Religion, Faith and the Fantastic
Often drawing from religious mythology, fantastic literature has been intricately linked to religious themes since before the mid-twentieth century, when Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, a religious allegory (although he insisted that it was not), and Tolkien formulated his understanding of fantasy as a sub-creation. In His Dark Materials (1995-2000), Philip Pullman creates a New Eve and imagines a frail deity no longer in control. A myriad of fantastic fiction — such as Terry Pratchett's Hogfather (1996) and Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001) — also looks at the displacement or immigration of old gods as well as the creation of new ones.