Fantasy is a type of fiction that includes magical or supernatural elements, often set in make-believe worlds and featuring imaginary beings.
This genre began in books and plays. Starting in the 20th century, it grew to include movies, TV shows, graphic novels, manga, cartoons, and video games.
English-speaking critics sometimes call this genre "fantastic literature." An older way to spell the word is "phantasy."
Fantasy is usually different from science fiction and horror because it does not focus on science or scary themes, though these can sometimes appear in fantasy stories. In popular culture, fantasy stories often take place in settings that look like Earth but have a sense of something different or unusual.
Characteristics
Fantasy stories often include magic, magical beings, or other supernatural elements as key parts of the story, themes, or settings. These stories frequently feature characters like witches, sorcerers, and magical creatures.
A key feature of fantasy is that the stories do not need to follow real history or natural laws to make sense. This is different from realistic fiction, which must follow real-world history and natural rules. In fantasy writing, authors create unique worlds, characters, and situations that might not exist in real life through a process called worldbuilding.
Many fantasy writers use real stories and myths from around the world for inspiration. While magic and supernatural elements are common in fantasy, they are not always required.
Fantasy is often compared to science fiction and horror because all three are types of speculative fiction. Fantasy differs from science fiction because fantasy stories do not need to be scientifically possible, even if they seem strange. Science fiction stories may seem unlikely but are based on logical scientific or technological ideas. To make fantasy stories work, authors rely on readers being willing to imagine things that are not real, a concept called suspension of disbelief. Although both fantasy and horror use supernatural elements, they are different. Horror stories focus on fear caused by the main characters' weaknesses or inability to face challenges.
History
Fantasy elements have been part of literature since the beginning. These elements also appear in ancient religious texts, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. The ancient Babylonian creation story, the Enûma Eliš, describes the god Marduk defeating the goddess Tiamat. This story shows a battle between good and evil in the universe, a theme common in modern fantasy. Ancient Egypt also had stories that mixed fantasy with other genres. The Tales of the Court of King Khufu, found in the Westcar Papyrus and written around 1800 BC, includes stories with elements of history, fantasy, and humor. Egyptian funerary texts contain myths, such as the stories of Osiris and his son Horus.
In ancient Greece, stories with fantasy elements were popular among adults. The plays of Aristophanes, such as The Birds, include magical events, like a man convincing birds to build a city in the clouds and challenging Zeus’s power. Works like Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Apuleius’s The Golden Ass helped shape the fantasy genre by blending myths with personal stories. These stories often describe humans changing into animals or objects. Ideas from Plato and early Christian writers also influenced modern fantasy. Plato used stories to explain his ideas, and early Christian writers used parables to teach spiritual lessons. This ability to find meaning in non-literal stories became a key part of fantasy.
Fantasy elements also appear in Islamic, Hindu, and Chinese traditions. One well-known Islamic story is One Thousand and One Nights (also called The Arabian Nights), a collection of folktales. Characters like Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ali Baba from this story are famous in Western culture. Hindu mythology, which evolved from earlier Vedic stories, includes many fantastical tales. For example, The Panchatantra uses animal fables and magical stories to teach lessons about politics. Chinese traditions influenced the fantasy style called Chinoiserie, which inspired writers like Ernest Bramah and Barry Hughart.
Beowulf, a famous Old English tale, has greatly influenced the fantasy genre. Many fantasy works, such as John Gardner’s Grendel, are based on its story. Norse mythology, found in the Elder Edda and Younger Edda, includes gods like Odin, dwarves, elves, dragons, and giants. These elements appear in many fantasy stories. The folklores of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland sometimes inspire "Celtic" fantasy stories. The Welsh tradition, especially the legend of King Arthur and the Mabinogion, has been particularly influential.
Some works make it hard to tell if they are fantasy or other genres. For example, it is unclear whether the writers of A Midsummer Night's Dream or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight believed the magical events in their stories were real. This uncertainty makes it difficult to say when modern fantasy began.
Modern fantasy literature is often said to start with George MacDonald, a Scottish author who wrote Phantastes (1858) and The Princess and the Goblin (1872). These books are considered the first fantasy novels written for adults. MacDonald influenced writers like J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Another important writer of the time was William Morris, who wrote fantasy novels like The Wood Beyond the World (1894) and The Well at the World's End (1896).
Fantasy fiction became more popular in the 20th century. Authors like Lord Dunsany, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and Edgar Rice Burroughs helped shape the genre. They created the "lost world" subgenre, which was very popular in the early 1900s. Classic children’s fantasy stories, such as Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, were also published around this time.
Fantasy for adults was not always accepted. Writers often had to include fantasy elements in stories meant for children. For example, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys included fantasy, even though his adult works only touched on it. Books like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) helped make fantasy seem like children’s literature, even when it was meant for adults.
