Retrospective: The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror

My reading of White Dwarf #4 this week reminded me first of Gary Gygax's Dungeonland (which was the subject of a previous retrospective) and then of its sequel – companion? – The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror (hereafter Magic Mirror). Like Dungeonland, this module was first published in 1983, at the start of a period during which Gary Gygax was extraordinarily prolific, creating a number of very remarkable, if flawed, products for AD&D. Unlike Dungeonland, whose interior artwork was inappropriately provided by Timothy Truman, Magic Mirror is almost entirely illustrated by the late, great Jim Holloway, whose darkly humorous style is perfect for an adventure module of this sort.

Much as I love Dungeonland, I've always preferred Magic Mirror. There are a couple of reasons why this is so, starting with the aforementioned Holloway artwork. Lewis Carroll's stories of Wonderland are famously weird, filled with characters and situations that are equal parts scary and humorous. In my opinion, Holloway manages to thread the needle between these two poles in exactly the right fashion. The result is a better complementarity between word and pictures than in Dungeonland. 

More important than the module's esthetics – vital though that is! – is its specific content. What specific content, you might ask? The first thing that immediately comes to mind is the wooden house of Murlynd. Murlynd is not a character from Carroll's stories but rather from the early days of Gygax's own Greyhawk campaign. A creation of Gygax's closest friend, Don Kaye, Murlynd is a magic-user but one whose adventures took him to the Old West, hence the reason that he's often depicted dressed as a cowboy, complete with firearms.

For reasons I cannot fully articulate, I've always found characters like Murlynd strangely compelling. I suppose it's the way that he represents an older understanding of fantasy, one that's not bound by the narrow definitions that we tend to accept nowadays. I've long admitted that I used to struggle with this wilder kind of fantasy. Yet, even as I was struggling with it, some part of me must have recognized that there was something liberating and, above all, fun about this approach to fantasy and Murlynd in his Stetson is fun – or so I think. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed Murlynd's house, filled with anachronistic items from throughout time and space, as well as a talking grandfather clock, a lightning quasi-elemental, and "the Witch-Ghost" in the attic, among other oddities. 

Of course, there are other equally notable elements of the module. For example, there's the Garden of Colossal Flowers, filled with vain, silly, and rude plants with humanoid faces; the Chessboard Fields that the characters can only cross by playing a violent version of the game; all the creatures mentioned in Jabberwocky; Humpty Dumpty; and the manor house that includes the Mad Feast Hall. Like Carroll's stories, Magic Mirror is equal parts funny and dangerous, but, above all, it's weird and whimsical. I think that's what made such an impression on me when I first read it nearly four decades ago. The module taught me that I didn't need to be such a stick in the mud about fantasy. I could cut loose from time to time and lean into the wild and woolly aspect of the genre. Whether the lessons I learned truly had anything to do with The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror or not, I feel a certain gratitude toward it and to Gary Gygax for broadening my vision of fantasy.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

One of these days, I should probably rename this weekly feature of the blog, because novels like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland really do need to be discussed, but they're by no means "pulp fantasy," at least as I usually use the word. Ah well. Written by an English mathematician and logician named Charles Dodgson (under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll -- a complex linguistic pun on his own name) and first published in 1865, the novel has proven extremely influential in the development of the literary genre we now call "fantasy." Indeed, for many English-speaking people, the novel, or some adaptation of it, is one the first encounters we have with a fantasy tale, at least a memorable one. And Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is nothing if not memorable. 

 I can still recall my own first reading of it as a boy, from an old edition my mother had in our basement, which included illustrations by John Tenniel and consequently seared into my brain ever since. That's because the novel wasn't written as what we'd today call a "children's book." That's not to say it's unsuitable for children, but Carroll didn't publish the story solely to appeal to children. Consequently, its language, imagery, and characters are quite sophisticated and, on many levels, unsettling. That's what sticks with me after all these years: all the things I read in this book that made my young mind uneasy -- not frightened exactly, although some of it was frightening, but shaken and excited. 

I think that's part of the book's lasting appeal. It's very hard to read it without thinking strange thoughts and considering odd possibilities. I hesitate to say it's a "mind expanding" novel, as that's a mite more pretentious than I wish, but there's no question that it does expand my sense of what fantasy is and could be. Speaking personally, that's a good thing, since I need little pushes into the phantasmagoric realm from time to time. My own tastes in fantasy tend to be more staid and conservative, so Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a much needed tonic. I doubt I'll ever be much of a surrealist, but novels like this help me see the value in such an approach. 

Gary Gygax obviously agreed, since he included trips to Wonderland in his old Greyhawk campaign, a tradition many other gamers have observed over the years as well. It's not hard to see why. Stripped of its specific details, the novel is the story of a person from our world journeying into a fantasy realm where the laws of reality are different. That's a standard trope of many genuine pulp fantasies, such as Burroughs's Barsoom stories, and one that was strongly influential on the development of D&D, despite the lack of citation in Appendix N. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland shows, I think, that fantasy can be intelligent without being stuffy and that there's no reason why we shouldn't let our fantasies differ greatly from our everyday experiences. Those differences can be both wondrous and unsettling at the same time and the retreat from both qualities can make fantasy -- and fantasy gaming -- all the poorer.