The Philosophy of Fantasy: A Ramble

This piece is called “The Philosophy of Fantasy: A Ramble” because that is exactly what it is. I start here and I ramble on to there… then there… then… (You’ve been warned.)

Good Fantasy, and I would chisel that point even finer with good heroic fantasy, is inherently philosophical. This wasn’t news to me as I was reading Richard Mathews’ Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination (2002), which I like to re-read on occasion. This time it was a slice from his discussion of William Morris and George MacDonald as the first Victorian fantasy novelists that stuck: “…This polarity of divergent values [Socialism vs. Christianity] was especially significant and set a thematic course for the genre, since fantasy was from the outset a more purely philosophical mode of writing than was realism.”

This made me think of Ursula K. Le Guin and her “From Poughkeepsie to Elfland” (The Language of the Night, 1979) where she took modern Fantasy writers to task (such as Katherine Kurtz) for creating works that could just as easily be set in modern times. Do modern writers, who may have little or no religious beliefs, still possess a philosophy in their work? Mathews would suggest that writing any Fantasy must require such. Is this why Le Guin was unhappy with some newer writers? Does, say George R. R. Martin, who loves internecine politics, lack philosophy? Does he require such?

Much of my own understanding of how fantastic fiction works comes from two scholars: Michael D. C. Drout (Rings, Swords, and Monsters (2006) and Eric Rabkin (Masterpieces of the Imaginative Minds (2007). Drout suggests that Fantasy (as opposed to mainstream fiction) is about needs not wants. In an imaginative work such as The Lord of the Rings, what Frodo needs is much more important than what he wants. He needs to take the ring to Mount Doom. He wants a second breakfast after a bath and ten hours sleep. Maybe a good smoke of pipe weed. Tolkien doesn’t let us forget the things we want as a counter-point, such a mug of Green Dragon Ale or the kiss a sweet elf maiden, but later. When there is time. Right now, it’s all razor-sharp rocks, screaming Nazghuls and more orcs than you can shake a stick at.

As all this needing goes on, Tolkien works in his Christian values subtly. His pal, C. S. Lewis over in Narnia is using the heavier-handed method of allegory (which Tolkien despised) to get across his philosophy. The Narnia books are so obviously a religion lesson that writers like Philip Pullman felt he had to write an anti-Narnia series in His Dark Materials. Pullman is quite aware of his own philosophical origins, which come from Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Gnostic. This kind of counter-argument, as Mathews points out, is in the very DNA of modern Fantasy. It was written as a counter-agent to modern realism. Fantasy as a creative act is inherently subversive. (That is why so many fundamentalists ban it.)

Reacting to another writer’s philosophy is how new writers springboard from the classics. The best example of this is Michael Moorcock’s Elric. He has been described as an anti-Conan. Where Conan is big, Elric is small. Hardy then weak. Alpha male then albino cripple. Where Howard proposed a world in which only barbarism is honest and true, Moorcock gives us the opposite, a Gothic realm filled with fear and doubt. Who is right? Does it matter? Each wrote true to his own philosophy and used it to make their imaginings worthy of long life. You don’t have to believe in Darwinian Survivalism to read Howard. You don’t have to like Mervyn Peake’s gloomy POV (where Moorcock got his inspiration from) to read Gothics. Non-Christians can enjoy Narnia, Middle Earth and George MacDonald (though I admit Tolkien is the easiest).

Two authors who espouse religious beliefs of the Buddhist variety are Ursula K. Le Guin and Niel Hancock. Both created some unique Fantasy in Earthsea and the Circle of Light books, but Le Guin is by far the better writer. Neither hits you over the head with religiosity but ask questions. This is, by far, the Fantasy writer’s best tool. What is the nature of good and evil? If you were offered the Ring of Power could you resist? If you could live forever, would you? These questions are as old as literature. The Epic of Gilgamesh asks these same questions in its own way. Why do we still ask them today? Didn’t the long-forgotten scribe who wrote Gilgamesh on cuneiform tablets answer that five thousand years ago? The answers are not the same as they were in ancient Ninevah.

