In response to an essay by Sara Douglass in defense of fantasy: (From my comment on Talvikki's DeviantArt journal)

"Escape from the modern world" is not a defense that fantasy fiction needs right now. Actually, right now, "escapism" is its most severe condemnation. I think with her anti-modernity argument that Sara Douglass has argued for fantasy's appeal, but not for its value. So, this right here is a critique of a fantasy apologetic from someone who is herself an apologetic.

No, modernity, rationality, and science absolutely aren't antithetical to wonder. Diving oceanic depths, reaching into far-flung outer space, smashing infinitesimal particles into clouds of light and heat add more to the imagination, not less. Logic and science only oppress the imaginations of people who weren't very imaginative to begin with. Rapidly changing, highly diverse cultures feed the garden of my soul (as Sara Douglass puts it) more than an idyllic medieval village or pristine wilderness. If you look at medieval illustrations, even classical myths and Biblical stories are given contemporary, provincial settings. Peasants thought Jerusalem was just around the corner and imagined Joseph and Mary as better-looking, bourgeois versions of themselves. They were fundamentally incapable of imagining life drastically different from their own. Sarah Douglass argues that knowing everything makes the world seem safe and lifeless, but science isn't about (and never can be about) knowing everything, it's about finding new things. That's as pretty opposite of the mundane as you're going to get with any philosophy.

Good fantasy doesn't tap into some vast, ancient, unchanging archetype, but acts like a funhouse mirror to everyday life. It takes the ordinariness of our lives and exaggerates it into Other, such that we recognize it as truer than reality. Assume that we run with the supposedly generic, Western medieval fantasy world, which despite my criticisms, I adore. Say, a world where the printing press was the dangerous cutting edge of modernity, or women unchaperoned were risque, or armed men weren't that "noble knight" schmaltz but just as proud, vindictive, and tragic as rival drug lords or CEOs. This is a world where its appeal comes not from somber ancientness, but from chaos, change, modern life run riot, not knowing "how it ends", from making all old things anew. Is that world really different from our own? Tap water is boring until we're confronted with the logistics and sheer beauty of a Roman aqueduct's soaring arches. Never mind light bulbs, or microwavable food. Good fantasy makes us see our own world with new eyes.

New Animal Resembling Furry Lobster Found

Aw, so cute!

Lake Needwood was very pleasant and filled with the Thanksgiving/Chrismas smell of a crisp winter forest. I hadn't gone to Rock Creek Park in a bit, and was surprised to notice that the trees were bare. I went into Rock Creek to gather the temperature vs. depth data with the temperature probe on the yardstick. I was wearing Milla's boots because I was the only one with feet small enough, except maybe Milla. We were trying to find a place with a depth of 60 centimeters, so I had waded into the center of the creek disregarding the water gushing into the boots and soaking my socks. I hadn't realized it would be so cold, or that the current could apply such insistent and constant pressure. I'd always thought the water would flow around me. I came back up and took off my socks and wrung them out and hung them out to dry on a tree branch and let other people do the rest of the data points. It would not prevent Ed and Milla from cuddling on the leafy bank later while I watched the water pour across a line of rocks in little rapids. Something I noticed was, the water never stops moving. (Well duh.) The ripples and the foam, the light and the shadow, is all caused by water rushing away from me, replaced by the same amount of water coming towards me, and yet from a distance, or to someone not paying attention, it looks as still and as clear as glass and as constant as if the water were a solid and unmoving sheet.

Afterwards, we had a lot of free time to just play around. We found that Rob and Dena balanced each other out on the seesaw, me and Alex balanced out Rob and Dena, and me and Alex balanced out each other. I picked up a nice walking stick David had hurled into the field as a javelin. I played on the swings to the creaking of chains. We took a walk around the lake, gleaming under the ashen sky and bare trees like unpolished metal.

"The Church says the Earth is Flat, but I know that it is Round. For I have seen the Shadow on the Moon, and have more Faith in a Shadow than in the Church." -Magellan.

I like to live in my little Klein bottle.


Imagine a cylinder, stretched up'l and out'l.


Push in the bottom to link with the throttle.


You need 4 dimensions to bring this about'l.


A home that's ingenious, clever, and crafty.


I find it delightful, but a little bit drafty.