Satire in Fantasy and Sci-Fi

A Brief and Occasionally Accurate Account of Pointy Hats, Rocket Ships, and Ridicule

Part 1

The Beginning

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt."

—Bertrand Russell (Mortals and Others)

Creation myths differ, but most agree that satire was born sometime in the 8th century BCE, right around the moment Homer caught a glimpse of himself nude in a reflective shield and cried, ‘Ah! Of course, Cyclops!’
Or so the story doesn’t go. I made that up. But honestly? It tracks. The man understood epic proportions (somewhere offstage, Penelope rolled her eyes so hard they became constellations).

If you're hunting for the origins of satirical fantasy, don't bother rifling through Tolkien's drawers or flipping through Merlin’s spell books. Instead, follow the scent of olives to ancient Greece, where bearded men in sandals were already mocking the gods mid-picnic.

Start with the 6th century BCE and Aesop’s fables with talking animals with moral agendas, and bite-sized wisdom that still slaps. Fast-forward to 423 BCE and Aristophanes’ The Clouds, a comedic takedown of philosophers, intellectual pretension, and generational angst. Then there’s The Birds (414 BCE), a chaotic featherstorm of divine authority and earthly nonsense in which humans build a sky-city to flip off both the gods and the bureaucrats. It's SimCity: Olympus Edition, but with more avian metaphors and significantly more political snark.

Of course, no satirical stew is complete without a generous ladle from the Roman larder. Enter Juvenal, whose Saturae (c. 100–127 AD) gave us Juvenalian satire, the kind that doesn’t just throw shade, it throws bricks. This is your Animal Farm, your Nineteen Eighty-Four: dystopia not as escapism, but as a flaming sword of moral indignation, swung by someone who’s absolutely had it with your nonsense.

Odysseus and the Sirens by John William Waterhouse (1891)

His gentler cousin, Horace, took a different tack. Horatian satire raises an eyebrow, not a rebellion. It chuckles at your folly, pours you a drink, and kindly reminds you that you’re being a bit of a twit. Less guillotine, more gentle poke with a poetry stick.

And then there’s Burlesque, not the fishnet-and-feathers kind (though no judgment), but the literary technique: treating the solemn ridiculously, and the ridiculous with solemn reverence. Which, frankly, is fantasy’s whole deal. Talking swords? Dead serious. Entire kingdoms ruled by sentient broccoli? Played straight as a bard’s lute.

Fast forward to the medieval and Renaissance cabinets of curiosity, where things get delightfully gothic and glow-in-the-dark theological. The Divine Comedy (1321) sends Dante spiralling through the afterlife like a holy tourist, armed with divine commentary and the most judgmental tour guide in literary history.

Meanwhile, Erasmus’s In Praise of Folly (1509) hands the mic to Lady Folly herself, who proceeds to roast the Church, the state, academia, and anyone else standing too close to power with their pants down. And then there’s Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516). Part epic, part farce, full of moon trips, magic rings, and fourth-wall breaks like your bard’s had one too many at the tavern.

By 1605, Cervantes drops Don Quixote, the literary equivalent of a man charging headfirst into genre conventions with a broken lance and far too many feelings. He dismantles the entire chivalric tradition.

And then there's Shakespeare, cheeky bugger, who gifts us A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595): a glitter-drenched labyrinth of fairies, potions, romantic chaos, and theatrical disasters. Less high fantasy, more what happens when you mix enchanted forests with strong feelings and a rehearsal schedule held together by sheer panic.

By the Enlightenment, satire had hit its stride. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) turned fantastical voyages into savage critiques of politics, science, colonialism, and human absurdity. Voltaire’s Candide (1759) took a sledgehammer to the sunny optimism of Enlightenment philosophy, gleefully dismantling the idea that we live in 'the best of all possible worlds', especially when that world is on fire.

In short: while it may look like you’re reading about an elven uprising in the Glitterbuns Realm, what you’re actually getting is a pointed critique of late-stage capitalism, democratic decay, or why letting goblins run public transport is a terrible idea. Fantasy satire isn’t about escaping the real world, it’s about returning from the dream with annotated notes. It’s not so much about elves and goblins as it is about zooming out far enough to realise just how ridiculous everything is. (And it is.)

Though the roots of satirical fantasy stretch deep into classical and early modern literature, the tradition that most directly shaped British authors like Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, and their ilk can be traced to a more specific cultural flashpoint: the founding of Punch, or The London Charivari in 1841. This weekly magazine became a cornerstone of British satire, famous for its wit, political irreverence, and delight in lampooning everything from crumbling empires to tedious dinner parties. It set the tone for a distinctly British blend of clever absurdity and eyebrow-lifted critique, a tone that would echo through generations of fantastical mischief-makers.

Although one could trace these traditions even further back (and lose a week down a rabbit hole of literary ancestry), we’ll avoid any more of that particular labyrinth, for now. For our purposes, Punch suffices as a cultural landmark.

But Punch did not emerge in a vacuum. The rise of industrialism brought with it a surge in literacy, while artists like Hans Christian Andersen and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, alongside the Pre-Raphaelites, helped ignite a cultural revival of medievalism, gothic horror, and the fantastical. The 19th century saw a new appetite for wonder and shadow: Frankenstein (1818), Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), and Dracula (1897) are all landmarks of this eerie renaissance.

This shift wasn’t confined to literature, music echoed the same strange magic, with Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Bartók, Stravinsky, Satie, and Debussy conjuring sonic worlds full of myth, madness, and mystery. In 1840, Edgar Allan Poe published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque; by 1843, Dickens had penned A Christmas Carol, a ghost story laced with moral satire and socioeconomic angst wrapped in tinsel.

