Fantasy literature in the context of "Fantasy film"

A magician, also known as an archmage, mage, magus, magic-user, spellcaster, enchanter/enchantress, sorcerer/sorceress, warlock, witch, or wizard, is someone who uses or practices magic derived from supernatural, occult, or arcane sources. Magicians enjoy a rich history in mythology, legends, fiction, and folklore, and are common figures in works of fantasy, such as fantasy literature and role-playing games.

Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or magical elements, often including completely imaginary realms and creatures.

The genre's roots lie in fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century onward, it has expanded into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga, animation, and video games.

George MacDonald (10 December 1824 – 18 September 1905) was a Scottish author, poet and Christian Congregational minister. He became a pioneering figure in the field of modern fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow-writer Lewis Carroll. In addition to his fairy tales, MacDonald wrote several works of Christian theology, including several collections of sermons.

The Neverending Story (German: Die unendliche Geschichte) is a fantasy novel by German writer Michael Ende, published in 1979. The first English translation, by Ralph Manheim, was published in 1983. It was later adapted into a film series and a television series.

Fantastic art is a broad and loosely defined art genre. It is not restricted to a specific school of artists, geographical location or historical period. It can be characterised by subject matter—which portrays non-realistic, mystical, mythical or folkloric subjects or events—and style, which is representational and naturalistic, rather than abstract—or in the case of magazine illustrations and similar, in the style of graphic novel art such as manga.

Fantasy has been an integral part of art since its beginnings, but has been particularly important in mannerism, magic realist painting, romantic art, symbolism, surrealism and lowbrow. In French, the genre is called le fantastique, in English it is sometimes referred to as visionary art, grotesque art or mannerist art. It has had a deep and circular interaction with fantasy literature.

The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by the World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction and fantasy art published in English during the preceding calendar year. The awards have been described by sources such as The Guardian as a "prestigious fantasy prize", and as one of the three most renowned speculative fiction awards, along with the Hugo and Nebula Awards (which cover both fantasy and science fiction). The World Fantasy Award—Life Achievement is given each year to individuals for their overall career in fields related to fantasy. These have included, for example, authors, editors, and publishers. The specific nomination reasons are not given, and nominees are not required to have retired, though they can only win once. The Life Achievement category has been awarded annually since 1975.

World Fantasy Award nominees are decided by attendees and judges at the annual World Fantasy Convention. A ballot is posted in June for attendees of the current and previous two conferences to determine two of the finalists, and a panel of five judges adds three or more nominees before voting on the overall winner of each category. Unlike the other World Fantasy Award categories, the nominees for the Life Achievement award are not announced; instead, the winner is announced along with the nominees in the other categories. The panel of judges is typically made up of fantasy or horror authors, editors, publishers, booksellers, and others connected to the genres of fantasy and horror in some way and is chosen each year by the World Fantasy Awards Administration, which has the power to break ties. The final results are presented at the World Fantasy Convention at the end of October. Through 2015, winners were presented with a statuette of H. P. Lovecraft; more recent winners receive a statuette of a tree.

His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights (1995; published as The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC's The Big Read poll.

Although His Dark Materials has been marketed as young adult fiction, and the central characters are children, Pullman wrote with no target audience in mind. The fantasy elements include witches and armoured polar bears; the trilogy also alludes to concepts from physics, philosophy, and theology. It functions in part as a retelling and inversion of John Milton's epic Paradise Lost, with Pullman commending humanity for what Milton saw as its most tragic failing, original sin. The trilogy has attracted controversy for its criticism of religion. By 2024, more than 22 million copies of the novels had been sold in 50 countries, and they had been translated into 40 languages.

The Book of Dust is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman, which expands his trilogy His Dark Materials. The books further chronicle the adventures of Lyra Belacqua and her battle against the theocratic organisation known as the Magisterium, and shed more light on the mysterious substance called Dust.

The first book, La Belle Sauvage, was published in October 2017, and is set 12 years before Northern Lights (The Golden Compass in some countries). It describes how the 11-year-old Malcolm Polstead and the 15-year-old Alice protect the infant Lyra, leading to her being in the care of Jordan College. It introduces the research by academics and other free-thinkers into Dust, a mysterious subatomic particle related to consciousness, and the origins of Lyra's alethiometer.

Children's fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy literature intended for young readers. It may also refer to fantasy read by children, regardless of the intended audience.

The genre has roots in folk tales such as Aesop's Fables that were not originally intended for children: before the Victorian era, fairytales were perceived as immoral and ill-suited for children's minds. A market for children's fantasy was established in Britain in the 19th century, leading to works such as Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Edith Nesbit's Five Children series; the genre also developed in America, exemplified by L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Of the authors of this period, Nesbit is commonly cited as the creator of modern children's fantasy.