Understanding Fantasy: Science and Heroic Fictional Works

In continuation of my previous posts talking about Fantasy and its types, this is the completion of the types and I am going to talk about Science fantasy, toy fantasy and heroic fantasy.

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Science Fantasy

Referring to Science fiction, we mean a type of imaginative literature which takes its development from the products of thoughts, thereby being far from the fact.

It is brought about normally by a mental picture of something that may occur based on realistic scientific trends and facts.

This type of fiction does come about, for instance, telling a tale of a particular world where young and old people are living on Mars and on Space.

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Such type of work is best identified to be futuristic fiction. From this, we can tell about the wonders attributed to the world of technology. Everything here is working like magic but remains technological.

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Some of the literary works that fall into this category are:

• Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley.

• Rocket Ship Galileo written by Robert Heinlein.

• The White Mountains written by John Christopher.

Toy Fantasy
Referring to toy fantasy we mean those imaginative story where toys represent humans as characters.

Peculiar to toy fantasy stories, story narrators make use of their favourite toys to life, and empowered them into animated personalities that that feature as humans do.

They can eat, talk, dance, think, laugh, breathe, love, and behave and do everything like human beings. You would see modern toy fantasies in picture book format.

Examples of stories of toy fantasy include:

• Winnie the Pooh created by A. A. Milne
  The Adventures of Pinocchio , by Carlo Collodi.

Heroic or Quest Fantasy

These are identified to adventure stories that have to do with a motif on quest and search. Such quest may have to be pursuit for a lofty purpose. For instance, on justice or love, or for a rich reward, or those that deal with magical power, better still a hidden treasure.

The conflicts on the stories usually have their focuses on the struggle between characters of good and evil. The protagonist who may possess the godly qualities may engage himself in a struggle against external forces of another character with qualities of the evil including inner tests of weaknesses.

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The plots of heroic fantasy mainly have more relations with every action drive in direction of a single purpose especially the success of the godly over evil.

Heroic fantasy has a lot to do in a great deal with the ancient myths, legends, and traditional folktales and so on. From these, heroic fantasy takes its discussed themes, settings, plot structures, and characters which may be human beings or animals.

Examples of Heroic fantasy include:

• The Hobbit written by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

• The Lord of the Rings written by J.R.R. Tolkien.

• The Book of Three written by Lloyd Alexander (1964)

• The Hero and the Crown written by Robin McKinley (1985).

Read the previous posts here:

• Understanding Fantasy

• Types of Fantasy Pt1

Omoluabipoint

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