Edit Fantasy Novels Set In The Past
Are there any FantasyNovelsSetInThePast? _Is this a trick question? Of course there are._ There are millions of fantasy stories set in pseudo-medieval or -dark-ages environments, but those aren't actually our world, so it's not really the past. Fantasy set in the actual historical past is much less common. SF set in the past is rarer still. There are certainly novels set in the past, but these are usually essentially mimetic; they may be imaginative (or inaccurate, depending on how you look at it), but they are generally not fantastic. One pattern that does come up is of a (future) historian travelling back in time to do research, but usually ending up involved in events. One example is 'FireWatch' by ConnieWillis, in which a historian travels to 1940s London, and ends up being part of a fire-watch team during the Blitz. Another example is 'TheDoomsdayBook' also by ConnieWillis, in which an Oxford student travels back to the time of the plague (although we are not sure _which_ plague! _BlackDeath?_). _There's a case to be made that these novels aren't really fantasy; the only suspension of disbelief required is at the start, for the time travel. The meat of the stories doesn't have a pervasive fantastic character. Is that right?_ There is, of course, AlternateHistory. Often, these stories are set in the chronological past, but not that of our world, so it's not clear that they are really 'set in _the_ past'. If we admit them, obvious examples are 'FatherLand', by Thomas Harris, 'SSGB', by LenDeighton, and 'TheManInTheHighCastle', by PhilipKDick. Of these, the first two are 'straight' AlternateHistory, whereas the last is, as you'd expect, crazed Dickian SF. 'CryptoNomicon', by NealStephenson, is SF, and has sections set in the past. However, the stuff in the past is essentially background: it's neither AlternateHistory nor SF _per se_. NiallHarrison has suggested 'ASH', by MaryGentle, as a fantasy novel set in the past, but was not sure whether this was really so. However, one good example would be TheDrawingOfTheDark by TimPowers. It posits that behind certain historical realities was a magical underpinning and a mystical war between East and West that paralleled historical invasions. Without being an expert on the history of the period, I could not say if it truly was historically accurate, but it certainly gave the impression that it was not AlternateHistory. _Isn't SteamPunk a whole subgenre of this?_ Isn't that SF set in the past? Doesn't the meanings attatched to the terms 'fantasy' and 'the past' laid down above mean that there are no FantasyNovelsSetInThePast _by definition_? To be in the past, it has to be in our world; but to be fantasy, it can't be in our world. _Not so. If the DarkIsRisingSequence was set in the 15th century, they would be FantasyNovelsSetInThePast._
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