The King of Prince Caspian Says Fantasy Helps Us See Reality
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 08. 2008 and is filed under posts by Guest Blogger Marcus Goodyear,Fantasy,Christian art,Faith.
Prince Caspian is coming, and I'm pretty darned excited about it. A few days ago I posted the first part of my interview with Micheal Flaherty, the President of Walden Media.
He touches on his love of fantasy, and the importance of fantasy for developing a child's imagination and curiosity. In particular, he says,
I've not thought of fantasy as a pressure valve before. Nor had I thought of it as a critical element of cognitive development. I mean, I've always felt that stories were an essential part of my own life, but Flaherty got me thinking. Maybe stories—and speculative stories in particular—are an essential part of being human.
That seems to be what Flaherty is talking about in the second part of the interview (which will go live on April 19, but I'm giving you an exclusive sneak peak so go read it now here). Flaherty says, "Fantasy doesn’t detract from reality, but it actually makes us more aware of it."
Am I just in love with favorite genre, or is speculative fiction part of what makes us human? From a Christian standpoint, this has implications on the character of God. We are made in the image of God after all. What do you think?
He touches on his love of fantasy, and the importance of fantasy for developing a child's imagination and curiosity. In particular, he says,
It's terrifying for me to see now what's happened to
kids, particularly from kindergarten to third grade, where pretty
rigorous instructions on mathematics and all kinds of things are
largely supplanting fantasy play and storytelling. These kids are under
such tremendous pressure at such young ages!
I've not thought of fantasy as a pressure valve before. Nor had I thought of it as a critical element of cognitive development. I mean, I've always felt that stories were an essential part of my own life, but Flaherty got me thinking. Maybe stories—and speculative stories in particular—are an essential part of being human.
That seems to be what Flaherty is talking about in the second part of the interview (which will go live on April 19, but I'm giving you an exclusive sneak peak so go read it now here). Flaherty says, "Fantasy doesn’t detract from reality, but it actually makes us more aware of it."
Am I just in love with favorite genre, or is speculative fiction part of what makes us human? From a Christian standpoint, this has implications on the character of God. We are made in the image of God after all. What do you think?
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Monday, April 07. 2008
Donna Swanson wrote:
Could it be that fantasy performs the same function as poetry? The poet uses the insignificant trifle, the isolated moments in life or in observations and puts them under a microscope, helping us to live in the moment of experience, either remembered or imagined. The truth is finite. The imagination is infinite and can see truth from many angles. A rose is a rose is a... But the left side of a rose may be altogether a different experience from the right.
Ask 5 children to describe that rose and you will get 5 delightfully different explanations. That's childhood.
We help children see from their perspective, perhaps. And we are important. If we remember that, we can write with delight.
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Monday, April 07. 2008
Mark Goodyear wrote:
Donna, for me poetry, fantasy, and scifi (my true love) are all very similar. They help us rediscover wonder. I wouldn't have put poetry in that grouping at first, but I think you are right about that. And I do love poetry--often forcing it upon people at my blog rather shamelessly. But what can you do? Poetry won't pay the bills.
Fantasy and Scifi on the other hand... won't pay the bills either most likely. But they are a lot of fun!
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Monday, April 07. 2008
Donna Swanson wrote:
They certainly are. One poem out of hundreds did actually become profitable. I wrote Minnie Remembers in 1974, it was picked up by a little magazine called Alive Now and then became something of a phenomenon in religious and secular publishing. Made into a documentary film by UMC and The American Nursing Association and reprinted in almost all denominational publications plus many secular ones, it finally wound down to a trickle of reprint permissions and now has probably been reprinted without permission almost as many times. I still get a request now and then.
I talked to Calvin Miller who wrote the Singer Trilogy once and asked him why all of his later books were prose. his answer, "They won't publish poetry now, so I just put it into paragraphs." The same quality of condensing images and situations into small packets comes in handy when writing for the modern reader.
BTW, after Jeff of Marcher Lord Press sent out the call for mss a year or so ago, I sent in a proposal for my double trilogy, The Windfallow Chronicles. He did not choose it for that run, but I received a post last week in which he said he had reread my sample, it was good, and he wanted to see the first book of the series. He also asked several others to resubmit, so it's not a done deal, but it made my day. Really made joining this website worthwhile!
