Slicing Off a Piece of Infinity

I recently listened to Brandon Sanderson’s “On fantasy”

lecture at the Tolkien Lecture at Oxford University. In the preamble part of his speech, Mr. Sanderson used the phrase “slicing off a piece of infinity” as part of explaining how fantasy is meant to capture the boundless reaches of imagination; and yet we must place rules upon it in writing that we think would constrain those reaches. Yet, a portion of infinity remains, by its nature, infinite. That phrase immediately stuck out to me. First it was the musicality of it, and the beauty of the description. It was wonderful, and I highly suggest listening to the lecture itself for that reason and the full extent of what Mr. Sanderson dictated. However, that phrase struck me on multiple levels, and so, I thought I would use this week’s post to explore those levels.

The level of Tolkien as a writer.

The lecture being given was a commemoration of fantasy

as a genre, and what Tolkien pioneered within it, so I would be remiss to not begin there. Tolkien is a writer who has reached the level of veneration among writers for the path he laid out, the structures he formed, and how he opened minds to worlds so different and so alike our own. I have a favorite quote from Tolkien. He once said, “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?... If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it is our plain duty to escape, and take as many people with us as we can!” I think these two quotes marry quite well. Fantasy has been belittled by calling it “escapist.” Fantasy readers simply do not wish to deal with reality. They would rather be children in a daydream.

We cannot beat these allegations, though very little of it has

to do with childishness. As Tolkien stated, fantasy is an element of freedom for the mind and soul; it is that slice of infinity. Part of the human experience is when the infinite within yourself touches the infinite within another. That is where empathy and relationships live. Becoming an adult has the preconceived notion that we must shear our imagination from ourselves. It is a tool for learning and play that only children need to attain the ability to function, eventually soberly, within our world. To that, I ask, are we ever done learning? As a teacher, I must say no. As a writer, I cannot help but say no. As a woman, I can assure you no, for there is too much in life unplanned, undetermined, and unexpected to relegate learning to a childish endeavor. It is easy to let any skill atrophy, and that includes imagination’s function as a learning tool.

There is a certain melancholy that is a shared experience,

which is the feeling of being trapped within our minds. We scream that we must get out of our minds, and bodies have become a prison where we do what is easy and what is habit, even knowing the detriment, instead of what is right. A healthy imagination is often the cure. How else might you find a new solution to your woes? What you have been doing isn’t working, or your problems would be your past already.

The level of myself as a writer.

As a writer of fantasy, I am on Tolkien’s team of using what

escape I have found to aid others in their flight. This is both in the sense that I share my imagination with you and with hope and the continual refinement of my skills, our imaginations collide so that you may experience the worlds I have crafted, and in the sense that none of my stories are just the story. In my first published short story “What the Catching Wood Caught,” you have the fun imagination romp of following an elf who can see creatures of spirit as he investigates the disappearance of a phantom girl’s living family in an effort to locate them and stop the disappearances before anyone else falls prey to whomever or whatever is behind them. It is an interesting story with twists that someone may enjoy and then set aside thinking, “that was fun,” before moving on to their next literary experience.

However, the element that elevates something from a nice

idea to a story is what the story gives back to the audience. By walking with the main character Enialis, the reader may learn something about being wary of appearances and the role of the spiritual world within ours, about altruism and fear of failure, about hubris, and about hope. Will any of you ever be in his exact circumstances? I should think not. However, by letting him make the mistakes and learn from them, you might be able to skip the mistake-making in real life and miss the heartache to get right to the answers. The place a story premise is drawn from may be slicing out a piece of the infinite, but so is how far the story goes once it is imparted to readers.

The level of fantasy as a genre.

This is also where I see the potential within fantasy as a

genre. Anything conceived of can happen, but anything conceived of does happen; it is a discombobulated mess that grants no understanding. Humans are pattern recognizers. We look for the threads that connect, the lines that make order. Even if we set out to do something entirely random, a pattern will emerge. Therefore, even though fantasy as a genre includes some level of whimsy, it is also a great act in organizing the chaos of what could be into the order of what is. It allows imagination to guide you through life lessons in a way that feels far safer because of its unreality.

Think of it this way: many of us enjoy the Halo franchise of

being superpowered Marines dropped into an alien landscape to fight hellish war for the purpose of saving mankind, but if you speak to veterans of real war, you quickly discover the horrifying reality buried within the glory stories, and few of us would readily choose to enter a Halo battlefield for real. That is because there is safety in the video game. You can drop in on a group of hunters and get decimated, respawn, and try again with a new strategy. The same can not be said for life. You only get the first try.

So fiction as a whole is a safe playground where we may

experience difficulties and traumas, process them, learn from them, and let them go without the scars that going through them in reality would present. How is fantasy uniquely suited to learning and exploration? It is that one step further removed. Anyone could become the housewife who discovers her husband is cheating on her, but none of us can become a hobbit tasked with dropping a magic ring into the lava of a mountain because that is the only place where it may be destroyed. So, it is one step further into a sense of safety that lets us truly explore the darkness to find the light that leads us back out. We don’t mind the time in the darkness because no matter how bad it gets, and it gets quite bad (looking at you, dark fantasy crowd), we know that we are safe and that we remain so even if the story does not have a happy ending. Even if the characters end utterly broken, we walk away with their lessons so that when the dark comes to us, we will not break.

The level of God’s fingerprint on the genre of fantasy.

Tolkien was a Christian, and I share his faith, so it would

also be remiss to not discuss how God and faith have a role in fantasy. Some people chafe against the notion because they see fantasy as mocking faith, as tearing God down to earth and making Him nothing more than fable and myth and therefore, demeaning HIm and the spiritual realities of life. There are a great many fantasy authors who do just that; some who even made that their purpose. However, I would counter with the questions “who is the author of all things?” and “whom are authors striving to imitate when we sit at our desks?”

People flippantly say that fantasy authors are playing at

god. I would agree in the same sense as how a son may don his father’s tie, dress jacket, and shoes to emulate his father going to work. We create because we have a Creator, and no one’s perversions can demean God nor those who use their craft of writing as a means to emulate their Father. Are we to say God can do all things, except speak to us through the genre of fantasy because it makes the spiritual realm too on display? That is what fantasy does. It calls us to remember that we are creatures of flesh and blood, but that is not all that exists.

Many lessons of the character of God and the nature of

faith play out in fantasy pages. Look at The Lord of the Rings. Look at Narnia. Look at many fantasy stories that were not even written by Christian authors. The ability to write is a gift from God, and there is not a gift from Him that cannot be used to further His kingdom that I know of. Who is the source of imagination? Who shaped our mind to have thoughts, solve problems, and experience the world through a variety of inputs? I think it is rather hard to divorce the fantasy genre from God, because it is how we try on our Father’s shoes. Can we walk like Him? Can we talk like Him? Can we trick our brother for a moment into thinking Daddy got home early so that he stops misbehaving?

Those are big shoes to fill, and we will never grow big

enough to fill them. However, as child psychologists can tell you, the purpose of mimicking a parent in play is to learn how to practice the skills that are necessary to become an independent adult, even if the kid views it as just having fun. You may view fantasy as just having fun, but like that kid, you are learning far more through the shape of the play than gaining a few hours of amusement.

I would, if I were speaking with Tolkien at the time he gave

that quote, add that it is also our duty to learn and pass on learning through whatever means of escape we may show our readers. This is something authors do readily, even if they do not realise what they are imparting. That is why we must take this play of ours seriously. Slicing off a piece of infinity can be a lot to chew.