by Francesca Grace

Created on: June 09, 2009

A creator god has manufactured two beings and set them loose in a world filled with creatures of every size and shape with unknown challenges around every corner. They are given instructions to populate the planet through mating and to take over everything they see for the creator god. Only one rule is given to them; never disturb the magic talisman that has been left out in plain sight. No complete explanation is given for the reasoning behind the taboo, they only know that they must not disturb it. Curiosity, the hunger to know, over takes their need to obey this vague and arbitrary order, and in time, they boldly step forward to touch the talisman. Like a doorbell ringing, the creator god swoops down to find his creations and for the first time they see a flaw in the story they had heard of the all knowing, all seeing creator god. While the two creations stood under a simple tree, this all powerful creator god could not find them and had to call out to them to locate their whereabouts. How could this be? If the creator god knew everything, all the time then how could a simple tree erase any trace of them from his sight?

Sound familiar? Yeah, it should. It's Genesis, from the Bible. The greatest fantasy book ever written. And yet millions have been driven to murder, rape, torture, pillage and to commit genocide as they interpreted the words they read and took it on themselves to destroy anyone who did not also blindly follow the story that was written down thousands of years ago by, perhaps hundreds of people.

Here is where fantasy becomes dangerous to the reader; when a reader can no longer decipher metaphor from fact and when heroes are accepted as role models even though they have inflated egos, sociopathic tendencies and sadistic and cruel fantasies of their own that must be fulfilled in order to please them.

Fantasy stories should, at best, provide a distraction and entertainment away from the day to day life that we humans lead. Fantasy, unlike other genres, allows a writer to explore and present entire worlds, languages and histories of civilizations and life forms yet unheard of in our predictable world. Fantasy at it's very best, accustoms our psyches to the possibility that their well may be life forms, energy and dimensions, beyond what our paltry five senses and our antiquated scientific instruments can measure at this time in Earth history.

By spending time with characters in fantasy novels, we learn tolerance and acceptance for others

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