with mammoths and magic currently at volume 2 Breath of God

Outside of the long-lived main character Immortal is straight hist fiction and sadly only so-so, wasting a great premise

I thought - though I may be wrong since I only read the first 15 pages - that Paul Park series is contemporary fantasy - it definitely starts in the 1990's or so but I have no idea where it goes (these books are from my 200+ tbr pile)

 

[Seegee]

What about Robert Harris thriller Fatherland? Set in a post WWII that never happened. One where the allies did a deal with the Nazis and Hitler is still running the Fatherland.

 

[...]

Daniel Fox in his "real name" persona has one crusade

Outside of the long-lived main character Immortal is straight hist fiction and sadly only so-so, wasting a great premise

There is also the whole alchemy subplot throughout the second half of the book. I thought the book was pretty good once you past the fist 50-100 pages. The whole child prostitute thing really bothered me.

 

[KatG]

What about Robert Harris thriller Fatherland? Set in a post WWII that never happened. One where the allies did a deal with the Nazis and Hitler is still running the Fatherland.

That would be alternate history SF. Nothing fantastical occurs in the story. Whereas Immortal has an immortal man and alchemy in it. Fatherland got a lot of attention when it came out, in general fiction, and was a bestseller. I've never read it, but it may be of interest to people.

 

[Seegee]

It was also made into a mini series with Rutger Hauer. SM Stirling did a book called Conquistador which is sort of alternate history and sci-fi/fantasy at the same time.
I wonder where Katherine Neville's The Eight fits in? Given the French Revolution part of the story I think it could classify as historical fantasy.

 

[owlcroft]

Consider these . . . .

The thread theme is "historical fantasy and alternate-history fantasy". Does that exclude "alternate history" in which nothing "fantastic" happens? It's a matter of taste and judgement, but I reckon we should remind ourselves that all fiction is "fantasy", in that it describes things that never happened.

If alternate-history tales in which nothing fantastic happens still qualify as "fantasy", then one of the all-time gems has to be Austin Tappan Wright's monumental Islandia. One excellent reason for including Islandia as speculative fiction, even absent "magic" and suchlike, is that it portrays a place that not only never existed, but that has customs and patterns of thought that are distinctly different from those of the everyday world--it is, in fact, an exploration of one version of utopia.

Aside from that book, other notable candidates include:

Richard Adams' Shardik.

Allen Andrews' too-little-known and delightful pair of "Pig Plantagenet" novels, The Pig Plantagenet and Castle Crespin.

John Barth's Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor and Chimera.

John Bellairs' utterly wonderful Face in the Frost (recently re-released in a superb NESFA Press edition with all of his other adult fantasy, including a previously unpublished fragment of a sequel to Face).

Margot Benary-Isbert's YA (but adult-readable) novel The Wicked Enchantment.

James Blaylock's steampunk novels: Homunculus; Lord Kelvin's Machine; and The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives (all much more fantasy than "serious" steampunk).

Ernest Bramah's six delightful Kai Lung books: The Wallet of Kai Lung; Kai Lung's Golden Hours; Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat; The Return of Kai Lung (aka The Moon of Much Gladness); Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree; and Kai Lung: Six [Return is not truly a Kai Lung tale, but was sold as such and fits in).

Mikhail Bulgakov's great Soviet-era fantasy The Master and Margarita.

James Branch Cabell's monumental Biography of Manuel (18 books, too many to list individually, most--but not all--historical fantasies); also his trilogy Heirs and Assigns and the two fantasy novels in the Florida trilogy.

Italo Calvino's charming duo The Cloven Viscount and The Nonexistent Knight (the pair collected with the quasi-fantasy Baron in the Trees as Our Ancestors). Also his Invisible Cities and Castle of Crossed Destinies.

Orson Scott Card's Alvin books (the series seems stalled at six out of a projected seven).

Angela Carter's story collection The Bloody Chamber.

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (re-mentioned here for completeness).

F. Marion Crawford's Khaled and The Witch of Prague.

Kara Dalkey's Euryale.

Avram Davidson's several charmers: Ursus of Ultima Thule; The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy; Peregrine: Primus and Peregrine: Secundus; The Phoenix and the Mirror, Vergil in Averno, and The Scarlet Fig; Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty; and the collection The Other Nineteenth Century.

Peter Dickinson's YA The Blue Hawk.

Dave Duncan's ongoing Alchemist series.

From Lord Dunsany: his Spanish duo, The Chronicles of Rodrigues (aka Don Rodriguez) and The Charwoman's Shadow; and The King of Elfland's Daughter.

Umberto Eco's Baudolino.

