Has the Fantasy Genre Become Stagnant?

How could fantasy ever become stagnant as a genre, when it is like an eternal spring flowing through the human heart and mind?

If one could suggest that fantasy is one, tiny creek that only flows in one season of the year, for example in the spring, one might argue that the fantasy genre has become or could become stagnant. In the summer, the creek would dry up and only if there was a lot of rain in the fall, would it begin to flow again. In the winter time, it would freeze over completely.

In reality, life has its seasons too.

Can we suggest that only in early childhood or youth, that the fantasy genre is active? No, we cannot state that. To teenagers, is fantasy no longer active? We have to say no to that too. How about to adults? Is there no room for fantasy in the adult heart or mind? We have to state that adults love fantasy, too. How about the elderly? Even old people thrive on fantasy.

A child can be thrilled by fantasy and enjoys every minute of it. Even a young child can create his or her own unique fantasy world and revel in it. An older child or youth enters into fantasy willingly, actively participates in it and expands it in his or her heart and mind. So do adults. In fact, what happens is the gradual expansion of the fantasy genre with age. By the time a person is old, the world of fantasy has grown in such a way, that most people cannot begin to comprehend it fully.

The difficulty with the fantasy genre, lies is the reality that some people can enter into a fantasy world, play in it or develop it further and then exit back out of it and return to a non-fantasy world, without encountering any harm from it. When a person is locked into that fantasy world and cannot get out of it, then serious mental health problems arise. This is the world of schizophrenia.

Most of us travel into the fantasy realm of life, many times a day and enjoy sitting on rainbows in our imagination, surveying or ruling our imaginary worlds, winning weird and wonderful inter-galaxial wars and so on. There is no end to the possible fantasies that one can build. In fact, the fantasy mode is one that can be expanded indefinitely, by almost anyone.

The fantasy world is akin to the world of a genius mind, because there are no limits placed upon it by anyone, except those of the person building the fantasy in his or her own way, in time or space. That person may be bounced in and out of fantasy repeatedly, by any number of realities. Remove the limits and the possibilities are endless.

But, the bottom line is this. A fantasy garden has been planted in the heart and mind of humankind, for a reason. It is like that eternal spring that keeps on welling up. Is that not part of what keeps us forever young?

An eternal spring can never become stagnant and the fantasy genre will never become stagnant either.