World Views and Fantasy

Sam and Frodo on Mount Doom

With the launch of my new book The Keeper, I was thinking it’s time to talk about world views and how fantasy can grab a lens and focus on current events without them being current events. Fantasy can highlight the predicament of human beings in a fantasy world that mirrors ours.

I think one of the most thought-provoking fantasy tales we’ve seen in our lifetime is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien addresses so many issues that we face in the here and now. War, destruction of the environment, the need to be humble and the rewards that come from it, how evil looks pretty and lures us to it, but leads us down a path of destruction, how loyalty serves and disloyalty ruins.

One could sit and ponder on all these themes for years after reading the books, and yet LOTR never came across as preachy.

This, as a reader, is what I look for in a book. And because of that, I find inspiration for my own books in the same sort of manner

I’m nowhere near the genius of Tolkien and I don’t claim to be. But there are little things happening in our world that I see that inspire me and that I use as themes for my novels.

Ian’s Realm deals with a young man who feels abandoned by his father, and who learns that instead of being a victim he can become the man he wishes his father had been.

The Cho Nisi series deals with tragedy, error, and redemption.

Darkness Holds the Son is a warning for parents.

Now The Keeper, my newest release, is a bird’s eye view of how the technology of tomorrow can threaten our past, our culture, our ethnicity, and our traditions. Is it right or wrong? Or is there even an answer to that question?

Themes in fantasy stories are not usually put there to persuade you toward one ideology or another. They are put there to stimulate thought.

This is why I love the genre so much. Yes, these stories take you away to another world and often let you escape the one you’re in. But when you come back, you’re a little wiser, a little more knowledgeable, and a little more perceptive to what is going on around you. Sometimes you’ll see consequences for behaviors you weren’t aware of, or you’ll understand a more meaningful resolution for problems that confront you.

Who would have thought that the way to destroy the ring lay in the relationship between Frodo and Sam, for instance? The need for fellowship, for being faithful to one another and loyal to the cause, is what defeated Gollum and in the end, Saruman, even though there were huge sacrifices involved.

Next time you’re invited to read a good book in the fantasy genre, take the plunge and see what comes of it!