Every monster you fear is really you

0:00 I'm going through a reading phase at the moment, in fact, I'm addicted to reading. I'm annoying my friends and my family because I'm lugging a book around with me wherever we go. Given I do this, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I'm reading about philosophy. I'm scrubbing up on my Plato or my Descartes or my Simone de Beauvoir, but no. You see, I love fantasy. I love created worlds and I love a map at the start of my book. I love dragons, swords, sorcery, and sinister forces swirling in the background. For a long time, I wouldn't admit that because people can tend to be quite snobbish about fantasy. They look down on it. Not the prize-winning magical realism kind, but the kind that I like, which involves elves and dragons and dark lords. It's generally agreed that children can

0:46 enjoy these made-up worlds. They can enjoy talking beasts and adventures, but when you become an adult, you should turn to proper stuff, mature, respectable, and written in ornate purple prose. It's as if books are a status symbol. And if you read a serious book, then you must be a serious person. But those who read fantasy, oh no. But this misses the point of what fantasy is about, and the totemic father figure of the genre, J.R.R. Tolkien, has a lot to say on the topic. This snobbery of those who look down on fantasy has a long pedigree, and so much so that in 1947, J.R.R. Tolkien felt the need to write a defense of the genre in a short work he called On Fairy Stories. For Tolkien, fantasy and fairy stories

1:33 are not simply stories about fairies or dragons or dark lords. They are stories that take place in a land of fairy, and the difference is important. They exist in their own created land, where any number of wondrous things can happen, but they are always treated with the utmost seriousness by the reader. When you enter fairy, you do not simply enter a world of make-believe, but instead you perform an act of what Tolkien called sub-creation, in which we form a new world within our wider reality. This imaginary world we create will always go beyond the words on a page. This fantasy realm cannot be caught in a net of words, for it is indescribable. Words alone will never be able to conjure up a fully realized land of

2:18 magic, and for this we need the ability to sub-create. When we sub-create, we create a secondary world into which the mind can enter. This world has its own internal logic, laws, and systems. We see, feel, and live in this world in a way that goes beyond just reading a book or reading the words on a page. We color in the background details. We add sights, smells, and wonders, and we are living alongside these characters. We are living alongside the adventure. And this is why movie adaptations can feel so hollow at times, because Hollywood can never hope to match sub-creation. If you've ever read The Lord of the Rings, you'll know what Tolkien is getting at, because Middle-earth is built with such detail and depth, that while this sub-creation can take time

3:05 and it can take effort, you will feel as if you are in that world. It's really hard to describe, because it's not simply inventing mental images or just using your imagination. It's creating an entire world and living alongside everything that's going on. It means watching the drama, of course, but you are inside the drama as well. Sub-creation is a fascinating philosophical topic in its own right, but it doesn't get us closer to what the value of fantasy is. What is the value of these books? And for this we must turn to another work of Tolkien's, his essay on Beowulf. Beowulf is not a story about a great siege or some courtly intrigue. It's a poem about a man. And that's the entire point, because for Tolkien, the story of Beowulf is about

3:51 one man's struggle against the great tide of misfortune. Beowulf represents the smallest, briefest flickering of a candle in a great expanse of darkness. And this is exactly what it means to be a hero then and forever. Beowulf is a great poem because it speaks of the dualism in all human life. It's about youth and age, success and failure, of glory and doom. Every person will enjoy the warm, joyful days of summer as much as the cold, despairing nights of winter. In one day, year, or a lifetime, everything can swing between light and dark. We will eat, drink, and be merry, but tomorrow we shall die. The brilliance of Beowulf and fantasy generally is that the monsters or the

4:37 villains that they provide, the orcs, the monsters, the dragons, the cruel emperors, the dark wizards, is that while of course they are imaginary, they are also empty vessels into which we can each pour our own nemeses, be that real life or more conceptual. As Tolkien writes, Beowulf glimpses the cosmic and moves the thought of all men concerning the fate of human life and efforts. It stands amid, but above, the dates and limits of historical periods, however important. There is something about great fantasy that emboldens the spirit, and it gives a kind of fire to the fight. It's found not only in the words and the plots and the adventure, but it's in its atemporality. It tells us that there is something universal to the human condition that

5:22 ought to be celebrated, sought out, and cherished. It's something that is as true for Anglo-Saxons in their snowy mead halls as it is for office drones changing their login passwords with a huff. It says that no matter what monsters we face, we shall overcome and live on. We shall not be defeated. Books of all sorts are escapist. Fictional narratives and made-up characters define any novel. Yet no genres are quite so escapist as science fiction or fantasy and in that lies their value. When we imagine a school of wizards, dragon riders, or humble villagers going on to become great heroes, we leave this world behind. We enter a world which bears just enough connection to this world to make sense while being alien enough to be hugely

6:08 exciting, vibrant, and readable. As Tolkien put it, "I have claimed that escape is one of the main functions of fairy stories and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which escape is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics and jailers and prison walls?" The ability we all have to read books, imagine worlds, and play make-believe is one of the greatest balms any of us can actually have in a world that is often overbearing and full of hardship. Yes, fantasy can take us on an incredible journey, but more than that, it gives us the villains and the heroes we need to

6:54 make sense of the world and to make it just a little bit easier to live in.