Robin Hanson asked his Twitter/X followers, "Is there any 'fantasy' world where you'd prefer to live there as a regular person, compared to living in our world now? They all seem pretty bad to me."
The most common actual answers were "Star Trek" and "Harry Potter." Several people said, "Any world with an afterlife." One said, "Narnia. God is real, good, and actively involved," and one wanted LOTR if a regular elf counted as a regular person.
Pondering this, I find myself back at the issue of most magic being inherently aristocratic. There aren't many worlds in which everyone has magic, so the cool things about magical worlds are pretty much limited to special people: wizards, heroes, jedi knights, etc. Star Trek is the only world I can think of where ordnary NPCs can have lives both better and more interesting than mine, and you could say that isn't really "fantasy."
Part of what makes "fantasy" "fantasy" is that it creates a fantasy for the reader; yes, I could be the special hero who finds mights magic and saves the world. Often the world-saving is utterly ridiculous (e.g. Brandon Sanderson), but I would say that saving the world is closer to the core of Fantasy than just having cool powers.
Fantasy is not about imagining places where NPCs want to live.
It is hard even to imagine a world where everybody had powers like Gandalf or Yoda, and to me it doesn't even seem very appealing; if everybody can cast spells then they're just like guns and who cares?
5 comments:
It is hard even to imagine a world where everybody had powers like Gandalf or Yoda, and to me it doesn't even seem very appealing; if everybody can cast spells then they're just like guns and who cares?
I find it extremely odd that you seemingly can't imagine a use case for "fantasy powers" that doesn't involve violence, and thus reduce them to a gun comparison.
Magic could replace many things we currently use machines and electricity for. That may sound extremely mundane, and no better than what we currently have - except in so doing, we replace the need to consume electricity produced via polluting methods, and the need to consume physical resources to produce the machines.
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There are definitely some idyllic fantasy world settings out there, they're just not common in most forms of media, because we tend to enjoy stories about conflict, where drama comes from extraordinary sources rather than mundane everyday human interactions. People tend to avoid creating fictional settings where everyone is happy and life is good, because a lot of people find that "boring". It's a form of selection bias.
Incidentally, this is why Star Trek is the big recognizable name that seems the most appealing - it's a world that was originally explicitly crafted to have a "utopian" background, and to have all the drama be derived from the protagonists voyaging out into the unknown frontier, where things are not utopian.
As for the 'fantasy' angle to things, I think that's a matter of stylistic restraints - fantasy leans towards the past as a basis for societal structures, and takes cues from feudal and renaissance life. In contrast, science fiction extrapolates into the future, and frequently posits things that have yet to pass, but which are conceivable or plausible.
FWIW, I'm not sure I've ever deeply identified with the heroic, world-saving aspect of fantasy. What I long for is mystery, hidden truths, and the idea of a world in which "enchantment" (in the Weberian sense) could be real. Perhaps that's why for many years I've been more interested in slow-burn horror and what's been called weird fiction than in fantasy as such. I love my memories of Tolkien, but Lovecraft (where the characters tend toward the decidedly un-heroic and world-saving is usually out of the question) is more the sort I'm compelled to go back to again and again. Just my taste; de gustibus and all that.
Some musings, more or less obvious, on the issue of spells and magic (which I would relate to ideas or fantasies of miracles and miracle-working):
Three aspects of why people fantasize about these sorts of things occur to me at the moment. First, there is the aspect of proof; wonders serve as an demonstration of the truth of some hidden thing or reality. Thus Moses' victory in his spell-battle with Pharoah's wizards serves as unimpeachable proof of the Hebrew God's might, and His very existence. Then, and closely related to the first, one may of course talk about legitimation (="propaganda") of power and will to power, more or less obvious.
Finally--and most important in relation to modern consumers--there seems to be a widespread, very human fantasy of access (possibly, but not always, privileged) to a source of power that does not come from what are perceived as more or less "worldly" sources (and with reference to such sources one could talk about everything ranging from privileged position to "merited" power like physical capacity or technical knowledge--including skill with, say, organizations, rules, etc.--or capacity to manipulate/connect with others, capacity for sheer hard work and achievement, etc., etc.). The feeling that one lacks these things will often be related to various degrees of self-hatred, which may be why wonder-working has so often been tied to forms of asceticism (which I would take to be a sort of actuated self-hatred) or fantasies of suffering.
The foregoing absolutely does NOT exhaust the problem of human longing for mysteries, the uncanny, heroism against cosmic threat, what James called "religious experience," etc. But fantasies of acquiring, or at least witnessing, active power unconnected to the social do seem to come up a lot in relation to those things.
People wanting "power unconnected to the social" is probably a good explanation for things like crypto-currency, now that I think about it.
I've literally had to endure discussions with co-workers trying to sell me on the idea of crypto-currency and listing off its supposed benefits, and I've had to patiently explain to them "Okay, sure, but... we already have access to all those benefits. We call it 'banking', and crypto-currency is actually LESS secure in those regards."
I guess the thinking is that when a bank does it, it's mundane and even bad; but when some random "company" of "ordinary people" do it, it's special and good?
And I think this is an inevitable aspect of human psychology. The first flights in airplanes were stupendous miracles - but within decades, flight became a mundane, everyday activity. The first electric lights were marvels of technology - today, we don't even notice them except when they fail to function perfectly.
I propose a corollary of sorts.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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Any sufficiently current technology is indistinguishable from mundanity.
I don’t follow this line of reasoning at all. JRRT wanted to live in the Shire, and he’s not alone there. Diana Wynne Jones created wonderful, redemptive worlds. The list goes on and on.
I get it. Epic fantasy. It’s all about the power mongers and who gets to save the world—most commonly by snuffing out via sacrifice the last glowing flower of magic.
But there’s absolutely a reason Totoro is one of the most beloved films (and marketed characters) of fantasy today, and it’s not because that movie is filled with swords and violence.
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