Younger people, on being exposed to the events of the world prior to 1980 by means of the daguerreotypes so popular in those long-ago days, may be misled by the conventions surrounding such portraits into thinking people were a lot more serious than they actually were. When recording an image is a matter of many minutes, one is inclined to treat the occasion as a formal one.
However, archaeological evidence shows that the hominins of that era were indistinguishable from anatomically modern humans. Despite being hobbled by rudimentary technology, they were persons in most senses of the word, capable of virtually the full range of cognitive processes true humans now display. This includes humour. If you think that there might have been no comedic fantasy before 1980, you might want to consider these five vintage American fantasies.
The Stray Lamb by Thorne Smith (1929)
Mr. T. Lawrence Lamb enjoys a comfortable middle-class life, save for a few minor defects: a debilitating self-loathing, a job he grudgingly tolerates, a commute he loathes, and a wife whose affections are for good reason focused far from Lamb. But he can enjoy whatever is left over until he retires or dies of ennui.
A seeming chance encounter upends his perfectly conventional life. Lamb is unaccountably afflicted with a tendency to transform into animals (of one kind or another) at inconvenient moments. This leads to scandal after scandal. It also leads to a dalliance with the attractive Sandra. It’s enough to drive a man to drink. Not that Lamb (or anyone else in this novel) needed much encouragement to drink.
The book is funny, in the way that all Thorne Smith novels are funny. Not as funny now, after a hundred years of social change, but still amusing.
In defense of Mrs. Lamb: while the novel reads as if it had been written by a man trapped in an unhappy existence, a man relieving his despair with unlikely fantasies, it’s pretty clear that marriage to Mr. Lamb wouldn’t be all that much fun for Mrs. Lamb. Blowing up the marriage and forcing Lamb to reinvent himself was probably best of all concerned.
Silverlock by John Myers Myers (1949)
A. Clarence Shandon (M.B.A., Wisconsin) prides himself in being a practical man who disdains the childish distractions of myth and literature. Thus, Shandon did not think twice about boarding a ship named Naglfar. Surviving the shipwreck that follows, Shandon’s only thought on washing ashore is survival, not curiosity about the Commonwealth of Letters in which he finds himself.
Befriended and guided by Commonwealth native Golias, Shandon—now renamed Silverlock—wanders the Commonwealth, encountering figures whom the well-read will easily recognize as figures of myth and fiction. Shandon, being the proudly blinkered man that he is, remains oblivious. However, even a man such as Shandon cannot resist being transformed by the Commonwealth of Letters.
The author’s assumption here is that readers will be far more conversant than is Shandon with the tales referenced in Shandon’s journey. Poor Shandon’s failure to understand the significance of his encounters serves a higher purpose: amusing John Myers Myers’ audience as they watch Shandon carefully step on yet another rake, having learned nothing from the previous rake.
“The Roaring Trumpet” by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (1940)
Suspecting that his patients’ mental issues are caused by resonance with other universes, psychologist Reed Chalmers devises a cunning system of symbolic logic that could, if properly applied, transport a person from one universe to another. Not being foolhardy, he hesitates to put his creation to a practical test. Death in another universe is still death.
Enter Harold Shea, a man bored with caution. Dissatisfied with mundane life, he sets out for a universe of Irish mythology. He arrives in a land of Norse myth, specifically one on the brink of Ragnarok. Still, a modern man like Shea should have no trouble impressing the natives…if the world he was in obeyed the laws of our universe rather than those of Norse legend. Shea’s prospects seem quite dismal.
If you are going to pioneer a groundbreaking and for all you know extremely dangerous new science, try very hard to determine first whether you are the protagonist in an ongoing comic fantasy series or a grim example of the consequences of hubris. The easiest way to tell the two apart? If your story is in Unknown, you may be battered and humiliated but you will probably survive. If alternatively, you discover you are in Weird Tales, make sure your affairs are in order.
“The Compleat Werewolf,” Anthony Boucher (1942)
Heartbroken to discover that coed-turned-moving-picture-star Gloria Garton has better romantic options than her former teacher, Professor Wolfe, Wolfe proceeds to drown his sorrows in a seedy bar. There, self-declared magician Ozymandias reveals to Wolfe a secret that Wolfe’s name probably should have suggested: Wolfe is a werewolf; he can unlock his nature by means of a secret technique the Ozymandias will teach him. Once a boring old academic, now a dangerous wolf!
Embracing his newfound powers with more enthusiasm than prudence, Wolfe proceeds to discover all the ways in which lycanthropy can change a man’s life. For example, transitioning from a socially acceptable unclothed wolf into a less socially acceptable unclothed professor in a classroom is an excellent way to find oneself available for new employment opportunities. For another, a man turned wolf in the right place at the right time could confound a Nazi plot… if he doesn’t get himself shot first.
