Fantasy Analyst II: Beginning The Hard Work of Hopecraft (An Overview)
Laying a footing for the work ahead
Now that the main offender has been named and brought into the light, we can bind it and get to work on mending what’s wrong with the fantasy landscape. First, let’s deal with the naysayers who would balk at us binding and leaving nihilism behind.
Critics of hopecraft may say it’s a child’s game or naivete, but many others beg to differ for good cause. Naivete exists as a witting or unwitting blindness to truth, but hopecraft is an active endeavor, a purposeful work that takes heart to lay its roots in truth. Both nihilism and hopecraft, though at odds, are statements of belief, one of faithfulness and the other of faithlessness. Hopecraft believes with reason there is something to be hoped in; nihilism believes there is nothing to lean on. One school of thought lifts eyes to the heavens, and the other leers at an open grave.
One school of thought lifts eyes to the heavens, and the other leers at an open grave.
Those drenched in hope do not deny the presence or reality of the grave. We just think there is something beyond the grave, something beyond this Earth. We keep our eyes on the ground from time to time to keep from stumbling, but our gaze goes back to the far country as often as possible.
In fantasy, there are two forms hopecraft can take, splitting the genre in twain: literary fantasy takes the highminded road to everlasting peace won by strength and courage, and pulp fantasy takes the fun but rocky path to live another day. They can both be hopeful, but their scope works out in differing lengths.
Examples of literary fantasy hopecraft are fewer than the hopeless bestsellers but shining by their own right: the Narnia series, The Lord of the Rings, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Howl’s Moving Castle (as well as others by Diana Wynne Jones), The Chronicles of Prydain, the Earthsea series, the Harry Potter series, and others. These stories are set in secondary or portal fantasy worlds but reflect a belief that the physical reality is not the only reality, thus becoming anti-materialist (pushing away the thought that the world of five senses and table of elements is all there is).
Pulp fantasy, or those geared more toward action and quick-moving plots and less toward subtext, complex plots, and skillful literary devices, can still be hopeful. Well-known (though contested) examples include: A Princess of Mars, Dying Earth, and a few others come to mind, though many examples do not spring to mind now because pulp stories tend to stick to passing fads. This type of fantasy can be done well, in fact: if we look outside print media, the original Star Wars trilogy fits into this.
Sometimes it bothers me that many of these stories seem to be written for children, but I have to check myself for this. It is a touchy balance to keep. One side of the cliff tempts me to merely seek a recreation of the feeling I felt when I first learned of hobbits and centaurs. The other side of the cliff tempts me to grow jaded and dissolve into materialistic hopelessness. The narrow road ahead means forging into the rest of this life with a hopeful heart.
Which leads me to the object of hope: another world, another life, another reality–the gospel of Jesus Christ and the world without end. Hope needs to be moored to a steady anchor or else it is a kite lost in the wind which will soon catch a downdraft and plummet to the rocks. I see no worth in a blind hope or mimmering, whimsical well-wishing. I see worth in conviction and bold truth-seeking.
This does not mean that fantasy needs to be didactic, or bent on teaching moral lessons. Didacticism is the cause of much fantastical failure. If a story is meant to teach a lesson, it will not stay a story long. Stories should be stories, and preaching should be preaching. If one of these dips into the other pool, both muddy.
Deeper truths than materialism come into better stories like deep magic in Narnia.
This is where the hard work starts. I don’t believe in allegory for widespread storytelling, and JRR Tolkien famously decried allegory (though he did not hate it in every sense), so I’m in good company. But think of the difference between The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books in terms of their widespread appeal: one has taken root in many cultures, mindsets, and belief systems, and the other either appeals to Christians or attracts unbelievers just enough to wish it were divorced from its religious symbolism. Many people will claim that LOTR isn’t Christian, but no one can claim that Narnia is pagan.
The difference between these two series is where we begin the hard work of hopecraft, because while these are the two most well-known successes of this train of thought, they get to different places. I love them both, one of them has an edge in the aims of fantasy.