Amusing Site

While conducting a search for a few things online today, I stumbled across an amusing "book review" site. The Christian Guide to Fantasy claims to be "a compendium of reviews of those books commonly classified as Fantastic Fiction from a literary and Christian moral standpoint."

Unfortunately, the site owners have demonstrated throughout that they really don't understand the genre. This evidence appears in three categories: 1) terminology, 2) application of sub-genres, and 3) understanding of criticism/theory.

In the first case, the owners state the claim that "Magic does not a fantasy make." Sadly, this conveniently ignores the fact that magic is the core trait of the fantasy genre. Of course, this claim shouldn't be surprising considering they further claim that "fantasy takes place primarily in another world, science fiction takes place in this world, and alternate reality takes place in this world with impossible or implausible changes." The second claim clearly shows a lack of understanding of the genres in question. Admittedly, the definitions of fantasy and sci-fi are constantly debated by fans and literary critics, but basically come down to: fantasy involves magic of some sort while sci-fi involves scientific extrapolation and the future (not necessarily involving Earth - see much of the corpus of sci-fi film and a variety of authors). Alternate reality does not necessarily involve "impossible or implausible changes" to our own history. All it requires is some change - the non-invention of prop planes due to safe zeppelins (plausible change), Abraham Lincoln not being assassinated (plausible change), or the South winning the Civil War (plausible change).

The second case, application of sub-genres, is really quite amusing in CGF's case. First, they claim that Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series and Web of Light/Darkness duet are both sword & sorcery. Sadly, this is not the case as both represent alternate histories/realities and neither fits within the characteristics of S&S. I won't even get into their claim that she "butchers history" by portraying Christianity as "oppressive, degrading, yadda yadda" and including sex, incest, rape, etc. except to say that someone needs to learn a little pre-20th century history. Strangely, they also consider Laurel K. Hamilton to be sword & sorcery, in spite of the fact that she couldn't be further from that genre. Seeing as Hamilton writes urban fantasy/supernatural romance . . . I really don't buy Mercedes Lackey being in that sub-genre either.

But, they'd probably have spastic fits if they read real sword & sorcery like Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, or Fritz Leiber. Of course, they also recommend Terry Brooks as being "fairly good in plot, language, and morals" (despite the fact that he basically rewrote LotR at a fourth or fifth grade reading level).

Which brings me to the "Critical Writings" segment of their page. The whole area consists of: Tolkien, Lin Carter, Le Guin (whom they obviously didn't read, since they give her a glowing pro-Christian review), and Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (a very small, basic, simplistic, and poorly researched book). None of these "critics" - and I like Tolkien, Carter and Le Guin's non-fiction - really do more than scratch the surface of "critical" work on the genre. Nowhere do they mention Brian Attebury (the current leader in academic study of the genre), Jack Zipes (current leader in academic study of children's/YA fantastic literature), Farah Mendlesohn, Andrew Butler, Gary Westfahl, Ann F. Howey, Verlyn Flieger (perhaps the top Tolkien scholar ever), or even David Colbert (simplistic and non-critical as he is). Most of those names come up in even the most basic Amazon search, as poor as Amazon is for finding such material.

On the other hand, the site's mission becomes clear when one notes that it hasn't been updated since the last Harry Potter book was released.