One of the many little catches Wolfe discovers too late is that while changing from wolf to human requires only someone utter the word “Absarka!”, wolves cannot talk. However, it could have been much worse; Ozymandias mentions in passing the tale of a man who discovered he could transform into a full-sized diplodocus. Unfortunately, he was standing in a decidedly smaller-than-diplodocus-sized house at the time.
“The Little Witch of Elm Street” by Mildred Clingerman (1956)
Nina appears to be an adorable little four-year-old girl, a child over whom besotted adults might coo. She is, however, the neighborhood menace, a child towards whom adults might direct muttered curses as they stanch bleeding calves left in the wake of the girl’s latest tricycle outrage. To quote one of Nina’s unfortunate neighbors, Nina is “seven kinds of unmitigated hell.”
Twelve-year-old Garnet Bayard has her own theory about Nina. Garnet does not think Nina is seven kinds of unmitigated hell. Garnet believes that Nina is a victim of demonic possession. Someone will have to rid Nina of her devil. Garnet is determined to be that person. Good thing Garnet is a witch.
A common trope in what one might call “late baby boom speculative fiction” is a terrifying child against whose powers potential adults cannot prevail. In SF, the child might be a prodigy, psionic, or a mutant. Nina is the fantasy analog, a possessed little girl. I don’t know what in particular would make children such figures of dread fascination in the 1950s.
***
Old-time Americans being as capable of humour as modern humans and equipped with the rudimentary written language needed to record their tales, there are many of comedic fantasy tales like the ones that I have just noted. Perhaps you have dabbled in the detritus of the distant past and have your own favourite comedic tales, tales that I have inexplicably overlooked. If so, feel free to mention them in comments, which are, as ever, below.
In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, four-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021 and 2022 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.
A title I overlooked because I have not reread it in half a century: Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, in which a 19th Century American finds himself in Arthurian Britain, which the American sets out to modernize. Hijinks ensue.
I can recommend the darkly comic novel The Unfortunate Fursey, by Mervyn Wall, from 1946 — the title character is a 10th Century Irish monk who, er, unfortunately attracts the attention of the Devil — and as a result loses his position in the monastery and gains a reputation as a powerful sorcerer.
[And I see that with great brilliance I missed the word “American” in the title of the post!]
@1: I was wondering why that one had not been included. I’m sorry I don’t have something different to add.
I could have also mentioned James Branch Cabell‘s Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice, except the main thing I remember about my attempt to read it is that I do not appear to have Cabell-shaped receptors in the humour centre of my brain. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice tried to have the book suppressed, a failed effort that greatly raised the book’s public profile.
(Also an inspiration for Heinlein’s Job)
How about Leonard Wibberley’s The Mouse that Roared?
That’s more SF than Fantasy, isn’t it? And I mentioned it in another essay.
I think some of Vance’s fantasies were supposed to be funny or at least sardonic but again, I have the wrong brain to properly appreciate that aspect of his fiction.
I know it’s SF, not fantasy, but Henry Kuttner’s tales of Gallagher, an inventor who can only invent while drunk and then can’t remember why he invented the result, are hilarious. The vain robot he saddles himself with is particularly memorable.
And then there’s Mary Chase’s hilarious play =Harvey,= about a man whose best friend may (or may not) be a six foot tall rabbit….
A short story in this category that I’ve always loved is “The Talent of Harvey” by Howard Fast. First printing 1973, so it qualifies as before 1980. The humor is very dry, but I always find myself giggling and smiling widely before I get halfway through. Howard Fast was good at that humor. I should read more of his stuff.
I love Silverlock, and carefully annotated my copy (in pencil) with the names of all the stories I could identify. Pretty sure I didn’t find them all.
A Connecticut Yankee is moderately funny if you have a passing familiarity with the sort of medieval romance/adventure stories that were popular in the 19th century. Some experience with the original, print version of Ivanhoe (not one of the movie versions) is probably sufficient. Knowing something about the state of journalism in late 19th century America is also helpful, though most of those jokes are fairly obvious in context. Here, reading one or two of Twain’s pieces on the subject elsewhere is probably enough.
Silverlock is absolutely wonderful and has, for my money, one of the best opening lines ever: “If I had cared to live, I would have died.” Not the sort of opening you might expect from a comedic novel, but it fits.
My humour receptors are different, so I can whole-heartedly recommend Jurgen, and some of its companions like Figures of Earth and The Silver Stallion.
