Fantasy

Important Fantasy Sites
Fantasy Art Brom: Master of dark fantasy. His worlds are unique, mysterious and dangerous but always strangely inviting. Tim Bradstreet: Bradstreet's art exudes the grime of the street and the sweat and cigarette smell of his characters. Even the pictures of vampires and sorcerers have a strong foothold on reality. Thomas Canty: Beautiful and serene artwork from a great fantasy artist. His work exudes the Pre-Raphaelite mystique, one of many today that have returned to the settings and themes that those 19th century painters made their livings from. Frank Frazetta: The master of fantasy art. Period. Exclamation point. Brian Froud: Quintessential British Faerie artist who seems to steep himself in the folklore and myth of the British Isles Robert Gould: The modern master of Pre-Raphaelite mystique and the leader of today's return to that Romantic movement of fantasy art. John Howe: The other quintessential J.R.R. Tolkien artist. Unlike Alan Lee whose work is brimming with the moods of the ancient Celtic myths that reside in the interstitial fluid of Middle Earth, Howe's reveals the dark and muscular evil of Tokien's creations. Jeffrey Jones A wonderful fantasy artist. All the lyricism of the Pre-Raphaelites mixed with the power and fury of Frank Frazetta flows through Jeffrey Jone's brush. Mike W. Kaluta: A marvelous artist and student of late 19th century illustrators. His figures have a grace and style not normally found today. Nostalgia rubs off his work from the page. Most famous for adapting The Shadow for D.C. Comics. Alan Lee: The quintessential J.R.R. Tolkien artist. His work is brimming with the moods of the ancient Celtic bogs and the blood of the Druids. Ted Nasmith: One of the bright young fantasy illustrators working in the field of Tolkien studies. His work brings a new sense of scope and majesty to the central world in fantasy literature. Keith Parkinson His work for TSR's gaming division brought a much needed brand of naturalism to heroic fantasy. Luis Royo: An artist of uncommon draftsmanship. His heroes are larger than life, and no one draws more beautiful women and women warriors than Luis Royo. P. Craig Russell: A marvelous, classically trained artist whose art nouveau stylings and roccocco filligrees enlivened 1970's comix art. Adapted Elric of Melnibone for Marvel Comics. Charles Vess: is the modern heir to the old-world, mythic landscapes of Arthur Rackham. HIs work reeks of the Celtic woods of Britain. Barry W. Smith: A legendary comix artist. His style is baroque and stylized drawing from the richness of the Old Masters. Created the legendary art conglomerate The Studio with mates Kaluta, Wrightson and Jeff Jones. Yoshitaka Amano: A brilliant multi-media artist equally at ease designing games for the Sony Playstation or for Japanese animation houses. His collected works have shown in galleries across the world. An accomplished fantasy artist.	Fantasy Authors Clive Barker: Stephen King called him the future of modern horror. That may have been premature at the time, but he certainly has become a multi-media phenomenon with credits in film and the theater as well. In the end he is a sublimely threatening novelist who challenges the reader's basic nature with every paragraph as great horror should. Peter S. Beagle: Author of the Last Unicorn which is the penultimate classic of modern high fantasy. His books are always immensely readable and accomplished. Stephen Brust A welcome heir to the crown of Fritz Leiber who created the urban heroic fantasy genre. Brust's Draegera series creates a deeply personal mythology based more on Eastern European fairy tales and myths than the usual pseudo-Tolkien-esque fantasies lesser writers have produced.  Jonathan Carroll A literary wunderkind whose novels have the supposed sophistication and wit of any mainstream novel with the trappings of real genre. Call it magic realist if you want but we in the know realize who our great fantasy writers are: Jonathan Carroll is one of them. Nancy Collins: A great writer of gothic tinged, dark fantasy and horror. Her characters are warped and wounded, at the fringes of the fantastique. The original punk queen of the vampires, her Sonja Blue character would eat Buffy for lunch. Glen Cook: His Black Company series is a soldier's eye view of a heroic fantasy from within the ranks of the last of the mercenary companies of the South. The grime and stench of battle comes oozing off the page. Charles DeLint: Charles DeLlint's work argues for the defenition that fantasy does not have to escape the world to be effective fantasy. His novels are worlds much like our own that touch however much to a world that is older and stranger, the world of the Druids. Raymond Feist: A gamer and a writer in the same package who writes like a writer who decided one day that his game was as interesting to others as it was to himself. A thank you to him who thought that