Simultaneously, key medieval and mythological texts were being rediscovered or reimagined. Take The Mabinogion (12th–13th century), translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in 1838. It offered something radical to a Victorian audience: characters with agency, contradiction, and weirdness — more Homer than Plato, more human than allegorical. Its influence echoes clearly in later modern fantasy (see: The Silmarillion), laying groundwork for tales where gods bleed, kings doubt, and the magical is inseparable from the mortal.

Likewise, the rediscovery and transcription of Beowulf throughout the 18th and 19th centuries helped shape the evolving landscape of fantasy literature. It’s no coincidence that Tolkien, a Beowulf scholar and philologist, would go on to become one of the genre’s founding architects. The bones of the dragon he studied would later roar to life in The Hobbit and beyond.

Meanwhile, fantasy, and its jitterbugging cousin, science fiction, became playgrounds for society’s what-ifs, testing morals, futures, and the absurdity of bureaucracy without having to involve Reality’s lawyers. Magic and warp drives became metaphors for power, ignorance, ambition. The dragon’s hoard? Capitalism with scales.

Early sci-fi classics like H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898) paved the way for authors like Douglas Adams to point out that the future, much like the past, is crawling with morons wielding laser guns.

Though Punch wasn’t a fantasy magazine per se, it often dipped its pen into the fantastical. Absurd creatures, mythological setups, surreal exaggerations, all in service of mocking authority. In doing so, it helped codify a uniquely British tradition of satire: dry, ironic, self-aware, and prone to hiding behind whimsy before stabbing you in the heart with social truth.

This fusion of satire, commentary, and absurdity found new life in the Discworld of Terry Pratchett, the intergalactic ennui of Douglas Adams, and the genre-layered mischief of Jasper Fforde. Punch didn’t invent dragons, but it gave them clipboards, made them middle management, and sent them to do performance reviews on knights.

Around the same time, literary nonsense emerged as a genre in its own right. Edward Lear (1812–1888), in A Book of Nonsense (1846) and The Owl and the Pussycat (1870), played gleefully with logic, language, and form, not satire in the Juvenalian sense, but a vital precursor to surreal and absurdist comedy. His work laid the groundwork for the later flourishes of Lewis Carroll and, eventually, the looping logic spirals of modern absurdist fantasy.

In 1853, Richard Wagner began his operatic transfiguration of Nordic myth with Das Rheingold, setting the stage for high-stakes fantasy wrapped in thunderous drama. Just a few years later, Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1862) explored forbidden fruit and sisterly salvation with rich, symbolic verse. Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière (1862) reminded us that real historians can fabricate myth more extravagantly than most novelists, blending scholarship and sensationalism in a way that would echo through later historical fantasies.

In 1866, Sabine Baring-Gould published Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, providing easily digestible mythic fuel for contemporary fantasists. Around the same time, Théophile Gautier’s Spirite ventured into paranormal romance, while William Gilbert’s The Magic Mirror revealed the Victorian imagination at full tilt, wish-fulfillment fantasies filtered through moral tension and mirror-world metaphors.

'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.'

Then came Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) transformed literary nonsense into philosophical subversion. Dream-logic, puns, paradoxes, Carroll poked elegant holes in Victorian certainty with a smile and a flamingo mallet. By the time The Hunting of the Snark arrived in 1876, he’d gone full meta: a mock-epic of confusion and futility dressed in rhyme and whimsy. This tradition of structured absurdity flows directly into The Goon Show, Monty Python, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Discworld. Comedy that looks silly but knows exactly what it’s doing.

Also in 1871 came Thespis, the first collaboration between W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Their operettas, The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S. Pinafore, and others, revelled in absurdity, parodying class, empire, and bureaucracy through farce and razor-sharp lyrics. They didn’t just shape musical theatre; they helped define the rhythm, tone, and satirical targets of British fantasy humour. You can draw a straight line from the Lord High Executioner to the guild-run chaos of Ankh-Morpork.

Oscar Wilde added his own flourish to the fantastical: The Sphinx (1884) offered a decadent tour of cosmic and mythic imagination, while The Canterville Ghost (1887) brought sophistication to the humorous ghost story, pairing satire with sentiment in equal measure.

Satire, though, wasn’t confined to ghosts and goblins. The Diary of a Nobody (serialised in Punch, 1888–89) by George and Weedon Grossmith turned its gaze to the hilariously mundane struggles of suburban life, proving that the fantastical isn’t a prerequisite for satire, self-importance and bureaucracy will do just fine.

Meanwhile, William Morris pushed fantasy forward with The Wood Beyond the World (1894), one of the first fully imagined secondary worlds, rich in supernatural elements and medieval textures. Earlier works like George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858) and William Beckford’s Vathek (1786) also deserve mention, blending fantasy with gothic, exotic, and spiritual stylings.

Morris’s medievalist vision can be read as a reaction to industrialisation and the anxieties of modernity. Much of fantasy’s affection for pseudo-medieval settings, all towers, swords, and suspiciously clean peasants, reflects a cultural longing for a world where problems could be solved with a sword or a quest, rather than paperwork and supply chains.

Even Shakespeare’s Lysander knew this, fleeing the regulated world of Athens to the edge of civilisation — to the not-the-city, where magic, mischief, and truth could thrive ungoverned. That liminal space stretches all the way back to the grotesque doodles in medieval manuscripts, killer rabbits, jousting snails, musical monkeys, visual nonsense that echoed older mythic margins: Polyphemus, trickster gods, shape-shifters. Figures always on the edge of the story, breaking the frame.

