Neth Space Defends Escapism
We're in one of the periodic battles between spinach and marshmallow in the SF world; this time, it seems to have been started by M. John Harrison's dismissive comments on worldbuilding last week. Neth Space gathers up all of the relevant links (so I don't have to -- very kind of him), and then dives into his own essay.
I am, as usual, flabbergasted that anyone needs to defend escapism in popular fiction. SF/Fantasy/Horror are genres of entertainment; "escapism" is the very first thing they are required to provide. (Maybe if we use the more elevated term, "willing suspension of disbelief," it will be less contentious?) If fiction does not provide an "escape" from the reader's world outside the book, it hasn't even managed to hold her attention, and is an utter failure.
(Not to mention C.S. Lewis's famous quote about the people who are most obsessed with stopping escape.)
Comments
Or Tolkien's remark in his essay "On Fairy Stories" (one of my favorite quotations ever): "Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter."
(I looked it up.)
Posted by: Beque | February 9, 2007 12:40 PM