On F. Scott Fitzgerald and Heroic Fantasy

Little known fact. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and coiner of the term “The Jazz Age,” wrote heroic fantasy.

Why bring this up? On a mailing list I subscribe to the question was asked, “It’s interesring to note that though Hemingway and Fitzgerald did make it big, they still were miserable and bitter at times. I oftened worried what type of Sci-fi writer Fitzgerald would have been.”

Fitzgerald didn’t need pulp sci-fi. He wrote for Hollywood. 🙂

That said, Fitzgerald did write some historical fantasy fiction, four stories about a Visigoth barbarian who lived in France in the seventh or eighth century. The character, Philippe, is believed by scholars to have been based, in part, on Hemingway. The stories haven’t been collected, to my knowledge. I’ve only read the first, which appeared in a collection entitled Their Price Was High, a collection of little known Fitzgerald stories. Also little known–Fitzgerald’s last novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was very nearly a novel about Philippe.

Maybe, someday, we’ll have a Philippe collection.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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