{"id":298,"date":"2006-08-07T00:17:47","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T04:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/is_our_fantasy_readers_learning"},"modified":"2006-08-07T00:17:47","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T04:17:47","slug":"is_our_fantasy_readers_learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2006\/08\/is_our_fantasy_readers_learning.html","title":{"rendered":"Is Our Fantasy Readers Learning?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Stross, “Genre neuroses 101<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

\n

“Finally, there is the blasted heath that is fantasy. At least the two decade long post Lord of the Rings hang-over is mostly over, and the post-movie-trilogy bean fest has faded somewhat. There’s some really interesting stuff going on there (paging Paul Park, Paul Park to the white courtesy phone — or Steven Brust, at a pinch). But fantasy is, almost by definition, consolatory and escapist literature.<\/strong> Pure fantasy doesn’t really tell us anything about the world we live in, and I fail to discern any huge new movements sweeping the field as symptoms of the cultural neuroses of one country or another.” (emphasis mine)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Two problems with the sentence in bold. <\/p>\n

First, fantasy is not<\/em> “by definition” consolatory and escapist. Not even China Mieville believes that<\/a>. It is trivial to come<\/a> up<\/a> with<\/a> counterexamples<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Second, why is “consolatory” fantasy so obviously inferior to “unsettling” fantasy? I can agree that fantasy that rattles our sensibilities can<\/em> be excellent. But saying that excellent fantasy must<\/em> rattle our sensibilities, that’s not qualitatively different from saying that all excellent fantasy should Teach Us Something. Ugh. Look, I don’t mind if you enjoy attempting to OMG R0X0r OUR W0rldvi3w!!!11one1!!, but please, don’t assume that’s the end-all be-all goal for fiction.<\/p>\n

Oh, and another thing. “Pure fantasy doesn’t really tell us anything about the world…” Umm, if this is a reference to fundamentally aphysical nature of fantasy, please do keep in mind that 98% of SF, even “hard SF”, is equally aphysical. Those “nanobot\/Singularity” stories that are so hip these days? They’re as grounded in reality as the latest offering from Laurel K. Hamilton<\/a>. Not that nanobot stories can’t be fun and all, but if you’re actually taking them seriously<\/em>, well, that faint murmuring you’re hearing is the sound of a thousand condensed-matter physicists snickering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But saying that excellent fiction must<\/em> rattle our sensibilities… well, that’s not qualitatively different from saying that all good fantasy should Teach Us Something. Ugh. Look, I don’t mind if you enjoy attempting to OMG R0X0r OUR W0rldvi3w!!!11one1!!, but please, don’t assume that that’s the end-all be-all goal for fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}