The only difference between a fantasy fan and a non-fantasy fan is that we fantasy fans aren't interested unless there is a strong element of make-believe in the situation. And no, I don't know why I have that preference, I just know that I have it very strongly.
Well, I don't know why you have the preference either, obviously. But speaking more broadly, I do think there is something psychological going on in the draw to fantasy, and to treat it as a thought exercise, "take real world, add vampires," the way some 1950s hard sf is written, is more often than not to miss the point.
Not that such a treatment couldn't be a perfectly valid in its own point, just as for people interested in positronic brains golden age sf is satisfying. But it's not going to satisfy a taste for space opera, and recognizing that a taste for space opera is what draws many people to the genre is to not understand it in its completeness.
Similarly, many people are drawn to fantasy because it offers a world where anything can happen, and people who can do anything, and while a focus on characterization (far more than was ever present in golden age hard SF, that's for sure) is part of what's going on ((the fantasy isn't exciting if the protagonist doesn't feel real), it's not quite pyschological realism which is part of the contract with the reader.
So in, say, Harry Potter, we're not just being asked to believed the make-believe that a boy can be a wizard, but also that a 11-year-old boy can be responsible to take on a Dark Lord. And yes, the relationship rules are different; the way we construct the relationships between children and their parents, or children and their teachers, is altered because it's fantasy.
Now, of course, that type of alteration can happen in ostensibly "realistic" fiction as well--the relationships in one of Frances Hodgeson Burnett's children's book have the same feel. But I think it's even more natural within the fantasy genre for the reasons I've stated. Certainly the fantasy works where this doesn't happen are few and far between; I can't think of one.
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Well, I don't know why you have the preference either, obviously. But speaking more broadly, I do think there is something psychological going on in the draw to fantasy, and to treat it as a thought exercise, "take real world, add vampires," the way some 1950s hard sf is written, is more often than not to miss the point.
Not that such a treatment couldn't be a perfectly valid in its own point, just as for people interested in positronic brains golden age sf is satisfying. But it's not going to satisfy a taste for space opera, and recognizing that a taste for space opera is what draws many people to the genre is to not understand it in its completeness.
Similarly, many people are drawn to fantasy because it offers a world where anything can happen, and people who can do anything, and while a focus on characterization (far more than was ever present in golden age hard SF, that's for sure) is part of what's going on ((the fantasy isn't exciting if the protagonist doesn't feel real), it's not quite pyschological realism which is part of the contract with the reader.
So in, say, Harry Potter, we're not just being asked to believed the make-believe that a boy can be a wizard, but also that a 11-year-old boy can be responsible to take on a Dark Lord. And yes, the relationship rules are different; the way we construct the relationships between children and their parents, or children and their teachers, is altered because it's fantasy.
Now, of course, that type of alteration can happen in ostensibly "realistic" fiction as well--the relationships in one of Frances Hodgeson Burnett's children's book have the same feel. But I think it's even more natural within the fantasy genre for the reasons I've stated. Certainly the fantasy works where this doesn't happen are few and far between; I can't think of one.