The Fantasy Genre

Adolescent vampires who earn their author $50 million annually, books on boy wizards that have sold more than 300 million copies... These just being examples of one extreme, fantasy as a genre has been seeping into almost all forms of entertainment in the last decade and captivating millions. Love it or hate it, you will undoubtedly come across it. But is this wave of interest in hunky werewolves, wands and witches, dragons and elves just another example of how easily money can be made off a bunch of hormone-driven 14-year-old girls and sci-fi nerds, or is there something the genre offers for those willing to learn?

Fantasy as a genre has actually been around practically as long as literature has, in the form of myths, legends or epic stories. The Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, for instance, or even Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, with their monsters, enchantresses and magic would doubtless be categorized as fantasy had they been written in the twenty first century. However, it wasn't until J. R. R. Tolkien that the genre translated in a relevant and popularised manner to its recognised form today. Ever since, the number of authors who write fantasy has skyrocketed: yet as the quantity and variety of its audience increased, the quality of the storylines were often stretched thin. No wonder that nowadays, reactions to it are more along the lines of "oh, I hate all that airy fairy crap" - to use the succinct words of a friend.

To be honest, I understand where this friend is coming from. Aside from the fact that the most popularised form of it today features sparkly vampires in a mind-numbing teenage romance (which is a rant entirely on its own), even adult fantasy seems to repeatedly have the same elements. Someone is always on a journey to fulfill their "destiny", which roughly translates into vanquishing a few dragons, rescuing a few damsels, and defeating some evil overlord whose sole aim is - oh, who'd have thought - world domination. It also doesn't help that most fantasy novels adapted for the big screen go through Hollywood's Factory of Over-Simplification.

So fantasy appears to have a bit of a bad rep, and possibly with reason. However, as with many things in life, this seems to be a case of the popular but cringe-worthy obscuring a few real gems. Both amongst talented newcomers and veteran masters of fantasy writing, there are elements that can appeal to almost any reader who keeps their expectations and personal tastes open.

Well-written fantasy is grand and sweeping in its description, and as the settings aren't restricted by the physically possible, language is free to do its work in conjuring and merging unexpected images, often resulting in mental landscapes you never thought your imagination was capable of visualising. Tolkien, Tad Williams, and Philip Pullman are particularly good at this. If you enjoy interesting characterisation, fantasy abounds with everything from intense character studies, such as Ursula Le Guin's Lavinia, to multiple character points-of-view like George R. R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. There's epic or "high fantasy" such as Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, which can probably give you all the conflicts, resolutions, settings, characters, languages, and fantasy elements you could possibly want - and still be good.

At the root of the matter, fantasy is more easily accessible and enjoyable than people think - by definition, all that this genre promises is something in addition to what is real: the supernatural, not the artificial. A different way of representing the struggles, emotions, failures and triumphs which can be found in any other literary genre, yet one which allows you to escape them while doing so.

No one's saying fantasy books are intellectual masterpieces that merit immediate and serious study. However, they are of a genre which is sadly misrepresented and heavily cluttered with clichés. Sifting through what it has to offer with an open mind can be as rewarding as gaining a heightened imagination or a few hours of much-needed escapism.

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