Why is fantasy getting so popular all of the sudden?

Discussing it with my wife, she made an interesting observation: Maybe the popularity of fantasy is booming because our culture was getting too saturated with reality TV?
Hm. I read somewhere the more rational the world gets, the more irrational fantasy needs to be.

Fantasy is one of the oldest forms of storytelling. We used the fantastic to attempt to explain the world when science could not. But, now that science can explain a great deal of the workings of our world, where does fantasy fit in?

We dream in fiction every night. So fiction must be important to our everyday lives, somehow. My wife jokingly said, “I don’t know anyone who dreams in non-fiction!”

I fondly look back on my early childhood, remembering what it was like to live within the constraints of my imagination without impunity. As I grew older, role-models made it clear I was expected to cast aside my childish ways. The problem with that was, any innocence I loosened my grip on could not be regained. The imagination I have left is what survived being smothered by grown-ups, and what survived the harsh sting of the real world.

If a samurai could represent ancient custom … beliefs … fantasy … a machine-gunner could represent a person who denounces anything science cannot explain, or a snobby book critic who strongly feels fantasy is unsophisticated. You know the type, haughty as Hell–just itching to unleash their arsenal of condescending adjectives: ‘This diatribe panders to the lowest common denominator. All the clap-trap and hullabaloo quickly degenerates into sheer pabulum.’ Bleh. That may sound one-sided, but stay with me :)

Once upon a time, we really did wonder how vast the ocean was; what untold monsters might have been lurking in the murky depths; what undiscovered lands might lay in wait beyond the horizon. We wondered just where the world came to an end, if it ended at all; what horrible demons might have lived deeper than we could ever dig, and what caused all of those violent earthquakes and eruptions. We wondered if ghosts would drag us to the underworld if we wandered too far off in the deepest bogs alone; where disease comes from; how the body even works; if there were any truly bottomless holes deep inside the darkness of caves; what deeper meaning the twinkling stars were hiding. We believed in magical incantations and really used them for good or ill.

The same way we feel when we gaze at the stars and wonder if there is intelligent life out there is how we once felt about everything. To say the least, it must have been overwhelming. We used to think all rivers were gods–crafting a clay jar from its water and mud wasn’t just a way to pass the time and later sell at the local craft store, it was a truly spiritual experience.

I believe reading a fantasy book is the best way to recapture that sense of wonder. A fantasy writer’s job is to see beyond the borders of the mundane world to explore a totally different, yet eerily similar one where everything is yet to be discovered. We take the questions and answer them with the irrational answers we all secretly wished were the real answers. And we can enjoy them from a safe distance. We need irrational answers in our lives to believe in something greater than us. At the very least, we should believe in love.

Despite science’s incredible advancements in the last few hundred years, some cultures have managed to cling to the old-world traditions that captured their imagination for many centuries. I got to see it first-hand in Japan; statues of demons and gods still litter the landscape. The shape of buildings and other structures still hold spiritual meaning. And people still pray at shrines to prevent killer dragon gods from rising from the depths of lakes. It’s breath-takingly beautiful. And it has no need to be rational … but I can’t help but wonder how many more years it will last.

Hopefully, a master of swordplay will always be more prestigious than some shmuck with a machine-gun.

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