On the Need for Fantasy in our Lives

[alfreda89]

Is fantasy critical to our generation?  Why fantasy,and why now?  Sometime in the 90s I was suddenly drawn to fantasy, and although I have started noodling with SF again, I find myself mainly concerned with what I can say through the medum of fantasy.,

"Which is why it makes sense that so much of the 20th century was preoccupied with science fiction, a genre that, among other things, grapples with the presence of technology in our lives, our minds, and our bodies, and with how our tools change the world and how they change us. Those issues are of paramount, urgent importance right now. But a countervailing movement is happening too: we’re also turning to fantasy. It’s counterintuitive, because fantasy is so often set in pre-industrial landscapes where technology is notable for its absence, but it must have something we need. We’re using it to ask questions. We like to celebrate this world, our new world, as a paradise of connectedness, a networked utopia, but is it possible that on some level we feel as disconnected from it as Lewis and Tolkien did from theirs?"

Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians series, explains.