Fantasy Art and Studies 3 E-Book

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Fantasy Art and Studies
• Sprache: Französisch

Seitenzahl: 186

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Qu'est-ce que la Science Fantasy ? Où situer ces oeuvres à la frontière entre Fantasy et Science-Fiction ? Les articles et les nouvelles du troisième numéro de Fantasy Art and Studies apportent des éléments de réponse. Au sommaire, une définition de la Science Fantasy en lien avec les pulps et l'émergence des comics, des robots à la cour du roi Arthur, la confrontation entre un chevalier médiéval et un vaisseau venu d'ailleurs, un Orque prêt au combat, une chef elfe et ses soldats à l'assaut du système de Grimm, une scientifique dans un monde médiéval fantastique, l'univers des light novels, et aussi de la comédie. Sans oublier les illustrations de Guillaume Labrude, Julie Ramel et Antoine Pelloux et le premier volet de la BD de Guillaume Labrude. What is Science Fantasy? What about the works which subvert the frontiers between Fantasy and Science Fiction? The articles and short stories of the 3rd issue of Fantasy Art and Studies give some answers. Here is what to expect: a definition of Science Fantasy related to pulps and the rise of comics books, robots at King Arthur's Court, the confrontation between a medieval knight and a vessel from far away, an Orc ready for battle, an elf leader and her soldiers in Grimm system, a scientist in a medieval fantastic world, the universe of light novels, and also a good deal of comedy, plus illustrations by Guillaume Labrude, Julie Ramel and Antoine Pelloux. You will also discover the first chapter of Guillaume Labrude's comics.

Leseprobe

Sommaire

EDITO

DEFINING SCIENCE FANTASY

SOUVENIRS TÉLÉPORTÉS

POURFENDRE LES DRAGONS

A FUTURE DROID IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT : WHEN SCIENCE FICTION INVITES ITSELF INTO FANTASY

L’ECHANTILLON

ORQUERIE

LA SCIENCE FANTASY AU PRISME DU LIGHT NOVEL : POUR UN MÉLANGE DES GENRES

RETOUR RAPIDE

ET LE COCHON ?

PROCHAIN NUMÉRO : VICTORIAN ROOTS/RACINES VICTORIENNES

EDITO

DÉFINIR LA Fantasy conduit inévitablement à se demander ce qui la différencie de la Science-fiction. De fait, les définitions de la Fantasy reviennent souvent à expliquer pourquoi la Fantasy n’est pas de la Science-fiction et en quoi elle diffère de celle-ci. Cependant, jusqu’à la publication du Seigneur des Anneaux en 1954-1955, la Fantasy n’était pas clairement distinguée de la Science-fiction dans le discours éditorial et les deux genres coexistaient dans les mêmes collections.

La nécessité qui s’est imposée aux éditeurs et aux chercheurs de constituer des catégories différentes au sein des fictions de l’imaginaire a conduit à des définitions exclusives qui sont régulièrement remises en question par des œuvres combinant des éléments de plusieurs genres. Ceci se traduit par la création de termes tels que Science Fantasy.

Les auteurs, les illustrateurs et les chercheurs de notre troisième numéro ont tous exploré ce mélange de Fantasy et de Science-fiction qu’est la Science Fantasy. Après une tentative de définition du sous-genre (Viviane Bergue), nous suivons la 997ème phalange d’Álfheim, et sa chef elfique, dans le système de Grimm (Christophe Germier) et nous assistons à la confrontation entre un chevalier médiéval et le vaisseau de deux nains et d’une elfe (Xavier-Marc Fleury), avant que Justine Breton ne discute de films où des robots s’invitent à la cour du roi Arthur. Laurent B envoie son héroïne sur une planète qui ressemble à un monde traditionnel de Fantasy, tandis que Florian Bonnecarrère relate un combat entre un Orque et des chevaliers qui n’est peut-être pas ce qu’il semble être. En retour, Alexandra Aïn nous entraîne sur les rivages du Japon où manga et light novels offrent de surprenantes combinaisons d’éléments de Fantasy et de Science-fiction. Et, puisque la Science Fantasy peut aussi verser dans la comédie, Tom Ariaudo et A. R. Morency introduisent tous deux une large part de dérision dans leurs récits. Enfin, Guillaume Labrude nous révèle ce qui se cache dans la tête du roi Charles Drax, dans une bande dessinée pleine d’humour noir.

