Once More With Footnotes

Providence is on their side.
     
                  Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country? Why does James Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it goes off rath er than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards? Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place. Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, bu t let there also be hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain.
     
                  To stay sane, if I may gently paraphrase what Edward Pearce recently wrote in the Guardian, it is frequently necessary for so meone to take short views, to look for comfort, to keep a piece of the world still genially ordered, if only for the duration of theatrical time or the length of a book. And this is harmless enough. Classical, written fantasy might introduce children to t h e occult, but in a healthier way than might otherwise be the case in our strange society. If you're told about vampires, it's a good thing to be told about stakes at the same time.
     
                  And fantasy's readers might also learn, in the words of Stephen Sondheim, that witches can be right and giants can be good. They learn that where people stand is perhaps not as important as which way they face. This is part of the dangerous process of growing up.
     
                  As for escapism, I'm quite happy about the word. There is nothi ng wrong with escapism. The key points of consideration, though, are what you are escaping from, and where you are escaping to.
     
                  As a suddenly thirsting reader I escaped first of all to what was then called Outer Space. I read a lot of science fiction, wh ich as I have said is only a 20th-century subset of fantasy. And a lot of it was, in strict literary terms, rubbish. But this was good rubbish. It was like an exercise bicycle for the mind — it doesn't take you anywhere, but it certainly tones up the muscle s.
     
                  Irrelevant? I first came across any mention of ancient Greek civilisation in a fantasy book — by Mary Renault. But in the '50s most schools taught history like this: there were the Romans who had a lot of baths and built some roads and left. Then there w as a lot of undignified pushing and shoving until the Normans arrived, and history officially began.
     
                  We did Science, too, in a way. Yuri Gagarin was spinning around above our heads, but I don't recall anyone at school ever mentioning the fact. I don't ev en remember anyone telling us that science was not about messing around with chemicals and magnets, but rather a way of looking at the universe.
     
                  Science fiction looked at the universe all the time. I make no apology for having enjoyed it. We live in a sc ience fiction world: two miles down there you'd fry and two miles up there you'd gasp for breath, and there is a small but significant chance that in the next thousand years a large comet or asteroid will smack into the planet. Finding this out when you'r e 13 or so is a bit of an eye-opener. It puts acne in its place, for a start.
     
                  Then other worlds out there in space got me interested in this one down here. It is a small mental step from time travel to paleontology, from sword 'n' sorcery fantasy to mytho logy and ancient history. Truth is stranger than fiction; nothing in fantasy enthralled me as much as reading of the evolution of mankind from protoblob to newt, tree shrew, Oxbridge arts graduate, and eventually to tool-using mammal.
     
                  I first came across words like ecologist and overpopulation in science fiction books in the late '50s and early '60s, long before they had become fashionable. Yes, probably Malthus had said it first — but you don't read Malthus when you're 11, though you might read someone lik e John Brunner or Harry Harrison because their books have got an exciting spaceship on the cover.
     
                  I also came across the word neoteny, which means "remaining young". It's something which we as humans have developed into a survival trait. Other animals, w hen they are young, have a curiosity about the