Esther Friesner, with Mustapha and His Wise Dog; Yesterday We Saw Mermaids; Druid's Blood; and some others I'm missing out.

John Gardner's Grendel and Freddy's Book.

David Gemmell - while his books seem set in alternate worlds, they are all nominally tied to that strange world being ours after a periodic (every 11 thousand years, I believe) massive shift of some sort.

Mary Gentle's White Crow books (Ash is sf).

Peter Hanratty's Last Knight of Albion and Book of Mordred (which tell unrelated tales).

Mark Helprin: Winter's Tale.

Russell Hoban: Pilgermann.

The irrepressible E. T. A. Hoffmann: The Devil's Elixirs; The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr; and--of course--The Tales of Hoffmann (impossible to find in a complete version in English, but a few highlight collections are available.)

Barry Hughart's "Kai Lung"-style tales: Bridge of Birds; The Story of the Stone; and Eight Skilled Gentlemen.

Robert Irwin: The Arabian Nightmare (why is this so little-known?).

Yves Menard's jewel of a tale: The Book of Knights.

Richard Monaco: the gutsy retelling of Arthuriana--Parsival, a Knight's Tale; The Grail War; The Final Quest; and Blood and Dreams.

Midori Snyder: The Innamorati.

S. P. Somtow (Somtow Sucharitkul ): The Shattered Horse.

Peter Tinniswood's marvellous take on the Robin Hood legend, The Stirk of Stirk.

As noted, J. R. R. Tolkien's "Middle Earth" is simply supposed to be a literally "pre-historic" Earth, so all those works fit here.

Michel Tournier's Four Wise Men.

Jack Vance's "Lyonesse" trilogy: Suldrun's Garden; The Green Pearl; and Madouc.

Virginia Woolf (yes, that one) and her Orlando.

That is by no means a comprehensive list, but does, I believe, include most of the more literate examples of the sort wanted for this thread.

 

[KatG]

Technically, alternate history stories that do not contain any fantastical elements are considered alternate history SF, not fantasy -- a matter of quantum physics rather than fantastical forces such as magic or the supernatural. However, if people want to mention those, we're not going to get too picky about it. Fantasy fans have long been comfortable co-opting as fantasy tales that actually have no fantastical elements to them, like Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series or Gene Wolfes New/Ur-Sun, so I'm not going to play police officer much here.

Likewise, stories that bounce between present and past can be considered part of or at least overlapping the sub-category of historical fantasy. Something like Stephen King's Gunslinger series, for instance, has alternate realities which are magically accessed, some with magic, some not, some post-industrial and some not, some versions of Earth, others less clearly so. Michael Moorcock did some similar, I believe, that go into World War II and such.

David Gemmell did a lot of alternate world fantasy, but he also did some historical works, such as his series on Troy.

 

[owlcroft]

David Gemmell did a lot of alternate world fantasy . . . .

But, as noted earlier, he did tie those to "the real world" by means of a theory--whacko, but that's an author's prerogative--that every eleven thousand years or so, the Earth undergoes some major transformation (I dimly recall something like it inverting in orbit, the north pole becoming the south and vice-versa, but the exact mechanism is not critical) that wreaked major havoc and destroyed civilizations, typically including their historical records. If, again, I recall correctly, I believe a good part (or all) of the magic in his "Drenai" world ultimately turned out to be powered by an orbital satellite.


[A]lternate history stories that do not contain any fantastical elements are considered alternate history SF, not fantasy . . . .

That, I would venture, depends in good part on the definition of "fantastical". A world with no violations of physical law as we know it can nevertheless be "fantastical" if the social organization and patterns of thought encountered are unlike anything ever found, or considered possible, in the "real" world--as is the case with Islandia. A young American diplomat in (as best I recall) 1910 or so can be sent out as the envoy to the nation of Islandia chiefly because he was a Harvard classmate of a leading figure in Islandia; but the entire tale is that young man's slow coming to appreciate and meld into the almost alien mindset of the Islandians. (Islandia being another variant on Utopia.)

Just some thoughts . . . .

 

[txshusker]

Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead - great read... an Irish monk is kidnapped/enslaved by Vikings while on his way to deliver the Book of Kells to Constantinople. No magic or fantasy ideas, here... just a cool ride through 7th century Europe.. and a fit ending for the hero/protagonist. It's long, but well worth it.

Baudolino - Umberto Eco - fun, humorous, maybe a bit random, but not a bad read. Short and quick to finish. usually in the fiction aisle vs the SFF aisle (he also wrote the slow The Name of the Rose and the awesome/ultimate conspiracy Foucault's Pendulum... if you like Dan Brown - you'll love that one.)

