(By Jane Beaumont, Cape Town, South Africa)

In time-honoured fashion I looked to the dictionary for a definition of fantasy. Chambers' etymological gave me "imagination", "mental image" and "not real" as meanings. Of course, according to the last definition - not real - all fiction becomes fantasy but that doesn't help us to give anything like a concise, cohesive description of specific fantasy fiction! So, back to the dictionary to find the origin of the word fantasy. Hah, it comes from the Greek "to make visible". That I like. In effect, therefore, fantasy makes that which is imagined come to life - wish-fulfilment at its best!

The genre of fantasy fiction is as old as story-telling itself. Under its banner come myth and legend, saga and epic, fable and morality play. Many newcomers to modern fantasy are not aware of its vast foundations reaching down through the past to the beginnings of mankind, but look to some of modern fantasy's greatest tales and how often will you find descendants of Norse saga or Arthurian legend?

Someone once said there were only half a dozen plots for plays. The same is pretty much true of fantasy, but - and it's a huge but - just as plays range from Shakespearean tragedy to Ben Elton farce, so fantasy encompasses vast (sometimes far too vast) sprawling tragic sagas of the Thomas Covenant Chronicles type and satirical comedy best typified by Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, with a multitude of variations in-between. There's fantasy of a literary quality that would happily ace the Booker prize were the judges a little less biased, and there's fantasy well below the literary level of the average Mills & Boon. The only way to decide

a) whether you fancy fantasy as a genre at all

b) what sub-genre of fantasy you prefer

c) which authors you'll become addicted to

is to start reading!

We'll be publishing reviews at this site to whet your appetite for fantasy. In the meantime, your local lending library and neighbourhood bookshop are looking forward to seeing you!