Stories about Stories

Brian Attebery is Professor of English at Idaho State University and the editor of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He is also the coeditor, with Ursula K. Le Guin, of The Norton Book of Science Fiction (Norton, 1997) and the author of Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (Routledge, 2002) among other works.

I highly recommend Brian Attebery's new book. It's a scholarly work, but it reads with bright clarity as takes us back and forth between fantasy and myth, showing not only the connections, but also how the best of fantasy is a roadmap that can return the reader to its source material.

• Table of Contents ; Acknowledgments ; Introduction ; Chapter 1: Fantasy as a Route to Myth ; Taxonomic Interlude: A Note on Genres ; Chapter 2: Make It Old: The Other Mythic Method ; Chapter 3: Silver Lies and Spinning Wheels: Christian Myth in MacDonald and Lewis ; Chapter 4: Romance and Formula, Myth and Memorate ; Chapter 5: Expanding the Territory: Colonial Fantasy ; Chapter 6: Angels, Fantasy, and Belief ; Literalist Interlude: Burning Harry Potter ; Chapter 7: The Postcolonial Fantastic ; Chapter 8: Coyote's Eyes: Situated Fantasy ; Works Cited