 

[KatG]

Like I said, we're not going to get too picky about it. But do bear in mind that most fantasy fans like actual fantasy elements in their historical fantasy, not just an alternate version of World War II, say. Magic, supernatural, divine/mythological, or at the least, phenomena unexplained by any remote scientific theory. Historical fiction is great, but many fans are not going to be interested in it alone.

 

[NickeeCoco]

Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead - great read... an Irish monk is kidnapped/enslaved by Vikings while on his way to deliver the Book of Kells to Constantinople. No magic or fantasy ideas, here... just a cool ride through 7th century Europe.. and a fit ending for the hero/protagonist. It's long, but well worth it.

I had no idea he had that. I've only read Hood and Scarlet by him. I'm waiting for Tuck to come out in paperback. I was under the impression that Hood was his first novel. Guess I was wrong!

 

[Seegee]

I had no idea he had that. I've only read Hood and Scarlet by him. I'm waiting for Tuck to come out in paperback. I was under the impression that Hood was his first novel. Guess I was wrong!

Oh no! Lawhead had written loads before Hood. I think he did an Arthurian trilogy and I also enjoyed one he did about the Crusades, which given it's tendency to talk about the power of religious artifacts belongs on this thread.
Has anyone read Sara Douglass's Crucible series? Quite grim and about the fight between good and evil during the dark ages. It was different for her, but was her subject, given that she holds a PhD in the Medieval history. I far preferred it to her more standard fantasy.

 

[Alex]

But, as noted earlier, he did tie those to "the real world" by means of a theory--whacko, but that's an author's prerogative--that every eleven thousand years or so, the Earth undergoes some major transformation (I dimly recall something like it inverting in orbit, the north pole becoming the south and vice-versa, but the exact mechanism is not critical) that wreaked major havoc and destroyed civilizations, typically including their historical records. If, again, I recall correctly, I believe a good part (or all) of the magic in his "Drenai" world ultimately turned out to be powered by an orbital satellite.

Quite interesting that you bring that up=) As it turns out astronomers, the ancient Mayans, merlin and other ancient oracles all hint that this will happen 21 of december 2012. Something about the earth being in a straight alignment to the center of the Milkyway. Incidentally, this happens once every 12000 years=)

Just a sidenote.

 

[Shayna]

While in the realm of fairy tale fantasy, Patricia C. Wrede's Snow White and Rose Red is set in Elizabethan England.

Funny you mentioned this book...I just picked it up last week!

I have recently started on looking for different versions of all fairy tales, like darker versions!!

 

[KatG]

Quite interesting that you bring that up=) As it turns out astronomers, the ancient Mayans, merlin and other ancient oracles all hint that this will happen 21 of december 2012. Something about the earth being in a straight alignment to the center of the Milkyway. Incidentally, this happens once every 12000 years=)

Just a sidenote.

And did the ancient Mayans predict the collapse of their civilization and that they wouldn't be around anymore except for some racial descendents by 2012? No, they did not. Therefore, I don't think much of their predictive powers, though I will probably go and watch the silly movie because it stars John Cusack. (Thus, invalidating my assertion that stars don't really sell movies.)

We have probably got some ancient Mayan, Aztec, etc. fantasies around somewhere, so if anyone wants to bring those up, feel free.

On a completely different part of the globe, an old favorite of mine is C.J. Cherryh's Rusalka series, set in historical Russia.

 

[suciul]

We have probably got some ancient Mayan, Aztec, etc. fantasies around somewhere, so if anyone wants to bring those up, feel free.

Well In the Courts of the Sun by B. D'Amato is a superb, superb one (part 1 with a big twist at the end so the sequel is an asap novel ) about the Mayan prophecies.

I reviewed it (with links to a large excerpt) on FBC and just loved the gonzo narration and the world building - this book has one of the best described "truly alien "cultures I've read in sff and it just happens that is the Maya around the 650's which is accessed by a wacky and one way time-travel method -

There is a scene where one of their major "prophets" uses the "game" at the 9 stone level to predict something and there is a monkey and a spider involved - they are drugged and sort of "play the game" and it's just sense of wonder through and through

 

[beniowa]

suciul, it seems we're bound to agree to disagree on historical novels. I found In the Courts to rather lop-sided. The ancient Maya stuff was fantastic and I loved it. It was the rest pf the book was rather meh: no real sense of impending doom, a Gary Stu main character, unbelievable twist ending. It's almost two novels in one book and that's the problem. The story set in the Maya timeline ended up having almost no impact on the plotline so it could have been scrapped entirely. I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't.