way. Robin Hobb: Acclaimed writer of the Assassin Trilogy. Her finely detailed and original world speaks for the care and originality that is so lacking in most ther writers of this genre. J.V. Jones: A practioner of classic adventure fantasy and a writer as easy to read and acomplished as the other, more famous, English - female - initialed fantasy writer. Robert Jordan: Though his Wheel of Time series has recently careened out of control in weight and mass and dangling plotlines, no other modern fantasy novelist has bothered to create such a massive series as detailed and internally coherant as Jordan. The War and Peace (x9) of the high fantasy novel. Guy Gavrel Kay: Author of Tigana and the Fionavar Tapestry, along with the Lions of Al-Rassan, which are all classicly imagined high fantasy in the vein of Tolkien, Peter Beagle and Evangeline Walton. That he served as editor along with Christopher Tolkien on The Silmarillion is even more of a testament to his breadth of talent. Tanith Lee: An author of almost overwhelming stylistic and thematic integrity. Every novel is inventive, original and thought-provoking. Ignore the trappings of fantasy. Read her. George R.R. Martin: This new fantasy epic from one of the most respected authors in science fiction literature shows what a truly gifted author can do to even the most cliched situations and settings. Martin brings the exactness of historical literature to the stock high fantasy novel. It will never be the same again. Michael Moorcock: Elric stood the heroic fantasy novel on end. A pale, albino sorceror who would bring the destruction of his world, he was a far cry from the muscular and heroic Conan clones that had cornered the market at the time. One of many responsible for the New Wave movement that brought modern literary forms to genre in the 1960's. Tad Williams: A marvelous writer who just happens to be writing all-encompassing epics of heroic fantasy. A wonderful writer in a jungle of hacks and has-beens.	Classic Authors James B. Cabell: One of the original fantasy authors writing in the English language. An old world stylist living in the new world and one of the most influential obscure writers to have ever lived. Wrote an epic across generations in the life of one man - Don Manuel of Poictesme and his heirs . Lord Dunsany: An early master of high fantasy, the 18th Lord Dunsany inspired an entire genre, including writers like H.P. Lovecraft and R.E. Howard only to be half forgotten amongst even hard core fanatics. His King of Elfland's Daughter is brilliant in prose and wonder from a place beyond the fields we know." E.R. Eddison: Creator of one of the first wholely original worlds in fantasy literature. A writer whose characters are larger than life, and always strive for the ancient virtues of glory to kingdom and to themselves. An influence of J.R.R. Tolkien's. Robert E. Howard: THE great sword and sorcery writer. Influential beyond his time and questionable talent. A writing savant who put everything of himself into his characters, of which Conan was the best and most famous, and consequently lost his desire to live when his mother died of cancer. He died of a bullet hole to the temple in his early thirties. A wasted life. Fritz Lieber: Grand old master of Sword and Sorcery and of the intelligent and adult variety. The most influential writer besides Robert E. Howard and a much more accomplished writer I might add. H.P. Lovecraft: The many tentacled menace of Cthulhu and his ilk would have never stirred the imaginations of Peter Straub, Stephen King or Clive Barker if H.P. Lovecraft had never writter his many short stories and novelettes in this wide ranging and highly influential saga. GeorgeMcDonald: Victorian preacher, writer, lecturer and early fantasist who was a friend to both Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll and a major influence on both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Abraham Merritt: One of the great and nearly forgotten pulp authors. Noted for the Ship of Istar and Burn, Witch Burn! William Morris: Pre-Raphaelite master and early fantasist. Writer of one of the earliest created world novels in The Well at the World's End Talbot Mundy: Adventurer and early pulp author of weird fiction. Writer of Tros of Samothrace and others. Mervyn Peake: Singular author of what can only be described as an alternate world fantasia of crumbling Gothic architecture and modern satirical excess in The Ghormenghast Trilogy. Clark A. Smith: Poet, artist and pulp fiction writer extraordinaire, this early fantasy, sci-fi and horror writer was one of the original masters in these infant genres. A contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Evangeline Walton: Famous for her rendition of the Tales of the Mabinogion which constitute the interstitial matter of Celtic Mythology. Her work was witty and immensely likeable while unfortunately being lost in the murk of much modern fantasy.