Part 2

The Early 20th Century

As the 20th century dawned, the torch of speculative satire passed into strange new hands, some gloved, some robotic, and a few clutching martinis.

Part of this evolution began with P. G. Wodehouse. His first published work, The Pothunters (1902), aimed squarely at schoolboys and rugby fields, doesn’t yet deliver the full Wodehouse bloom, but the seeds are there: wordplay, farce, a narrator who already sounds like he’s smirking behind a monocle. By the time My Man Jeeves arrived in 1919, Wodehouse had perfected his symphony of upper-class absurdity. While his settings were staunchly realistic, his comedic architecture (hyperbole, irony, inverted logic) laid groundwork for genre stylists to come. Jeeves is less valet than wizard in a waistcoat; Wooster, a chaotic bard in spats.

In 1904, J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan gave us a mischievous meditation on escapism and arrested development, a fantasy that felt playful but deeply political in its exploration of never growing up (and never really escaping empire).

By 1907, George Sterling’s A Wine of Wizardry was busy declaring fantasy’s literary ambitions in lavish, alchemical verse, a decadent manifesto disguised as poetry. If nothing else, it proved that Cosmopolitan readers of the time were still romantics at heart, albeit with a taste for doom-laced magic and moonlit incantations.

The 1920s brought new mutations in the genre. Eric Rücker Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros (1922) pushed epic fantasy into ornate, operatic territory, showing just how far the transfiguration of myth could go when written with enough Elizabethan bravado. David Garnett’s Lady into Fox (also 1922) gave us modern theriomorphic fantasy, transformations not as metaphor, but as domestic shock therapy. Around the same time, Ben Hecht’s Fantazius Mallare emerged as a fever dream of artistic delusion, full of psychological perversion and metafictional smoke, the surreal inner sanctum of fantasy cracking wide open.

Then came 1926. Amazing Stories launched under the editorial direction of Hugo Gernsback, a man who seemed to believe the future could be fixed with enough rivets and a more Germanic approach to optimism. Amazing marked the formal birth of modern science fiction publishing: a genre still brimming with men in lab coats explaining things at length, but now with ray guns and Martians. Though rarely humorous itself, the magazine legitimised speculative settings, worlds distant enough for authors to smuggle critiques of their own into stories of aliens, utopias, and machines that didn’t always behave.

Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and H.P. Lovecraft had already kicked the speculative doors wide open, and occasionally off their hinges. Verne gave us submarines and moonshots before they existed, Wells gave us time machines and social Darwinism with a side of Martian imperialism, and Lovecraft gave us ancient, incomprehensible horrors mostly annoyed at being woken up too early. While rarely overtly comic, these early works carved out the imaginative space, both literal and metaphorical, for philosophical, satirical, and often existential exploration.

By 1932, the tone had darkened. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World envisioned a society where everyone was chemically pacified, cheerfully shallow, and numbly content, a dystopia built not on terror, but on convenience. It wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but the satire ran deep: irony soaked into every synthetic fibre of that disturbingly efficient future. Huxley proved that speculative fiction could be both prophetic and caustic, a tradition picked up by Orwell, Vonnegut, Atwood, and anyone else with a flair for metaphor and civilisational despair.

Meanwhile, fantasy was finding its modern voice. In 1937, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (or, There and Back Again) laid the cornerstone of immersive secondary world-building, not just an adventure, but a map, a language, a lineage. That same year, Stephen Vincent Benét’s The Devil and Daniel Webster turned a classic Faustian bargain into a courtroom showdown, pitting American exceptionalism against Old Scratch himself.

In 1938, T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone reimagined Arthurian legend through a whimsical, anachronistic lens, offering new models of wizardry, pedagogy, and magical transformation. That same year, over in Soviet Russia, Mikhail Bulgakov was privately writing The Master and Margarita, a satirical whirlwind of devils, talking cats, and state censorship, knowing full well it wouldn’t see daylight in his lifetime. Also in 1938, Tolkien delivered his lecture On Fairy-Stories, an unprecedentedly serious apologia for fantasy as a vital narrative form, one that offered consolation, escape, and even a kind of redemptive truth.

Then, in 1940, comic fantasy took a decisive leap with The Compleat Enchanter series by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. Their hero, Harold Shea, used symbolic logic to travel into mythic and literary worlds, think Jung meets Bugs Bunny. These stories gleefully dismantled the high seriousness of fantasy while poking fun at academic literalism. They established a new kind of comic fantasy: cerebral, self-aware, and unafraid to wield footnotes as weapons. Magic, it turned out, could be funny, especially if you approached it with a slide rule and an inferiority complex.

A very different kind of satire arrived in 1945 with George Orwell’s Animal Farm, less comic fantasy and more political allegory in wellington boots. The animals did talk, yes, but mostly to say: 'We’re all doomed.' Orwell wielded fantasy’s tools, anthropomorphism, fable, allegory, not to entertain, but to expose and flay. Animal Farm, followed by Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), showed that satire in speculative fiction could be deadly serious. Not darkly funny, just dark. No jokes, only dread. But satire nonetheless.

Meanwhile, on the airwaves, where imagination cost little and sound effects were expertly crafted with saucepans, a new kind of British absurdism was bubbling up. In 1953, The Goon Show, created by Spike Milligan, began broadcasting surreal comedy to millions. Strange characters, tangled plots, and wilful nonsense came wrapped in the sound of exploding socks. The Goons shredded narrative conventions and laid the groundwork for Monty Python, Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett, all of whom absorbed the vital lesson: reality is optional, authority is ridiculous, and logic is something to be dismantled and repurposed.

