MIND OUT OF TIME PT. 1

I see from Google that others have used the reverse-pun in my title before this. Still, I suspect the connotations of my pun are a little different from anyone else's.

In UP WITH FANTASY, DOWN WITH HORROR, I suggested that one could regard "fantasy" and "horror"-- categories which usually appear in that famous marketing troika, "fantasy, horror and science fiction"-- as two "super-genres," at least in terms of how they organize what I've called sympathetic and antipathetic affects. Having said all that, I'm going in a different direction now, Now I'm asking the unmusical question, "is there something that sets the genre we usually call 'fantasy' from all other genres with metaphenomenal content?"

Before going further, I'd note another specification I made here regarding the three rationales all or most authors use to justify the metaphenomena in their stories:

(1) The rationale of science.

(2) The rationale of magic.

(3) The rationale of "just because."

These rationales become important partly to sorting out some of the problems with the standard colloquial usage of "fantasy." At least where prose fiction is concerned, the "magic rationale" is the one most often connoted with works called "fantasy," because so much of the genre's development in the U.S. was influenced by Tolkien. But colloquially "fantasy" can also take in "just because" works like WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. And though "science fiction" as such is usually considered as something of an "opposite number" to fantasy, even within the "Big Tent" of SF one sees certain works labeled "science fantasy."

On a related note, I talked a little bit about the history of my personal response to the "magical fantasy" genre in this Rip Jagger's Dojo comment:

I did not get converted to Tolkien first, but to Lin Carter, at least as editor. I got a half dozen fantasy paperbacks at a college book sale, and they included at least one CONAN, a Ballantine called DISCOVERIES IN FANTASY, and the Lancer collection of JIREL OF JOIRY. My memory is that I saw new depths in those fantasies for adults that I hadn't seen in things directed more at kids, like Oz and Peter Pan. I continued to read voluminously in both fantasy and SF for the rest of my life, but something about seeing a new potential in a genre at just the right age makes me prefer the fantasy genre in an affective sense.

Now, I ask myself, to what extent was my liking for "magical fantasies" associated with the appearance of the magic-rationale?

I think that the concept of magic has definite appeal. Magic usually takes two forms in fiction: one active, one passive. The active form involves some entity-- typically a mortal sorcerer, a god, or a demon-- using magical procedures to influence some aspect of the universe. The passive form takes the form of depicting the existence of entities that are thought to be intrinsically magical, but are not brought into being by anything but the intrinsic rules of a fantasy-universe. One finds both forms in LORD OF THE RINGS, in that characters like Gandalf and Sauron utilize specific procedures to influence their world, while whole categories of entities, such as dwarfs or trolls, are passively magical in nature even though they utilize no magical procedures. 

However, despite the strong association of the colloquial use of the term "fantasy" and the "magic rationale," I think there's a more fundamental appeal to "magical fantasy" than the use of said rationale-- which I'll discuss in the next section.