Short commentary (still more I seem to repeat a lot of what’ve already been said, just want to shift a focus a bit):
Fantasy is more ‘childlishly’ maximalist, ‘real life’ literature more ‘grown-uppingly’ merciful. The often made accussation of LoTR being overly ‘black’n’white’ is true in this respect. We tend to be more merciful not for we
are merciful, as, say, Second Voice of Leaf by Niggle was, but we know our own guilt and ‘put ourselves into guilty’s place’. If LoTR were written along the pattern of social or pshycological novel, Sauron probably would have been given life imprisonment, with lot of lawyers to back him up, appealing for strike off for his ‘good behavior’ and ‘bringing a lot of good for society’ pressing plates for Aragorn’s royal court carriages etc.
Fantasy does not allow for that – it turns moral law, the one that have been called Natural Law prior to XX century, into imperative which is to be followed at all costs, without peace treaties and truces, sort of ‘ok, I will let you kill a bit here if you let me rape there a little, than we’ll sell some oil together, find profit and call it quits’ agreements which our ‘real’ world is unfortunately famous for.
The essence of [good] fantasy is expressed in Theoden’s words
Thus shall I sleep better. Again, in modern social novel the background would be that Theoden is after improving his own health, after remedy for insomnia, but the idea is indeed that following the imperative, being not merely ‘selfless’ but ‘self-sacrificing’, laying down own life is the thing proper, and doing what is right, but not pleasing, is more pleasing than doing pleasing thing which is not right, if you follow my meaning, kind sirs and ladies. And such a thought may be indeed ‘subversive’ for society lulled by psycho-analysts (or, rather, lulling itself) into belief that what is pleasing is right.
Short notice:
Dragons and SF – as always, there is an exeption – a lot of ‘probable’ and ‘improbable’ dragons in Stanislav Lem’s fiction, yeh
