"Fantasy isn't just a jolly escape: It's an escape, but into something far more extreme than reality, or normality. It's where things are more beautiful and more wondrous and more terrifying. You move into a world of conflicting extremes." —Terry Gilliam

Fantasy: it's stuff with magic in it, not countingPsychic Powers,Magic From Technology, anythingmeant to frighten,classy literature, or anything strongly religious, unless the psychic powers coexist with other forms of magic, or are stretched to the point where they are some other form in all but name, or the technology behind the magic isMagitek or the story is dominated by fantasy tropes, or -- and where did that clean-cut definition go?

In fact, while the core of the fantasy genre is clear enough, there is no succinct definition that encompasses it all. The boundary withScience Fiction isnotoriously ambiguous, but the boundary with horror is often no less fuzzy. Religiously inspired works, like theLeft Behind series, can have a basic good versus evil plotline that would fit well inHigh Fantasy, but few would place them there, and so on.

Within fantasy, there are a few subgenres, in alphabetical order to avoid favoritism, but easily divisible into genre (labelled asFantasy) and outside of genre.

Often placed outside theFantasy genre, or not marketed as such:

• Demythtification - real-worldMythology assemi-mundanehistory that "inspired the legend". Inverse of Magical Realism.
• Magical Realism, in whichFantasy elements intermingle with the realism of a contemporary novel.
• Mundane Fantastic, in whichFantasy elements (orSuperhero orScience Fiction) mix with more naturalistic elements.
• Wuxia - Chinese High Fantasy or Heroic Fantasy, withalltheelements. usually marketed asLit Fic outside China.
• Xenofiction - Fantasy from anonhuman (alien orwild animal) perspective.

Almost always marketed asFantasy:

• Dark Fantasy, which is fantasyDarker and Edgier.
• Gaslamp Fantasy, fantasy with anAlternate History 19th-century setting (or reasonable approximation thereof).
• Heroic Fantasy, (also called Sword and Sorcery):Trope Codifier is theConan stories.
  • Thud and Blunder is a subgenre.
• High Fantasy, (also called Epic Fantasy):Trope Codifier isThe Lord of the Rings (but therewere many precursors).
  • Mythopoeia is also an established variant.
• Historical Fantasy - a version of the history of our world, but withsignificant fantasy elements added.
• Low Fantasy - anythingnot set in our world which isn't one of the others.
• Magical Land - virtually a sub-genre in itself, and common in works for children. This overlaps with Modern Fantasy.
• Science Fantasy, which overlaps with other sub-genres, as well asScience Fiction
• Urban Fantasy - confusingly, has two meanings:
  • a) a story which takes place inour world, or a recognizableAlternate History version of it
  • b)or else in a major city in a secondary world.

Common features of genre fantasy include:

A secondary world: A world whose connection with our present day world ranges from nominal to non-existent. It could be the remote past or future, or simply a-historical. The inhabitants can be anything from human only, through the standard elves, dwarves and orcs, to a completeFantasy Kitchen Sink. SeeStandard Fantasy Setting for the, er, standard fantasy setting.

Appeal to apastoral ideal: Much genre fantasy, of all genres, appeals to the pastoral ideal, one reason for the pseudo-medieval settings. Even urban fantasies will quite often depict cities as blots on the landscape, whose denizens are blinded to what really matters by material ephemera. There are some fantasies, however, which either deliberately take the opposite stance or present a more balanced worldview.

Magic and Powers:Functional Magic is almost always present, though its role in the world can vary widely. It might be either respected, feared, persecuted, or simply not believed in. It's frequency varies from the stuff of legend, through to rare but available to the well connected, up to a ubiquitous part of everyday life.Magitek usually lies at the extreme end of this scale. It may be taught through amaster and apprentice system, or in amagical university, when it can be taught at all. When wizards are immortal, they don't need to train successors, and may not be able to.

However, even magic itself isn't a required element, as novels such as Ellen Kushner'sSwordspoint, K.J. Parker'sDevices & Desires or Ricardo Pinto'sThe Stone Dance of the Chameleon which feature no magic whatsoever but take place in an alternate, pseudo-historical world, are still classified as fantasy. This is due in part to their widespread use of other tropes associated with fantasy, particularlyLow Fantasy. (Swordspoint is an interesting case, because while it contains no supernatural elements in itself, one of its sequels,The Fall of the Kings, is largely concerned withThe Magic Comes Back.)

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• Speculative Fiction
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