HOW FANTASY DIFFERS from Science Fiction is a question that occurs every time one tries to define Fantasy. Indeed, definitions of Fantasy often tend to be explanations of why Fantasy is not Science Fiction and differs from it. However, historically, Fantasy was not clearly distinguished from Science Fiction in editorial discourse until the publication of The Lord of the Rings in 1954-1955. Before that, both genres coexisted in the same collections.

The necessity for publishers and scholars alike to create different categories in imaginative fiction has led to exclusive definitions that are regularly challenged by works that combine features of several genres. This translates in the forging of terms such as Science Fantasy.

The authors, illustrators and researchers of our third issue have all investigated this blending of Fantasy and Science Fiction that is Science Fantasy. Starting with an attempt to define the subgenre (Viviane Bergue), we then follow the 997th phalanx of Álfheim, and its Elvish leader, in Grimm system (Christophe Germier) and attend the confrontation between a medieval knight and the vessel of two dwarves and an elf (Xavier-Marc Fleury), before Justine Breton discusses movies in which droids enter King Arthur’s court. Laurent B has his heroine sent to a planet that looks very much like a traditional Fantasy world, whereas Florian Bonnecarrère unfolds a fight between an Orc and human knights that may not be what it seems. In turn, Alexandra Aïn takes us to the shores of Japan where manga and light novels offer surprising combinations of Fantasy and Science Fiction elements. And, since Science Fantasy can also verse in comedy, both Tom Ariaudo and A. R. Morency introduce a large part of derision in their narratives. Finally, Guillaume Labrude tells us about what is in the head of king Charles Drax, in a comic strip full of dark humour.

Viviane Bergue

DEFINING SCIENCE FANTASY

Viviane Bergue

Viviane Bergue has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the Université Toulouse 2-Le Mirail, France. A revised version of her thesis was published in 2015 under the title La Fantasy, mythopoétique de la quête. She is the founder and editor of Fantasy Art and Studies.

Viviane Bergue est Docteur en Littérature Comparée, de l’Université Toulouse 2-Le Mirail. Une version remaniée de sa thèse a été publiée en 2015 sous le titre La Fantasy, mythopoétique de la quête. Elle est la fondatrice et éditrice de Fantasy Art and Studies.

It is often difficult to distinguish and define the different subgenres of imaginative fiction, as publishers and critics regularly add new ones that sometimes overlap with existing categories. This is typically the case of Science Fantasy, a term which was mostly used in the 1950s and the 1960s. Science Fantasy is generally intuitively seen as “a bastard genre blending elements of SF and fantasy”, to quote the entry of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction1, in other words a kind of stories that are in-between Fantasy and Science Fiction, thus explaining the reunion of the antithetical words science and fantasy. However Peter Nicholls, author of the entry, observes that Science Fantasy has never been clearly defined.

Comparatively, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy2 discusses the term a bit more thoroughly, though it starts with a definition provided by Gary K. Wolfe in Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship, according to which Science Fantasy refers to stories where Fantasy elements are used in a Science Fiction context. Gary K. Wolfe’s definition is not so different from the definition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. It still comes to the basic notion that Science Fantasy is a mix between Science Fiction and Fantasy, the question being whether Science Fantasy is closer to Fantasy or to SF. For The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, it is rather the first option, even if Peter Nicholls points out that “Science Fantasy does not necessarily contain magic, gods and demons, heroes, mythology or supernatural creatures3”, all of these being typical of Fantasy fiction, but, instead, “certain SF themes are especially common in Science Fantasy – parallel worlds, other dimensions, ESP, monsters, psi powers and supermen – but no single one of these ingredients is essential4.”

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy complicates the view by mentioning competing subcategories, Rationalized Fantasy and planetary romances, while suggesting that the term Science Fantasy better applies to dying-earth tales, in which “history and science are like the stories which underlie most fantasy narratives, and when protagonists in such tales discover what makes their worlds tick, the effect is less that of conceptual breakthrough than of recognition5.”

