Where Do Reality and Fantasy Collide?

When Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies came out, my understanding editor let me do a series of related articles. One concerned the idea that here was a book that was embraced by a generation of peace-loving hippies (I should know; I was one!) and it was a story about a war. But then again, it wasn't.

It was about a whole lot of other things: true spiritual fellowship, the heroism of ordinary people, courage, steadfastness in the face of the overwhelming might of an oppressor, sheer bloody-minded determination to do good, the idea that there are some deeds that must be essayed, even though their end is uncertain.

For my money, Tolkien had an extremely clear grasp of the nature of a figure like Christ and one figure sacrificing everything so that others may know release from bondage. From comments in his introduction to the book, some early readers felt Tolkien was incorporating events from World War II. He denied this vehemently, but this brings up a good point, and a dilemma that any fantasy author has to ask himself: where are the edges between fantasy and reality clearly drawn, and where do they blur?

I think the blur-able bits tend to be in our settings. Most of us don't really believe that elves, magic, the Force, a multiplicity of gods, or talking animals inhabit our everyday reality. Do we want to  believe? Sure. If we could build the best of all possible worlds, would we include these? Very probably. Do we, as C.S. Lewis once suggested, believe that if we can imagine it here, it exists somewhere in the cosmos? I think a lot of us do.

The places where fantasy and reality match are in the truths we as writers hold to be self-evident. Our world views influence what we write. My world view is of a future where man not only survives but manages to unite the planet. In that future, morality and science keep pace; we quit worrying about who has the most toys and focus on making the playground a safe and happy place for everyone. Caros, the home base for most of the questing party in Adventurers of the Carotian Union, is a fantasy take on this fully-realized civilization of the future. Magic and technology both function at a high level, but the civilization as a whole has a refined sense of spirituality that focuses both productively.

{THE CHALICE OF LIFE, above, by Karen Webb}

I don't pretend to put myself in the same league as my heroes like Tolkien and Lewis, but my choice is to write a spiritual, uplifting sort of fantasy in that vein. I think, though, that the three of us hold similar truths to be self-evident: the universe has a benevolent creative force; true heroism comes from mirroring forth virtues in the moments when we are hardest beset; and the light of elements like unity, love and fellowship among people can stave off a whole lot of darkness.

Any story has to have struggle - struggle of a character with himself, struggle caused by outside forces - or you have no plot. It is in the source of the struggle and its eventual resolution that the writer's reality manifests in his fantasy world.