The Appeal of Fantasy for (Some) Mormons

Back in April, I posted some thoughts over at A Motley Vision about the appeal of science fiction for (some) Mormons, which in turn prompted some excellent comments by various readers. At the time, I pointed out that the appeal of fantasy for Mormons, while similar, was “a different essay.” And here, at long last, is that essay!

Some of the reasons that have been pointed out in connection to the appeal of science fiction for Mormons relate to fantasy as well. Certainly the existence of an active Mormon sf&f community (originally centered at BYU and finding its periodic watering hole at the annual Life, the Universe and Everything symposium) has played a role in encouraging would-be writers and providing a space for both critical discussion and fan activities. Scott Parkin’s comment about sf as “a genre of parables about the potential of Humanity (for better and worse), and the power of both technology (line upon line) and wisdom (precept on precept) to shape and enable that potential for individuals, societies, and peoples — particularly as we come into moral and definitional conflict in an ever-expanding creation” also seems germane to fantasy, though with less emphasis on technology and more on personal (as opposed to social or instrumental) power. Similarly, William Morris’s observation that as Mormons we may be more used to “speculation about pre/present/future states of existence” because of our religious discourse would seem to apply to fantasy. Certainly fantasy offers the same imaginative possibilities as science fiction for worldbuilding as rehearsal for godhood, although it’s my impression that fantasy authors less frequently take full advantage of these possibilities. (More on this later.)

More specifically, there are some themes with deep Mormon resonances that fantasy is outstandingly well suited to explore. One frequently noted example is the archetypal journey and its two related (though not identical) instances of the heroic quest and the initiatory coming-of-age process, both of which feature so prominently in fantasy literature. This sense of life as a journey in which we are tested and tempted and grow to fill our potential before returning to our beginning place, this time as adults and heroes, has clear parallels to very specifically Mormon ideas about the purposes and structure of human existence. Similarly, the implications of vast personal power — such as, for example, the potential for humans to become gods — is a theme with unusual importance to Mormons among the community of believers, and one that fantasy is well-suited to explore. In this connection, I note that while science fiction is well-suited to describing characters with instrumental capabilities of gods — capabilities created by technology — fantasy bypasses much of this by making power personal and magical, residing within the individual. Both ways of looking at power offer intriguing possibilities from a Mormon theological perspective.

But wait; there’s more!

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“Fantasy” as a genre takes its name from one of its defining characteristics: that is, that the world depicted in such stories (whether some version of our own or some utterly different place) in some way fails to operate by the standard rules that modern society accepts as describing consensus reality. One might suspect, then, that the reader’s reaction to such violations of the natural order would be confusion, anxiety, alienation, or even fear. And yet this is not the case. Modern fantasy — unlike, say, the fantastic genre of existential horror per H. P. Lovecraft — typically arouses in its readers a sense of wonder: a positive appreciation of aspects of the world that might otherwise seem familiar and humdrum.

The magic of modern fantasy typically communicates a sense of rules, whether those rules are explicitly spelled out a la Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series or largely unspoken as in Tolkien. For the most part, the worlds of fantasy stories communicate a strong sense of order, even if that order is different from the one we know in our own world.

But not necessarily unfamiliar to us. Very often, the rule-structure underlying apparently non-realistic operations in fantasy worlds represent an expression of worldviews that once were consciously believed in and to which in some cases we may continue to lend credence on a subconscious level. Thus, for instance, the magic system of Le Guin’s Earthsea universe (and to a lesser extent the magic systems of many other fantasy writers) embody the notion that words contain meaning in themselves, as opposed to the assumption of modern linguistics that language is purely arbitrary.[1] Similarly, fantasy literalizes primitive and/or metaphorical versions of reality in which everything, even plants and rocks, can speak. It can even make fictionally real for unbelievers the gods of Greek mythology, as in the Percy Jackson books, and the Christlike sacrifice of self for others, as in the actions of Harry Potter at the end of his series.

But wait, you say. As Mormons, the Atonement of Christ is something we literally believe in. We don’t need a fiction to explain to us how — in the words of C. S. Lewis — “the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) two thousand years ago could help us here and now — except in so far as his example could help us.”[2] There’s something potentially problematic about treating the Atonement as if it were magic, even — or perhaps especially — given that we can’t explain it in terms of everyday rationality.[3]

For that matter, depicting every part of nature as in some sense alive and potentially sapient arguably (Moses 7:48 notwithstanding) takes us to the borders of paganism, as I have acknowledged in another post. Worship of the creation, rather than the creator. Wandering down strange paths.

