How important is escapism in SFF?

[tinkerdan]

Escapist Fiction Novels are much more structured than reality.
Reality is Chaotic there are so many shades of gray that they include all the shades of grey.

But that distinction is one of the things that makes Escapist fiction so important. I think that a lot of people yearn for that structure and it's a great place to go to get away from all the madness of real life.

Things are Black and White; Good and Evil; Beautiful and Ugly. There are not so many shades between. At least that's the way it was for quite a while. Today a lot of the fiction starts to have gradients of all of these and comes closer to the chaos of reality.

However there is still the structure that the worlds are made from that have sets of rules that are strictly adhered to(often offered in the light that it makes the story more realistic; yet sometimes reality isn't that structured).

As a contrast it would seem that literary fiction tries to play off of the chaos to gain it's sense of realism.

I know a number of people who read very little 'fiction' usually meaning what is usually defined as escapist fiction. However when I look at what they do read it tends to be historical, biographical stories and I'm uncertain if they realize that those, even when not fictionalized, tend to be structured in such a way that there is order to that persons life or that event in history and in truth that's achieved by leaving a lot of the stuff out that would let messy reality crowd into the story and give it disorder.

The search for escape reading material is a way to shut down the chaos of normal life and bring in some order that we know on some subliminal level simply does not exist in real life.

 

[dsri]

I think it depends on the audience for the novels. A young adult might want more of escapism than adult who might want a story that makes them think.

 

[Paul Meccano]

For me, reading is a healing device. Not one of healing the past but certainly in the moment. immersion or escapism ( difficult to differentiate when talking about reading a book is about making me feel well in the moment. After all feeling slightly uncomfortable in this life, no matter how happy a person, is our lot as humans. Personally I love that I have to escape into a book to feel happy.

Life is perfect if you live it perfectly in a perfect world, does seem to be a modern thing, of which I am no fan at all. it seems more false than escapism to me. There's always place for escapism, just as creativity.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I'd love to find some escapist reading at the moment, just light and relaxing and fun to read books. The trouble is, I'm a very fussy reader.

 

[Ambrose]

Back in 2017 Dask wrote: How do shallow writers get published? Doesn't sound right.
Remind me of one of Piet Hein's Grooks, to the effect that good writers starve while bad writers prosper because writers that can't write are read by readers that can't read. That's not an exact quote, but I don;t have the book to hand/

 

[Montero]

I'd love to find some escapist reading at the moment, just light and relaxing and fun to read books. The trouble is, I'm a very fussy reader.

In SFF you might try T Kingfisher Paladin's Grace. It is a romance - but it is a romance between two people who really can't believe the other one likes them..... it has a lot of not-entirely-light things - like a serial killer - but it is all handled in an upbeat kind of way. It also does an excellent job of handling how people who have a deep and passionate interest in something behave. Far too many books and authors just don't understand people who are experts and how deeply that pervades their life and viewpoint.

Other than that, truly light - A Cat Called Birmingham and You Can Take the Cat out of Slough by Chris Pascoe

Or if you like living abroad books, then Driving Over Lemons and the sequels to that.

 

[chongjasmine]

I read fiction to escape from real life. Therefore, I like fictions like wheel of time where good triumphs over evil.
And tend to dislike fictions that are too much like real life.
Life is already hard, why read about real life when one can escape into a world of make-believe.

 

[jbmwriting]

I personally lean towards escapism, but I feel like you can explore a lot of meaningful topics, even in a series that has consistently happy endings. I don't need all rainbows and butterflies, but that's the balance I like personally. Explore some real topics, see real character development, and then have the good guys win in the end.