During my reading-the-whole-of-Unknown project, I did find those receptors a bit out of tune with the times – while the magazine did, after a rather unfocused start, settle down into purveying (mostly) lightweight humourous fantasy, it turns out that the prevailing sense of humour at the time was distinctly robust, and readers could chuckle heartily over stories that racked up quite alarming body counts. Like the one where the hilarious punch line involves a young woman being killed and eaten, possibly in that order. Or the one where the protagonist finds out, too late, that his friendly hosts are a werewolf, a vampire, and a demon, and in their upcoming evening meal, he is to star as the main course. Or the one where the amusing properties of the place where the protagonist happens to be… mean that his urgent call to the emergency services, regarding a severed artery of his, won’t be received until twenty-four hours have passed.
Life, it seems, was cheap in the pages of Unknown.
See also Horace Gold’s “The Trouble With Water.” And there was Crockett Johnson’s comic strip Barnaby, whose fairy godfather turns out to be Mr. O’Malley, a cigar smoking and dues-owing member of the Gnomes, Elves, and Little Peoples’ Chowder and Marching Society. Which I seem to recall being referenced in some humorous fantasy, but I don’t remember what.
Poul Anderson’s Operation Chaos (its sequel is, I believe, later than the time frame of this article) was humourous fantasy set in a world like ours but one in which magic had been re-discovered and put on a scientific basis early in the 20th century. A lot of the humour came from Anderson’s application of magical techniques and entities to contemporary situations and needs.
I enjoyed Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade, although the aliens may make it SF. Medieval people always seem like fantasy.
I just re-read The Stray Lamb- always excellent. My favorite Smith is Rain in the Doorway.
There is a Silverlock Companion for assistance with the characters. JMM didn’t write a lot of fantasy, but his historical work is also excellent- and has lots of funny bits.
Gosh, the Princess Bride is an obvious choice that I somehow overlooked.
I can whole-heartedly recommend Vance’s Dying Earth stories. It does not take itself seriously. It has the initial impression of classic fantasy like Lovecraft or Cabell, but turned up to 11. It abounds with pompous characters and malevolent monsters that can be tricked by the sufficiently clever. And as soon as you are done with one absurd situation or character, there is another. This is what makes it truly funny. There is an egalitarian spirit to it. Everything on Earth is at least somewhat ridiculous. Everyone has foibles, but there also is great personality and creativity and diversity. The humor is wry, always served with a twist.
Since we seem to be drawing very large boundaries around “comedic” (a term I would never have applied to Silverlock), ISTM that The Face in the Frost (John Bellairs, 1969) is a counterexample to footnote #1; when asked how he could have produced such a wonderful work, Bellairs spoke of several miserable months on the other side of the Atlantic from his usual haunts near Boston. Parts of the book are dark enough that some people can’t stand to read them when alone at night; I was introduced to it because a couple of the spells are double dactyls (something my local group was running through at the time), and was rereading it for its whimsy just last night — the house of the wizard Prospero (“And not the one you’re thinking of!'”), filled with “things that trouble antique dealers’ dreams”, plus “the only magic mirror that wallows in the trash of future centuries”, sets a tone without offsetting the serious problem he and Roger Bacon face.
@9: there is a thoroughly-annotated edition of Silverlock if you want to check your notes. (Unfortunately not an e-book yet; much of the backlist is being replicated as e-books, but conversion and securing rights are both non-trivial.)
@16: I reread The Eyes of the Overworld a few years ago and found it hadn’t aged well; it’s a whole book (rather than scattered scenes) of someone who makes Falstaff look noble, and takes such a lighthearted view of sexual assault that I wouldn’t give it to anyone without a trigger warning. OTOH, it will probably entertain anyone who likes watching a small-time Falstaffian repeatedly dumped in the river due to overestimating his own cleverness; humor is very individual. And I can’t speak to most of the other books in the series as it has been a long time since I’ve read any of them.
Something else worth knowing about The Dying Earth stories, IIRC, is that in at least one book—I think it’s The Eyes of the Overworld—every single female character is raped and/or murdered. This is one way the classic sword-and-sorcery action is turned up to 11. Vance has a fun way of putting sentences together (I’ve liked other things by him), but some readers may have trouble finding the funny in the story’s events.
@1 While Connecticut Yankee is, of course, deeply humorous throughout, it is, beneath the surface, deadly serious. Time for me to re-read it for the nth time – it is one of my all-time favorites.
James Thurber’s “The Unicorn in the Garden” belongs on this list.
There’s a lot of American funny fantasy for kids:
Edward Eager’s children’s books like Half Magic (Wah! Oo! Mrgltz!) and Knight’s Castle.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder (sp?)’s Black and Blue Magic — actually I haven’t read that one since I was in grade school, but I remember it as being hilarious.
