| Re: Must fantasy include magic
As you probably know, I love the Gormenghast books. And I think what makes them fantasy is three-fold:
1) They describe a culture and a way of life so gloriously grotesque and improbable that they have only the most tenuous connection to reality.
2) Though there is nothing directly supernatural, there is little of the truly natural. Many of the characters are so very much larger than life (or, in a few cases, like Nannie Slagg and the wretched Bright Carvers, smaller), that they are ruled by unnatural obsessions and unnatural passions.
3) There is no other genre or classification into which they could possibly fit. |