This whole approach refutes my regard of The Lord of the Rings as simply a rousing good adventure story. Schweitzer seems to regard the Peter Jackson films based on the Tolkien epic rather highly. Personally, I found the first of them beautifully produced but dreadfully shallow and ultimately boring. I literally fell asleep during the film, and never went back to see its sequels. But as the Romans used to say, De gustibus non est disputandum.

The leitmotif of Schweitzer's criticism is the question, "What does it mean?" and I believe that he has thus asked the key question of the serious critic. Another way to ask this same question is, "What is this book about?" The answer should not be a plot synopsis or a description of the protagonist or even an examination of the author's technique, for all that these things are also of interest. They are more the subject of the reviewer than the critic, and as regards The Lord of the Rings Schweitzer is a critic, not a reviewer. He asks, What is this book really about?

If a work can provide a substantial and thought-provoking answer to the question, it is certainly worth serious criticism. Otherwise it's just a rousing good adventure story.

At Darrell Schweitzer's prodding, I am rather inclined to go back and read The Lord of the Rings again, for the first time in forty-seven years. But then there are all those other books piled on my desk and night table, calling out to me with their seductive charms.

The Fantastic Horizon contains a variety of pieces of various length, culled from The New York Review of Science Fiction, Weird Tales magazine, and a variety of nonfiction anthologies. Schweitzer also includes the texts of several speeches. It really helps to write out your text before talking to an audience, you can always recycle the words into print. The subjects range from A.E. Van Vogt's classic Slan to Niven and Pournelle's Inferno, with side trips into the history of science fiction in Philadelphia (which I suppose can be forgiven), the career of Britain's Lord Dunsany, the works of the great and unjustly forgotten fantasist Robert Nathan, the historic roles and contributions of -- or damage done by -- Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Hugo Gernsback.

The Fantastic Horizon is an intellectual feast for anyone who loves science fiction and fantasy. It's like a pleasant, wide-ranging conversation with a knowledgeable friend with whom one shares a variety of interests. At least such is the case for anyone who is looking for something more than a rousing good adventure story.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

A word of warning: the first edition of The Fantastic Horizon is marred by an excess of typographical errors, most of them merely annoying but one or two of them truly horrific. It is to be hoped that the publisher will reissue the book in a corrected edition.