We have two tags, really-SF and "Fantasy"-but I feel that we should have another general name to include the sub-genre of books which deal with Middle Earths and lands and worlds based on this planet, worlds which exist only in some author's vivid imagination. In this sub-genre I would classify books like The Worm Ouroboros, Jurgen, The Lord of the Rings, The Once and Future King, the Gray Mouser/ Fafhrd series, the Conan series, The Broken Sword, The Well of the Unicorn, etc.
Now all these stories have several things in common-they are fantasy stories which could hardly be classified as SF, and they are stories of high adventure, generally featuring a central hero very easy to identify oneself with. For the most part they are works of escapism, anything else usually being secondary (exceptions, I would agree, are Jurgen and The Once and Future King). But all of them are tales told for the tale's sake, and the authors have obviously thoroughly enjoyed the telling.
The roots of most of these stories are in legendry, classic romance, mythology, folklore, and dubious ancient works of "History."
In a recent letter, Sprague de Camp called this stuff Prehistoric-Adventure-Fantasy and this name, although somewhat unwieldy, could apply to much of the material I have listed. PAF? Then again, you could call it Saga-Fantasy or Fantastic-Romance (in the sense of the Chivalric Romances).
What we want is a name which might not, on analysis, include every book in this category, but which, like "Science Fiction," would give readers some idea what you're talking about when you're doing articles, reviews, etc., on books in this genre. Or for that matter it would be useful to use just in conversation or when forming clubs, launching magazines, etc.
Epic Fantasy is the name which appeals most to me as one which includes many of these stories-certainly all of the ones I have mentioned.
Most of the tales listed have a basic general formula. They are "quest" stories. The necessary sense of conflict in a book designed to hold the reader's interest from start to finish is supplied by the simple formula:
A) Hero must get or do something;
B) Villains disapprove;
C) Hero sets out to get what he wants anyway;
D) Villains thwart him one or more times (according to length of story); and finally
E) Hero, in the face of all odds, does what the reader expects of him.
Of course E) often has a twist of some kind, to it but in most cases the other four parts are there. This is not so in Jurgen nor in White's tetralogy admittedly, but then Jurgen is definitely an allegory, while in TheSword in the Stone and its sequels it is the characters which are of main importance to the author. Jurgen only just manages to squeeze into the category anyway.
Also, it can be argued that this basic plotline can apply to most stories. Agreed, but the point is that here the plotline tends to dominate both theme and hero, and is easily spotted for what it is.
Conan and the Gray Mouser generally have to start at point A), pass wicked points B) and D), and eventually win through to goal- point E). Anything else, in the meantime, is extra-in fact, the extra is that which puts these stories above many others. The Ringbearers in Tolkien's magnificent saga do this also.
Now, the point is that every one of these tales, almost without exception, follows the pattern of the old Heroic Sagas and Epic Romances. Basically, Conan and Beowulf have much in common; Ragnar Lodbrok and Fafhrd also; Gandalf and Merlin; Amadis of Gaul and Airar (of The Well of the Unicorn). And I'm sure many of the unhuman characters (elves, orcs, wizards, and such) and monsters these heroes encounter can trace their ancestry right back to the Sidhe; Lord Soulis; Urganda the Unknown; Grendel; Siegfried's dragon; Cerberus; and the various hippogriffs, firedrakes, and serpents of legend and mythology.
As de Camp showed in his "Exegesis of Howard's Hyborian Tales" and as I did in my earlier and not nearly so complete article "Historical Fact and Fiction in Connection with the Conan Series" (Burroughsania, vol. 2, no. 16, August 1957), the names for characters and backgrounds in Howard's wonderful series were nearly all culled from legendry.
Most of Howard's sources are easily traced, for he did not even change names. The same goes for The Broken Sword; and the Ring tetralogy is obviously based (only based, mind you) on Anglo-Saxon foundations.
This, of course, does not detract one iota from the stories themselves. In fact all the authors have done much, much more than simply rehash old folk literature-they have taken crudely formed and para-doxical tales as their bases and written new, subtler stories which are often far better than the ones which undoubtedly influenced them.
Also, when I compare Conan with Beowulf and so on, I am not saying that these characters were the originals upon which Howard, Leiber, Tolkien, and the others based their own heroes and villains-I am simply trying to point out that the influence was there.
So, all in all, I would say that Epic Fantasy is about the best name for the sub-genre, considering its general form and roots. Obviously, Epic Fantasy includes the Conan, Kull, and Bran Mak Morn stories of R. E. Howard; the Gray Mouser/Fafhrd stories by Fritz Leiber; the Arthurian tetralogy by T. H. White; the Middle Earth stories of J.R.R. Tolkien; The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison; the Zothique stories of Clark Ashton Smith; some of the works of Abraham Merritt (The Shipof Ishtar, etc.); some of H. Rider Haggard's stories (Allan and the IceGods, etc.); The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson; the Gormenghast trilogy of Mervyn Peake (it just gets in, I think); the Poictesme stories of James Branch Cabell (including Jurgen, The Silver Stallion, and others); and The Well of the Unicorn by Fletcher Pratt.
I would appreciate other suggestions for possible inclusions. TitusGroan and its sequels by Mervyn Peake actually do not have the form nor roots I have described but they have the general atmosphere and are certainly set outside of our own space-time Earth.
The question might be raised as to whether or not to include Alternate Space-Time Continuum stories such as de Camp's and Pratt's Harold Shea tales, Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur (obviously the main influence for many subsequent stories), L. Ron Hubbard's Masters and Slaves of Sleep, etc., in which present day heroes enter worlds of legend and myth and don't take the idea altogether seriously. The basic difference is in the treatment, I think. In the Epic Fantasy group the author more or less asks you to accept the background and so on as important because his characters consider it important, then take the story from there, respecting the laws and logic which are to be taken for what they are, and taken seriously.
In the AS-TC group the treatment is often humorous, the author having the attitude of a teller of tall stories who doesn't expect to be believed but knows that he is entertaining his hearers-which is all that is required of him. Thus, although several of the AS-TC group could just about fall into the Epic Fantasy group, I consider it best to describe them as simply "Fantasy" (which I usually interpret to mean the kind of stuff which filled the majority of Unknown's pages).