Quote:
Originally Posted by davem
I think Tolkien is right - fantasy is what saves humanity from sinking into the pit of utilitarianism & uglyness.
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To consider just 'survival,' we should mimic the bugs (interestingly proposed in Frank Herbert's
Hellstrom's Hive) and do away with all of these non-essentials. Unless dragons or hobbits are about to enter our niche, what's the point about reading about them?
But we're not yet termites in one big mound. We're humans, and one of the things that we do is explore the universe, and imagination plays a big part in that. What is imagination other than another tool that we use to survive? Can I eat that bug? Maybe a story or song would help me remember. Can I ford that river? Maybe there's a better way, and wasn't I just thinking about spiders? Anyway, an offshoot of this is to look at the world and see otherwise.
Another thing about fantasy is that, to me, it's even harder to write...well. Anyone, as
davem may have noted elsewhere about the Dragonlance (?) novels, can churn out text that includes elves and dragons and giants, but to do it well, you have to make this new world seem so right and natural that it's almost transparent. When reading LotR I wasn't brought up short by the existence of a Balrog - it seemed to fit, make sense and so I never skipped a beat.
Writing about life today is also challenging, but you have cultural references with which to work, and can 'see' what you want to use. In fantasy writing, even the simplest of things must be considered. Do elves even have feet? If not, how do they walk?
The fact that many of the peoples of ME are humanoid-type just shows how hard it can be even for a master.
And lastly, as I've rambled on long enough, sometimes it's easier to write/read about something very important when it's removed to the fantasy world. Telling the world that the new city is ugly may not be as safe (when heard by the creators) or effective as creating a novel helping them (falsely) remember how wonderful the old city was, even if the old city never existed.