Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [174]
A number of books have dealt with the development of science fiction from Verne or Wells, but none, so far as I know, has dealt with its literary development from earlier times. I have already partially described various aspects of fantasy which have gone to form many of the ingredients of modern science fiction, but before I go on to say why I think fantasy has it over science fiction, I’d like to deal with a couple of modern branches of fantasy which have developed from the Gothic phase of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
One of these is usually termed the sword-and-sorcery story. The other has no name that I know of, perhaps because it is rarely published these days. This is the story dealing with what Harry Levin has described as the “haunted palace of the mind”—Otranto, Udolpho, Usher, Gormenghast, etc.
These two settings are connected in that they are both private worlds created from the author’s imagination, having no evident connection with the history or geography of the earth we know, yet it is accepted that they are on earth. They are mythical worlds—worlds which the author’s private mythology has created.
They differ in that one is boundless, horizonless, depending on adventure and supernatural marvels for its basic plot-ingredients, and the other is bounded, enclosed, oppressive, depending largely upon its interplay of characters.
The first is a development of the Gothic historical romance, the second is a development of the Gothic haunted castle story, the origins of which have already been touched upon elsewhere in this series.
It would be foolish to describe either of the outstanding modern examples of each stream as “Gothic novels,” but they do contain many of the refined elements of the earlier type. They are both trilogies by British writers—namely Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Peake’s Titus Groan books.
I know that both authors have been surprised that people link their work. Yet there is a link in that both have created rich, closely detailed imaginary landscapes bearing little or no relation to the earth we know. Both, also, have used “innocents” as their central characters. Peake has used a child, Titus, while Tolkien has used childlike creatures—the Hobbits.
Peake’s novels are, in other ways, far superior to Tolkien’s, because Peake places emphasis on his characters, whereas Tolkien is content to write a classic tale of doom, marvels and high adventure. I find, also, that Peake’s images stay in the mind, but I find it extremely difficult to conjure up distinct images of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Also Peake’s characters actually develop as the story goes on, while Tolkien’s characters do not.
The “haunted palace of the mind” was the dominant theme in Gothic fiction. Elements from this theme have been used in mainstream fiction (Murdoch’s The Unicorn is a recent example), other branches of fantasy and science fiction.
Shortly after Walpole’s Castle of Otranto was published (1764), a novel appeared which claimed to be influenced by Otranto and also called itself “A Gothic Tale.” This was Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1777)—a story which yearned, like Walpole’s, for an Age of Chivalry that never was and was influenced by Mediaeval Romance. Historical romances of this type did not share the same popularity, for a long while, that the “haunted castle” story had. These stories, of course, were tales of chivalry, nobility, adventure, knights, quests, dooms and naturally, the stock marvels of the Gothic—spectres, living portraits and the rest. As quite often