F & SF

      I had an interesting discussion a couple of days back with one of my online writing friends. He doesn't think much of fantasy and science fiction. He says they're "not real," and they're "made up."
      I pointed out that all fiction, by definition, is not real. Perhaps a novel might have a more realistic setting or characters, but the story is still "made up." Whenever we read a book, we enter a world of the author's creation. Some of these worlds are similar to our own; some are not. But all are imaginary.
      The closer a novel comes to the real world -- and I could argue that "real world" is an incorrect term as we all see the world through the filter of our perceptions and experiences and thus it is different for each of us -- anyway, the closer it comes to our meandering, apparently senseless world, the more likely it is that it will be hailed by critics and taken seriously by those who don't understand the power of a story to inspire the reader and further, to shape our world.
      Myths and legends are as old as mankind. Fantasy and science fiction seems to me to be our current myths. A lot of the stories won't survive due to a failure of imagination, but some of them will. I'd like to think I could pick out some that will be read in a couple of hundred years, but I doubt I would be correct. Myths have their own way of surviving, and it is as real and as mysterious as we are ourselves.