Whenever you ask fantasy readers why they read the genre, the word that tends to pop up most often is “escapism”. Which, given the state of the world at the minute, is appropriate.
Recently there have been a variety of conversations circulating about the small histories of the genre. Those authors and books and TV shows that don’t tend to get oh-so-long monologues from white-haired men in funny hats, but are no less influential as a result.
The influences that make up this genre form a spectrum more colourful than a “canonised” list of classic books would have you believe. The same is true of its readerbase. The last time I looked at the numbers, I found that approximately one in five readers discovered the genre through a unique book. And that doesn’t account for other mediums like TV, movies, comic books, anime, or manga.
I mention this to illustrate the (perhaps obvious) point that what constitutes escapism for one person might not be the same for another. That the thing that keeps us coming back for more is not necessarily the same thing for everyone. And it’s part of the beauty of our expansive, all-encompassing genre that this is the case.
Some people come to fantasy to experience the highest stakes possible. Those world-threatening epic fantasies where the difference between good and evil could be black and white or a thousand shades of grey. Others prefer lower stakes, which could be anything from small-scale slice-of-life, to extraordinary people suffering ordinary crises.
Fantasy can allow you to explore a world that is as different from ours as it is possible to be, or one that is strikingly similar but with just enough distance for you to comfortably explore upsetting real-world issues. You can investigate every possible facet of the human experience, or something not human at all. You can live a life with fascinating people, explore a world filled with wonder and possibility, or have an adventure at whatever level of action you desire. Sometimes maybe all three.
And for me, it’s that sheer level of variety that I fell in love with. To speak personally for a second, I’m someone who has a fierce loathing of the familiar and a deep-rooted terror of the pre-ordained. When two books are too similar, I can rarely read them back-to-back. I can’t re-read a book or re-watch a movie until I forget most of the details. This means that my taste is an erratic, ever-evolving mess of a thing that is impossible for anyone to put a finger on.
And so fantasy is my safe haven. With fantasy, there’s always something new. There’s always something different. There is something for everyone. It’s a genre with a million subgenres, infinite possibilities, and absolutely no limits. It’s a fandom made up of countless groups of people from countless backgrounds. Fantasy is so large, so all-inclusive, and so fluid that it should be impossible for any one person to hold up any one subsection of books and say “this is fantasy.”
Because it is always, always more than that.
Fantasy is infinite. It can, quite literally, be anything. Which is why it is tremendously silly when people try to put it in a box. In a genre built on escapism and imagination, that is the opposite of what we should be striving for.
We read fantasy because, at some point in time, someone created a thing uniquely suited for us to love. A thing that is individual to each person.
Right now, someone else is out there creating something entirely new for people to fall in love with.
And who the fuck are we to say that thing isn’t fantasy?
