Political Fantasy

From Fancyclopedia 2, ca. 1959

(Marconette) A story whose primary object is to illustrate some sociological opinion, which it does usually by imagining events in the modern world which we know couldn't have happened because if they had we'd have read about them in the newspapers -- like van Loon's story of the invasion of America by the Nazis in 1940, or Warner Brothers' "Mission to Moscow". Such stories may take place in the future, like Wells' "The Life and Death of a Dictator". Such stories are fantasy not so much because they involve superscience or the supernatural, but because they must be placed in an imaginary country, or in the future, or in some present subjunctively alternate to our own, in order that the author may manipulate characters and incidents freely. Stories like Things to Come, which merely have sociological overtones, probably would not be called political fantasy. The term is not really a good one as a parallel to SF, weird, and pure fantasy, because it frequently overlaps with true science fiction, etc, and there are similar stories, commedia of manners on the grand scale, whimsical bits, and stories simply speculating "if", which are not sociologically motivated.

From Fancyclopedia 1, ca. 1944

(Marconette) - A story whose primary object is to illustrate some sociological opinion, which it does usually by imagining events in the modern world which we know couldn't have happened because if they had we'd have read about them in the newspapers, like van Loon's story of the invasion of America by Nazis in 1940, or Warner Brothers' Mission to Moscow. Such stories may take place in the future, like Wells's "The Life and Death of a Dictator". Such stories are fantasy not so much because they involve superscience or the like, but because they must be placed in an imaginary country, or in the future, or in some present subjectively alternative to our own, in order that the author may manipulate characters and incidents freely. Fantastories like Things to Come which merely have sociological overtones probably would not be called political fantasy. The term is not a good one as a parallel to s-f, weird, and pure fantasy because it frequently overlaps with true science-fiction etc, and there are very similar stories, comedies of manners on a grand scale, whimsical bits, and stories simply speculating "if", which are not sociologically motivated.

See also: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Classification of Fantasy, Politics.

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