Quickly, the scholar or the curious reader who wants to determine what Science Fantasy exactly is finds themselves switching from entry to entry, each of them adding new related terms, and thus drawing a galaxy of interconnected Fantasy categories which may form together the face of Science Fantasy. Consequently, it seems necessary to examine these cross-references a little closely in order to establish a definition and a better understanding of Science Fantasy and how it diverges both from Science Fiction and more traditional Fantasy narratives.

Barsoom and the planetary romance trend

Both encyclopaedias agree that planetary romances in the line of Edgar Rice Burroughs are to be considered as Science Fantasy, rather than actual Science Fiction. In the Barsoom series and similar works, the alien planet on which the action takes place functions more as a Fantasy world than a typical SF venue. Indeed, these planetary romances feature exotic civilizations that remind of our pre-industrial and pre-technological past – they have royal dynasties, theocracies, still use swords to fight and have traditions and codes of honour that point to medieval or antique times – though they may possess an advanced technology. Monsters and psi powers6 are common in these stories. In the Barsoom series, for instance, all Martians are telepathic. The Red Martians also have flying machines, and Burroughs imagines weapons that have nothing to envy to other similar devices in SF of his time.

The Barsoom series actually remain a classic and a prototype for subsequent planetary romances7. Mars is reinvented here as a once flourishing world, much like Earth, but that is now decaying: oceans have disappeared and been replaced by deserts, there are numerous abandoned cities and ruins, and its inhabitants have developed different technologies to adapt to this mainly dried world. As in more traditional Fantasy worlds, Mars – or rather Barsoom as it is called by its inhabitants – also has its legends, its strange beliefs, and a history that is full of mysterious enigmas concerning the fate of supposedly vanished people.

The first story of the series, A Princess of Mars, initially published in All-Story magazine, has its main protagonist, the Earthman John Carter, transported to Mars in a completely impossible way. From the account of the character, who is the narrator of his own story, the reader understands that somehow Carter has had his astral body separated from his actual body, left in a cave somewhere in Arizona, and that his astral form has been attracted by Mars8. This impossible transportation from one planet to another, without the help of a technological device, signals the work as definitely Fantasy. The rest of the narrative and the subsequent books confirm this grounding into Fantasy, rather than plain Science Fiction, with their marvellous adventures and epic journeys.

The Barsoom series also diverge from Science Fiction aesthetically, something that is visually emphasized by the various cover illustrations of the books, such as the one signed by Frank E. Schoonover for the McClurg edition of A Princess of Mars. This illustration features in the foreground a man clothed as an antique warrior – he wears a kind of tunic and several leather straps and belts that make him look like a gladiator – and holding a sword in his right hand, his other hand aimed at shielding the woman in the background, who is wearing red antique robes and a kind of diadem, which looks slightly ancient Egyptian. The décor behind them also looks antique, reminding us of Roman palaces. Nothing in this illustration tells that the story takes place on Mars. On the contrary, the image could be used for the poster of a peplum movie. It is however consistent with the title of the novel, A Princess of Mars, since the word “princess” points to the world of romances and fairy tales, rather than the world of Science Fiction.

Frank E. Schoonover’s cover illustration is typical of the imagery surrounding the Barsoom series: the various editions of the series have similar cover illustrations, following the same aesthetics that looks much like the imagery accompanying Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, published some years later in pulp magazines. On these pictures, men are athletic and portrayed as muscular warriors, whereas female characters are beautiful, sexy, and generally almost naked. Thus Dejah Thoris, the eponymous Martian princess, looks very similar to Red Sonja, a comic book character based on a character invented by Howard. It is no surprise then that, if the fiction of Howard has been indistinctly referred to as Heroic Fantasy or Sword and Sorcery, the planetary romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his imitators have also been sometimes labelled Sword and Planets. Their similar aesthetics and the absence of actual scientific extrapolation in Burroughs’s Barsoom series imply that this sort of planetary romances is simply a displacement of Sword and Sorcery narratives from so-called ancient unknown ages of the Earth9 and imaginary worlds to other planets, the alien venue serving then as a loose explanation for the development of fantastic fauna and flora, and seemingly human people with special abilities.

