Over at fellow RORee Marianne de Pierres‘ blog I’ve written an article about the fantasy genre.
It’s a genre much maligned by the literary world, yet many literary books are fantastical in nature. As in all genres there’s a bell curve with a lot of stuff sitting in the middle, being neither remarkably good or really bad. Yet fantasy can be used to explore all sorts of interesting concepts. You only have to look at the work of Margo Lanagan to see how freeing it can be. And you only have to read a Terry Pratchett book to see how it can be used to satirise our world. For Terry Pratchett fans here’s link to TP Quotes.
Closing with a quote from the great TP himself:
‘The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.’
