Brendan Batliner: "The Great Escape"

The Great Escape

By

Brendan Batliner

That science fiction and fantasy exist as two separate genres today is proof enough that some line has been drawn between the two. When I consider the genres as I whole, I find myself drawn to Tolkien’s On Fairy-Stories (http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf) and James Gunn’s Towards a Definition of Science Fiction (http://www.scribd.com/doc/66106598/Gunn-Toward-a-Definition-of-SF). Both authors attempt to define and enumerate the elements of a speculative genre and have come to influence my ultimate opinion on the matter: distinguishing between science fiction and fantasy is valuable in that it defines the extent of escapism that a piece of speculative literature can provide. In a more concrete sense, fantasy provides complete escape from the given world, whereas science fiction anchors itself in reality, providing an extrapolation of reality.

To begin, I think it is necessary to consider Tolkien’s definition of Escapism in fantasy:

Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic… The world outside [a prison] 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. Just so a Party-spokesman might have labelled departure from the misery of the Führer's or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery.

According to Tolkien, Escape in fantasy is not simply a matter of juxtaposition with the real world, as with a criminal in prison. Rather, Escape provides safe passage out of entire mentalities and ideologies, like those of an empire. To read fantasy is to Escape wholly and unrestrainedly into another world, where a different frame of mind is necessary to thrive fully.

Compare this definition with Gunn’s definition of science fiction, and the clear difference between the genres is discovered:

Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distance places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger.

The key distinction between Tolkien’s fantasy and Gunn’s science fiction is that Gunn’s science fiction focuses on the projection of reality – that is, a science fiction story exists in a world unrecognizable to our own, but there is always an anchor to the present, often grounded in present societal change or turmoil. When reading science fiction, a reader searches not for a true Escape from his or her present world but for an extrapolation of it. More serious literary critics will find value in exploring what present societal change has been extrapolated, but for a casual science fiction reader such as the one who relaxes after a hard day’s work, science fiction provides the vicarious experience of something new, something different, without the complete letting go that fantasy mandates. 

For a reader of fantasy, the genre represents something subtly different from what science fiction does. In the words of Gunn, “When a character falls down a rabbit hole or passes through a mirror, the writer is telling the reader: Don’t ask realistic questions.” Fantasy represents Tolkien’s definition of Escape – transporting oneself from reality to a completely different world, where questions are not to be asked and assumptions are meant to be thrown away. One cannot read fantasy with a science fiction mindset because one will squander time searching for the anchor to reality, when there is none. Likewise, one cannot read science fiction with a fantasy mindset because one will lose track of the story having given up all assumptions about the laws of the world.

This distinction is valuable for a single reason: when readers differentiate and classify books, the extent of escapism is just one more quality with which to classify them. What are classification systems anyways but means to give order to an otherwise chaotic collection? To classify genres is to sort them according to their qualities – through a comparison of Tolkien and Gunn’s definitions of speculative fiction genres, one of these qualities, extent of escapism, has been brought to light.