I read and write fantasy novels because I love the freedom of exploring humanity through history without being tied down to specific ‘realtime’ eras/facts. Alas, the Silmarillion defeated me too. I very much like your logos/mythos analogy, and am freqently irritated by the arrogance of those in the spec fic field who don’t feel they’ve achieved anything unless they’ve denigrated the books/sub-genres that please other people. I find it the height of irony that they are so quick to ghettoize within the genre, whilst simultaneously bemoaning the mean types in the Literati field who won’t take spec fic seriously.

And Arthur Scargill? *shudder* I was living in the UK at the time of miners’ strike. He was a terrible, terrible man. The lives he destroyed with his Messiah-complex machinations are uncounted. Not that I’m doing a carte blanche defence of La Thatcher — she had her moments, no doubt about it. But I’ll never forget the sight of Scargill gloating over the death of the miner killed by other miners with a steel post through his windshield.

The conflict you are talking about doesn’t only happen between the more and less scientifically inclined either, from Copernicus to homo floresiensis and beyond scientific egos and dogma have repressed new ideas that conflict with the current consensus, often to the great detriment of their own field. In the end I think the enemy here is as much the very human trait of arrogance as anything else.

But the logos/mythos distinction totally maps to my own taxonomy of Scientistic Fiction and Soul Fiction… and you can probably tell where my sympathies lie.

When I tell people I read a lot of fantasy books some looks at me strangely – but then they get the half hour or so in depth rant (sorry explanation) about why its more than fairies prancing round in toadstool rings – although sometimes that’s cool . Fantasy can write about deep, spiritual and cultural themes and issues that somehow are more acceptable when set in a different world/time/whatever.

Maybe I read fantasy – and historic fanstay especially – because I have trouble fitting in to everyday life. Perhaps. But it seems to me that there’s something profound missing from society today, and I think other people notice that as well – not just people who read fantasy or the like – fantasy is just my way of finding what I’m looking for, even when I don’t know what it is myself.

Silence.
I gaze through the observation window,
Into the endless darkness.
We are so small.

The stars look just as small up here,
Though brighter –
Away from city lights.
Very far away.

Space tourism.
Man has crossed the final frontier,
Left it in the dust miles back.
The future is upon us.

Up here,
A sense of awe and wonder,
As our green and blue home,
Unfolds beneath us.

We could go to the moon.
That magical place that captures
Our imaginations
With its mystery.

Why go there?
Why take away the mystery and allure of space,
And the moon,
By going there?

As we drift,
Spiralling slowly through the debris field,
I can’t help but wonder,
If the wonder is diminished,
When seen next to a discarded fuel tank.

The silver moon I stare up at,
The white-burning stars I walk beneath,
Are not the lump of rock,
Or atomic explosions,
We see out here.

And the velvet black sky,
The cloaks our world as it sleeps,
Is not this endless oblivion,
Littered with cast off machines,
Like an inter-stellar scrap heap.

When will we realise,
The excitement and awe we feel in life,
Is in the not knowing,
The imagining,
In the dreaming.

Reality can never live up to our dreams.