Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine-that would cut my social circle considerably. John Harrison and I could go on-the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations. From the Surrealists through the pulps-via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabiński and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader. Tolkien's clichés-elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings-have spread like viruses. And there's a lot to dislike-his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. His oeuvre is massive and contagious-you can't ignore it, so don't even try. Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. “When people dis fantasy-mainstream readers and SF readers alike-they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature.

Fantasy genre label wizard