Thanks for your comments.
Donna
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Tuesday, April 08. 2008
Merrie Destefano wrote:
The pretend world has always been my favorite, since I was a child. I don't think any mathematician could changed that. I think I just would have gotten worse grades in school.
It was just a natural progression for me, from fairy tales to science fiction. There was a point in my adolescence when it was everywhere: The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Lost in Space. Both on TV and in print media.
I guess it was a blessing. Total immersion.
I hope CBA continues to open up speculative fiction.
Oh, and hi, Mark!
:)
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Wednesday, April 09. 2008
Xdpaul wrote:
Public schools especially have stripped a fundamentally critical developmental process from children: play as work and work as play.
I don't think it is any coincidence that God not only made us for work, but that he intended work to be a pleasure. (Keep in mind that the Sabbath rest command isn't a "Hey guys, you only get one day off," sort of thing but more a "People, you'd work every day if I didn't mandate rest - and you need to spend time with me not busying yourself.")
The origins of our work ethic stems from childhood play and fantasy. Little children need to enjoy the stories of being mommies and daddies, doctors and firefighters, heroes and villains, caretakers and leaders. It isn't "just" fun and games. It is training, training that our pressurized focus on "measurables" at a young age is not suited for.
This line of thinking is often dismissed as "having no standard." But the fact is, it is a standard, in fact, a much higher one than the current educational system will ever hope to achieve if it maintains its current course: it is the one that both research and common sense dictate - i.e. the right one.
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Wednesday, April 09. 2008
Mark Goodyear wrote:
Merrie, hi! For me the pretend world is just as powerful as the actual world--as long as we are honest about it. Dishonest pretend worlds get us nowhere.
Xdpaul, education has certainly faced some big challenges with accountability requirements. That's why it's so important when companies like Walden step up to help public schools. After ten years in public schools myself, I know what it feels like when every side condemns every effort I made to help my students.
But maybe we're getting away from the idea of fantasy and faith here? How does fantasy help us become more aware of reality?
Or to put it another way, how does a work of fantasy remain honest and true--even as it plays with reality?
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Wednesday, April 09. 2008
Xdpaul wrote:
"Reality" includes angels and demons, earthquakes that swallow sinful men directly to sheol, whales who swallow humans for safe keeping, a world that was made in six days, and at its very heart, a dead man who came back to save us all.
But, because of a planet wide illness, sort of a "lie virus" and our own fallen states, we, like infants who haven't developed the stage of "object permanence", often define reality only in terms of what we can see.
We warp our understanding of what is "real" to the point of making it equal to what is "seen."
Good fantasy literature must be rooted in the real (in other words, we must believe that magic, as described in a given story, "works.") but trains our minds to explore what is really real: that is, the Kingdom of God, the gifts of the spirit, the lake of fire, the end of days, and the Return of the King.
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Wednesday, April 09. 2008
Mark Goodyear wrote:
Xdpaul, I like your idea that fantasy gives us permission as a society to explore the unseen world.
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Wednesday, April 09. 2008
L.L. Barkat wrote:
Certainly God seemed to have a great time with instituting the speculative church.
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Wednesday, April 09. 2008
L.L. Barkat wrote:
Postscript thought here.
I was just reading about Einstein in Krista Tippet's Speaking of Faith and I think the passage is instructive:
"Einstein's most brilliant achievements emerged, as Gates tells it, from penetrating 'what if' questions, which he articulated as 'parables' and worked relentlessly to comprehend. For example, Einstein traced his discovery of the theory of relativity back to wondering what would happen to space and time 'if he could ride along on a beam of light.'" p.108
Fantasy, no? And look where the ride took him.
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Wednesday, April 09. 2008
Marcus Goodyear wrote:
Actually, L.L., I'd call that science fiction! But I'm going to be thinking about the "speculative church" all evening I think.
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Thursday, April 10. 2008
Xdpaul wrote:
For totally separate reasons, I posted a quote from Dante's Paradise at my journal, but I think it is appropriate here:
"Reason, thou see'st, hath all too short a wing."
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