The Case of Fantasy

A few years ago, I was given a gift. It was on one of the usual gift-giving occasions; if a birthday or a Christmas, I’m not quite sure. In either case, an older relative of mine gave me a pair of books. Now, these were not the kind of books I usually read, though I was still very grateful. It’s healthy to try and expand past your horizons, after all. However, unbeknownst to her, probably the greatest gift she gave me that day was what she told me afterwards. After I had thanked her for the gift, she said, “Now you can read something other than fantasy.”

I had to stop there. I felt like I had been struck by lightning, or as if a bucket of cold water had poured right over me. As of today, years later, I still can’t place what occasion it had been, if I had been given anything else, or even the titles of those books off-hand. But I remember those words. They stirred something in me, awakened an idea that had been slumbering right beneath the surface.

I am not ashamed to be a fan of the fantasy genre. Since my father read to me, among other things, the works of Tolkien and most of the Narnia books when I was little; since I grew up watching the usual animated movies and tv-shows usually based on some sort of fantasy, from talking animals to European folklore; since the first pieces of literature I read on my own were Harry Potter and The Belgariad, and since I played the old Zeldas and Warcrafts both, how could I not be? I was firmly indoctrinated. However, society doesn’t always seem to agree with me.

I admit that I sometimes have trouble separating one crime-thriller pocket-book from the next and, whenever I visit a bookstore, I tend to gravitate towards the fantasy section. The shopkeepers refuse to make it easy for me, though, since it is usually relegated to somewhere in the back, next to, or even smack into, the children’s section, and, even in my thus far short life-time, I have seen those in the mainstream ones shrink in size, provided they even have one at all.

This whole outlook gives me the impression that fantasy, by a whole lot of people, isn’t seen as “real” literature. To them, it’s kind of like an old set of clothes or a pair of training wheels; something to discard as you outgrow it, relegated to the occasional moment of nostalgia. I refuse to believe that to be the case, however. Fantasy is a powerful well of ideas. Because that’s what literature is, a kind of collective mind reading. When I read something you’ve written, and vice. versa., it’s not just the words I’m absorbing, the cold, raw data. It’s the ideas.

In fantasy, we can explore all these ideas without all the prejudice and shackles that constrains us to the real world, explore themes that we otherwise couldn’t. When I enter the fantasy section of a bookstore, I see unadulterated fits of imagination and ambition. While all other genres are chained to this one world we live in, fantasy can set foot in as many worlds as the human mind can conjure: from Munchkinland to Hyboria, from Midkemia to Eberron. I can meet people I hadn’t seen before, explore places I didn’t even know existed.

I think fantasy appeals to something primal in us, something so old it dates back to when we all sat around the crackling campfire, telling each other stories of what and how the stars were. It speaks to the boy who wants to fly and wield a sword, to the girl who wants to wander the deep forests and speak to woodland creatures.

Maybe that is childish, in a way. But what’s the harm in that? Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland are children stories, both, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who don’t think even an adult mind can’t benefit from reading them. Why must our dreams grow smaller as we grow older?

I doubt she, the older relative of mine, ever meant to stir such musings in me, or even that her words were meant to be taken that way. Nevertheless, they gave face to this old idea of mine, that fantasy was somehow lesser to some people. In the end, though, I’m not sure that it’s all that important. After all, what is fantasy but pure, human imagination; dreams put to paper? As long as people can dream of lands far away, we’ll have fantasy, and maybe it’ll be recognized as the force on human consciousness that it is in the future. Or maybe not. In either case, I’ll have my copy of The Lord of the Rings waiting for me on the bookshelf.

Comments

[Azusa]

When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate.

Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious—you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike—his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés—elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings—have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader.

That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps—via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabiński and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison and I could go on—the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations.

Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine—that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it—Michael Swanwick's superb Iron Dragon's Daughter gives the lie to that. But given that the pleasure of fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity, why not try to come up with some different themes, as well as unconventional monsters? Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies?

Thankfully, the alternative tradition of fantasy has never died. And it's getting stronger. Chris Wooding, Michael Swanwick, Mary Gentle, Paul di Filippo, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others, are all producing works based on fantasy's radicalism. Where traditional fantasy has been rural and bucolic, this is often urban, and frequently brutal. Characters are more than cardboard cutouts, and they're not defined by race or sex. Things are gritty and tricky, just as in real life. This is fantasy not as comfort-food, but as challenge.

The critic Gabe Chouinard has said that we're entering a new period, a renaissance in the creative radicalism of fantasy that hasn't been seen since the New Wave of the sixties and seventies, and in echo of which he has christened the Next Wave. I don't know if he's right, but I'm excited. This is a radical literature. It's the literature we most deserve.

—China Miéville

[Super_Big_Mac]

I agree that fantasy is underrated, but Oz and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are not primarily for children. At least, the originals aren't.

[DemPonies]

1875836
I'd concede that Alice might not originally be for a child audience (in fact, I once read about the idea that the author wrote the whole thing as a sort of jibe against a certain branch of mathematics) but I'll have to disagree concerning Oz. I might get it wrong here, but I think the book was written for younger readers in mind. It and the series it spawned even became a kind of Harry Potter of its age.

[Super_Big_Mac]

1875865 It may be that young folk enjoyed it, but have you ever read the original? It was quite a bit darker than "Follow the yellow brick road!"
Not to mention that most of it was supposedly making a satire of different groups with the munchkins, the straw man, the tin man, and the cowardly lion, and the wicked witch herself.

We were given an article about all this in eighth grade or something, as well as the book. It's been a while since I read it, but it didn't put in mind a happy fun land for kids.