Political and social changes can affect how people view fantasy. In early 20th-century China, the New Culture Movement criticized traditional fantasy stories, calling them backward. Later, when the Communist Party took power, stories about the supernatural were still discouraged. Fantasy in China became popular again after the Cultural Revolution ended.
Fantasy became a major part of pulp magazines in the West. The first all-fantasy magazine, Weird Tales, was published in 1923. Magazines like The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (founded in 1949) helped spread fantasy stories to a wide audience. These magazines also helped science fiction become popular, and the two genres became linked.
By 1950, sword and sorcery stories, like Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, gained popularity. However, it was the rise of high fantasy—especially J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—that brought fantasy into the mainstream. Other series, like C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea, helped make fantasy a widely accepted genre.
Fantasy has continued to grow in popularity, especially in the 21st century. Series like J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, and George R. R
Media
Several fantasy films have become very popular and successful. The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson, and the Harry Potter films are two of the most successful film series in movie history.
Fantasy role-playing games (RPGs) appear in many forms of media. Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) was the first tabletop role-playing game and is still the most successful and influential. A 1999 survey in the United States found that 6% of people aged 12 to 35 had played role-playing games. Of those who play regularly, about two-thirds play D&D. In 2005, more than half of all RPG products sold were branded Dungeons & Dragons.
The science fantasy role-playing game series Final Fantasy is a leading example in the role-playing video game genre. As of 2012, it remained among the top ten best-selling video game franchises. Magic: The Gathering, the first collectible card game, has a fantasy theme and is also a major force in the industry.
Classification
Fantasy includes many types of stories that are defined by their themes, settings, or how they mix with other kinds of stories, like science fiction or horror. These types include the following:
In her book Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008), Farah Mendlesohn created a system to classify fantasy stories. She based this system on how the magical or imaginary parts of the story appear in the world of the story. (She also noted that some fantasy stories do not fit into any of these categories.) The system includes the following groups:
Subculture
People who work in publishing, editing, writing, art, and research meet every year at the World Fantasy Convention (WFC) to discuss the fantasy genre. The World Fantasy Awards are given during this event. The first WFC took place in 1975, and it has happened every year since then, in different cities each time.
Other events, such as Florida's FX Show and MegaCon, are science fiction conventions that also attract fans of fantasy and horror. Anime conventions like Ohayocon and Anime Expo often include screenings of fantasy, science fantasy, and dark fantasy shows and movies. Examples include Majutsushi Orphen (fantasy), Sailor Moon (urban fantasy), Berserk (dark fantasy), and Spirited Away (fantasy). Many science-fiction/fantasy and anime conventions also focus on specific groups within the larger fan communities.
According to 2013 data from the fantasy publisher Tor Books, 67% of writers for historical, epic, or high fantasy are men, and 33% are women. In contrast, 57% of writers for urban fantasy or paranormal romance are women, and 43% are men.
Analysis
Fantasy is studied in many subjects, such as English, history, and cultural studies. Some works explore how ideas from the medieval past connect to modern popular culture.
The French writer Tzvetan Todorov says the fantastic is a place between the real world and the supernatural. In these stories, strange events happen, but it is unclear whether they are real or imagined. However, this idea is not widely used in English writing. The French word fantastique is used to describe a narrower idea than the English word fantastic, which is a synonym for fantasy. Differences in how countries define fantasy have caused debates, such as the one started by Stanislaw Lem.
In her book Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (1981), Rosemary Jackson agrees with some parts of Todorov’s theory but also questions it. She argues that fantasy is not just about escaping reality or imagining better worlds. Instead, she says fantasy is connected to real life, especially the social and cultural times when stories are written. Jackson explains that strange or unreal parts of fantasy stories are created to show how society’s rules and beliefs are limited. These stories challenge those rules and suggest new ways of thinking. She believes Todorov’s theory is too narrow, focusing only on how fantasy works in stories, not how it connects to culture. Jackson also suggests that fantasy should be studied as a way of storytelling, not just a genre. She uses ideas from psychology, such as those of Sigmund Freud, to explain how fantasy relates to the human mind.
Other ways to understand fantasy depend on the time and society in which stories are written. In their book The Female Fantastic: Gender and the Supernatural in the 1890s and 1920s, Lizzie Harris McCormick, Jennifer Mitchell, and Rebecca Soares explain how changes in society during the late 1800s and early 1900s influenced fantasy writing. During this time, women were gaining more freedom and equality. Public concerns about these changes, along with women’s growing roles in society, led to new types of stories that mixed the supernatural with the everyday. These stories, like the uncertain roles of women, showed that boundaries between the real and the strange were unclear. At the time, society was unsure about women’s roles, just as fantasy stories were unsure about whether they were real or supernatural. This period allowed stories to reflect the complexity of both the genre and women’s changing positions in society. Many women began to challenge traditional ideas about gender, showing more varied ways of being, such as embracing traits often linked to men or other identities. Fantasy stories mirrored these changes by making it hard for readers to know whether the supernatural was real, just as it was hard to know whether women’s roles were fully equal or not.