Then in 1954, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings arrived, the fantasy epic to end all fantasy epics, and then restart them, and then make them a trilogy. With its solemn tone, deep lore, and mythic earnestness, Tolkien’s work set the gold standard for high fantasy, and by extension, a sparkling target for parody. Noble elves, dark lords, hairy hobbits: all destined to be lovingly mocked and reinvented.

From 1950 to 1956, C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia brought fantasy to younger readers, part Christian allegory, part fairy tale, part lion-led monarchy. Though more whimsical than Tolkien, Narnia carried the same moral weight and mythic seriousness that later authors would gleefully undercut.

By the late 1950s and early ’60s, humour and science fiction began flirting openly, not yet full-on romance, but certainly exchanging knowing glances across the cafeteria. Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958) offered a light-hearted coming-of-age adventure mixing intergalactic thrills with a playful tone. Though aimed at younger readers, it helped set the stage for a more comedic, character-driven sci-fi, a universe both absurd and emotionally grounded.

Part 3

1960 to Discworld

The 1960s witnessed several landmark developments that reshaped the satirical and speculative landscape. It was the decade when fiction realised it didn’t have to be serious to be clever, it could wear sunglasses, lean against the wall, and mutter ironic remarks about the Cold War.

In 1961, Private Eye magazine was founded, ushering in a new era of sharp, irreverent British satire. Combining investigative journalism with gleeful anarchy, Private Eye became a cultural touchstone, the spiritual heir to Punch, but meaner, faster, and far more likely to lampoon the Prime Minister’s haircut. Its tone influenced a generation of writers, broadcasters, and general troublemakers.

Then in 1965, Frank Herbert’s Dune reminded everyone that science fiction could be serious. While not comedic by any stretch, Dune’s intricate web of politics, mysticism, and ecology provided exactly the sort of pompous, high-concept grandeur that future satirists would gleefully tear into. After all, any story involving spice, messianic teenagers, and giant worms practically begs for parody.

Quietly germinating in the late ’60s was the seed of a comedy sci-fi phenomenon: Douglas Adams. Though The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy wouldn’t officially launch until 1978, its conceptual DNA (absurdist humour, philosophical musings, deeply irritated aliens) was already sprouting by 1967, reflecting a growing appetite for speculative satire that could entertain and provoke.

In 1968, the genre’s scope widened again with Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film and novel that managed to be epic, wordless, and deeply confusing. The polar opposite of comic sci-fi, its very seriousness invited irreverence: nothing makes a better straight man than a monolith doing absolutely nothing for 20 minutes. That same year, Soviet authors Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s satirical novel Tale of the Troika (Сказка о Тройке) offered a uniquely absurdist critique of Soviet bureaucracy and scientific absurdity, a rare Eastern Bloc gem sneaking satire into speculative fiction like contraband vodka into a party congress.

Also in 1968, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Wizard of Earthsea set a crucial precedent for immersive fantasies in sophisticated secondary worlds, especially in the burgeoning field of young adult literature. Meanwhile, Leon Garfield’s Mr. Corbett’s Ghost updated the moral outlook of Christmas fantasy.

Then, in 1969, Bored of the Rings arrived, courtesy of Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, founders of The National Lampoon (1970–1998), itself a mischievous spinoff of The Harvard Lampoon, which had been mocking things since 1876 (inspired, inevitably, by Punch). Bored of the Rings wasn’t just parody; it was full-scale genre demolition. Every trope Tolkien had painstakingly carved into the stone tablets of high fantasy was gleefully defaced with fart jokes and brand-name satire. Vulgar and undeniably influential, it set the stage for a generation of writers daring enough to point and laugh at fantasy’s lofty seriousness. (Later, The National Lampoon would follow up with Doon in 1984, a sandy spoof of Herbert’s Dune.)

The 1970s saw speculative fiction splinter into brilliant, unruly forms, grim, grand, comic, cosmic. While earnest fantasy and hard science fiction dominated bestseller lists, a parallel thread of irreverence, absurdity, and deconstruction wove through the genre like a prankster in a wizard’s hat.

In 1970, Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber arrived with a voice that was cool, cynical, and narratively unreliable. Not comic fantasy in the traditional sense, its sarcasm, genre-bending alternate realities, and myth-meets-modernity vibe introduced a sharp new tone. Zelazny proved fantasy didn’t have to be solemn, it could be slippery, stylish, and just a little sarcastic.

1972 brought Richard Adams’s Watership Down, recycling the Aeneid as an ecological and political fable about dispossessed rabbits. Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman offered a penetrating exploration of the seductions of erotic fantasy.

In 1975, the Compleat Enchanter series by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt was republished, reasserting its position as a cornerstone of comic fantasy. Featuring Harold Shea, a psychologist who uses symbolic logic to travel into mythological realms, these stories, first published decades earlier, found renewed relevance. Witty, clever, and fond of poking fun at heroic myth and modern rationalism alike, they reminded readers that satire could exist between sword and spell, and that not all fantasy required destiny and capital letters.

Also from the mid-’70s came William Kotzwinkle’s Doctor Rat (1976), a manic satire narrated by a clinically deranged lab rat trapped in a research laboratory. Both hilarious and horrifying, it’s a surreal fable of cruelty, science, and revolution, pushing absurdity to its screaming edge.

