Metaphysical Fantasy

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I was trying to get a loose categorization on a group of projects I'm working on, and I found it really difficult to find a label. Not an extremely, but something I could use to sum up the general similiarities between the stories. The closest I could come was metaphysical fantasy, which I found on the Fantasy Sub-genres wiki article. It still didn't fit perfectly, but the next closest choices were dark fantasy, which didn't seem to fit the general tone/atmosphere, and maybe gothic, which was a stretch at best.

So now I want to find out more about this apparent sub-genre that I've personally never heard much of. The wiki lists a few books as examples, including Moorcock's "Elric" stories, Fortress of Grey Ice by JV Jones, and some other stuff. The explanation wasn't all that clear, and the examples were not many.

Would anyone care to expand on this term/sub-genre?
 

Smiling Ted

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I was trying to get a loose categorization on a group of projects I'm working on, and I found it really difficult to find a label. Not an extremely, but something I could use to sum up the general similiarities between the stories. The closest I could come was metaphysical fantasy, which I found on the Fantasy Sub-genres wiki article. It still didn't fit perfectly, but the next closest choices were dark fantasy, which didn't seem to fit the general tone/atmosphere, and maybe gothic, which was a stretch at best.

So now I want to find out more about this apparent sub-genre that I've personally never heard much of. The wiki lists a few books as examples, including Moorcock's "Elric" stories, Fortress of Grey Ice by JV Jones, and some other stuff. The explanation wasn't all that clear, and the examples were not many.

Would anyone care to expand on this term/sub-genre?


Hmm...judging from the source definitions, perhaps a more accurate term would be "pompous fantasy."
 

veinglory

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Metaphysical fantasy comments on metaphysics: the explanation of things/realms beyond ordinary perception. It does lean pretentious IMHO.
 

Smiling Ted

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I don't know if "pompous" is the word I would use. perhaps you could expand on your reaction?

Okey-doke.

"Less certain of himself or his destiny then ever, the albino king must perforce bring his powers of sorcery into play, conscious that he has embarked upon a course of action by no means at one with his original conception of the way he wished to live his life. And now matters must be settled. He must begin to rule. He must become cruel. But even in this he will find himself thwarted."
 

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You may create a multi genre in this case or use the closest. My present WIP also don't have an exact genre. It can be considered as a "epic dark metaphysical heroic high fantasy" or something like that as it's containing many things from different genre, but I simply using "epic high fantasy" instead. That's the easiest solution and at least it's covering the greater part of the story. Use something which is covering around the 75% of your project. The rest 25%... well, that's going to be the surprise factor for the reader as a different genre also will be present. But that's not a problem.
 

Straka

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It would help to know the purpose of determining such a definition, academic pursuit or for marketing reasons?

The reason I point this out is I've read essays arguing the scope of Urban Fantasy, one even arguing that The Hunchback of Notre Dame is urban fantasy, another suggested any fantasy book where the city if a major character. Though the more marketing, agent minded definition I understand to be something more like modern day setting with vamps, werewolves, and alike.*

*Disclaimer: I don't mean to start a debate of UF but rather wanted to show the difference between an academic definition and a marketing one.
 
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Well, I've never read the "Elric" books myself, Ted, so I'll concede you this point. :)


Free, that is a generaly acceptable point. However, it relies somewhat on each individuals ideas of what conventions are most important to a particular genre. Urban fantasy has always had issues with this. Is it the city? Some would argue it isn't. Does it have to be set in our world? Many would say yes. If I included every possible genre that could be used to describe a lot of my stories (the ones that are primarily fantasy, if you add the sci-fi it gets even more complicated), the list might go like this:

heroic, dark, urban, metaphysical, high, historical, mythic, manners, romantic

Now, it is more than likely that some label or group of labels is more relevant to a particular story. But it can be hard to decide which.
How would you react to a "dark, urban, metaphysical mythology of manners", say? Or a "dark, romantic, historical, heroic fantasy"?

Anyway, no combination that I can think of describes the set of stories I was hoping to generalize. They are all incredibly similar as far as I can tell, but the set could hold the entire list of terms above, sans maybe "urban". They might drop on term, and keep the others. I guess you could divide them into two sets, one keeping the "epic, heroic", and the other not.


I had aother set I couldn't label well (different than this), where I just gve up and called it "chimney-punk." Which to anyone besides me would probably seem like an entirely arbitrary appellation.
 
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Juliette Wade

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Liosse, I'm not sure that finding a definition for metaphysical fantasy is going to be the best course of action for you, from a marketing standpoint. If you are, for example, looking through AgentQuery to try to find people to submit to, then I would suggest trying to address their descriptions of their preferences. I've done a lot of looking through there for my own fantasy novel, and I've never once come across someone who says they're looking for "metaphysical fantasy." In which case, describing your book like that might be construed by them as vague or possibly as telling them they won't be interested - if you see my point. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who will say things like "I don't like cliche" or "I like unusual twists on traditional fantasy ideas" - in which case you could write to them and say how your book fits that description perfectly. You know it's fantasy, so that gives you your search terms. After that, it can be really useful to try to look at more specifics and tailor query letters, etc. accordingly.
 

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I agree with Juliette. I couldn't decide how to place one of my works. I was considering dark or low fantasy, but it had traits of S&S too (which I was afraid to call it.) Then someone suggested just labeling it fantasy for an agent. I fell more comfortable keeping it loose and free.
 

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I haven't read that particular series by JV Jones, but I have read another of hers and found it to be a good fantasy read, if a little bit by the numbers.
 
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