The Worlds Of Fantasy - BBC4 Series

[Lalwendë]

There's a new three part series about fantasy fiction currently airing on BBC Four. In a spectacular display of non-joined-up thinking the BBC schedule this at 9pm on Wednesdays, same time as Torchwood...um...might a fantasy fan not be watching some sci-fi eh? Tch. And our DVD-R failed to record it.

Anyway. The first episode has now appeared on BBC iPlayer so if you're quick you can catch it. Marvellously, it mentions Charles Kingsley, E Nesbit and Alan Garner who always get forgotten about in these types of round up of fantasy fiction. If you think Pullman is the big bad guy about Narnia check out Alan Garner. Meh. I was quite taken aback actually as I love Alan Garner's books but I've hardly heard a thing about his opinions. Lots of stuff to think about in this documentary too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b0090blv.shtml

Episode 1 - The Child Within
Episode 2 - The Epic Imagination - next week. This is about Tolkien and Peake.
Episode 3 - Through the Looking Glass

In the last 10 years, fantasy writing has become one of the biggest-selling genres in publishing, spearheaded by the huge success of JK Rowling's Harry Potter books and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series.

In the first of a three-part series, this film explores the role of child heroes and heroines and asks why they have such an enduring appeal to writers of fiction for all ages.

The child hero goes hand in hand with fantasy writing, from Peter Pan to Harry Potter. In Victorian Britain, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies – part updated fairy story, part polemic on the use of child labour – centres on the imaginary life of the book's 10-year-old sweep hero, Tom. In its wake came a number of novels that defined fantasy writing, including classics such as Lewis Carroll's Alice adventures and JM Barrie's Peter Pan.

But as childhood changed through the 20th century, so did the child hero. After the Second World War, CS Lewis created the Narnia books as children's fables, which also incorporated strong Christian themes. In the Sixties, writers such as Alan Garner and Roald Dahl brought a darker kind of fantasy for children, both psychological and bleakly humorous, while in the present day, Philip Pullman's Lyra has become one of the defining child heroes of our age – naughty, playful, inquisitive, but with the fate of the world in her hands.

With contributions from Pullman, Garner, novelists Will Self and Alasdair Gray and critics (and obsessive Harry Potter fans), The Worlds Of Fantasy examines how the child hero grew up, and how fantasy grew with it to become the massive success it is today.

BBC FOUR Wednesday 5 March 2008
The Worlds Of Fantasy – The Epic Imagination Ep 2/3
Wednesday 5 March
9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR
www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour

In the mid-Fifties, two very different writers created epic texts that revolutionised literature. They were JRR Tolkien, the learned Oxford academic and writer of The Lord Of The Rings, and the visionary, surrealist artist Mervyn Peake, creator of the Gormenghast trilogy. They kick-started the modern genre of fantasy that today has successfully morphed from publishing into the realms of movies, TV and video games.

This film tells the story of how these men dreamt up the characters, the languages and the fantasy worlds that made up their vast narrative sagas. It looks at the immensity of Tolkien's project, for which he created Elvish – a new language – as well as detailed maps that chart his fantasy landscape of Middle Earth. It contrasts this with the interior, surreal world of Peake's oppressive castle of Gormenghast, populated by some of the most grotesque characters in world literature.

Gormenghast and The Lord of The Rings could scarcely be more different, and, in the post-War era of kitchen-sink dramas and suburban novels, their imaginary epics were an unprecedented breakthrough for fantasy.

The film goes on to examine how the lives and experiences of these writers fed into the magical worlds they created, from Tolkien's service in the horrific First World War trenches to Peake's childhood in Manchurian China and his witnessing, at first hand, the devastation of the concentration camps in Belsen.

Contributors to this programme include writers Joanne Harris, Kate Mosse, Tracy Chevalier and AS Byatt.

The Worlds Of Fantasy –
Through The Looking Glass Ep 3/3
Wednesday 12 March
9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR
In the last 10 years, fantasy has been one of the biggest forces in popular culture, conquering everything from books to interactive games. Readers, gamers and cinema-goers in their billions now regularly travel to the unique worlds created by writers such as JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling and Philip Pullman.

The final part of The Worlds Of Fantasy asks how this happened and what it says about people. It also asks whether fantasy is the pure escapism many think it is – or whether it has something significant to say about the human condition.

This film sets out to answer those questions, exploring the extraordinary and dazzling work of Terry Pratchett, creator of the Discworld series, which has made him the No. 1 bestselling British male author.

Pratchett's childhood inspiration was the bible of fantasy – Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings, which kick-started the genre's explosion in the Sixties. As writer (and sometime member of rock band Hawkwind) Michael Moorcock explains, fantasy surfed the wave of Sixties drugs culture and was part of a new, radical way of looking at the world.

But fantasy's increasing dominance hasn't simply been about escaping from reality – for the greatest writers it has, rather, been a way of reflecting it. From Pratchett's satires on bureaucracy and global conflict to the new, more politicised generation of writers including Neil Gaiman and China Mieville, fantasy at its best is about who we really are.

With contributions from Pratchett, Gaiman, Moorcock, Pullman and a host of fantasy fans, this film shows how fantasy became a force to be reckoned with.

[Lalwendë]

Did anyone else watch this? I recorded it so i could watch Torchwood and then watched it afterwards - I thought it was good, if rushed! It was fascinating to hear a comparison of Tolkien and Peake though I completely disagreed with what that woman said about how they would not have liked each other's work.

They certainly weren't short of people to comment, including Tom Shippey and Colin Duriez. And my childhood fave, Toyah! They also included a lot of material of Tolkien talking, much of it taken from some of the older BBC documentaries which a lot of people will not have been lucky enough to see.

It's now been made available to watch online at BBC iPlayer. For the next six days only!

What did you think?

[Hookbill the Goomba]

I really enjoyed it. Although I found myself saying 'Ooh. That issue is much more complicated!' and constantly thinking of threads on the Downs.

I missed the last ten minutes, but I think I got the general idea of what they were saying. Although, they did seem to try and portray Peake as in some way superior to Tolkien. I doubt there would be many on these here forums who would say so. But it is interesting to see how vast Tolkien's work is in comparison to others. The Silmarillion and the whole history of Middle Earth is something that really sets Tolkien apart from others. Its hard to find a world as fully developed as Middle Earth.

Tom Shippey is always fun to hear talk about Tolkien.

Also; Andrew Lang name check, very briefly. I was most pleased.

[Lalwendë]

There was a bit of sarcastic comment here when AS Byatt pronounced Rivendell as Riy-vendell

I liked how they got across that Tolkien is just inescapable for any fantasy writer. That's something I've been saying for a while, and it's why you get so many writers who will ferociously say how 'they' are not like Tolkien - an unfortunate thing, but he is just inescapable no matter how much a writer might deny him!

It's interesting how you get people who can't read Tolkien because they find his prose too heavy, yet then you have Peake who has an even more ponderous style!

Maybe people say they like Peake better urely because of this 'inescapability' factor to Tolkien? They feel they must say something else is better? Or maybe it is due to the way Tolkien portrays character, which is not in the modern style; we don't 'see' inside their heads like you do with Peake, we see what their characters are like via their actions, as in the Sagas and old epics. People seem to go more for psychological analysis with characters these days.