Yet even these bold comic fantasies reveal a tension: while delightfully inventive, they sometimes lack the immersive weight of their high-fantasy counterparts. Their worlds can feel flimsy, theatrical backdrops waiting to be knocked over by the next punchline. But that fragility is also their strength. Where high fantasy builds cathedrals, comic fantasy builds mirrors. The joke isn’t just in the world, it’s in how we relate to it. That’s the point.

Meanwhile, high fantasy remained very much earnest. In 1977, Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara arrived as a full-throated Tolkien homage, solidifying the template for the next wave of heroic fantasy: brave orphan, dark lord, magical thing, repeat. Earnest, epic, and bestselling, and for some writers, irresistible material to mock.

Also in 1977, The Silmarillion was published, four years after Tolkien’s death, offering the closest possible approximation of his 'lost epic' of pre-Norman England.

That same year, Star Wars changed everything by turning science fiction into cinematic myth. While not satire, it established the visual and emotional language of space opera: heroic journeys, mystical mumbo-jumbo, dramatic breathing. It became the genre’s lingua franca, and therefore a perfect target for parody.

In 1979, the sky cracked open with Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. What began as a radio series became a literary phenomenon, fusing dry wit, philosophical depth, and surreal cosmic nonsense into something gloriously new. Adams didn’t just mock bureaucracy, he invented a galaxy-wide version of it. He didn’t just poke fun at sci-fi tropes, he dismantled them and offered tea. Hitchhiker’s proved comic science fiction could be intellectually rigorous and side-splittingly absurd, a revelation, and a revolution.

As the 1980s loomed, satire in speculative fiction stood on the threshold of transformation. New voices were rising, ready to blend parody with poetry, farce with folklore. And somewhere, in a small bookshop in Somerset, a man named Pratchett was taking notes.

Part 4

The 1980s and 1990s

Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic, released in 1983, launched the Discworld saga, a series that began by playfully poking fun at fantasy stereotypes. Over time, Discworld grew into an expansive, delightfully unpredictable universe. Beyond the laughs and whimsical nonsense, Pratchett’s stories became sharp, insightful critiques of society, politics, and human behaviour. He reinvented fantasy satire, proving it could be both hilarious and profound, holding up a mirror not just to mythical creatures but to the quirks and contradictions of everyday life. At the same time, many young readers started gravitating toward fantasy that wasn’t strictly labeled for kids. Books like Pratchett’s, which crossed age boundaries and appealed equally to adults and children, flourished like never before.

In 1984, William Gibson’s Neuromancer arrived as a cyberpunk manifesto that revolutionised speculative fiction. Grim and dystopian rather than comedic, Neuromancer injected a new edge of technological paranoia and cultural critique into sci-fi, setting the stage for countless explorations of humanity’s uneasy relationship with machines. That same year, British satire found a new televised voice in Spitting Image, a puppet show that skewered politicians and pop culture with biting humour, helping to mainstream irreverent satire during Thatcher’s Britain.

Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates (1985) introduced a different flavour: a fantasy tale infused with time travel, dark humour, and literary parody, blending historical fiction with the surreal and absurd. Meanwhile, Back to the Future (1985) thrilled audiences with its playful, nostalgic take on time travel and causality, proving science fiction and comedy could fuse into mainstream pop culture gold.

Fantasy’s pun-filled side found a champion in Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, which reached peak popularity in the ’80s. His whimsical, pun-heavy tales offered a lighthearted counterpoint to the decade’s darker or more cerebral fantasy trends. Similarly, Diana Wynne Jones enchanted readers with Howl’s Moving Castle (1986), blending magical adventure with sharp wit and vivid characterisation. The novel’s success, followed by sequels Castle in the Air (1990) and House of Many Ways (2008), secured Jones’s place as a cornerstone of imaginative, humorous fantasy for all ages.

Also in 1986, Craig Shaw Gardner unleashed A Malady of Magicks, the first of The Ebenezum Trilogy: an absurd, pun-laden romp delighting readers with its irreverent take on fantasy tropes. Around the same time, Tom Holt made his comic fantasy debut with Expecting Someone Taller (1987), a witty riff on myth and legend. Holt followed up with Who’s Afraid of Beowulf? (1988), carving out a distinctively sharp and playful niche in British fantasy satire.

Parallel to these literary developments, Tanya Huff contributed to genre blending with Child of the Grove (1988) and The Last Wizard (1989), injecting fantasy with mystery, strong characters, and nuanced storytelling.

On the animated front, 1989 saw the debut of The Simpsons, a landmark American satirical series. Though not strictly fantasy, The Simpsons often incorporates surreal and speculative elements, especially in its iconic Treehouse of Horror episodes, playful explorations of time travel, apocalyptic futures, and alien invasions. These forays allowed the show to parody politics, religion, family, and literary canon, cementing adult animation as a potent platform for sharp social commentary.

While Family Guy (1999–present) is often compared to The Simpsons, its problematic portrayals of violence against women complicate its legacy. Nevertheless, the show occasionally nods to British satirical traditions, for instance, the 2007 episode 'Lois Kills Stewie' features Stewie performing Gilbert and Sullivan’s I’ve Got a Little List, echoing The Simpsons’ homage to H.M.S. Pinafore in 'Cape Feare.' Such moments highlight Victorian satire’s enduring influence on contemporary adult animation.

The 1990s opened with notable works that continue to resonate today. In 1990, Patricia C. Wrede published Dealing with Dragons, the first in her Enchanted Forest Chronicles. With humour and feminist flair, the series playfully subverted fairy tale conventions, injecting fresh life into young adult fantasy and paving the way for more self-aware, empowered heroines.

