The Underlying Foundation of Magic

Celia Lake
Fantasy

I write about Albion, the magical community of Great Britain, currently between the 1880s and 1950. (Ireland is doing its own thing, magically.) There’s a tremendous amount of change in that time, in terms of medical advances, technology, communication options, and how people live their lives. At the same time, I don’t actually want to change history. Inserting magic into the landscape means thinking about what will and won’t be affected.

When I started writing, I knew I wanted to write about a magical community with a range of magical options. Just like with most other skills, I wanted what someone could do magically to depend on a combination of factors. For magic in my writing, that's a combination of talent (how easy it is for them to learn something), strength (how much they can accomplish with their magic), and knowledge (what they have learned about how to use magic). Someone with less strength but enough knowledge can still be incredibly effective, and someone with raw strength but no training has some definite limits. 

The Diversity Paradox

Liz Barr

On 6 September 1966, the general television-watching public got its first look at a little show called Star Trek. It had already been previewed at the World Science Fiction Convention, where it was greeted with enthusiasm by an audience ready to embrace a science fiction television series which took itself—and the genre—seriously. Lost in Space was for kids; Doctor Who… was also for kids, and in any case, wouldn’t reach an American audience for another decade or so. Star Trek was sophisticated and intelligent, and so was its audience.

Just ask them. Frederick Pohl, editor of Galaxy Magazine, predicted a swift cancellation, citing low ratings and suggesting that “Star Trek made the mistake of appealing to a comparatively literate group.”

Men Who Respect Witches I:  Male Validation of Women’s Magic in Equal Rites 

Tansy Rayner Roberts

…one of my favourite tropes is the male sidekick paired with a female protagonist. (Bonus points when there’s no romance involved!) In the 1980s, no matter what popular culture you were consuming, it was incredibly rare to find stories where men assisted the narrative of powerful women… and honestly it still feels a little subversive when I stumble across it these days. In the early Witch books, this dynamic is particularly notable because these stories are grounded in a recurring theme of appreciating tradition and old-fashioned values: the Witches are constantly looking back to how things have always been done, while also being sneakily progressive – and making sure no one expects them to follow any unnecessary social restrictions that are otherwise fine for everyone else.

Ceremony, Subjugation, Sacrifice, and Camellia sinensis

Kemi Ashing-Giwa
Science fiction

In speculative fiction, tea has appeared as an important cultural fixture most often in fantasy, but a number of science fiction stories have featured the drink. This includes C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner books, Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe tales (particularly the tellingly named The Tea Master and the Detective) and Becky Chambers’ recent Monk & Robot series. 

The book that first comes to my mind, however, is Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, first in her ongoing Imperial Radch series. In the domineering empire of the Radch, tea and its attendant rituals are luxuries for humans—nonhumans bound in service to the empire, like the “corpse soldier” main character, Breq, must make do with water. (Or fish sauce.) Beyond tea, I have always been interested in exploring social and political domination, and Leckie’s thoughtful, culturally vivid first novel has been a major influence on my work, especially my own debut novel. 

What Is Fantasy Anyway?

Cheryl Morgan
Fantasy

My contention here is not about genre boundaries; it is about exploding them.

If you were to ask the hypothetical person in the street what fantasy fiction is, there is a good chance that they will say it is stories about dragons and wizards. That’s not a bad first pass. After all, the two most famous fantasy worlds – George Martin’s Westeros and JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth – do fit the bill. Westeros is famous for its dragons, and Middle Earth for a wizard. But there are forms of fantasy that do not fit this definition.