The word ‘fantasy’ wasn't used to describe the genre until the 20th century

Fantasy is a genre that relies on the supernatural

Fantasy is a literary genre that embraces supernatural and magical elements. While the stories often follow common narrative archetypes, like a quest, they frequently take place in elaborately constructed worlds, which sometimes have their own complex physics, lifeforms, and societies.

One writer believes fantasy is a form of realism

The literary genre has become massively popular in the 2020s, turning a previously marginal form into a mainstream concern. Spufford, a literary novelist who grew up loving books that explored fantastic worlds, argues that fantasy is so popular because it so accurately reflects the real world.

JRR Tolkien believed fantasy literature was an entirely different world

Tolkien effectively invented modern fantasy, which often relies on an intricate universe, complete with its own languages, cultures, lifeforms, physics, and systems. When an author did this effectively, he called it “Faërie”—a sort of enchantment that transports the reader into the fictional world.

Early English fantasy writers built on horror and Gothic texts

After the success of 19th-century books like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” readers were eager for more stories that deviated from realism. Early 20th-century texts like George MacDonald’s “Phantastes” and Lord Dunsany’s “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” met the moment, laying the groundwork for the fantasy genre.

In 1974, 'Dungeons and Dragons' turned fantasy into a game

Inspired by the fantasy paperback explosion of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson published the original incarnation of the game, which immersed players in worlds similar to fantasy fiction. Since then, several newer editions have been released. In recent years, podcasts and livestreams featuring individuals playing the game have gained popularity.

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was the first major American fantasy novel

Baum blended elements of Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Lewis Carroll, placing them in an American context. The illustrations of William Wallace Denslow brought the fantastical elements to life, as seen below. The book was an instant smash hit, selling out its initial 10,000-book pressing within the first eight months. By the time it entered the public domain in 1956, it had sold 3 million copies.

The US paperbacks of Tolkien's books led to the popularization of fantasy

Tolkien initially resisted publishing his books in paperback because of the stigma attached to the format, with many believing that serious fiction was first published in hardback. When Ballantine Books eventually published the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in 1965, though, the genre became more popular, leading Ballantine to continue publishing adult fantasy and expanding the genre’s bounds.

Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' turned the fantasy genre upside down

A lot of 19th-century British fantasy was often stiff; its children’s literature was often overly didactic. Carroll’s novel—about a young girl who falls into an unusual world full—was neither, offering vivid, psychedelic imagery and seemingly nonsensical word games.

One fantasy football league has been running for over four decades

The Fantasy Football League began in 1980, before fantasy football was available online. The group, which began in Northern California, originally used a touchdown-only format because it was easier to score in the preinternet era.

Dr. Seuss was likely the first to use the word 'nerd' in print

The word appeared in 1950's "If I Ran the Zoo," but there are theories that the word (or forms of it) were already part of popular slang before the book was published.

'Muggle’ entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003

The Harry Potter term for a nonmagical person became an official English word when the Oxford English Dictionary added it in 2003—cementing the series’ influence on modern language and popular culture.

The word 'dystopia' was first used in 1868

John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, economist, and politician, uttered the word at the House of Commons while criticizing what he considered to be the government’s insufficient land policy for the Irish, saying, “What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable.”

Fanfiction proliferated on fan-made sites in the 1990s

As the internet became more accessible in the '90s, fanfiction writers created websites dedicated to publishing stories about their favorite characters. Still, the hobby was far from mainstream. As one writer from that time said, "Going to Star Trek/comic book conventions in the '80s and '90s was something nerds did. Telling people you read or wrote fan fiction put you in the super geek category."

'The Wizard of Oz' wasn't the first film to use Technicolor

Technicolor provided warm color to films. it was first used in 1917. But the 1939 film used Technicolor in such an intentional way—by having Dorothy exit a dull, sepia-toned world before entering the Technicolor Oz—it popularized the technology, even though audiences had likely seen it used before then.

The earliest mention of time travel

Time travel has fascinated humans for centuries. It appears in myths, literature, and science fiction. One of the earliest examples comes from the 400 BCE Hindu epic Mahabharata, describing time dilation long before Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. By the 19th century, stories introduced machines enabling time travel—setting the stage for modern sci-fi.

'Vacation' wasn't common for Americans until the mid-1800s

Although we now consider vacation to be an integral part of the summer season, the concept didn't exist in the US until the middle of the 19th century. Even then, it was still a luxury and didn't become a middle-class norm until the early 20th century.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

How one silent movie came to define science fiction

Fritz Lang's 1927 epic "Metropolis" set the template for much of the science fiction that followed, establishing themes that would come to define the genre through films like "Star Wars" and novels like "Brave New World." This short documentary from DW digs into the history of the film and its long-lasting impact.

The first known use of 'punk rock' was in 1971

When Creem Magazine's Dave Marsh wrote about seeing '60s garage rockers ? and the Mysterians perform, he remarked it would be unthinkable "to miss such a landmark exposition of punk-rock." The band isn't considered a punk band, but Marsh's description would go on to define other scrappy, back-to-basics acts.

Many writers considered 'existentialist' didn't identify with the term

“Existentialism” was first introduced in 1943 by philosopher Gabriel Marcel. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir readily adopted the term, but others, such as Albert Camus and Martin Heidegger, rejected it. Earlier philosophers, like Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, were long dead by the time the word was in vogue.

Inflation was a word before deflation was

The word inflation has Latin roots and technically means an influx of air, first appearing in the English language in the 1890s to describe bike tires. Deflation's first known mention in an economic text was in 1919.

The first known mention of the term 'country' to describe music was in 1736

The November 26, 1736 issue of the Virginia Gazette described a fiddling contest for "country" musicians. While the musical style would go by many names over the next two centuries, "country" was the one that eventually stuck.

Ghosts didn't say 'boo' until the 19th century

The word derives from Scotland in the early modern era and was often used to assert oneself. Eventually, it became a way to startle someone, and by the 19th century, was the go-to utterance of literary spirits.

George Orwell: What is fascism?

This 1944 article by George Orwell attempts to answer the question, "What is fascism?" Orwell's book Animal Farm was published at about the same time at the article, and he penned 1984, a book with anti-totalitarianism sentiments, a few years afterward. In this article, Orwell argues that the term "fascism" has become near "meaningless" due to being essentially demoted to a swearword.

The term “Middle Ages” was invented by Renaissance thinkers to belittle the era

The label “Middle Ages” reflects Renaissance writers’ admiration for ancient Greece and Rome, not medieval reality. They frame the post-Roman centuries as a cultural backslide—a view later reinforced by Edward Gibbon and modernized as the “Dark Ages” myth.

'Don Quixote' is often called the first 'modern novel' because of its aesthetics

Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” published in the early 17th century, isn’t the first long-form prose narrative. Still, many critics consider it the first “modern novel” because of its structure, approach to narration, and commentary on literature itself.

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.