This Strange Place in my Heart for Fantasy
I find this odd.
When I was a kid, I was very much into D&D despite the fact that I never played it, and I loved fantasy to death, despite the fact that I rarely read it. The first real fantasy book I read was The Mis-Enchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans, and despite its faults I still consider it to be one of my most favorite books.
In part, I like LWE because he often takes a different approach to theme than most fantasy writers I know. He still has some of the same faults: long, drawn-out conversations about the fantasy elements of the world between the characters. This always bugs me, and while it still bugs me when LWE does it, he (almost) always has a thematic reason for approaching it.
But still, there are flaws. And that's why I rarely touched fantasy and let it stew in my mind, because there were always these things that it would invoke in my mind. I would read the D&D manual and wonder about the possibility of awesome fantasy.
And what's more, this did not extend to any contemporary setting. I could never conceptualize a contemporary setting that could be as thematically powerful as a fantasy setting, because in fantasy, you could always make it so that the whole of existance was precariously balanced in one fashion or another. If the setting is contemporary, you cannot get that feeling, because all you're doing is displacing. The mindspace does not start out in a contained universe, or in an open one, or a good one, or an evil one: it starts right where we are right now (or were right then) and has to move to the world we want first.
But at the same time, I could never get that far into high fantasy, because high fantasy is just the use of certain props in a new contained universe. But I want props like guns, warships, starships. I want nuclear power and automobiles. I want helicopters, submarines. I want other props disproportionately: I want dragons as common as housecats. I want aliens from outer space used as more than just an allegory. I want the entire human race to fall under the heel of a dictator or uplifted by a saint, or even vise versa. I want the entire world to be corroded and renewed.
Contemporary literature starts where we are, finds a smaller space and tries to use that to say something bigger. Fantasy is large. We can't comprehend the whole world, though if we could comprehend large parts of it at once, it would be a masterpiece. Fantasy on the other hand, lets us go and find a world that we may comprehend, that paints a particular portrait and tries to find a rattling emotion like a huge canvas of color.
Too many fantasy authors still want to work small. They paint a large world but still keep to tiny things, little nothings as though they were contemporary literature. I'm not saying that the whole world in a fantasy has to be in danger; I'm saying that if that is the case, I want to feel the color of your world, and how its flame shifts in the wind before you take your fingers and snuff it out--or not.
Too many fantasy authors think that it's the props that are important. I can tell you, you can use one prop or another and it will draw its audience for sure. And I'm even talking about props like scientific accuracy. I say, for a well-done fantasy, you never need to limit your props. You can have a world of consistent color and still create something surprising, but you don't have to use the same colors that Tolkien did.
What I'm saying is that Fantasy doesn't have to be limited to the pseudomedival. In fact, it probably shouldn't. And it shouldn't be limited to being located somewhere in the past, present, or future compared to our place right now. It's not about time, it's about the space.
I want to see a fantasy that shows me strange and new colors, be it Fantasy proper, Sci-fi, or Horror. I don't read them very often because I likely have too high of an expectation in this sense. But shouldn't you know? This is storytelling. It's often not about what you say--though that is very important--but how you say it.
When I was a kid, I was very much into D&D despite the fact that I never played it, and I loved fantasy to death, despite the fact that I rarely read it. The first real fantasy book I read was The Mis-Enchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans, and despite its faults I still consider it to be one of my most favorite books.
In part, I like LWE because he often takes a different approach to theme than most fantasy writers I know. He still has some of the same faults: long, drawn-out conversations about the fantasy elements of the world between the characters. This always bugs me, and while it still bugs me when LWE does it, he (almost) always has a thematic reason for approaching it.
But still, there are flaws. And that's why I rarely touched fantasy and let it stew in my mind, because there were always these things that it would invoke in my mind. I would read the D&D manual and wonder about the possibility of awesome fantasy.
And what's more, this did not extend to any contemporary setting. I could never conceptualize a contemporary setting that could be as thematically powerful as a fantasy setting, because in fantasy, you could always make it so that the whole of existance was precariously balanced in one fashion or another. If the setting is contemporary, you cannot get that feeling, because all you're doing is displacing. The mindspace does not start out in a contained universe, or in an open one, or a good one, or an evil one: it starts right where we are right now (or were right then) and has to move to the world we want first.
But at the same time, I could never get that far into high fantasy, because high fantasy is just the use of certain props in a new contained universe. But I want props like guns, warships, starships. I want nuclear power and automobiles. I want helicopters, submarines. I want other props disproportionately: I want dragons as common as housecats. I want aliens from outer space used as more than just an allegory. I want the entire human race to fall under the heel of a dictator or uplifted by a saint, or even vise versa. I want the entire world to be corroded and renewed.
Contemporary literature starts where we are, finds a smaller space and tries to use that to say something bigger. Fantasy is large. We can't comprehend the whole world, though if we could comprehend large parts of it at once, it would be a masterpiece. Fantasy on the other hand, lets us go and find a world that we may comprehend, that paints a particular portrait and tries to find a rattling emotion like a huge canvas of color.
Too many fantasy authors still want to work small. They paint a large world but still keep to tiny things, little nothings as though they were contemporary literature. I'm not saying that the whole world in a fantasy has to be in danger; I'm saying that if that is the case, I want to feel the color of your world, and how its flame shifts in the wind before you take your fingers and snuff it out--or not.
Too many fantasy authors think that it's the props that are important. I can tell you, you can use one prop or another and it will draw its audience for sure. And I'm even talking about props like scientific accuracy. I say, for a well-done fantasy, you never need to limit your props. You can have a world of consistent color and still create something surprising, but you don't have to use the same colors that Tolkien did.
What I'm saying is that Fantasy doesn't have to be limited to the pseudomedival. In fact, it probably shouldn't. And it shouldn't be limited to being located somewhere in the past, present, or future compared to our place right now. It's not about time, it's about the space.
I want to see a fantasy that shows me strange and new colors, be it Fantasy proper, Sci-fi, or Horror. I don't read them very often because I likely have too high of an expectation in this sense. But shouldn't you know? This is storytelling. It's often not about what you say--though that is very important--but how you say it.