Fairy Godmother

A Q'and'A with Mercedes Lackey...

What does fantasy mean to you?

Fantasy for me has always gone far beyond the magic rings and castles of the classical fairy tale, although heaven knows I love the classical fairy tales! To write or enjoy fantasy requires an open mind and heart, and the ability to believe that things are not always what they seem.

Why do you think women enjoy reading fantasy?

I think it may be because, as Dorothy L. Sayers once pointed out about the mystery genre, fantasy is one of the last bastions of "moral fiction." By this she meant that in mystery — and in fantasy — good triumphs over evil, the wrongdoers get their just deserts, and all ends, if not always strictly happily, at least well. This is the definition of "moral fiction": something that shows the world, perhaps not as it is, but certainly as it could and should be. I think women are, as a whole, a lot less willing to settle for "that's just the way it is" than men are. You tend to find that the men who read fantasy are idealists, in fact.

What makes you write fantasy over any other subject?

I have greater scope in writing fantasy for my imagination than in any other genre. I can write fantasy romances, fantasy mysteries, heroic fantasy, modern-urban fantasy, historical fantasy, dark (or horror) fantasy, alternate-history fantasy, political fantasy even Western fantasy. There is virtually no genre that I could not use for a fantasy novel, and even if I haven't gotten around to it, someone surely has, because I can cite examples of every one of those books, either in my own body of work, or someone else's.

Anything you'd like to say about fantasy or writing, or writing fantasy?

When a reader closes the book with regret, you've done your job. What we all strive for is when a reader goes back to the same book again and again and finds equal pleasure in it each time they read it. That's what every reader is looking for, and every writer is working to accomplish.

And when it comes down to cases, everything written is at least in part a fantasy. Except maybe for the national budget. That's horror.