Mark Chadbourn said that the more rational the world gets,
the more we demand the irrational in our fiction. In my view, this is
absolutely right. In a world of cold numbers and hard facts, worlds of Elves,
wizards and, dare I say it, even vampires allow the human mind to sink into
another fantastical, far-fetched world far away from the ‘nine ‘til five’
culture of reality.
‘A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane.’ – Aldous Huxley
Tolkien’s The Hobbit
was my first adventure into the realm of fantasy, and I opened the book with an
excited anticipation: the blurb and the cover illustrations promised magic,
mystery and something altogether different: fantasy. Soon after I dipped my toe
into the refreshing pool of fantasy, I plunged in, buffeted by the wars of The Lord of the Rings and immersed in
the magic of His Dark Materials.
Few other genres can present a world so different to our
own, and yet embrace you in this world as if you were part of it. You find
yourself mourning for the deaths of Hippogriffs; worrying over the future of
Middle Earth; and excited by the prospect of an epic quest to defeat a
seemingly undefeatable adversary. Soon enough, my bookshelf was dominated by
the genre.
Since the 1970s, with the second coming of The Lord of the Rings with a new
paperback edition by Allen and Unwin, the genre has been pushed back into
motion, and new, imaginative pioneers have come up with even more far-fetched
worlds to present to the bewildered and amazed reader. Now fantasy is the
biggest genre in publishing, and authors such as Phillip Pullman and Terry
Pratchett have forced us to empathise with unnoticed Nomes and Armoured Bears.
As the world gets more rational and logical, dominated by
science and technology, the more we need to escape into inprobable fiction.
Non-readers may suggest that fantasy is simply a childish
play of swords and sorcery or immature battles between elves and dragons. Undeniably,
there are shelves filled with this. However, the genre is much more than that:
it starts at the point where fact ends; it is as broad as the boundaries of
human imagination.
The genre uses symbolism and allegory to subtlety present
our modern society. Therefore, fantasy is fantastic: it is open to all, from
those who crave a well-written adventure story to sink into, as well as
academic readers wishing to unlock the complex nuances of a good narrative.
Fantasy presents things beyond the every-day: parallel
universes; distance, far-fetched lands; alternate histories. Not only do these
allow for relaxed escapism, but also reflections on our everyday lives. It has
the ability to take many of us away from our world of bland commutes and
sitting at the computer (to steal the worlds of Mark Newton), and ‘offer[s] a
chance to break out of mundane moments.’
The genre of Beowulf
and The Iliad is, indeed, worthy of
the most intellectual academia. The genre presents irrational worlds of gods
and monsters, but this does not make it less worthy. If anything, it expands
the boundaries of human creativity, allowing it to encompass much more than the
real world could hope to achieve.
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