dark fantasy n.

Dark Fantasy.

Dark Fantasy.

Her work has shown wide variety, ranging through dark fantasy and horror to quirky and original science fiction.

Supernatural or occult fiction, weird tales, dark fantasy, and tales of terror are but a few of the euphemisms behind which the dreaded word horror is sometimes concealed—and lurking.

‘Dark fantasy’ is today’s posh word for ‘horror’; Barker’s considerable talents in this area lead to a few gobs of gratuitous nastiness, and also some terrific creations.

If you want angst—massive, high-G guilt and anguish—Stephen R. Donaldson has an unfailing supply. Applied to fantasy, in several previous series, this proclivity gave his work a gritty, offbeat, though frequently repellent power. His new ‘Gap’ series translates dark fantasy into dark sf without missing a beat.

I find myself writing…a story that is a mix of horror and sf, or dark fantasy.

I think we define Dark Fantasy a bit differently. For me, the Gothic fiction of the eighteenth and nineteeth centuries and the Dark Fantasy of the twentieth form a continuum. Horror fiction can be either realistic or supernatural. But the word fantasy in Dark Fantasy limits the term to that involving the supernatural. I'm oversimplifying, I know: not all Gothic fiction involved the supernatural, but most of it did—ghosts and demons, often. And I use Dark Fantasy to mean the same sort of material today, even though it has more vampires than demons! But I admit there are bothersome borderlines—a number of today’s vampire’s are rationalized: they are a separate, parasitical race, sometimes. And because of tradition I'd include those in Dark Fantasy also.

Back in the 1980s, one of the best things that happened to dark fantasy and horror was the Night Visions original anthology series.

Weird Tales, although publishing dark fantasy for many years, does not publish what I consider horror. The difference? A matter of degree.