Books, of course – whether fantasy or any other sort – are never just about times and places. They are about people, and preferably, ones we care to read about.
This second element is (strangely) probably more important even than the first; and it might very well be the greatest catching point for dispute among fantasy readers about what constitutes the proper employment of the genre. The main reason I never finished reading The Wheel of Time was my abiding hatred of Rand al’Thor; the thought that recurred with more and more feverish intensity as I read the books was, what a stupid, whiny, lame, annoying jerk. On the other hand, many readers love Rand; that’s why the books are so popular. He is, for them, a real hero.
However, whether we love heroes because they possess heroic virtues – prophetic existences, magical abilities, majestic undertakings and the like, or because we like them for who they are, can be difficult to separate. Some readers of fantasy point to the genre’s mythic origins as proof that fantasy ought to be heroic in the mythopoeic sense; that, in other words, we ought never to doubt the ideological framework in which a work is constructed. Other fantasists have actively attempted to undermine this conception and create heroes whose heroism can be cast in doubt. Stephen King’s Roland in the Dark Tower series, for example, stands in stark contrast to the hobbits of the Lord of the Rings – a fact of which King was well aware. The gunslinger is a dark creature with a dark past, despite his heroic qualities, as is Steph Swainston’s drug-addicted immortal Jant in the Castle series. It is this more cerebral kind of fantasy that cuts apart the standard conceptions of heroes and villains, and my preference for this sort of framework is the reason I haven’t written an article about villains. When Jake, the kid in the Dark Tower series, asks the gunslinger, “The man in black… Is he a bad man?” Roland replies, “I guess that depends on where you’re standing.” Sauron, I suspect, never received enough hugs as a young child.
I think the defining element at the base of these different ideas about heroes and their counterparts is whether or not one believes in, and appreciates, the concept of innocence. Many classic fantasies feature prominent innocents, such as Mark in Fred Saberhagen’s Book of Swords. And these are the fantasies that most usually reply to our mythic expectations: that good wins out over evil, that the guy gets the girl, and there’s a happily-ever-after (usually an apotheosis of the hero, as in the resurrection of Christ, or a rebirth of the world, as in Ragnorok). Darker fantasies and darker heroes tend to have ambiguous endings and characters that experience sadness and loss long before Evil rears its mythic head.
But irrespective of what kind of heroes we as readers prefer – whether, again, fantasy is an escape, or a release valve – those heroes are always heroes. They may rise above tribulations; they may fulfill their destiny; or they may never know peace. But they are always able to do things that readers are not, and this fact is true irrespective of the kind of world that they live in and the kind of actions in which they can partake. Rising above and fulfilling a prophetic destiny are things out of reach for most “real” characters; and endless suffering is rarely endurable to the actual human soul. “Heroic fantasy” is a misnomer, for if it weren’t for heroic characters – characters that are, even if not mythic, at least legendary – there would be no reason to read fantasy at all. We may as well partake of another misnomer: literature.
Richard Marpole
Jennie Ivins
While you make a valid point about the importance of having a hero that we can sympathize with, or even admire, I would not go so far as to say that the term “heroic fantasy” is redundant, or that we like heroes because they do things we can’t. I would say that you can have a fantasy novel with a protagonist who is anti-heroic, or fatally flawed but intetesting none-the-less (e.g. everyone in A Song of Ice and Fire). Also, perhaps we like heroes not because they are stronger, more talented, and more fabulous than we are, but because we identify with them, and when they perform great feats that makes us imagine that we could, too–if we were ever cornered by a dragon, that is, or the subject of a prophecy about saving the world.