And so while it seems to me that some of us as Mormons may identify with fantasy because it provides a language for depicting spiritual realities to which science and day-to-day experience are inadequate, I am also somewhat uncomfortable with this line of reasoning. Certainly I suspect that this is part of why some Mormons and other Christians are deeply uncomfortable with fantasy. For such people, fantasy embodies a belief system that is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity.

Back in the 8th century, Alcuin famously wrote to the bishop of Lindisfarne (questioning the monks’ reading of the heroic pagan legends of their Germanic ancestry), “What has Ingeld [or Frodo, or Harry Potter] to do with Christ?” For some of us as Mormons, the answer seems to be: a great deal. Whether that is to the good or the bad is, I suppose, a matter of perspective.

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One of the more ambitious critical attempts to characterize fantasy as a literary element is Kathryn Hume’s Fantasy and Mimesis. In that book, she describes every type of literature as incorporating both mimesis (imitation of reality) and fantasy (departures from reality), identifying fantasy further as the element in a work of literature that “helps activate whatever it is in our minds that gives us the sense that something is meaningful.”[4]

As it turns out, Hume’s analysis of the genre of modern popular fantasy is disappointingly superficial. But I think she’s on to something with her connection of fantasy with meaningfulness. More specifically, fantasy as a genre, I suggest, appeals in part because it subtly affirms a sense of order and meaning that we as humans crave, even as all too many of us in this modern world may have lost the capability to believe in it.

And this, for me, is perhaps the most persuasive point of connection between my own love of fantasy and my Mormon beliefs.

Mormonism, more even than many other religions, is preeminently a system of meaning. Each human life, in the Mormon view, is embued with divine significance. The universe is an orderly place, operating according to rules. God himself is a being whose reasons are far from unfathomable, and who delights to explain himself to humanity.

Ours is a faith for a rational, questioning age. And yet it remains very much a faith — that is, something that must be chosen and sustained in the face of alternative possibilities, including that of ultimate meaninglessness. For me, fantasy literature is one way of strengthening that faith.

It is an irony (or something like that). On the one hand, examples such as Tolkien notwithstanding, many of the specifics of fantasy literature do not represent anything in which I specifically believe. On the other hand, fantasy’s general evidences of meaningfulness I find both familiar and faith-affirming.

Integral to this, for me, is the sense that the whole of creation — nature, spirit, and humanity — is in an ultimate sense Good. My interpretation of Mormon theology sees human nature and the physical world around us (which fantasy is ultimately much about celebrating) as neither inherently corrupt — as traditional Christianity has often held — nor even neutral, but rather as something fundamentally positive. Evil, according to this view, is whatever works against the fulfillment of that positive potential. Even the “natural man” is not humanity in our natural state, but rather what we become when we choose to follow Satan rather than God (see Moses 5:12-13).

Likewise, fantasy holds forth the promise of what Tolkien describes as the “desire to converse with other [nonhuman] living things,” such as (for example) giant talking trees.[5] Unlike Lovecraftian horror that sees the alien as terrifying or science fiction in which difference is a prompt for investigation, the Other in fantasy literature is most typically a source of fellowship and sharing. Such a perspective aligns with Mormon views of all of humanity as ultimately belonging to the same eternal family — particularly considering the critical insight that most of the time, the alien Other we encounter in fiction (including fantasy) is a mask for one or another type of human strangeness.

In short, Mormonism is an ultimately affirming system of meaning whose power — for myself at least — is strengthened by all the evidences I see of the fundamentally positive nature of being, whether or not such evidences are explicitly or specifically Mormon. For me, fantasy literature excels at showing the universe, my fellow humans, and even myself to me in precisely this affirmatively meaningful way.

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AML is sponsoring a panel on “The Appeal of Science Fiction and Fantasy for Mormons” at LTUE (Life, the Universe and Everything) at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 17, 2017, in Provo, Utah, which I will be moderating. After initial statements from the panel, I plan to throw the discussion open to comments from the audience. I’d love to see you there!

[1] I believe this insight is one I encountered from Brian Attebery, possibly in his book Strategies of Fantasy (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992), though I can’t track down the specific reference.

[2] Quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), p. 150.

[3] Every attempt that I know to “explain” the Atonement via analogy to elements of everyday life fails at one or more points, including Elder Packer’s famous analogy about a friend renegotiating our debt for us. Because the point is that no matter how much time we’re given and how obedient we are, we can in no way pay back to Christ what he has paid for us — we lack the coin to do so.

[4] Kathryn Hume, Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature (New York: Methuen, 1984), p. 20.

[5] J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), 66.