Putting into words why I write fantasy (and other spec-fic) by default:

[capri0mni]

You know. This may sound super naive and ridiculous, and not something that should come spilling through the fingers of a 47 year old woman--

But:

I write "fantasy" because I believe it's more real than so-called 'realistic fiction'

It's not that I believe in the literal existence of elves, or vampires, or unicorns, or nannies who come flying in hanging onto the parrot-headed handles of umbrellas, or any of that (necessarily).

But I Do believe that:

A) There is more to the world than can be explained by the tangible and logical.

and that

B) That the things we imagine (subconsciously in dreams, and consciously, in our daydreams) can, and do have a profound impact on the real world all around us.

So every story I write will have at least some element of each of those things, even when I'm not consciously trying to put it there. Because it's more than just a favorite genre, it's the filter through which I see the world.

And that's also why I tend to get much less enjoyment out of reading "realistic" fiction:

If it's a story that never even questions "reality," never challenges the broad, culturally defined nature of our world, it just feels "flat"-- like the author is only telling half the story.

Ya know?

Comments

[smw]

"Realistic" fiction has always seemed like a sham to me -- just as you said, it's the failure to question "reality" that I find most unfortunate, as it makes the inevitable idiosyncrasies of the world sloppy and badly defined.

[capri0mni]

True.

And yet.

I also am a firm believer in Science, and find the woo-woo philosophies of those whom my father called "The white light and crystal set" lacking.

The reason (I believe) that the world will never be fully explainable by the tangible and the logical is:

Each time we get a fuller explanation of the world as we see it, we get a glimpse into part of the world we haven't seen before and could not even have imagined. Copernicus led to Newton, Newton led to Einstein, Einstein led to splitting the atom, splitting the atom led to quantum physics, that led to the HSC, and who knows WTF that will lead to?

It's like that annoying long car ride song:

The bear went over the mountain (3X)
To see what he could see--
And what do think he saw? (2X)
He saw another mountain (3X)
So what do you think he did? (go to line one, repeat).

"Realists" are perfectly happy half-way up, staring only at the rocks in front of their noses, with no inclination to gaze toward the horizon, and speculate about the shadows and shapes they see in the distance (whether that distance is external, and in the future, or internal, in the phantoms of our own psyches). Moreover, they expect the rest of us to be happy with that, too.

[pebblerocker]

Oooh, yes.

There's a certain set of people -- I think they're reacting to a further set of people that they interact with and I don't, pushing back against maybe people who are telling them that there's no need for science because God did it all, when they assert that science already explains everything and there's no such thing as a mystery, nothing that science doesn't have the answers for and hasn't figured out already, nothing that isn't perfectly understood, nothing measurable that we don't yet have the apparatus to measure -- I can't get into discussions with these people because they interpret any suggestion that there's anything more to the world than what they already know as an attack on science itself, or proof that I can't tell the difference between science and magic and am therefore not worth talking to.

Science isn't just the body of facts already discovered; it's the process of finding them out, and it won't ever be finished.

[capri0mni]

I should be in bed. I should have turned off the computer hours ago, so I don't have time to find it, now... but Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," -- the one Beethoven wrote that ditty for -- mentions the discoveries of scientists as one of the ways Joy (personified) rewards mankind. I'll post the full translation when I get back from the Art Garden, Monday or Tuesday (maybe Wednesday)