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Fantasy Literature

Just like many children, back in my younger days, I had my own fantasy experiences with both

some realities in them as well as some fiction. I liked books that based their stories on aliens or

alternate earth worlds. As Russel notes, there are rules to follow in fantasy literature that the

writer must try not to break at all costs. There was this particular book I used to read, I cannot

recall its name, but it talked about an alternate universe which had creatures similar to us.

Meaning that this parallel earth had a copy of each creature on earth, but the difference between

it and our planet was the powers that creatures there possessed. One, our doubles there were

immune to death, some contained some unique supernatural power while there were others called

“prefects” who were charged with keeping law and order in our typical earth through travelling.

Russel mentions that all fantasy stories must be grounded in some common humanity that

the audience is used to. In my case, my fantasies featured both fiction and reality. Creatures in

the alternate world were similar to us thus some bit of reality. Possessed some supernatural

power and the ability to travel to solve problems on our normal earth was the fiction in it.

However, I believe that for a fantasy story or any other story to be interesting, there must be a

limitation to what the creatures in the story can do. In my case, despite the parallel creatures in

the alternate world having immunity over death, their time travel to solve our normal earth’s

problems came with a ticking clock after which the particular creature could no longer be

immune to death. In addition to that, only creatures with some certain qualities and qualifications
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called ‘prefects” were allowed to travel to earth. Therefore, even if some other creature in the

parallel world wished to help a troubled soul on earth and did not have the set qualifications, they

had to contain their feelings.

The time bound set missions on the prefects meant that they had to solve a problem as

first as possible to get back to their universe. If unfortunate, time would lapse on them, and they

had to choose between continuing with their project to the end and lose their immunity or get

back to their parallel earth to redeem their life and fail to deliver full help to the creature in need.

These hard decisions are what made the story interesting and were vital in shaping the character

of the particular prefect to the audience.

In conclusion, wiring a fantasy to normal life is vital in capturing the attention of the

audience (L. Russell). If the writer fails to do this by having too much of some unrealistic world

or characters, the audience might not relate to it and might lose interest in the book. In my case,

the writer used the presence of other planets which back then the information on whether they

could support life or not was scanty. The aspect of having a double in some other universe was

also intriguing most likely leaving the audience wondering what profession they might be

practising in the alternate world, powers they could be having there or at least some character

difference that the real audience would have from the fiction one. The use of the fantasy

creatures to solve the real-life problems that were not far from imagining in one case healing a

dog whose limbs had been broken was a way for the writer to connect to the audience.
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Work Cited

L. Russell, David. Literature For Children: A Short Introduction. 8th ed., Longman, 2004, pp.

203-215.