Are You Writing Serious Fantasy?

[bombur]

Yes. I have to admit that the kind of fantasy that includes the issues of liberty etc. CAN be written. Yet I doubt it’ll be good. Of good fantasy approaching modern time I have read Orson Scott Cards maker books, and they had lots of political charge between the lines, but even in them the real deep down basic charge was the controversy of the unmaker, not that of politics. Let us remember that liberty is like the elefant of the story touched by four blind men; "it is like a wall, it is like a rope, It is like a tree, it is like a leaf..." I might even call Cards story the exemption that validifies the rule.

Of urban fantasy I do not think I even know what that means. If it is something akin to shadowrun RPG is meant, then I doubt that I’d want to know more.

The maker Alvin trilogy is a good example of what I meant with the good and Evil theme. It pretty much embodies my idea of the ”Big Bad Evil In The Shadows.” We of cource might call the charachters evil or good but MOST are not. They are under the influence of the unmaker. The existance of one True Evil suffices for black and whiteness in my opinion required by fantasy. Rest of the charachters even ”in the dark side” need not be Evil. But there has to be ”the dark side.” That is what I think.

Eols example, the mists of avalon, is a great book. Unfortunately I just have not been counting it as a fantasy, so I did not think about it when I wrote so absolutely of the need for Evil. I think I have pretty much been counting it to the same category with Sinuhe the egyptian, Clan of the cavebear, Name of the rose etc. etc. I've been considering historical fiction. Even the magic in it interacts so neatly with the forces of nature and that what truly is (/was/was believed to be), that it has not disrupted this line of thought.

”Sequels are always possible, ” said littlemans poet.

Yes I have to admit that. Sigourney Weawer said that of cource she’ll be ready to play in one more alien movie, if they somehow manage to patch Ripley back together after she jumped into molten steel. I think she might have meant it as a joke but she ended up comign back as a clone.

But I think ”the return of the son of the revenge of the Thulsa Doom” – phenomena is rather bad taste. Look at Tolkien. That story is OVER as much as a story can be in the end of the LOTR. This does not mean that you cannot have more stuff of it, but it’ll be appendixes and going back to the history of it.

The why(s) of fantasy:

Why we write fantasy?

Fantasy is escapism of cource. But why do we desire to escape this world?

Or in other words, what is it that we wish to escape in this world? Anwser this gentlemen and anyone can easily tell you what kind of place you desire to escape to?

Some of the anwsers are simple. At least Tolkien wished to give escape tho pure world where meadows are not littered by the smoke and coaldust from trains passing through them.

Perhaps we deeply desire for a land where there is magic, escape from the constricting laws of nature that dictate that mere amount of ones will change nothing and that to set fire one needs matches and to make a fortress out of mountain range one needs a shovel and a bit of time. This is escape from realism to romanticm, land of wannabes and wannados.

I have identified in me yet another desire for escape. As an political activist and idealist I work for better world and sometimes nothing changes and sometimes mistakes are made and sometimes bad things are acchieved and sometimes good. Realization that the worlds rulers are like us, blind mice, is painful.

Oh that there were a world where man could identify the army of the dark lord, and stand in the line against it to write on ones shield, I witheld.


Janne Harju'