  Fantasy
This week: Fantasy Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
-Maya Angelou
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
-Albert Einstein |
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Fantasy
So, a question that's been occupying a corner of my mind, lately:
What is fantasy? As a genre, I mean.
I've been going with the basic genre definition of fantasy being anything involving "magic" (with a pretty broad definition of "magic" that sometimes includes what could be called technology).
In terms of genre, that could be good enough. But we have other kinds of fantasies, too - the kind where we imagine winning a contest or being irresistible to one or more genders or being as rich as Warren Buffett. That sort of thing.
Generally speaking, such fantasies don't translate well to print. "Once upon a time, there was an incredibly handsome guy. He discovered he had a talent for writing and sold his first novel without any complications at all. The end."
No one cares.
Of course, any kind of fiction writing, not just what we call fantasy, requires conflict and resolution (I don't count the "literary" genre, of course). In writing, it doesn't matter that a protagonist has achieved his or her goals - what matters is how the protagonist got there, how they overcame hardship and trials.
Such trials are notably lacking from most everyday human fantasies.
Meanwhile, some people (literary genre writers and others) express disdain for the fantasy genre, dismissing it as "unrealistic." And yet, reality is usually boring. We don't live our lives fighting great evil (or good) on a regular basis; it's all most of us can do to survive - a noble enough goal, of course, but our daily work routine makes for lousy fiction unless it's only there to be interrupted by, say, a dragon or an alien attack. Yes, this is even true for cops, doctors and lawyers, despite the dramatized TV shows and movies about such professions.
I've argued before that any fiction is fantasy, and I'll stand by that - if not in terms of genre labeling, but in order to distinguish it from consensus reality. Taking our office worker from the above paragraph as an example, someone working in an office might, say, make and drink coffee every morning. The "true" story of her life, if complete, would include a description of this routine five days a week, fifty weeks a year, for forty years. Someone out there might read something like that, but I wouldn't. And yet, it's reality for many, many people.
Readers don't care about routine. Readers care about breaks from routine. Someone comes into a PI office with a case. Dragons attack. Your coworker collapses, cause unknown. While it could be argued that the first and third of these examples are more "realistic" than the second, because they've been known to happen in everyday life, the dragons are actually the more difficult to write - not only do you have to describe the dragons, come up with their looks and habits, but you also have to show a reaction to something that's never actually happened.
And that, in the end, is what the fantasy genre (and to some extent, science fiction) is really doing - speculating on the extraordinary and our reactions to it. While all fiction is "made up in your head," only fantasy goes the extra mile.
So revel in it. You'll be ready for anything, eventually. |
Some uses of imagination:
(Note: I don't usually include partial stories, but this one hooked me)
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Fantasy: January 15, 2013 Issue [#5463]
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