Conclusion

It you missed any of this series you can find them here:
Part 1: http://fantasy-faction.com/2011/keeping-fantasy-fresh
Part 2: http://fantasy-faction.com/2011/sands-of-time
Part 3: http://fantasy-faction.com/2011/absense-makes-the-heart
Part 4: http://fantasy-faction.com/2011/keeping-fantasy-fresh-a-time-for-heroes
Part 5: http://fantasy-faction.com/2011/gold-in-them-hills

Conclusion

The title of this article series is “Keeping Fantasy Fresh,” though it seems all I have managed to do herein is create a loose idea of what fantasy is in the first place. But, as readers and writers of fantasy, how do we identify “a new, fresh, exciting take on those archetypes and clichés” that we already know and love?”
Unlike most of the eternal debates that rage over fantasy among Internet circles and that appear in countless books on the subject, I hope that my definition of “what fantasy is” demonstrates that fantasy is a genre that keeps itself fresh naturally. No other genre permits pure imagination to the degree that does fantasy. The sheer breadth of the genre – from sword and sorcery to paranormal romance, and, very possibly, even space opera – demonstrates how little is required to unleash its potential, and how much is housed within the kernels of its essence.

Indeed, I am of the belief that “science fiction & fantasy” ought at least to be read “fantasy & science fiction;” but preferably, we could get rid of the SF label altogether. This isn’t because I don’t like science; but the science fiction that is truly separate from fantasy, as a distinct genre rather than sub-genre, is usually not the same as what is most often read under the SF label. Just like how fantasy usually looks like anything with rogues and dragons on the cover, science fiction all too often looks like anything with space marines and alien babes on its dust jacket. And what do either of those things have to do with science? No more, I suggest, than the Gray Caps’ infernal machine in Jeff VanderMeer’s Shriek: An Afterword, or the “angreal” of The Wheel of Time. Science fiction is the magic of machinery; fantasy is the magic of the soul.

Sometimes, as in the most far-flung SF stories (which are usually the most frequently derided by hard-liners), these disparate elements are unified. Iain M. Banks’ Culture stories are my favourite science fictions, and I don’t doubt that this is because he cares more for the spirit of the technologies and futures he proposes than the actual how-to of the stuff. His science fiction takes on magical qualities, and instead of thinking about the problems of technology, we have to think about the problems of the characters’ hearts.

Perhaps I’ve got all this SF stuff wrong. I’ve gotten more than a few rejections from Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine, and one of the lines on the form letter they send stipulates that “Analog readers are problem solvers.” Perhaps the difference between fantasy and science fiction isn’t in the elements of the world in which the story takes place, but the way in which the problems of the story are solved – and the way in which the readers and writers of those genres think.

So what kind of problems is fantasy solving? The reason fantasy remains fresh – while science fiction stales as real technology is invented – is that its landscapes, mythos, and heroes are conscious extrusions of the emotional subconscious. The story becomes a painting of the mind, rather than a manual. And as long as fantasy continues to reach out to fundamental human problems and fundamental human stories, it will always be fresh, because it can take us to places where we may revisit these problems, ask why they happen, and wonder how else we might have solved them in our own lives; a place beyond the world, beyond time itself, to a place just as divine as that proffered by any religion.

Or, maybe – just maybe – I’ve spent too much time stuck in my own head – fantasizing!

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