This year I’m delighted to be attending the World Fantasy Convention. I’ll be speaking on one panel and doing the con thing the rest of the time. If you’re attending, I hope to see you there! Here’s my panel, later today:
How World War I Changed Fantasy Literature
Time: 2 p.m. – 3 p.m., Thursday, Regency F
Panelists: J. T. Glover, Gary K. Wolfe, Sarah Avery
Description: A discussion of how World War I influenced writers from William Hope Hodgson – who died during the war, and seemed to preview some of its horrors in The Night Land – to Tolkien, who served in the war and whose Lord of the Rings bears resemblances to both The Night Land and his experiences during the war. Scholarly works have been published on the effect the war had on C. S. Lewis and the impact on the Narnia series. As well, the shock of the war may have been responsible for pushing both H.G. Wells and the nascent genre of science fiction out of the literary mainstream and forcing it to create its own subculture.
World Fantasy 2014
