Ben Domenech

No, there is truth to these other worlds.

And fantasy is a way of showing them, of finding these other worlds.

That is fascinating.

I didn't know that route.

And of course, you would.

I'm not surprised.

I think just to follow up on that, for me, fantasy is often more easily defined by what it's not.

And Tolkien does a really good job in On Fairy Stories of describing all the things that we might think that are fantasy, but aren't.

And he talks through all the different sort of genres of literature that you might think are sort of fantasy adjacent, but they're not.

So that's a really good place to start, too, if you're trying to figure out, okay, well, I get this nice definition of what it is, but does that fit this or does that fit this?

And he really does a good job there.

I think the problem with the definition of fantasy that Tolkien sets forth is that

And I'm not going to name specific titles, but there's a lot of stuff out there that's fantasy literature that really is not fantasy the way Tolkien.

Yeah, not the way he defines it.

The way Tolkien defined it.

I'm fine with that.

I still like a lot of stuff that Tolkien probably wouldn't consider fantasy because it doesn't reveal that kind of truth.

But yeah, for Tolkien, I think it's really important to recognize that fantasy was more than just making up worlds of elves and swords and dragons.

Yeah, it's a lot more than that.

It was glimpsing some kind of truth.