Is This Just Fantasy?
I once worked in a bookshop that flooded. Renovators upstairs had accidentally burst a pipe and water began pouring through the ceiling. Drips started to form in the crime section. As we rushed to protect tables of books a fire crew arrived — by chance they’d been walking by, seen us struggling and, convenient as a literary device, rushed in to help.
They had helmets. They had tarpaulins. It was all very surprising. Amid the watery chaos one asked, with some seriousness, “Should we move Fiction into Fantasy?” A tiny pause followed, a momentary hesitation among the assembled staff. Odd, under the circumstances. It felt like a philosophical query. Why not combine fiction and fantasy? Might this be the moment? As one well-known hobbit famously mused, rolling a golden ring between his fingers: “After all … why not?” Why shouldn’t I?
The separation between literary and genre fiction is paper thin yet persistent — from library shelves, award categories, writing workshops and prize money, to funding for writing and marketing. Fantasy is the undeniable mother of fiction, its ur-form, part of culture’s earliest storytelling. Every myth or creation story was a work of speculative fiction once. On ancient cave walls, in the ebook locations of the Epic of Gilgamesh or within the morality and fairy tales whose echoes appear in modern texts, fantasy precedes and informs literature, resonating through the ages.
As the concept of genre evolved and became formalised by the publishing world, its storytelling conventions were agreed upon by authors and readers alike. By and large, a genre writer today falls into a category by adhering to some pattern.
Modern fantasy authors, for instance, are advised to create the parameters of their fantasy world
