Fantasy books of the 1960s

The sixties cracked fantasy open. Ace's unauthorized paperback Lord of the Rings in 1965 — and Ballantine's authorized response — turned Tolkien into a campus phenomenon and proved there was an enormous, unmet appetite for the genre. Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné stalked through the decade in moody novellas. Ursula K. Le Guin published A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968, redefining what a coming-of-age magic story could do. Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light arrived in 1967, and Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn closed the decade in 1968. Fantasy had a counterculture audience now.

For today's reader, the sixties shelf offers experimental ambition and formal range. Content remains generally restrained, though Moorcock and his peers pushed darker than the fifties allowed — moral ambiguity entered the bloodstream. The prose can be lyrical, mythic, or hardboiled depending on the writer. This is a decade for readers who want classics that still feel slightly subversive, and who appreciate writers consciously experimenting with what fantasy could be.

• Counterculture-flavored experimentation
• Moral ambiguity entering the genre
• Lyrical, mythic prose
• Early antihero protagonists