Vera Nazarain has posted an interesting essay at Fantasy magazine about how popular, formula-driven urban/paranormal fantasy (in the mode of Anita Blake, with vampires, were-whatevers, etc.) loses the sense of wonder (and thus her interest) at the fantastic when the characters in those stories regard magical encounters as ordinary, everyday, mundane events. It’s an interesting read, and I think she nailed my own reasons for not being a fan of that sub-genre, though I’ve never explicitly defined those reasons before. What’s the point of fantasy, after all, if it ceases to be fantastic?

That is the underlying question that Nazarain’s essay doesn’t quite reach: what’s the point of fantasy? What is it about that sense of wonder that is so compelling?

In an essay that appeared recently in the Telegraph, fantasist Mark Chadbourne suggests that the appeal of the fantastic is in its irrationality, that readers crave this antidote to the increasingly rational boundaries of our everyday lives. “It’s about turning off the mobile phone and the computer and remembering who we are in the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves.” I can’t say I disagree, at least with the last half of that statement. (The article doesn’t have much more in depth to say, but it does provide a good overview of the evolution of the modern genre.)

In my opinion, though, I wouldn’t say that its computers and cell phones (and the general technologizing of our society) creating those rational boundaries. My gut feeling is that it’s the secularization of society, the decline of the importance of religion and myth as an active force in how we perceive our relationship with the universe. As the world grows smaller physically (because of technology) and philosophically/spiritually (thanks to the work of comparative religion scholars such as Joseph Campbell) I think more and more of us find it harder to use religion as a doorway to the collective unconscious — a doorway it is necessary to go through in order to evolve individually and as a tribe.

Fantasy, using the same language as myth and dream, opens the doorway for a more rational (or maybe just embittered) mind, without requiring belief. Religion and myth create awe in those who believe in them, because they provide a glimpse at the magic and wonder and awe-fulness of the universe, and so should fantasy that is functioning properly — there’s something True even if it’s all impossible.

Ergo, I would go on to conclude that this sort of urban paranormal fantasy (though it can happen in any sub-genre I suspect) that is stripped of awe and wonder and replaced magic with mundanity is no longer functioning as fantasy. It’s romance, it’s horror, it’s crime fiction, it’s whatever … it’s just using fantasy tropes to tell its story. But putting fairies in a story doesn’t make it fantasy anymore than putting cowboys in a story makes it a Western.