The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Dorothy Gale is the protagonist of many of the Oz novels by American author L. Frank Baum, and the best friend of Oz's ruler Princess Ozma. Dorothy... first appears in Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels. She also is the main character in various adaptations, notably the classic 1939 movie adaptation of the book, The Wizard of Oz. Even when she does not appear in a sequel , she is arguably the most important character in the series, as it is she, through her actions in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, who sparked later events. Dorothy's adventures continue. In later books, Oz steadily becomes more familiar to her than her homeland of Kansas. Indeed, Dorothy eventually goes to live in an apartment in the Emerald City, but only once her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry have settled in a farmhouse on its outskirts, unable to pay the mortgage on their house in Kansas. An influence on the creation of Dorothy appears to be the Alice books of Lewis Carroll.
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Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1960s however,... a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other media. Stories involving , paranormal magic and terrible monsters have existed in spoken forms before the advent of printed literature. Homer's Odyssey satisfies the definition of the fantasy genre with its magic, gods, heroes, adventures and monsters. Fantasy literature, as a distinct type, emerged in Victorian times, with the works of writers such as William Morris and George MacDonald. J. R. R. Tolkien played a large role in the popularization and accessibility of the fantasy genre with his highly successful publications The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . Rarely does one consider modern fantasy without conjuring the memory and image of Tolkien and his creations. Tolkien was largely influenced by an ancient body of Anglo-Saxon myths, particularly Beowulf, as well as modern works such as The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison.
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Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural... fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts. Speculative fiction as a category ranges from ancient works to both cutting edge, paradigm-changing and neotraditional works of the 21st century. Speculative fiction can be recognized in works whose authors' intentions or the social contexts of the versions of stories they portrayed is now known, since ancient Greek dramatists such as Euripides whose play Medea seems to have offended Athenian audiences when he fictionally speculated that shamaness Medea killed her own children instead of their being killed by other Corinthians after her departure, and whose Hippolytus, narratively introduced by Aphrodite, Goddess of Love in person, is suspected to have displeased his contemporary audiences because he portrayed Phaedra as too lusty.
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