The OZ books by L. Frank Baum and, later, Ruth Plumly Thompson have some really funny stuff in them (not so much the first one).
Dare I mention Xanth? I dare. I don’t recommend it, mind you, but I mention it.
And, not for kids, we must not forget the unintentionally hilarious “Eye of Argon” (linked in case someone on this thread has somehow not been blessed with it).
@21: How could I have forgotten Thurber? I loved The Thirteen Clocks (1950) so much that I paid a ridiculous price for a ~original edition because it appeared to be out of print. (Many years ago in Boston there were some brilliant performances of this — one on radio with terrific voices, one on stage.) The top layer is a deliberately stereotypical quest story — a random minstrel (who is not just what he seems) is rude about the evil duke (not0-really-guardian of the princess Saralinda) and is given a Quest; under that are all sort of sly comments about evil and henchmen, and time and the unreliability of magic, and a completely inexplicable appearance: “the only Golux in the world, and not a mere device!” Quite short, and written for someone age ~8, but enjoyable by adults because of the extra layers. Someone a few years ago pointed me to The White Deer (1945), which hasn’t gotten the same reprinting, possibly because it reads in some ways like a practice piece for Clocks.
The SFWA printing of Silverlock has an extensive appendix, identifying many but not all of the characters and stories.
Tales from Gavagan’s Bar is a collection of humorous fantasy stories by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt.
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, by Spider Robertson, is fun if you can tolerate bad puns. For example. the Irish time traveler named Justin. Also known as Justin the Mic of Time.
Just here to strongly second Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby @@@@@ 12 and James Thurber’s 13 Clocks @@@@@ 22. I will also mention, as I have before, Maurice Dolbier’s “The Half-Pint Jinni” (1948, predating Edward Eager’s Half Magic), where Mardak the jinni can only grant half a wish. “Now…what can have gone wrong this time? I asked to be as far from Baghdad on this side as we were on the other…. Of course! And that’s just what happened! We’re only half as far from Baghdad on this side as we were on the other!” “Well,” said Mardak. “We’re getting nearer all the time. At this rate, we’ll be in Baghdad around nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Leonard Wibberley’s The Mouse that Roared has a number of delightful sequels and a prequel set in the 15th century or so, Beware of the Mouse, sadly out of print. Edward Eager’s Knight’s Castle may be a children’s book, but any adult who reads it and doesn’t enjoy it has no soul — the best moment is the baseball game in Sherwood Forest: “He striketh thrice! Out upon him!” “Nay, ’twas a ball! Slay the umpire!”
My favorite Thorne Smith is The Night Life of the Gods, which has a lot of farcical scenes but ends on a rather wistful note. I would also recommend Eleanor Farjeon’s The Glass Slipper, a novelization of a panto, which isn’t exactly funny ha-ha but is comedic in the larger sense, especially in regard to the stepsisters, Araminta and Arethusa.
I have fond memories of Alfred Hitchcock’s Ghostly Gallery, which seemed to be equally divided between funny (deliberately) stories and genuinely spooky/unsettling ones. (Dunsany’s “In a Dim Room” manages both, which I appreciate.)
Particular note to HG Wells’s “The Truth About Pyecraft,” in which a man finds a weight loss spell that works as designed but not as intended, and Henry Kuttner’s “Housing Problem” about attracting the wrong sort of neighbours.
… and I only now realise that the first story, “Miss Emmeline Takes Off,” is by Walter “Freddy the Pig” / “Mister Ed” Brooks. Excellent.
Ah! All of these are favorites except I’ve never seen “The Little Witch of Elm Street.” Clearly I need to dig that up. :)
Every time I read Silverlock, I realize why I hadn’t re-read it earlier. It’s a great story but (spoilers!) the ending is completely depressing to me. Why does it end that way?
I found Thorne Smith withthe Del Rey reprints and I think Night Life of the Gods is probably my favorite. I also love de Camp & Pratt. Thanks for pointing out some “older” choices.
Happy to see Jurgen and The Silver Stallion in the comments at least, although in my opinion, they’re worthier examples of vintage comedic fantasy than any that made it into the actual article. Many other works by Cabell might also qualify, but none of the others (that I’ve read, at least) are quite so good.
Spellsinger series by Alan Dean Foster
@7 See also Henry Kuttner’s “Hogben Family” stories, about a clan of hillbillies who seem to be descended from refugees from Atlantis and have a variety of superhuman and preternatural abilities.
I was also surprised to see Cabell not mentioned until the comments. Jurgen is the common entry point, but The Silver Stallion is also great. I think The High Place is another one of his best.
