Fantasy Aficionados discussion

Hmmm... That's actually tough to answer. I would say because they have the best stories. I grew up around my grandparents who could tell you a story about making blood sausages and make it sound just as epic as Destroying the One Ring. Some regular fiction can compare, but only fantasy consistently provides me with a narrative style that makes me feel the same sense of awe and excitement about a story.


And because I just can't help myself, the best explanation comes from Peter Falk:
"Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles."

I don't like half-truths in historical fiction and even a nonfiction book has speculations in it basically can be counted as fiction. Not knowing where truth starts and fiction ends, I don't like that confusing feeling.
To me, fantasy is the only pure fiction. You can be sure every bit of information is true, because it is totally made up, if it makes any sense to anybody else other than me :D

Well-written and well-done fantasy lifts us up out of the mundane, at least for a little while.

I love being swept away into a different world with different peoples/customs/etc, and seeing mythical creatures and daydreaming about having magic and other cool stuff.

Don't hate me but I'm not a huge fan of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire Saga. Though I love his short story the Sand Kings. But he says it better than I ever could...So I'll let him speak what I wish I could have come up with.

"The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.

I read fantasy becuase it shows the triumph of the human spirit.

Michael wrote: "Don't hate me but I'm not a huge fan of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire Saga. Though I love his short story the Sand Kings. But he says it better than I ever could...So I'll let him spea..."

What a great quote! That does say it so much better than I can. Heaven would be a nice cozy hobbit hole. I am halfway through Game of Thrones, by the way, and loving it, but dark and grim are not for everyone.

I read fantasy to be transported to other worlds where anything is possible. Life would be boring without a little magic. And I'll take a good sword fight any day.

I read them because fantasy books and calgon can take me away.

I read them because they take me away to beautiful places filled with fantastic and amazing people (creatures) ;)

Because I love being transported to places that are far away from "real" life...and discovering characters that are relatable and sometimes preferable to people in the "real" world. I want to ride a dragon, and then discover I have an ancient magical talent.

Judy wrote: "Because I love being transported to places that are far away from "real" life...and discovering characters that are relatable and sometimes preferable to people in the "real" world. I want to ride a dragon, and then discover I have an ancient magical talent."

I'm glad to see this. I was just reading an article about fantasy's trend to be more "realistic" but for me I want my fantasy to be...well fantastical.

Amen! Bring on the ogres, the trolls, the magic swords, the fire lizards and the quests. I love the quote from #7...

I read Fantasy primarily to escape from reality and to stimulate my imagination.

A rare work or series requires a lot of reader input, thought or even research, but when I feel the need for fantasy, I'm usually needing escape.

S.J. wrote: "Well-written and well-done fantasy lifts us up out of the mundane, at least for a little while."

I like the way S.J. puts it. Like a lot of you have written, Fantasy is a wonderful escape from reality. But I think it's more than that. If well-done, I think it allows us to see life from a different perspective, despite the lovely trappings of magic and elves and all that. It can give us a glimpse of what home truly is like, even if it is not spelled out in the pages.

Fantasy can talk about truth and beauty and life and death in a disarming way, and this is something that is difficult to find in other genres. I thirst for that sort of thing from time to time. Of course, the Fantasy has to be good...

Fantasy contains the distilled truth of the human spirit without limits imposed by the real world. You can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone, love,laugh, struggle, survive, cry, live, fly and even die without leaving your armchair.

It's because in books, everything is possible. fantasy books are like organized imaginations and dreams of people and sometimes, a lot better! :)

I think there's so much more lattitude to let the imagination roam in fantasy. I like all sorts of books, but a good fantasy or horror novel can't be matched.
Carl Alves

I read fantasy because I want to get as far away from realism as humanly possible. I want to escape my world and journey through one that has a resolution - and a positive one at that.

If I want realism, I will watch the news or read a newspaper. Do not want it in my entertainment, thank you very much!

:D

Frederic wrote: "Albert Einstein said, "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."

Why do you read fantasy books?"

Hard to argue with Albert Einstein! :)

Christopher wrote: "S.J. wrote: "Well-written and well-done fantasy lifts us up out of the mundane, at least for a little while."

I like the way S.J. puts it. Like a lot of you have written, Fantasy is a wonderful es..."

I totally agree with S.J. Reading fantasy lets you see from a different perspective. It allows you to examine the truth of a problem without be entangled by the politics or social dictates of the real world.

I like reading fantasy because I love using my imagniation and I love escaping the world for a little bit.

Much of the time, I read fantasy for pure escapist entertainment, but the best of fantasy reminds me of who and what and how I want to be in the here and now, either by example or through contrast.

Though it definitely plays a part, it is not entirely for escaping the world. After all, any reading does that.
I believe I read fantasy ( and enjoy it), because deep down I want it to be REAL.
When good wins out, especially!

I read fantasy for two reasons: the first is the main plot naturally, the second is the escaping to a different world while reading. I also grew up watching anime and tv series with fantasy.
Some books are a challenge to my imagination :)

There are a number of reasons I read fantasy. It gives me a chance to transform into a sorceress or a wizard or a seer at the turn of a page and experience magical powers beyond imagination. It sends me on incredible journeys through strange, fantastical lands where I can encounter creatures of every ilk and kind, be they good or evil. It exposes me to alternate worlds, politics and cultures. It leads me into great battles of good against evil.

...I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. :)

I read fantasy as an escape. I like getting to explore these new worlds with the characters and getting to take a journey with them.

I consider fantasy to be the greatest genre of literature. It requires a breadth of the imagination, and a discipline to convey your ideas.

It's not easy writing fantasy books, and yet, fantasy fans are laughed at as geeks and nerds.

