Sleepy Hollow (film)
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Gaslamp fantasy (also known as gaslight fantasy or gaslight romance) is a sub-genre of fantasy. Generally speaking, this particular realm of fantasy employs a Victorian/Edwardian era setting. The gaslamp fantasy genre is not to be confused with steampunk, which usually has more of a super-science edge and uchronic tone. Gaslamp fantasy also differs from classical Victorian/Edwardian faerie or pure fantasy in the J.R.R. Tolkien or Lewis Carroll style or from historical crime-novels in the Anne Perry or June Thomson style by the supernatural elements, themes or subjects it features. Many of its tropes, themes, and stock characters derive from Gothic literature - a long-established genre composed of both romantic and horrific traits and motivated by the desire to rouse fear, apprehension, and other intense emotions within the reader - and could be described as an attempt to modernize literary Gothicism.
Writer and artist Kaja Foglio originally coined the term in an effort to distinguish her and husband Phil Foglio's comic series, Girl Genius, from "steampunk". Kaja hoped to suggest the work's distinctive style, a medley of allohistory and Victorian-esque "mad science".
Later on, however, fantasy-fans redirected the term to denote a spin-off genre of Holmesian fantasy or Victorian era Gothic tales. According to fantasy-fans as a whole, the sub-genre consists, namely, of contemporary and/or modern fantasy novels set in the Victorian "gaslamp" era, such as the Gaslight Grimoire anthology. The sub-genre also includes some pre-Victorian-era novels.
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Origin
The term "gaslamp fantasy" was first coined on April 26, 2006, by webcomic artist Kaja Foglio to differentiate her comic, Girl Genius, from conventional steampunk fiction.
- "I called it Gaslamp Fantasy because, around the time we were bringing Girl Genius out, there was a comic called Steampunk on the shelves and I didn't want any confusion. Plus, I've never liked the term steampunk much for our work, it's derived from cyberpunk (a term which I think actually fits its genre well) but we have no punk, and we have more than just steam, and using a different name seemed appropriate. I mis-remembered a term that I had come across in the foreword to an H. Rider Haggard book, where the author was talking about Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Rider Haggard and that sort of pre-pulp adventure material, and came up with "Gaslamp Fantasy." I felt a bit foolish when I discovered that I had made up my own term, but it works and I like it.|personquoted=Kaja Foglio, author of Girl Genius"
Girl Genius, although science fiction set in 19th century Europe, does not have a firm emphasis on fantastic Industrial Revolution technology. Elements of other types of fiction are featured, including magic and mythical creatures, and the scientific element of it is less prominent. It also includes steampunk takes on contemporary sci-fi biology elements, like clockwork cyborgs and mass-produced Frankenstein's monster type creatures.
Generally, the term refers to fiction in a Victorian-style setting similar to steampunk, but with a broader emphasis. The stories are usually not so focused on machinery of the period (or, often, any machinery at all), take more liberties with the actual time period, and it may contain elements of other genres.
Since the term was coined, "gaslight fantasy" has been retroactively applied to other fiction written in the Victorian age, such as the works of Bram Stoker, Jules Verne or Arthur Conan Doyle.
Examples
Novels
- Emma Bull: " Territory" - a fantasy depiction of Tombstone, Arizona during the OK Corral era circa 1881, featuring Wyatt Earp - brother to the Deputy US Marshal, Virgil Earp - as a black magician, a Chinese physician
- Elizabeth Bear
- Galen Beckett: (The Lockwell Sisters)
- Fabrice Bourland: "La dernière enquête du Chevalier Dupin (The ultimate case of the Chevalier Dupin): Poe's hero investigates the mysterious suicide of the French poet Gérard de Nerval in a dark Montmartre;
- Rick Boyer: "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" (1976)
- Kaja Foglio and Phil Foglio: bibliography (the Agatha Heterodyne series e.g.)
- Edward B. Hanna: "The Whitechapel Horrors"
- J. P. Hightman: "Spirit" - supranatural macabre novel with Salem, Massachusetts, in the year 1892 as historical background
- Watkins Jones: "Sherlock Holmes and the Occult: The Case of the Scarlet Women" a confrontation with the infamous black magician Aleister Crowley
- John R. King: "The Shadow of Reichenbah Falls" a "Jack the Ripper + Moriarty + The Evil + Holmes" supranatural pot-pourri, the readers appreciation ranging from enthusiastic to "not Holmes at all"
- Emily Gee: "The Laurentine Spy" , the setting being like the pre-Victorian British Regency era
- F. Gwynplaine: "The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex" (1997) and "The Adventure of Exham Priory " in the "H.P. Lovecraft-sounding" Shadows Over Baker Street anthology (2003)
- Naomi Novik: "His Majesty's Dragon", "Throne of Jade", "Black Powder War", "Empire of Ivory", and "Victory of Eagles", a Napoleonic gaslight fantasy saga
- Mike Resnick: "Dragon America" - another "pre-Victorian" fantasy having the American Revolution as historical background this time
- Cameron Rogers: "Music of Razors" - Gothic urban fantasy genre novel set in nineteenth century gas-lit Boston
- Fred Saberhagen: much more a Bram Stoker's disciple author of two Holmesian "vampirics": "The Holmes-Dracula File" (1978) & "Seance for a Vampire" (1994)
- Dan Simmons: "Drood" - a novel set in 1865 and lasting through 1870, the huge Gothic novel centers around Charles Dickens, beginning with his train accident at Staplehurst on June, 9, 1865. As rushing to assist the dead and dying, Dickens meets a mysterious, and quite frightening, man ("cadaverously thin, almost shockingly pale...") named Drood. Dickens's story is supposedly narrated by Wilkie Collins and both will chase Drood in the dark Victorian London's underworld
"The Terror" - blending history - the 1845 Franklin arctic Expedition - with dark lovecraftian horror
- Jô Soares: " O Xangô de Baker Street" - a Sherlock Holmes in travel to Brazil meets Jack the Ripper, before the murders in Whitechapel. Humorous Voodoo-Holmesian fantasy novel
- Brian Stableford: "Werewolves of London" (1990)
- Daniel Stashower: " The adventures of Ectoplasmic Man " - where Holmes meets Houdini - as Editor (with M H Greenberg & J L Lellenberg): " Ghosts of Baker Street "
- Mark Summer: the Jake Bird series : a post-ACW western and fantasy series ("Devil's tower" (1996), "Devil's engine" (1997)
- Brian Talbot: The Adventures of Luther Arkwright a graphic novel set a world based on Victorian England and followed up with the sequel Heart of Empire
- Thomas Wheeler: "The Arcanum" - with cameo apparences of Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, HP Lovecraft as members of a secret society of demon-busters, A.E Waite and Aleister Crowley as villains
- Leanna Renee Hieber: "The Strangely Beautiful series" - The first two books in the series follow Miss Persephone Parker, a young albino girl living in Victorian London and attending the Athens Academy, whose fate is to fight ghosts. Two of her teachers are members of a select order known as The Guard, mortals charged by the goddess Persephone to battle the ghosts and other denizens of the Whisper-world that run rampant through the city. The third book, released in 2011, tells the story of the mortals who held the power before the Guard in the first two books.
Anthologies
- Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes – eleven short stories by Barbara Hambly, Kim Newman, Barbara Roden, Bob Madison, Christopher Sequeira, Chris Roberson, Peter Calamai, et al., each tale involving some supernatural including Peter Pan! Foreword by David Stuart Davies.
Films
- Sleepy Hollow
Internet works
- Girl Genius: An alternate earth (poorly) ruled by Mad Scientist archetypes.
See also