“When my grandfather remodeled Bellegarde…he sealed up, in a cornerstone, just as people sometimes place there the relics of a saint, both of Mademoiselle Delorme’s garters. Probably there was some salutary story connected with his acquiring of them; for my pious grandfather cared nothing for such vanities as jeweled garters, his mind being wholly set upon higher things.”
If you find that comedic you will like Cabell; if not, you probably won’t.
I had to dig out my copy to find the quote, and of course I found a lot of other books first…Another vintage work of humorous fantasy that bears mention is Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat by Ernest Bramah, though since Bramah is English it does not fit. I also turned up Lud in the Mist by Hope Mirrlees, though a quick trip to Wiki shows me Hope was also English. The Elfin Ship by James Blaylock was published in 1982, so is not quite vintage. Still, all of those are worthy of mention.
How about Zelazny’s Doorways in the Sand? Too sf?
@34: I’d say that the Zelazny, like the Callahan’s stories, looks intended to be SF; I replaced my vanished copy of Doorways a few years ago and confirmed that I still loved it, and I have warm memories of Callahan’s, but they use SF tropes throughout.
@24: another I-should-have-remembered: your mention of Edward Eager brings up Noel Langone’s The Land of Green Ginger, which Aladdin’s son has to quest for with the ?help? of the Genie’s son. I loved it at age 11 but found it rather overdone when I reread in my fifties; IIRC Gaiman still loved it around that age, so some readers here might be amused. ISTM it’s definitely less precious than the bits of Jurgen that I’ve read.
Does everybody already know that Harold Shea’s adventures were continued through 3 more novellas and a novel? Most of the above are one-off examples — even Thorne Smith AFAIK wrote completely discrete books (even if the tone is quickly recognizable) — but Harold’s sense-of-something takes him to The Faerie Queene, Orlando Furioso, the Kalevala, and Cu Chulainn’s milieu. All of these are available in one volume, along with related bits.
Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld were my favourites.
And Wasp by Eric Frank Russell.
I know the man is considered persona non grata in many literary venues thanks to his (alleged) despicable treatment of his young daughter, but trust the art not the artist. Back in the seventies Woody Allen wrote one of the funniest fantasy short stories I’ve ever read. It was initially printed in May of ‘87 in The New Yorker. Anyone else remember Allen’s “The Kugelmass Episode”? The last line of the story is sheer genius.
@1–Conneticut Yankee also ended in a very dark place–the kind of war he described at the end was very nearly a prediction of WWI.
Avram Davidson wrote just enough humor to fill an anthology . . . Help! I Am Dr. Morris Goldpepper, The Sources Of The Nile, The Lord Of Central Park, The Golem, The Grantha Sighting, and four or five others. His Peregrine novels surely fit here as well.
38: My memories of The Kugelmass Episode are pretty dim, but I still remembering laughing at how various literary critics try to cope with an additional character turning up halfway through Madam Bovary.
@40 – my favourite Avram Davidson story is “Or All The Sea With Oysters”
Farmer Giles of Ham, by J. R. R. Tolkien. The Hobbit is also fairly comedic. Not American, however.
I was going to mention Christopher Stasheff’s “Warlock” series, but the first one was published in 1983, so I guess it doesn’t count. Similarly, The Color of Magic, the first Discworld novel, was also published in 1983. Barry Hughart’s “The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox” series is first published in 1984. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s Song of Sorcery was published in 1982. On a Pale Horse was 1983. It was a good decade for funny fantasy, I guess!
Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin was published in 1978. And it turns out The Warlock in Spite of Himself was first published in 1969. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster was in 1961.
Yes, there were a few Stasheff/Warlock books published in the time frame; ISFDB lists the 1983 book first because it’s a prequel.
I love the references to Zilpha Keatley Snyder, John Bellairs, and many others, but @38, I went and found my (old) copy of the Woody Allen book with “The Kugelmass Episode” and it hasn’t held up well at all in some ways as far as today’s times go. The references to the greatness of O.J. Simpson, for example. Also, I think the story was published earlier than 1987, because my copy has copyright dates that go from 1975 through 1980. Back in the day, though, I thought it was funny. One of my college teachers had never heard of it, so I introduced it to her while we were reading “Madame Bovary.”
Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October is certainly fantasy and certainly funny.
@47 True, but also published in 1993.
@43 Song of Sorcery!! I was trying to remember this author’s name the other day! I loved her work in the 80s. I hope it’s held up.
@1 You asked why authors in the 60s/70s wrote so many stories of terrifying young people. I wonder if it’s because the world was changing (again!) and the young people were adapting more quickly?