an issue between two rivals. Morning Star(1910) is
an Egyptian historical novel with liberal doses of
magic. The Mahatma and the Hare(1911) describes
a tedious journey through a dream world and is
probably Haggard’s least successful novel. Early in
his career he collaborated with fellow fantasy
writer Andrew LANGon The World’s Desire(1889),
a sequel to Homer’s The Odyssey in which
Odysseus goes to Egypt to search for Helen of Troy
for a series of adventures that include an en-
counter with a magical serpent.
Haggard was the most consistently successful
writer of lost race novels, a form that enjoyed con-
siderable popularity until it became obvious that
most of the world had been explored. The form has
recently enjoyed renewed popularity among thriller
writers such as James Rollins, Jeff Long, and John
Darnton, sometimes very ingeniously. Several of
his nonfantasy novels are also lost world adven-
tures, including King Solomon’s Mines(1885), Allan
Quatermain(1887), The People of the Mist(1894),
Heart of the World(1895), When the World Shook
(1918), and Heu Heu or the Monster(1924). King
Solomon’s Mineshas been filmed at least twice and,
the character Allan Quatermain has also appeared
in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold
(1987), not based on one of Haggard’s novels.
“The Hag Seleen”Theodore Sturgeon(1942)
The borders between science fiction and fantasy
were much more tenuous during the 1940s than
they are today, and although Theodore Sturgeon is
remembered primarily for his work in the former
genre, he produced a considerable body of fantasy
and supernatural fiction, including a number of en-
during classic short stories that appear sprinkled
through his collections, all of which were marketed
as science fiction. Like so much of Sturgeon’s
work, this story is much more remarkable than its
straightforward plot suggests and is remarkable for
its skillful and efficient character development, in
this case the relationship between the narrator and
his very young daughter, Patty.
The story opens with them canoeing through
a Louisiana bayou when they are struck and almost
killed by a sawyer, the stump of a cypress tree that
has become waterlogged and unbalanced beneath
the water, periodically rising unexpectedly to en-
tangle anything overhead with its ropy roots. They
just manage to make it to the shore, where they
are confronted by Seleen, a classic hag whose ap-
pearance is so hideous that they are both instinc-
tively repulsed. Seleen tells them that this part of
the bayou belongs to her and that she magically
compelled the sawyer to kill them. Her attitude is
so menacing that the narrator strikes her and vows
thereafter to be particularly watchful lest she sneak
up on them in the nearby cabin they have rented.
There is no immediate sequel, but Patty begins
behaving strangely, stealing locks of hair and hid-
ing them in a rotted tree. Her father discovers
what she is doing and concludes that she is being
tricked by Seleen into providing the raw materials
for a fresh curse, which is partly true. As it turns
out, Patty, who is in some ways much too old for
her years while in other ways a typical child, has a
little magical talent of her own, and the hag is
eventually defeated and the family saved. The con-
flict is between the family and Seleen, but the true
focus of the story is Patty, about whom Sturgeon
manages to convey a more detailed picture than
might have been accomplished in an entire novel
by a less talented writer.Hambly, Barbara(1951– )
Although most science fiction writers start with
short stories and move on to novels, fantasy writers
are more likely to begin with book-length works
and produce occasional short fiction later on. That
was the case with Barbara Hambly, whose career
was launched with the Darwath trilogy, The Time
of the Dark(1982), The Walls of Air(1983), and
The Armies of Daylight(1983). Two individuals
from our world are dragged into an epic conflict
when a woman begins to experience visions in
which inhuman creatures invade the world, al-
though she eventually realizes that it is a magical
alternate reality that she is seeing. The pair are re-
cruited by a wizard who hopes to defeat the in-
vaders and eventually prove crucial to developing
a magical defense. Their efforts are further ham-
pered by widespread distrust of magic even among
those who have the most to gain from their inter-
vention. Hambly’s story is darker than most similar150 “The Hag Seleen”