Characterized by modern, urban settings, a sophisticated, often satirical tone, and the irony-laced employment of traditional figures such as witches, genies, angels, devils, magicians, and ghosts, slick fantasy flourished during the twenties, thirties, and forties, and manifested itself in many different media. John Henry Noyes Collier, who died in 1980 at the age of seventy-eight, specialized in “slick” fantasy stories, “slick” because they generally appeared in “slick-paper magazines” as opposed to the cheap-paper pulps, upscale publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, or Esquire. It’s happened to many worthwhile writers. There’s a problem with being a member of a multitude, however - it’s easy to get lost, easy to be pushed to the back of the line by the ever-swelling mob of new books, new writers, new modes, easy to be misplaced or forgotten. Martin and the hilarity of Terry Pratchett… well, there’s nothing it can’t do. Howard and the ambiguity of John Crowley, that can contain the brutality of George R.R.

Any form that can accommodate the cynicism of Glen Cook and the lyricism of Patricia McKillip, that can hold the clarity of Robert E. Cover by Charles Bingerįantasy, this genre that we love so much, is in reality not one genre but many that’s one reason we love it. Fancies and Goodnights (Bantam Giant, 1953).

John collier fancies and goodnights