Terence Hanbury "Tim" White was an English writer. He is best known for his Arthurian novels, which were published together in 1958 as The Once and Future King. One of his most memorable is the first of the series, The Sword in the Stone, which was published as a stand-alone book in 1938.
Kathleen Wendy Herald Peyton, who wrote primarily as K. M. Peyton, was a British author of fiction for children and young adults.
Magic realism or magical realism is a style of literary fiction and art. It paints a realistic view of the world while also adding magical elements, often blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. Magic realism often refers to literature in particular, with magical or supernatural phenomena presented in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting, commonly found in novels and dramatic performances. Despite including certain magic elements, it is generally considered to be a different genre from fantasy because magical realism uses a substantial amount of realistic detail and employs magical elements to make a point about reality, while fantasy stories are often separated from reality. Magical realism is often seen as an amalgamation of real and magical elements that produces a more inclusive writing form than either literary realism or fantasy.
The Name of the Rose is the 1980 debut novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, and an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory. It was translated into English by William Weaver in 1983.
Peter Francis Straub was an American novelist and poet. He had success with several horror and supernatural fiction novels, among them Julia (1975), Ghost Story (1979) and The Talisman (1984), the latter co-writen with Stephen King. He explored the mystery genre with the Blue Rose trilogy, consisting of Koko (1988), Mystery (1990) and The Throat (1993). He fused the supernatural with crime fiction in Lost Boy, Lost Girl (2003) and the related In the Night Room (2004). For the Library of America, he edited the volume H. P. Lovecraft: Tales and the anthology American Fantastic Tales. Straub received such literary honors as the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and International Horror Guild Award.
Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to.
Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer. Since the 1970s, Macdonald's works have received attention in academic circles for their psychological depth, sense of place, use of language, sophisticated imagery and integration of philosophy into genre fiction. Brought up in the province of Ontario, Canada, Macdonald eventually settled in the state of California, where he died in 1983.
Low fantasy, or intrusion fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy fiction in which magical events intrude on an otherwise-normal world. The term thus contrasts with high fantasy stories, which take place in fictional worlds that have their own sets of rules and physical laws.
The Edge of the Cloud is a 1969 historical novel written for children or young adults by K. M. Peyton. It was the second book in Peyton's original Flambards trilogy, comprising three books published by Oxford with illustrations by Victor Ambrus, a series the author extended more than a decade later. Set in England prior to the First World War, it continues the romance of Christina Parsons and Will Russell. The title alludes to Will's participation in early aviation.
Leon Garfield FRSL was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for children's historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books and scripted Shakespeare: The Animated Tales for television.
Elements of the supernatural and the fantastic were an element of literature from its beginning. The modern genre is distinguished from tales and folklore which contain fantastic elements, first by the acknowledged fictitious nature of the work, and second by the naming of an author. Works in which the marvels were not necessarily believed, or only half-believed, such as the European romances of chivalry and the tales of the Arabian Nights, slowly evolved into works with such traits. Authors like George MacDonald (1824–1905) created the first explicitly fantastic works.
Slice of life is a depiction of mundane experiences in art and entertainment. In theater, slice of life refers to naturalism, while in literary parlance it is a narrative technique in which a seemingly arbitrary sequence of events in a character's life is presented, often lacking plot development, conflict and exposition, as well as often having an open ending.
John Rowe Townsend was a British children's writer and children's literature scholar. His best-known children's novel is The Intruder, which won a 1971 Edgar Award. His best-known academic work is a reference series, Written for Children: An Outline of English Children's Literature (1965), the definitive work of its time on the subject. It was greatly expanded for the first revised edition as Written for Children: An Outline of English-language Children's Literature (1974) and updated for its 2nd to 4th revised editions in 1983, 1987, and 1990 – the last, "A survey of imaginative writing, including poetry and picture books, accompanied by a bibliography of works on children's literature and illustrations from many of the classics of children's literature through 1989.".
Rewind is a science fiction novel written in 1999 by William Sleator. It explores maturity and self-confidence.
Lawrence Gordon Clark, is an English television director and producer, perhaps best known for his A Ghost Story for Christmas series of mostly M. R. James ghost stories, which were broadcast annually by the BBC throughout the 1970s.
Science fiction and fantasy have been part of mainstream Russian literature since the 18th century. Russian fantasy developed from the centuries-old traditions of Slavic mythology and folklore. Russian science fiction emerged in the mid-19th century and rose to its golden age during the Soviet era, both in cinema and literature, with writers like the Strugatsky brothers, Kir Bulychov, and Mikhail Bulgakov, among others. Soviet filmmakers, such as Andrei Tarkovsky, also produced many science fiction and fantasy films. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, modern Russia experienced a renaissance of fantasy. Outside modern Russian borders, there are a significant number of Russophone writers and filmmakers from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, who have made a notable contribution to the genres.
Howard Pease was an American writer of adventure stories from Stockton, California. Most of his stories revolved around a young protagonist, Joseph Todhunter ("Tod") Moran, who shipped out on tramp freighters during the interwar years.
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games.
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and usually inspired by mythology or folklore. The term "fantasy" can also be used to describe a "work of this genre", usually literary.
Urban Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction, film horror and television dealing with industrial and post-industrial urban society. It was pioneered in the mid-19th century in Britain, Ireland and the United States and developed in British novels such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Irish novels such as Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). In the twentieth century, urban Gothic influenced the creation of the subgenres of Southern Gothic and suburban Gothic. From the 1980s, interest in the urban Gothic revived with books like Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and a number of graphic novels that drew on dark city landscapes, leading to adaptations in film including Batman (1989), The Crow (1994) and From Hell (2001), as well as influencing films like Seven (1995).
