Hobbits and Spaceships and Elves--Oh My!

I have been invited to say a few words about science fiction and fantasy, which is entirely appropriate on a blog sponsored by a group of romance writers.

You see, “romance” is a lot more than love stories. The word comes from roman, the name of a vernacular language intermediate between Late Latin and Old French. It later came to mean the kind of stories told in the vernacular, as opposed to the classy stuff written in Latin: stories of adventure, of magic, and of course, love. Later all sorts of things were incorporated, including love of nature, interest in primitive people, and even love of democracy. But one element remains constant, and has since Gilgamesh: the Quest.

Jayne has commented that one of the reasons romance novels are so popular is that they affirm the traditional values of our culture, like courage, honor, loyalty, and altruism, as well as love. I think that another reason genre fiction IS popular, and only SF and fantasy rival romance, is that they incorporate the quest. Even mystery fiction does so: the object of the quest being to find out whodunit.

Incidentally, SF and fantasy are not interchangeable terms: fantasy is a much older genre, going back to the aforesaid Gilgamesh; science fiction is a much more recent development, in some ways a subset of fantasy, in others a much more intellectual genre. Both, however, primarily rely on the marvelous. In fantasy, the quest is usually straightforward—seeking the Holy Grail, the Well at the World’s End, a new home for a colony of rabbits, a lost or imprisoned king or princess, the One Ring or its destruction.

SF tends to combine the marvelous as a setting with the quest as problem-solving: How are we going to defeat/make friends with these aliens? Repair our damaged ship? Get to where we are going?

A lot of books today talk about writing fiction in terms of the quest, with titles like The Writer’s Journey; this is very much influenced by Joseph Campbell’s classic The Hero with a Thousand Faces. According to Campbell, the quest is achieved when the hero returns to change his society in some way. In fantasy, it may be discovering the magic object that will defeat the foe or heal the wounded Fisher King (the sword or the Grail); in SF it is usually solving the problem so that we win/we make friends/fix the ship/arrive safely. And of course, one of the traditional ends of the quest is the hero winning the hand of the heroine—hence romance enters the fold.

One thing that both SF and fantasy can do is extrapolate—the “what if?” factor. In SF, it is often the future development of a culture: what if a planet was settled by members of the Society for Creative Anachronism? What if there were three sexes? What if we met a powerful enemy in space? In fantasy, it tends to be magical archetypes—dragons, enchantresses, spells, magical rings and swords—which highlight the kind of choices we make in everyday life by setting them off dramatically: betraying one’s friends (Boromir in Lord of the Rings) or not (the rabbits in Watership Down), surrender in the face of hardship or persistence in courage; staying faithful to one’s beloved or cheating. Not all fantasy is moral, of course, and SF tends to be a great deal more problematic; but the secret of their popularity is that they do maintain the core values, which is what enables the hero (or heroine!) to complete the Quest and give us a satisfying ending.

What about your favorite fantasy and SF tales, both in childhood and as an adult? Did they involve quests?

The quest-story is found in just about every culture that has recorded its tales; why do you think it is so popular?

Talpianna