The Scale of the Fantastic

The following is presented partly as an explanation of what I see as valid material for this blog. Do you think of Sherlock Holmes as fantastic? You may be surprised…

Eric S. Rabkin, editor of Fantastic Worlds: Myths, Tales, and Stories, Oxford University Press, 1979) in his introductory remarks proposes a useful device for measuring the Fantastic. As he says in “The Diversity of Fantastic Literature”: “Individual narratives may be more or less fantastic.” In other words, all fiction is by its nature “make believe”. Rabkin’s device is a scale that sets down a means for looking at all fiction. His scale is:

Realism

Henry James, The Ambassadors

Emile Zola, Germinal

Realistic Literature

Jane Austin

Charles Dickens

Fantastic Literature

Tales of the Great Detective

“The Magic Swan Geese” Alexeander Afanas’ev (ed.)

“The Tale of Cosmo” George MacDonald

“The Black Cat” Edgar Allan Poe

Fantasy

“The Royal Banquet’ Norton Juster

Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carrol

Now I don’t necessarily agree with his choices for examples. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” at 8 where I would place it back at 5. Much of Poe can be interpreted psychologically rather than literally. I suspect Rabkin, though he includes H. P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany and J. R. R. Tolkien in his book, would consider much of what came after 1979 (The era of the Post-Tolkien fantasy bestseller which began in 1977 with The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks) as sub-literate trash and therefore irrelevant.

What I do like about Rabkin’s scale is it helps me to identify or codify some types of fiction that don’t fall neatly into genres (which we must remember were invented by publishers as a marketing tool, not academics). For example Doc Savage is a genre-crosser, with some Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror and Mystery elements, and yet none of the above. But ol’ Doc can be placed on the scale, outside of genre considerations.

Rabkin picks 5 as the point for Sherlock Holmes, which is set in a realistic London of the 1880s, but the things Sherlock does, from solving crimes, defying the police, wearing disguises, are quite fantastic. Doc Savage has this same fantastic persona in a realistic world mode, though his is set in the New York of the 1930s. The world-shaking scope, which Philip Jose Farmer brands “apocalyptic”, pushes Doc up the scale from 5 to 6 or 7.

This idea applies to most fiction. A Romance novel may have a realistic setting, though the “romance” of the plot will push it to a 5. “Romance” in this case means a divergence from realism. True love, the Mounties always get their man, good over evil, and many other tropes that watching the nightly news will tell you just aren’t so. This applies to the Western, with its romanticized West, the incredible adventure tale, and most Hollywood films.

What the scale does for me as a reader of fiction is it helps me to identify where I enjoy being on the scale. My father was a non-fiction reader, DIY, naturalist studies and Canadiana. He was so suspect of untruths in writing he did not read fiction. He was firmly set at 0 on the scale. But the apple sometimes falls far from the tree for my comfort level begins at 5. I can’t really bear the boredom of 0-5 though I waded through enough of it in high school and university. My tastes begin at detective and historical fiction and go all the way to 10.

It is a well known phrase in my house that I have only one criteria by which I evaluate movies. “Does it have monsters in it?” Monster fiction begins around 6 with the adventure tale featuring unusual creatures (such as the films in the Anaconda series) and go to the far end with William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land or H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. I’m not particular if it is SF/F/H but more how the author uses the monsters in the tale. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ dorky piecemeal aliens on far planets to M. R. James’ subtle ghosts; it’s all life’s blood to me. 5-10 is my part of the scale. What that says about me psychologically, we’ll leave to the armchair shrinks to decide.

Now we add in another scholar, Professor Michael D. C. Drout and his Rings Swords And Monsters Exploring Fantasy Literature Lectures and things get even more intriguing. Drout says mainstream fiction is largely atheistic, relativistic and descended from Shakespeare (strained through Henry James) and Fantasy is moralistic (concerned with big questions) and descended from the Marchen or fairy tale. He also says each must be judged by its own aesthetic (you can’t judge one by the other’s rules). Looking at Drout’s two categories, we see Henry James at the mainstream end of the scale at 1, while Tolkien rests at the other end. In other words, Drout’s two categories act as poles on Rabkin’s scale.

Most people tend to fall to one side or the other (though I am sure some straddle the 5 mark). The geeky SF fan (me!) lives in a world of 5-10, enjoying the monsters, and space ships, cool detectives, superheroes and ring quests, exploring the nature of good and evil and what it means to be human by being super-human; while the serious mainstream reader clamors for realism and “the human condition”. One needs more than the real world while the other is locked inside of it. That sounds judgmental for my bias is obvious but wondering about these different kinds of readers helps me to focus on what I find important as a writer, how to judge if I have found that golden something I strive for. It also helps me not to be distracted by another mode of thinking and judging that is alien (no pun intended!) to my pursuits. I will forever be stuck between Sherlock Holmes and Lewis Carroll and I couldn’t be happier about it.