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The fantasy genre is characterized by such elements as magic and mythological or invented creatures. Any story involving such elements can be labeled fantasy. Hence, while the overused devices and gimmicks of the genre may get old, the genre itself will always be as fresh as authors choose to make it.

Terry Pratchett has used a wildly imaginative fantasy world satirize the telecommunications industry, the relationship between Britain and the Middle East, and the Israel/Palestine conflict. While neither fantasy nor satire is new, Pratchett's synthesis of the two is clever and unexpected. Because he uses his fantasy realm as a venue for real world commentary, he has to create fantasy analogs for things like cell phone towers. In this particular example, he invoked the concept of a "semaphore tower". Each tower had a shudder painted black on one side and white on the other. By flipping the shudders on the tower, the operator could communicate a Morse code signal to the next tower and so on. It sounds plausible and fits the level of technology used in his books. Reading the book "Going Postal", I thought Pratchett a genius for his clever analog of telecommunications. I later learned that such towers were built at one time, although the invention of the telegraph made them obsolete before the first set of towers was even finished. Still, though the concept is from history, Pratchett certainly made good use of it.

Author Holly Lisle makes no attempt at real world commentary but still managed to keep her Sacred Texts series from being just another mindless quest story. The prophecy that the characters are trying to fulfill fails, truly and genuinely fails. There is no backtracking, no reinterpreting the prophecy, no finding another way to fulfill it. Lisle then takes the opportunity to point out the obvious fallacy in most fantasy works. A prophecy that says "If the quest is completed, you can defeat the enemy" does not say anything about what happens if the quest is not completed. The fact that the prophecy failed does not doom the heroes to defeat- it merely means they aren't guaranteed victory.

Even if a work of fantasy fiction does not include any special conceptual innovations, it can still be interesting. The characters' quirks and foibles, the author's sense of humor, and the details of the plot all provide opportunities to catch the reader's imagination. A story that happens to take place in a "fantasy" setting need not have

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