That same year saw a landmark collaboration: Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens. This comic apocalyptic fantasy wove biblical lore with pop culture satire, exploring themes of morality, bureaucracy, and human folly with delightfully irreverent wit. Good Omens helped define a new kind of fantasy satire, profound yet playful, philosophical yet wildly entertaining.

C. Dale Brittain’s Wizards of Yurt series (from A Bad Spell in Yurt, 1991, through Is This Apocalypse Necessary?, 2000) continued the tradition of blending fantasy with lighthearted humour and engaging characters, further enriching the comic fantasy niche.

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (2001) pushed the boundaries of speculative fiction by blending myth with modernity. Though not strictly comic fantasy, Gaiman’s dark humour and cultural critique layered subversive satire across sprawling, multi-faceted narratives, challenging traditional storytelling and myth-making.

Meanwhile, Pratchett’s later works, including Small Gods (1992) and Going Postal (2004), demonstrated the maturing of comic fantasy into a sophisticated genre. These novels combined humour and social commentary with narrative complexity, exploring religion, politics, and human nature with a deft, satirical touch.

The 1990s also witnessed a starkly contrasting trend toward darker, grittier fantasy with George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (1996). This novel inaugurated the ‘grimdark’ sub-genre, emphasising morally complex characters and brutal political intrigue. This turn heightened the importance of comic fantasy as a space for relief, reflection, and critique, its irreverence and wit serving as a vital counterbalance to grim seriousness.

Other notable works included Colin Webber’s Merlin and the Last Trump (1993) and Ribwash (1994), alongside James Bibby’s Ronan series (1995–98) and Shapestone (2000), which contributed to the decade’s diverse speculative and satirical tapestry.

1995 also saw Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (published as The Golden Compass in the US), a bold experiment in theodicy and philosophical fantasy that sparked a new wave in children’s literature with its complex themes and immersive world-building.

In 1997, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone ignited a worldwide phenomenon unlike any before, popularising fantasy for a new generation and blending coming-of-age storytelling with rich mythic and magical traditions.

That year also brought To Say Nothing of the Dog: or, How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis, a comic science fiction novel and the second entry in her Oxford Time Travel series. Praised for its clever wit and historical parody, it won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1999 and was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998.

Peter Chippindale’s Laptop of the Gods: A Millennium Fable (1998) offered another satirical perspective on the cusp of the new millennium, blending speculative elements with sharp social critique.

On the satirical animation front, 1997 also saw the debut of South Park. Bringing a boundary-pushing, aggressively irreverent form of satire to adult animation, South Park wove speculative and fantasy elements into its episodes with absurdity and shock to challenge societal norms. Episodes like The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers (2002) and A Song of Ass and Fire (2013) brazenly parody fantasy epics, blending reverence with irreverence in a distinctly 21st-century voice. South Park’s bold mix of parody and provocation reshaped comedic social commentary as the century closed.

Part 5

The 2000s and Early 2010s: Reinvention, Parody, and Urban Fantasy Wit

The new millennium kicked off with a fresh burst of inventive satire and metafictional whimsy, led by Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair (2001). The first instalment in the Thursday Next series, Fforde’s novel stood out for its richly layered wordplay, literary satire, and delightfully absurd logic. Paying clever homage to, and continuing the traditions forged by Terry Pratchett and Iain Banks. The Eyre Affair wove fantasy and metafiction into a uniquely playful exploration of storytelling itself. Through its premise of a detective who literally steps into works of literature, Fforde revitalised comic fantasy for a new generation, blending sharp wit, literary references, and sly critiques of cultural institutions. This metafictional approach expanded the genre’s capacity to interrogate not only fantastical worlds but the very nature of narrative, authorship, and reader engagement.

Riding the tidal wave of the early 2000s’ fantasy mania, 2002 saw Michael Gerber launch Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody, a cheeky and unapologetically crude spoof of the Harry Potter phenomenon. Gerber’s juvenile yet undeniably hilarious series, including Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel (2003), Barry Trotter and the Dead Horse (2004), and The Chronicles of Blarnia: The Lying Bitch in the Wardrobe (2005), delivered literary custard pies to the face of the boy wizard craze (the latter's release coincided with the film remake, directed by Andrew Adamson). The blunt humour, while polarising, struck a chord with a generation eager for irreverent, referential comedy poking fun at beloved fantasy franchises. The success of The Unnecessary Sequel alone, which sold over 700,000 copies, proved parody was more than a side hustle, it was a main event. Around the same time, A.R.R.R. Roberts’ The Soddit (2003) attempted a similar approach, casting Bingo Grabbins as its hapless hero in place of Tolkien’s hobbit. Critics, however, echoed a familiar refrain for comic fantasy: humour sometimes tried too hard, overshadowing character and plot.

Following this surge in parody, Tom Holt returned with his J.W. Wells & Co. series, beginning with The Portable Door (2003). Blending corporate satire with supernatural chaos, Holt’s novels evoked the whimsical absurdity and witty wordplay reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas, a respectful nod to the British comic traditions that have long shaped fantasy satire.

By 2004, Susanna Clarke made a literary splash with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. This richly detailed, slow-burning fantasy, steeped in dry wit and subtle social satire, drew inspiration from Austen and Dickens, exemplifying how fantasy can engage with history and society through elegant irony and scholarly charm. Clarke’s work expanded satirical fantasy beyond outright parody into the realm of nuanced cultural critique, proving the genre’s capacity for depth alongside humour.

