some thoughts on the genre
This weekend, I was streaming some old episodes of Dr. Albert Lin’s show, where he uncovers ruins with modern technology. I get goosebumps honestly.
Short story long, watching these scientists delve into ancient history reminded me of one of the reasons I love my chosen genre. In turn, that reminded me of others. So, I wrote an ode. Don’t worry, it’s prose. This list may well be incomplete, but here are a few of my favorite things about fantasy.
worlds that were
Our species has been around for a while, but we only have a written record for a tiny fraction of that period. If we’re lucky, we have grave goods we can examine or images carved in stone. Potsherds and a few rotted strands of cloth. Even a people who left texts we can interpret can be hard to parse; much of what the Greeks have to say is Greek to me.
Ancient peoples built monuments that scraped the sky. They sailed off the edge of the world as they knew it in pursuit of adventure or riches. They did incredible and sometimes monstrous things, and that’s amazing when you consider they were US without Google.
People who don’t like or read the genre tend to assume the fascination with premodern societies is reactionary, a desire to escape from the confusion of modern values or industrialism. For me, neither is true. I’ll keep my 90-year life expectancy and right to vote, thanks. I’m an atheist and quite happy I’m not going to be burned at the stake or stoned because of it.
I find imagined ancient worlds fascinating because our antecedents can’t speak for themselves to tell us what their lives were like. Here is a way to try to get inside their skin.
There were monsters off the edge of the map, and they walked into the haunted forests anyway.
Ill-intentioned acquaintances performed curses on them.
When they fought a neighboring city-state and defeated its leaders, they had killed its god.
The natural world had a will and communicated with them.
I can’t be the only one who finds that terribly interesting, right?
a fabulous thought experiment
I’m also obsessed with the make-believe of it all. A fantasy world is like a billion-axis slide rule you can use to toy with what you think you know about society and the human condition. Take a culture not so different from one you think you know, change a few variables, watch what comes from it!
Some classic questions fantasy loves to ask:
- humans aren’t the only sentient species, how do we interact when faced with equals?
- humans aren’t the apex species, how do we cope with being hunted/ ignored/ enslaved/ other?
- magic is real, how does that impact science/ government/ warfare/ social dynamics?
- humans have extra senses or abilities, how would our daily lifestyles shift because of this?
- the story isn’t about humans, dullard!
reality-fail (magic should be real)
I could leave this entire section to the title and feel like I’d made my point, but I’m happy to talk about magic any day! In a sense, it’s a subcategory of above: the glorious thought experiment. But no one puts magic in corner; it’s too fun not to merit a discussion all its own. If we had powers, inborn or trained, to accomplish our ends in ways unavailable irl, how would that change us? How would it change the way we deal with the world around us, be it our jobs, our governments, or natural catastrophes?
I would be lying if I tried to claim my interest is purely scholarly. That’s why magic gets its own category! It’s the sexy flashy headlining popstar of the Reasons I Love Fantasy Lineup, and at a certain level, it’s hard to rationalize why you love something you love this much.
Magic is pretty and weird, and inventing magic systems bends my brain in pleasing ways. I considered writing this post a different tenor, using words like ‘ethics’ and ‘ontology,’ but this is my ode, my mission, to enthuse. Magic is a glorious union of creativity and rigorous thought in which a fake phenomenon is given such texture, defined with such painstaking precision, that you can predict how it’s going to act in a new scenario. It isn’t real but it feels real. You wish it were.
Who doesn’t love a little wonder?
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