Beyond The Escape

The idea of fantasy as escapism was first presented to me in some groan-worthy English class. The example was L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, how their primary, perhaps only function as literature was as escape from the realities of the Depression. The impression that I took away from that class was that fantasy as a genre served no other purpose, and so was worthy of no further study.

I call bullshit. One form of fiction is no more or less escapist than any other.

I don’t read — or write, for that matter — fantasy to escape. I read for the same reasons I travel: to learn, to explore, and to gain perspective.

Fantasy and science fiction can, literally and figuratively, go places no other genre does. They test characters in ways and extremes that simply aren’t believable in some closer facsimile to our world. They have the ability to take the “what if” kernel of a story idea and stretch it beyond our known rules and limits.

And cloaked in all this alien strangeness are characters who become hyper-real to their readers and truths that other genres rarely touch on.

I’m a control freak, so making my own rules is one of the many things I love so much about writing fantasy. But the most basic fact of the matter is that I more often than not find anything else simply unable to hold my interest.

Thoughts? Theories? What are your favorite aspects of your favorite genres?