The recent example, sort of, is Charlie Stross' Merchant Princes series -- though it isn't particularly fantasy, apart from the device that achieves the transport between Earth and the various parallel Earths (and back again). It definitely isn't wish fulfillment -- the main thrust of the series is exploring how economic development is affected by the contact between the (at last check) three parallel worlds.
Zelazny's Amber books might be classed as portal fantasy, of a sort. And I'm sure that Andre Norton had at least one SF-ish portal fantasy, wherein the magic McGuffin is the Siege Perilous, which transports anyone sitting in it to the world they properly belong to. Can't remember the name of the book, though.
Are Jasper Forde's literary detective mysteries portal fantasies? It seems like being able to literally step into the pages of fiction is a particular subgenre of portal fiction, another example of which, in its way, is Heinlein's Number of the Beast.
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yati
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Date: 2009-04-21 07:30 pm (UTC)Zelazny's Amber books might be classed as portal fantasy, of a sort. And I'm sure that Andre Norton had at least one SF-ish portal fantasy, wherein the magic McGuffin is the Siege Perilous, which transports anyone sitting in it to the world they properly belong to. Can't remember the name of the book, though.
Are Jasper Forde's literary detective mysteries portal fantasies? It seems like being able to literally step into the pages of fiction is a particular subgenre of portal fiction, another example of which, in its way, is Heinlein's Number of the Beast.