In her article " Fantasy, Reading, and Escapism ," author and Tor.com contributor Jo Walton writes, "If your life is bounded and restricted, seeing that more options exist helps, even if they’re all theoretical and imaginary. Escaping doesn’t mean avoiding reality, escaping means finding an escape route to a better place." This defense of Fantasy (and we might add Science Fiction) is one that many of us first encounter in print through J.R.R. Tolkien's On Fairy Stories , but it is also something that many readers and writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy know intrinsically. There is value in getting away, in witnessing another world's epic struggles of good against evil and putting our own problems aside, if for a moment, so that we might recharge. It's something I've felt, too, but when I sat down to create the world for my latest Work in Progress, I thought: Fantasy can be more than that. It can be equipment for living. It can be an exploration o...
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