An aesthetics rooted in pulps and comic books

It is worth noting that both Burroughs’s and Howard’s fiction were initially published in pulp magazines. These low-quality paper publications played an important role in the spreading of popular literature during the first half of the twentieth century, because they were cheap and they mostly published adventure and supernatural stories as well as mystery fiction. If Weird Tales, in which Howard’s stories first appeared, must be considered as the first pulps dedicated to Fantasy – and indeed it mainly published Fantasy narratives and Horror tales, whereas Amazing Stories favoured Science Fiction – many pulps did not really draw a clear line between Fantasy and Science Fiction, and indistinctly published both genres. Consequently, from an editorial point of view, SF and Fantasy could be seen as very close, and, somehow, interchangeable. They appeared in the same magazines, they were illustrated by the same artists, and, thus, superficially, they shared the same visual aesthetics10. The proximity was such that, in 1950, while the pulps were receding and slowly replaced by digest magazines, the British publishing company Nova Publications launched a new publication entitled Science Fantasy. Funnily, despite its name, Science Fantasy mainly published Fantasy stories by authors who have since become famous in the genre, namely Michael Moorcock – who became the editor of another Nova Publications magazine more focused on Science Fiction, New Worlds, when it was acquired by Roberts & Vinter –, Thomas Burnett Swann, and Terry Pratchett, though it also featured the dystopian fiction of J. G. Ballard.

The apparent similarity of SF and Fantasy, due to their distribution through the same channels, the proliferation of narratives that were more interested in adventures than actual scientific extrapolation and the use of similar visual aesthetics, was however amplified in another growing medium: comic books. Both Conan and the Barsoom series were adapted in comics, just like the adventures of another hero created by Burroughs, Tarzan. Julian C. Chambliss and William Svitavsky have pointed out the continuity between pulp heroes and these iconic characters of comic books that are superheroes11, in terms of racial and cultural assumptions, as well as in terms of thematic characteristics.

In this context, it is interesting to observe that the Barsoom series has been a major influence on Alex Raymond’s comics Flash Gordon, which in turn has been influential on superhero comic books12. Flash Gordon is again a planetary romance, in which the eponymous character, an Earthman, is transported to planet Mongo, where he lives amazing adventures. This time, the means of transportation is a technological device, a spaceship in which the character and his female friend Dale Arden travel, with the mad scientist Dr Hans Zarkov, in order to prevent a collision between Earth and Mongo. Despite this beginning that sounds plainly SF, the comics turns back to more fantastic and adventurous tropes. Once on the alien planet, Flash Gordon enters into conflict with Ming the Merciless, the despot emperor of Mongo who calls himself emperor of the universe. The conflict is a pretext for many adventures that lead the hero and his companions to explore the various kingdoms of Mongo, each of them a rather fantastic setting, such as for instance the undersea kingdom of the Shark Men or the flying city of the Hawkmen, whose look has inspired the superhero Hawkman from DC Comics. Among the villains faced by Flash Gordon, the giants of Frigia and the Witch Queen Azura should be mentioned as examples of fantastic figures displaced in a supposedly typical SF venue. Later adventures have the hero travel to other planets, after the overthrow of Ming, thus transforming the planetary romance into a space opera13.

Flash Gordon shows the perenniality of a certain kind of narratives, which see other planets as merely fantastic venues where everything is possible, from the existence of monsters and impossible fauna and flora to strange ancient civilizations and people with seemingly magical powers. The comics also bridge the gap between fantastic pulp fiction and superhero stories.

Rationalizing Fantasy

Planetary romances from pulps and comics are a real claim for the need of a term such as Science Fantasy that combines the two main genres of imaginative fiction, even if it could be tempting to say that these narratives do not have so much to do with Science Fiction. However these tales express a tendency to rationalize their Fantasy. Even Burroughs extrapolates his idea of a Mars that is now a decaying world from current speculations from scientists of his time14. In Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, that can be both labelled as planetary romances from the Science Fantasy trend, the fantastic aspects of the worlds described receive a rational explanation. Both Pern and Darkover were originally settled by people from Earth, who either were unable to leave the planet or wanted to create an agrarian society there, and their descendants gave birth to a new civilization that developed psi powers and forgot all about its origin. The very fact that Darkover and Pern’s societies look medieval appears then as a consequence of this oblivion and the necessity faced by the first settlers to rebuild a civilization from nothing, without being able to rely on technology. So what looks magic at first glance can be explained, and the remnants of the original spaceship can take fantastic proportions15.