The mid-2000s also witnessed a broadening tonal palette for comic fantasy. A. Lee Martinez’s Gil’s All Fright Diner (2005) delivered a supernatural comedy with deadpan delivery and quirky characters, blending absurdity with genuine heart and adding further diversity to the genre.

In 2009, Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies marked a significant moment in genre-blending satire. By injecting the undead into Austen’s classic, the novel capitalised on growing popular appetite for mashups that juxtaposed high culture with pulp horror, signalling a new direction where satire embraced both homage and hijinks with gleeful abandon.

The year 2011 marked two pivotal moments in speculative fiction’s evolving landscape. First, Ben Aaronovitch launched Rivers of London (also published as Midnight Riot in the US), kicking off a series that masterfully blended urban fantasy, police procedural, and dry humour. With sequels such as Moon Over Soho, Lies Sleeping, False Value, and Among Others, Aaronovitch revitalised comic fantasy by weaving supernatural mystery together with sharp social observation and witty dialogue, appealing to a contemporary audience craving both escapism and grounded commentary.

That same year, the television adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones burst into global consciousness, thrusting Martin’s grim, morally complex fantasy world into the mainstream. The series’ massive popularity highlighted an insatiable appetite for darker, serious fantasy narratives, yet simultaneously intensified the need for humorous counter-narratives within the genre. As Martin’s epic tales demanded serious engagement, comic and satirical fantasy grew even more vital as spaces for relief, reflection, and incisive critique, balancing darkness with laughter, and complexity with levity.

Part 6

The 2010s and Beyond: Cosmic Nihilism, Meta-Humour, and New Frontiers

Responding to the era’s appetite for sharp, boundary-pushing satire, Rick and Morty burst onto the scene in 2013 as a direct spiritual descendant of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Back to the Future. This animated series blends high-concept science fiction, featuring multiverses, clone conspiracies, and interdimensional bureaucracy, with cosmic nihilism and comedy. Like South Park, Rick and Morty spares no one in its satire, skewering scientific hubris, family dysfunction, and pop culture alike. It showcases how comic sci-fi can tackle profound philosophical questions while remaining wildly entertaining, pushing the boundaries of what satirical speculative fiction can achieve in the 21st century.

In 2014, J. Zachary Pike released Orconomics: A Satire, the first book in The Dark Profit Saga. This novel cleverly skewers fantasy tropes through the lens of economics and capitalism, marking a fresh addition to the growing body of satirical fantasy that critiques not only genre conventions but real-world systems. That same year also saw the publication of A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar, which enriched speculative fiction with lyrical prose and subtle cultural resonance.

2014 additionally introduced BoJack Horseman (2014–2020), Netflix’s first original adult animated series created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Set in a surreal, anthropomorphic Hollywood, BoJack Horseman blends comedy, fantasy, and stark emotional realism. Using absurdity not merely for laughs but to explore weighty themes like addiction, depression, fame, and identity, the show balances silliness with devastating insight into human frailty. Comparisons to Discworld are inevitable, though BoJack’s anthropomorphic cast is more varied and ridiculous, evoking echoes of whimsical beasts from traditions like Punch magazine and medieval and Renaissance art, birds with parasols, geese sitting upright in chairs, humans with donkey heads, hinting at subtle cultural resonances beneath the show’s modern sheen.

Where Rick and Morty grapples with cosmic nihilism, questioning reality and the meaninglessness of existence, BoJack Horseman focuses on existential nihilism, the struggle to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless life. The two also differ in tone and style: Rick and Morty frequently breaks the fourth wall, often with brutal, violent consequences for its characters, underscoring the disposability of existence within its multiverse. In contrast, BoJack rarely breaks the fourth wall outright but crafts a world where heightened self-awareness subtly permeates the narrative. Despite its darker themes, BoJack exercises restraint, only three somewhat major character deaths occur, and uses humour to endear audiences to deeply flawed characters. This delicate blend of tragedy, emotional depth, and comedy has made it a landmark in adult animated satire, demonstrating how fantasy and absurdity can explore the complexities of the human condition.

The year 2016 was notable for several releases that pushed satire in new directions. The first Deadpool movie brought meta-humour, fourth-wall-breaking antics, and irreverent comic book satire to mainstream audiences with unprecedented gusto. Meanwhile, Welcome to Night Vale (2012), a surreal, deadpan podcast-turned-novel series blending sci-fi, horror, and comic fantasy, gained widespread popularity. Its absurdist tone and eerie humour carved out a unique niche in speculative fiction, appealing to fans of genre-bending satire. That year also saw Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky, a seamless blend of magic and technology mixing witty dialogue, environmental themes, and a satirical take on modern doomsday anxieties, which earned Nebula and Locus Awards.

In 2017, Nicholas Eames’ Kings of the Wyld delivered churlish, juvenile humour alongside traditional fantasy tropes, while Martha Wells introduced All Systems Red, the first of The Murderbot Diaries. This science fiction series, featuring dry humour and corporate dystopia satire, became a sleeper hit in sci-fi comedy, exploring AI agency.

Jasper Fforde returned in 2018 with Early Riser (UK 2018 / US 2019), an alternate history set during a new ice age where corporate-driven hibernation becomes deadly. With wry wit and irony, Fforde skewered consumer culture and climate inaction, continuing his tradition of metafictional critique. That same year, Catherynne M. Valente’s flamboyant Space Opera offered a glittery Eurovision-in-space satire, smarter and bonkers in equal measure. C. L. Polk’s debut Witchmark (2018) added nuanced fantasy with social commentary.

