ICFA 45 Debrief: Notes from the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

I’ve recently returned from the 45th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Since I’m an introvert and have to push myself to network, I set a goal before the conference to talk to three new people each day and have at least one interesting conversation. Well, that goal was absolutely an underestimate of how much fun I had talking to all these wonderful scholars and creatives. It was an absolute dream to attend. When you want to study fantasy and science fiction, there are a lot of people in English departments who won’t take you seriously. Being in a place where everyone else is also interested in what speculative fiction has to say was so refreshing.

My presentation was part of a panel of two papers on Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. It was a fascinating panel in that my co-presenter and I came to exactly opposite conclusions about whether the novel supported or denied the idea of Escape into the fantastic, as theorized by Tolkien. John Pennington (whose work on George McDonald I’m going to have to look into when I finally get around to reading Phantasties) framed the novel as rejecting the premise of a secondary world in favor of a world that is deeply intertwined with, and even formed from, the primary world. He also cited a lot of postsecular theorists in his discussion, which gave me a whole different way to understand the book that I’m going to need to spend some time working on.

My paper, “‘The Beauty of the House is Immeasurable’: Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi on the Uses of Speculative Fiction for Escape During the Covid Pandemic,” took an opposite tack. I looked at the relationship of the protagonist to the artistic and symbolic world he lived in as representative of our relationship with speculative fiction, coming to the conclusion that the book demonstrates how Tolkien’s idea of constructive Escape functions. I tied in the public reaction to the book when it was published in the early pandemic as well as my own experiences using media to cope with 2020.

I was blown away by the discussion which brought up ideas that could spark at least 3-4 other papers about the novel. (Edited collection on Piranesi, anyone?) It was an honor to be in a panel with such an intelligent audience. I felt like I finally experienced the purpose of an academic conference: getting feedback on your ideas from people who really care about the subject.

I guess the people running the conference also liked my paper, because at the closing banquet, I received the David G. Hartwell Emerging Scholar Award, along with Sasha Bailyn, whose interesting publication Inglenook Lit combines creative nonfiction and speculative fiction which blows my mind. I’m really honored by this award; it gives me real validation and encouragement for my crazy desire to spend the rest of my career focused on speculative fiction.

Below are some comments and notes on my favorite papers and panels that I attended. (There were so many good panels that I didn’t get a chance to attend as well!)

Breaking All the Rules Now – Julia DaSilva gave a fascinating anarchist reading of CS Lewis’s The Last Battle. It was a bit heavy on theory I’m not familiar with, so I’ll need to do some further reading to really understand it. With that caveat, the main point seemed to be that the presence of the rings from The Magician’s Nephew contradicts the overall feeling of that Aslan is in control of who has access to Narnia and when, which seems to indicate an “overflow” of meaning that opens up possibility beyond the Christian allegory that Lewis may have intended. She also compared the novel to an intriguing book called Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison, which is from a similar time period and seems to be Narnia-esque only Norse mythology. I pushed back a bit on her conception of Lewis as a political conservative, especially given some of the politics evident in Out of the Silent Planet; I think he can’t quite be pigeonholed by the modern political dichotomies, though she’s right that he’s not an anarchist by any means. However, I think her point about the significance of the rings in the theology of the series is worth further consideration. I had some great conversations with Julia after her presentation and look forward to hearing more of her takes on Lewis’s work!

Religion and Fantasy – I was assigned to chair this panel, but you know I would have gone anyway. This turned out to be a really interesting mix of papers. Cat Ashton shared an analysis of the Evangelical worldview and how it has been spread through fantasy literature. As a religious person myself, I had a bit of an allergic reaction to some of her framing, but on the other hand, I also tend to not agree with the types of evangelicals she was describing. I worry about the idea of painting Evangelical Christian novels as propaganda and novels with a more liberal worldview as open and honest explorations of ideas. Is this characterization merely due to whether we happen to agree with the worldview presented? I know plenty of conservative Christian readers who would reverse that characterization. I think it’s not as simple as dismissing any book promoting a Christian worldview. But since I only had a chance to hear the paper aloud, I will have to follow her work and give it a second chance in written form.

Andy Dibble presented on whether CS Lewis’s portrayal of the damned in The Great Divorce is convincing to the non-Christian reader. He posted a similar version of his ideas in a recent blog post. One really interesting insight I took away was how strangely Lewis’s self-insert character is positioned. It’s weird that the narrator is portrayed as uncertain and the questioner of doctrine given that Lewis is the author and constructor of this speculative world designed to convey exactly that doctrine.

Robert Stauffer gave a peek into some original research he is doing to recover some early religious fantasy short stories written and published in a periodical funded by the Horlix powdered milk company. It was an absolutely wild tale, which I look forward to picking up in book form. He mentioned the existence of a story by Evelyn Underhill (who wrote a long text on mysticism and is honored on the Anglican liturgical calendar) that explores the idea that Christianity existed before Christ, which I’m interested in for obviously Latter-day Saint reasons.

War/ Peace: Fantasy’s Critical Potential – David Sweeten examined the Battle of the Two Rivers in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time as a remaking of the Scourging of the Shire. Both Tolkien and Jordan were veterans of war but very different wars (WWI and Vietnam, respectively), and Sweeten tied this to the different outcomes of the “attack on home” motif. Liam Drislane also presented on the motif of “white slavery” episodes in epic fantasy, particularly using the example of Egwene from the Wheel of Time.

Of most interest to me on this panel was my friend Paul Williams‘ reading of Orson Scott Card’s Tales of Alvin Maker series as an example of positive peacemaking in the epic fantasy genre, which often seems to endorse violence as a means of settling disagreement. He didn’t explicitly tie this to Latter-day Saint theology in the panel, but I could definitely see the allusions he was making to D&C 121:41-46, which discusses how righteous power can be achieved “only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned.” He also quoted Patrick Mason’s work on LDS peacemaking.

Analyzing Publishing Practices in Fantasy – Dennis Wilson Wise gave a spirited defense of the fantasy novels published in the wake of Tolkien’s success with Lord of the Rings, like Terry Brook’s Sword of Shannara series. Many see these books as mere formulaic imitators trying to cash-in on the trend and barely worth any critical attention. Wise reframed this narrative as the cultivation of the epic fantasy genre by husband-and-wife editing team Judy-Lynn and Lester del Rey, who gave authors the personal attention needed to develop their stories into something that would meet market demands. Yes, they introduced some of the tropes they loved from classic science fiction into fantasy at a time when sci-fi itself was moving to critical respectability, but they were as critical to the development of fantasy as John Campbell was to science fiction.

At this same panel, Jordan Jantz presented a fascinating data analysis showing that small literary presses are moving towards being more accepting of speculative elements. She did this by looking at the publishers of books that won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prizes, getting the list of the last 20 years of their publications, and analyzing their Goodreads tags for indicators of genre elements. The trend towards speculative elements seems to be going up over time, though almost 60% of the speculative books are in the gray area of “fabulation,” a category that includes magical realism or books with surrealist elements, which not all scholars of the fantastic would include in speculative fiction. However, I think Jantz made a good case that the gap between literary and genre publications is closing, which means there will be more respectability for the study of fantastic fiction as a whole.

Anyway, that’s what I got out of ICFA 2024! I’m already thinking about my plan for what to submit on the theme of “terror” for next year. If I met you at ICFA, please drop me a note to say hi!