Philosophy, by definition, is the study of the nature of universe. Fantasy’s philosophy seems more directed to the unknown in the universe, or the supernatural. We don’t read Tolkien to find out how Nigel grew the tree with the leaves. What kind of fertilizer does he use? How often does he water it? Such mundane information is not the object here at all. Some of us read Tolkien to look at dark truths. Tolkien was a soldier in World War I and he had to face the deaths of friends as well as life in the trenches. A pretty dark place to find questions. Does he answer them? That is a  matter of opinion. For some, Tolkien’s work is not to be venerated. (Obviously he didn’t answer it for everyone. Moorcock is not a fan.)

Writers can only try to head the reader toward an answer. It is the reader’s own job to discover them, not the storyteller’s. That may seem counter-intuitive but works that slam you over the head with dogma, opinion or over-whelming philosophy is called propaganda. Writers could just say, hey, good is good and evil is evil, but the reader won’t come back for more. The truth must be explored, taken apart, considered, all the while a story takes place. To do less is to truly be a poor writer. I think this is partly what Le Guin was suggesting in that article. Fantasy has the tools of wonder to address big questions. Why wouldn’t we use them? Is too much realism a problem?

As a writer of Sword & Sorcery I often struggle with this one. Should all Fantasy be written in a stilted Dunsanian tone? Howard wrote Conan for the Pulps, so, no, it doesn’t have to always be done that way. Is Dunsany more philosophical than Howard? Is the philosophy in the way it is written or what happens? (I addressed the ornateness of Fantasy before here.) Does a more poetic style convey more? Writers like Le Guin and Fritz Leiber would not support such an idea. Their prose is simple, direct, unadorned but their worlds are fantastic and poetic all the same.

All this leaves me wondering what my own philosophy is. As a modern person of a secular, scientific background I am predisposed to writing Science Fiction. (I would say SF writers have philosophy too, even if it is only embracing a fact-based stance to create from.) Stylistically, most SF is much less in love with the words than Fantasy. (John W. Campbell’s reign over SF insured that much of Science Fiction’s diction is about as poetic as a car manual. Thank goodness, for Ray Bradbury!) So I am sitting here in the 21st Century, with no great religious or Socialistic impulse, with a diction that is honestly derived from the stripped down Mystery stories of Erle Stanley Gardner, wondering why I should write heroic fantasy at all. Am I guilty of Le Guin’s Complaint?  (Just chuck it all and go write Mystery novels. One quarter of all books in the universe are Mystery novels. Frightening. When aliens dig up our civilization centuries from now they are more likely to find Agatha Christie than Shakespeare.)

Writing a more ordinary form of fiction simply is not going to happen for me. Blame it on the early works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard that formed my first real reading experiences. Blame it on no love for the dire future we run headlong towards. Blame it on nostalgia ( I am over fifty and subject to plenty of it–in a cranky Grandpa voice: Back in the 1970s things were so much better….) Blame it on some unrealized philosophy lurking inside me undiscovered that can only find expression from heroic fantasy. (Something to do with those who fight monsters, I think…) The part of me that still thrills to a Frank Frazetta painting (that I have literally a hundred times before). The part of me that gets gooseflesh when I see a glimpse from a game or movie trailer that suggests that there is still wonder to be found (until you watch it and find that clip is the best part).

I won’t give up. Sword & Sorcery is in my blood. All this mountain of thoughts and feelings about Fantasy be damned. It is what I want to write. It is what I need to write. Why? We’ll leave that to the psychiatrists to figure out. My philosophy may not be evident. We can leave that to the critics to argue over. (I can’t wait to hear what the Freudians think!) It is fun to write. It is fun to read. Maybe that’s enough.

I promised a ramble. And there you are. In the immortal heroic fantasy words of Led Zeppelin (press play): Ramble On….