Such a thing had not existed at all in 1960, and even in early 1969 it had consisted of a cross section of work appearing as a subbranch of science fiction (Sword and Sorcery) or as books for young readers, with a few titles presented as loosely “Tolkienian.” Says Williamson:īy 1974, then, a discrete genre, with a definition and a canon, had demonstrably emerged. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in the 1960s, the Lancer Conan Saga shortly thereafter, and the appearance of the BAFS and their famous unicorn colophon, “fantasy” became a thing. No one talked about “the fantasy genre” like we do today no authors proclaimed themselves “fantasy writers.”īut with the mass-market paperback publication of J.R.R. Many authors were writing fantastic tales of Faerie or blood and thunder prior to the BAFS (principal run 1969-1974), but none were consciously working in the confines of an established genre. Prior to the BAFS, Williamson claims, the literary entity that we today widely recognize as “fantasy” did not exist. In his The Evolution of Modern Fantasy author Jamie Williamson makes a monster of a claim for the importance of the Lin Carter-edited Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (BAFS).
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