If fantasy was good enough for Shakesphere, then it's good enough for me.

I think the question is the wrong way round. Better question: why not read/write fantasy?

An author can write about anything they can imagine. Non-fantasy (with a broad definition of fantasy) decides 'well, bugger that imagination stuff, let's just assume that everything is how you think it is, with the following exceptions...'

Why limit yourself like that? You have the whole of human thought to explore, and you obsess over Milton Keynes. Sure, maybe somebody out there is really passionate about Milton Keynes, and it's good that somebody's writing that book... but the rest you - really? Don't you get bored?

Particularly since much of non-fantasy breaks the rules anyway. If you're setting a plot in new york, you're likely to eventually find yourself thinking "drat, that won't work, those places are opposite sides of the city!". In fantasy, this is easy to work around - you either build a new city with the locations better aligned, or have a city, possibly new york, where locations literally move around, as the plot demands. In non-fantasy, you're stuck with it. You either have to re-plot, or you think for a moment, and go 'oh screw it, nobody'll notice'.

A lot of writers to the last thing, all the time. Which just makes me wonder why they're calling it new york at all. Why make a big fuss about sticking to the rules of 'the real world', if you're happily making stuff up as you go along just as much as any fantasy writer? Stop holding onto the 'safety' of the edge of reality, just dive in and swim!


--

Of course, much of this could also be levelled at fantasy. I find fantasy's obsession with badly-disguised versions of england circa 1450, as imagined by an american circa 1950, just as limiting as non-fantasy's obsession with milton keynes. But in non-fantasy, the limitation is the name of the game, whereas in fantasy, it's just a habit of certain writers.

--

But in general, I tend to see it not as 'fiction', with a little ghetto genre 'fantasy', but as 'fiction', which is comprised almost entirely of 'fantasy', with a little, very specific, genre called non-fantasy. Sure, in practice most writers write in that genre. But in terms of what they COULD be writing about, the whole of human imagination, thought and experience, that genre is the exception, not the rule.

^Very good points. I like the idea of turning the question around: why don't people read fantasy? Is it because of the required imagination? Somehow, the idea of reading and writing fiction seems a little bit easier for me--it's writing real, or almost real life, with clear rules and guidelines and familiar motivations.

Wastrel wrote: "Why limit yourself like that? You have the whole of human thought to explore, and you obsess over Milton Keynes. Sure, maybe somebody out there is really passionate about Milton Keynes, and it's good that somebody's writing that book... but the rest you - really? Don't you get bored?"

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I started reading a real-world book yesterday (not set in Milton Keynes, actually, somewhere more interesting than that - which is almost anywhere, I suppose) but I just couldn't do it. I knew how it was going to end before I'd got more than a few chapters in, and if the writing isn't extraordinary, what's the point? It's far more fun if you don't know what's going to happen next. That's part of the problem with the pseudo-medieval settings, actually - just too predictable. George Martin only gets away with it because of his habit of gleefully offing half the cast in a range of inventive ways.

I read fantasy because, as C.S.Lewis says in the Narnia books, there are worlds you can only reach by magic, and those are the worlds I want to visit.

Goerge RR Martin says it better then i ever could in one of my favorites quotes.

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”
― George R.R. Martin

For me, it's the fact that we live in reality everyday, and see all the same monotonous things everyday, so I'm BORED of reality! Fantasy just has so many opportunities and new ideas, where you can submerge yourself in a different world, forgetting the continuous list of tasks we have to do in our lives by completely separating ourselves... :)

I agree with Wastrel: most fiction is fantasy, to a degree, because it never happened. The fact that some writers set their stories in a world where warriors ride horses and magic is pervading as opposed to our world, where soldiers ride in tanks and internet is pervading is incidental. Fantasy writers kill their characters with swords. Mainstream writers kill their characters by laying them off, so they safely disappear from the story. The differences are superficial. The similarity - any story (if it is any good) in any genre is about people and their emotions - is deep.
But most readers who consider fantasy 'not true' think that if the story is set in Baltimore with cars and banks it should be more true than if it's set in Valdemar with magic. Such readers don't believe in dragons or magic, as if magic diminishes the emotional context. But that's not so. For me, magic and swords make people and emotions more 'naked'. Fantasy tropes, more often than not, intensify a story.

Contemporary fiction uses the existing world as a backdrop and a stage. The characters spring from the author's imagination.

Fantasy fiction needs not just the characters to spring from the author's imagination, but the backdrop, the stage and the setting to come from there as well.
When people take vacations, ideally they travel to some new and interesting place rather than stay home and go through their daily routines as usual. A good fantasy story will take a reader on just such a vacation.

Hadn't come across this one before, but a friend posted it & I thought it apropos to this discussion:

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I didn't see a better place for this, but please repost it if it's too off topic. Forbes did a very nice write-up on GoodReads.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidel...

We are now driving sales, folks!

People have been praising Mantel's books recently, and rightly so IMO. But, Mantel had a ready made world for her story. The good fantasy writer has have the discipline to create it, and not let it get out of control. Michael Moorcock's Wizardry and Wild Romance touches on these points very well. It's a good primer for people looking to write fantasy.

Escapism, pure and simple. I love being able to disappear from the world for a minute, an hour, a day...

That, and reading stories is like getting to know someone. A book is another's thoughts, ideas, opinions. I've heard it said that a lot of authors pour themselves into their works, so what better way to get to understand them other than reading their writings?

That and I don't entertain the more thoughtful side of my brain in my day job. As a soldier, and this isn't stereotyping, a lot of my day-in day-out is physical and a situational awareness of the world. With reading fantasy, I exercise that part of my brain where I have to imagine and create.

...it keeps me sane...thinking about goblins, fairies, kings and magical swords...if you know what I mean.