Tolkien Did Not Invent Fantasy!

Fantasy as a literature genre has existed since Victorian times, and there is a whole range of books written before “The Lord of the Rings”

The society for science fiction SFera was founded in 1976, and their main aim is to gather people who are interested in science fiction, fantastic, horror and science in general. In SFera, currently there are workshops on the theme of writing fantasy stories, which prompted us to talk with Mihaela Marija Perkovic, the leader of the workshop.

Javno: Why choose a workshop for writing fantasy?

- Most Croatian authors write SF or horror. There is a relatively small amount of fantasy, and one of the reasons for this is that it has a huge tradition, and a lot of effort is needed to make something new and of quality. Everyone who reads the genre, reads the originals in English, and know all of the clichés which repeat themselves, and the genre is quite demanding.

So it is not easy to write a quality fantasy, because you have a very demanding public. The aim of the workshop is to let people get quality information about the Croatian heritage, which if learned well, is a good basis to write quality stories that are convincing and imaginative.

Javno: Is there a foundation for an authentic, Croatian fantasy?

- Croatia has a huge heritage, but the problem is that fantasy is not represented in schools. Most people read Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic, and that is the end of reading fantasy.

We also have a lot of material, and many experts study ethnology and history, and have a lot of quality works on the topic of Croatian heritage which can be a great foundation from where people can extract information on which they will base their Croatian fantasy stories.

Javno: In what way are the workshops conceived?

- The workshops are split into 10 parts. The first eight consist of lectures, talking about the given topic, or doing stylistic exercises. The last two workshops consist of people reading their stories which they wrote during the two month pause after listening to the first eight parts.

Javno: How do you define fantasy?

- Fantasy as a literary genre has existed since Victorian times, and does not start with Tolkien. There is a huge number of books written before. There is also huge amount of releases that the layman will see as “mainstream”, but fans as fantasy. An excellent example for this is Peter Pan. Tolkien should be congratulated for making the genre popular, and for bringing fantasy to the level of popularity it should have.

Javno: Which Croatian authors should be mentioned, that could be interesting to the public who enjoy SF, fantasy or horror?

- Viktoria Faust is one of the best known Croatian authors, and writes horror. Her short stories are excellent, and her main topics are vampires and kids, which is interesting. Unfortunately, it would be great if she used Croatian topics. For SF, I would mention Kresimir Misak, who writes classic SF topics, but in a way that has not been worn out. What I particularly like about his stories is that in every book it is clearly written that the events happen in Zagreb. Which is great and very important. The stories are simple and convincing, those who read start to believe, which is the point of SF.