By 2019, Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth emerged as a bold, genre-defying novel combining necromancy, space opera, and dark humour. Its sharp wit and complex characters reinvigorated fantasy boundaries with irreverent edge. That year also saw The Library of the Unwritten by A. J. Hackwith, expanding comic and satirical fantasy’s landscape, alongside Mid-Lich Crisis by Steve Thomas and The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley — a brutally satirical military sci-fi critiquing nationalism, capitalism, and war.

Sarah Gailey’s Magic for Liars (2019) and The Echo Wife (2021) continued blending speculative fiction with social commentary and dry humour, deftly subverting genre tropes—from magical murder mysteries to twisted cloning ethics.

Part 7

The 2020s: Whimsy, Warmth, and Satire in a Complex World

Moving into the 2020s, TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea (2020) offered a whimsical and heartfelt fantasy that cleverly blends bureaucratic satire with magical realism. Its warm tone and gentle humour provided a refreshing counterpoint to darker trends in contemporary fantasy, emphasising kindness and hope amidst complexity.

That same year saw Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education, often described as Harry Potter meets Gideon the Ninth, alongside Andrew Rowe’s How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps, which draws inspiration from video game narratives. These works exemplify the ongoing fusion of genre tropes with innovative storytelling and humour. Also in 2020, Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun was published, a second world fantasy deeply inspired by pre-Columbian indigenous cultures, its world-building drawing from non-European sources to broaden the genre’s cultural horizons.

In 2021, Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes embraced cozy fantasy, low-stakes, character-driven, and rich in humour, prioritising warmth and slice-of-life storytelling over the epic quests typical of the genre. This shift signalled a broader diversification in fantasy’s comedic and emotional registers, reflecting readers’ evolving tastes for gentler, more intimate narratives. That year, Tasha Suri also won the World Fantasy Award for The Jasmine Throne, affirming the growing prominence of nuanced, diverse voices in fantasy.

The year 2022 continued the tradition of sharp parody with Keven Shevels’ A Song of Ice and Haddock, which carried forward the satirical spirit of the Harvard Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings, combining sharp wit and absurdity to playfully lampoon epic fantasy tropes. The same year saw R.F. Kuang’s Babel, or the Necessity of Violence, a debut that topped The New York Times Best Seller list. Despite facing criticism for perceived didacticism and heavy political messaging, Babel exemplifies how speculative fiction continues to engage deeply with urgent real-world issues. Alexandra Rowland’s A Taste of Gold and Iron (2022), like Some by Virtue Fall, offered political fantasy infused with comedy, skewering the theatre of diplomacy, power structures, and questions of morality.

Also in 2022, R.B. Lemberg’s The Unbalancing, part of the Birdverse, arrived as a poetic fantasy infused with satire on ecological collapse, grief, and societal failure. Deeply informed by queer and trans themes, the novel demonstrated how fantasy world-building can intertwine with pressing social commentary and personal identity. That same year marked the premiere of Wednesday, whose darkly comic tone and gothic fantasy aesthetics resonated widely, with a second season debuting in 2025.

In 2023, Tom Holt released The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse, a novel whose title evokes memories of works like The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (Rankin, 2002) and Pratchett’s Hogfather (1996). Yet Holt’s latest plunged into darker, more absurdly comic territory, a genre-defying blend of office satire, speculative fiction, and postmodern pastiche. Echoing British comic fantasy legends like Pratchett, Adams, and Rankin, it leaned heavily into sci-fi absurdity and corporate dystopia. The narrative thrives on contradiction: mundane magic collides with labyrinthine bureaucratic conspiracies, as characters try to save the world with the same weary resignation as employees facing an overdue audit. This surreal yet grounded tale exemplifies how modern comic fantasy blends the fantastical with everyday frustrations, using humour to illuminate the chaotic nature of contemporary life.

One of the most insightful contributions of satirical fantasy lies in its ability to confront human frailty. Far more than mere laughter, satire is a form of ethical engagement. By exposing our follies, vices, and contradictions, it uses comedy not only to entertain but to provoke reflection, and ultimately, reform. Beneath its playful exterior, satire holds a mirror to society, challenging us to see ourselves more clearly and encouraging change through insight wrapped in humour.

Most recently, Jordan A. Werner’s The Witch and the Ostrich (2024) continued this proud tradition, adding new layers of wit and imagination to the evolving landscape of comic and satirical fantasy.

Part 8

A Broader Canvas: Satire in the Age of Global Upheaval

Satire has always been more than just literary in-jokes or playful riffing on fantasy conventions. It is a vital mirror held up to society, reflecting not only what elves, wizards, or heroes are doing but also the deepest and most pressing issues confronting humanity. In the wake of the global pandemic, political chaos marked by the rise and fall of figures like Trump, the seismic shifts caused by Brexit, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, ongoing culture wars around identity, ‘wokeism,’ and the fake news culture, as well as the revolutionary advances (and anxieties) around AI, SFF satire finds itself speaking to a larger, more urgent audience than ever before.

Far from escapism, the genre’s incisive humour and imaginative scope allow it to grapple with complex social, political, and ethical questions in ways that are both accessible and thought-provoking. Comic fantasy and satirical speculative fiction have the power to disarm, to challenge, and to inspire reflection on the nature of power, identity, and the future we are collectively shaping.

As the world grows more unpredictable and interconnected, the need for satire’s sharp wit and ethical engagement remains paramount. The genre’s ongoing evolution ensures it will continue to be a crucial voice in the cultural conversation, telling us not just what the elves are up to, but what we might do next.