Not Your Parents’ Dystopias
3rd October 2014
The standing consensus of genre historians is that general readers are likely to turn to fantasy during times of anxiety and dissatisfaction, preferring to look away (the “it’s my high school, but with zombies/werewolves/vampires” direction of urban fantasy) or behind (the “it’s another time and another place, but it looks/sounds/smells like medieval Europe” direction of high fantasy) rather than ahead to what they perceive as an unwelcoming, problematic future. Fantasy doesn’t offer an alternate view of tomorrow. It provides an escape from it.