Consequently, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy is right in referring to Rationalized Fantasy in its entry dealing with Science Fantasy, since the two subgenres seem to overlap and might be considered as two different terms referring to the same kind of fiction. According to The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, Rationalized Fantasy can be given three meanings, all of them consistent with Science Fantasy, as a blending of Science Fiction and Fantasy. The first meaning concerns stories in which magic is codified through almost rationale systems. The second meaning is about stories in which what appears fantastic at first finally receives a rationale explanation16, for instance when the Fantasy events happen to be a dream, especially in Children’s Fantasy. The encyclopaedia also gives the example of Dave Duncan’s The Seven Swords trilogy (1988) in which the so-called wizards “turn out to be masquerading technologists even though the world they inhabit is one in which the Goddess and her magical servants regularly intervene17.”

Meaning 3 comes closer to Science Fantasy and the planetary romances that have been discussed, since it applies to stories in which the fantastic is explained through SF tropes. “Thus in Julian May’s Saga of Pliocene Exile (1981-1984) the Fairies whom the adventurers meet in the past turn out to be aliens, the Vampires in Barbara Hambly’s Those who Hunt the Night (1988) have been changed by a virus with which it is possible to experiment in the laboratory, and so on18.” Sometimes it is the reverse: SF icons are given a magical rationale, as in Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane (1986), in which it is said that dragons have arrived on Earth “by winged flight from another planet19.” Similarly, in a sort of modern process of euhemerizing the Northern gods, the recent movie adaptations of the Marvel comics Thor make the gods, the giants and the elves come from other planets20. It can be noted, in passing, that these adaptations thus diverge from the original comic books, in which Asgard, the city of the gods, is located on Earth. The change might be due to the producers’ will to create an inner consistency in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hardly existing in the various competing versions of the Marvel superhero comics, so that a character from Northern mythology like Thor can coexist with the hyper-technological hero Iron Man, without generating a sense of discontinuity and disbelief. Hence the Asgardians live in another world, that is rather explicitly presented as another planet, and they can create machines that look very much like robots, such as the Destroyer sent by Loki to kill Thor. Bifrost, the marvellous rainbow bridge that links Asgard to Midgard (e.g. Earth), is a wormhole, according to astrophysicist Jane Foster’s data, and the Dark Elves are a people who spread in the universe before light existed21.

Imagining that gods, elves and dragons come from other planets and should be considered as extra-terrestrial beings might appear as an even better explanation or, in any case, a more appealing one than saying that gods and elves were actual men whose deeds and lives were embellished so as to make them bigger than life, or that dragons were fantasised creatures based on the observation of dinosaurs bones. Indeed, by identifying them as alien beings, the narratives then acknowledge both their extraordinary abilities, which can be easily interpreted as magical by pre-industrial societies, and their impossible anatomy. Suddenly these mythological and folkloric creatures gain some kind of veracity, they leave the plainly impossible to enter the probable. It is certainly in this way, more than in displaying traditional SF elements such as other planets and flying machines, that Science Fantasy comes closer to Science Fiction. Indeed, according to Darko Suvin, SF is a genre in which cognition, that is what we know of the laws of nature, and a form of estrangement interact. SF “does not ask about The Man or The World, but which man? in which kind of world? and why such a man in such a world22?” In other words, SF is concerned with the multiple possible humanities from alternative presents to unknown futures, whether on Earth or on faraway planets. Somehow, the more the narratives that can be labelled Science Fantasy tend to a rationalization of their Fantasy elements, the more they get closer to actual Science Fiction, and can appear less as Fantasy tales than as Science Fiction stories in Fantasy disguise.

Science Fantasy is certainly a problematic and challenging term as it creates a bridge between Fantasy and Science Fiction, two genres which, according to Darko Suvin’s famous theorization of SF, seem antithetical. However, when one looks closer at the galaxy of narratives and subcategories related to Science Fantasy, it appears that this subgenre always displays an internal tension between favouring fantastic and plainly unrealistic adventures and a tendency to rationalize its more fantastic elements, even on a superficial level. Thus planetary romances may describe worlds that look definitely Fantasy but can be made believable through the idea of divergent evolution of fauna and flora, due to an environment that differs from Earth’s. Similarly, the existence of creatures from folklore and mythology becomes suddenly possible because they are reinvented as extra-terrestrial beings who travel in spaceships.