![]() ![]() John Holbrook Vance, who was born in California in 1916 (and is still alive at the time of writing), wrote fantasy, SF and mystery fiction under several names, though Jack Vance was his regular by-line. More recently, Terry Brooks has set his Shannara series in the distant future, and Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, is set in the last days of Earth.Īrguably the greatest far-future fantasy of all time, though, is Jack Vance’s 1950 book, The Dying Earth. ![]() The idea was also used by William Hope Hodgson in his bizarre 1912 fantasy, The Night Land, set after the sun has been extinguished, and by Clark Ashton Smith for his tales of Zothique, Earth’s last continent, written during the 1930s. Wells’ time traveller in The Time Machine. This, too, often involves an SF crossover, and an early example is the final destination of H. One of the choices less often taken is to set stories in the remote future. Or, like Martin (and me, for that matter) they can create a world that simply exists in its own right, without reference to our own. They can set the story on another planet such as Pern (though this will normally involve some element of SF). They can send their characters through a magic portal, like Lewis. They can create a fictional prehistory, as both Tolkien and Howard did. Fantasy authors who want to get away from familiar contemporary or historical surroundings have various broad types of setting to choose from. ![]()
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