Yet fantasy literature, with its exemplar in Tolkien, is an enduring form chiefly because it touches a deep chord in the human psyche: a desire for simpler times, with a clear distinction between good and evil. More, says Jordan, fantasy offers its own well-ordered but thematically unlimited universe.
“In hard, technological science fiction, we’ve gotten away from a view of the eternal conflict between good and evil. Indeed, we see everything drifting through a shade of relativistic grey. While I agree that there are many ambiguous, grey issues, there is also good and evil. And the only areas of fiction in which the distinction is clearly delineated are fantasy and horror.
“There used to be this perception that science fiction had to be hard and technical and that people were mere window dressing to help communicate the science. Of course, this was rarely true of the best SF, which stood out for the very reason that it didn’t follow the strict guidelines on what that sort of fiction should be. By contrast, people are central to fantasy. And although there is no magic in my books, no incantations, the ‘wizards’ still tap into the power that drives the universe.”
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