Some Added Thoughts on Fantasy

I know I’ve “done” fantasy already, and of course, every month during the CSFF tour, fantasy comes up again. But the truth is, I love it.

And I miss the tour. It is fun to click around the blogsphere and see what everyone else is saying, to leave comments and go back later to see what others said, too. It’s very fun.

But I also feel passionate about the genre because I believe whole-heartedly that there is this hungry audience waiting for the next great fantasy that will drag them in on the first page and not let them go.

Yesterday I talked about the continuum I see in the SFF genre, with hardcore secular science fiction readers on the far right. The picture I have in mind is a line divided in the middle, with secular writers on the right of the divide and the hardcore writers on the furtherest extention of the line. Very niche.

On the left side of the line are the Christian writers, and those that are hardcore hug the dividing line (these are the people who most often talk about feeling caught between two worlds). Also very niche, probably more so than secular writers.

My belief is that a Christian writer can create a story for all those readers who do not fall into the SFF niche—in fact, for all readers, not SFF readers exclusively.

I think of it as the Harry Potter syndrom. As Gene Edward Veith pointed out in his article “Good Fantasy & Bad Fantasy,” first published in the Christian Research Journal:

Many of them [Harry Potter readers], reportedly, are enjoying a book for the first time in their lives. Parents and teachers are saying that the Harry Potter series is turning on thousands and thousands of young people to the pleasures of reading. Boys, in particular, who have usually been more resistant to books than girls, are turning off the TV and the video games to spend time with a “good” book. Young people, said to have been conditioned by the TV attention span, are settling down with a 700-page book.

What drives this? I believe Veith’s conclusion is right on:

Children, especially bright children, can identify with Harry Potter, who at first is trapped in the “muggle” world (the drab ordinary material realm of those who cannot see the supernatural), while alienated in his school and feeling despised even in his stepfamily. It turns out he is really a wizard all along, and at Hogwarts this nerdy kid with glasses even becomes popular! Young Harry Potter fans are not so much fantasizing about witches as they are fantasizing about being popular and successful. [Emphasis added]

Adults are imprisoned, too. The stresses on the job, the nightly news. Worry about terrorists, aging parents, the latest medical tests, eating too many carbs, using the right sun screen, the high cost of energy, paying the credit card bill … the list is endless. But worse, it all seems to take us away from who we are—people made in the image of God for the purpose of friendship with Him.

Enter a Christian fantasy that offers a view of the world that incorporates the supernatural instead of denying it and that shows how the very part we know has been missing from our lives or, at best, has been sublimated to second tier, is the source of power to bring victory over the barage of problems.

Who wouldn’t want to read such a story?