Savvy Saturday: What is Fantasy?

This week on Savvy Saturday, we put out a call to all of our Fantasy authors on what they think of the ever-popular Fantasy genre. They were asked to respond to the question: What does Fantasy mean to you? We will get to see their opinions, and we would love to see yours. Comment below with what Fantasy means for you.

"What if" without the science. *slinks away*
     -KM Tolan, the Sci-Fi author who snuck in

What KM said.
     -Celia Breslin, Urban Fantasy author
Dragons and pixies.
     -Carol McPhee, Romance novelist

"Boundless creativity."
     -Jenna Greene, YA Fantasy author

I personally think of fantasy as anything with magic.
     -Colleen Myers, another (awesome of course) Sci-Fi author

Fantasy is an escape. When I read fantasy or when I write fantasy I immerse myself in the author’s imagination or in my own and forget all my problems. In fantasy, I can reinvent myself as a hero or a sorceress or a dragon. I can have magic. I can befriend an elf. Like dreams, fantasy allows me to be what I’m not, where I’m not, without complying with the rules of physics or biology or human politics, or my own dull personality. When I dive into fantasy, I don’t have to think about my health or age or finances. I can take outrageous risks, have extravagant adventures, and achieve marvelous victories. Moreover, I can say what I would never dare to say in real life. In fantasy I’m free.
     -Olga Godim, Fantasy author

Fantasy is the literary kaleidoscope which allows a new vision of our reality.

Often that vision is one in which the magical or supernatural is a key element of the created world’s primary existence. This is not the world as we know it (or believe it to be).

It may be an existence populated with brave knights, feisty damsels, and fiery dragons; with wizards, dwarves, and trolls; and perhaps with megalomaniacal supernatural entities bent on world domination [cue maniacal laughter]. Or it may be a world in which things that go bump in the night stalk the streets, or unicorns roam verdant forests.

Conversely it may be a world in which reality is altered only slightly, so that our perception of our own plane of existence grants us a vision of the mystery and magic behind and beyond our general conception of reality. Magical realism allows an extension of our sense of the world so that we perceive the ‘man behind the curtain’—that is, the workings of magic that are an integral part of the myth and mystery of the world we inhabit.

There are more subgenres of fantasy than a dragon has scales. But all of them are born of that desire to alter and expand our perceptions of reality, to show us the magic that inhabits either our world or a world that never was, but should be.
     -Keith Willis, Fantasy author and dragon enthusiast