Timeless Fantasy

            I’ve often pondered over why I enjoy the fantasy genre so much. The reasons I find are numerous, but there is one aspect that stands out: Timelessness. Fantasy, well written, has the potential to last forever.

            Before I continue, I’ll add a disclaimer saying that this is a blog based on my particular reading preferences and – in spite of what it may seem like – I am not saying other genres are horrible; I’m merely using them as a basis for comparison.

            Books come and go, and part of the reason when a book goes is how well people can understand and relate to it. This means that within sixty or so years of having been written, books based in modern times are out of date – because society and technology changes so incredibly fast. If my parents were to write a book about their teenage years, I would be able to understand it, but everything was so much different by my teens that I wouldn’t relate. Likewise, if a modern day teenager (in a generation where everyone has a smartphone) read a book I wrote based on my teen years (around the time when only about half the teens had cell phones – flip or slide, rather than smart), they would find they had a very different life experience. Most of them wouldn’t have a chance with my parents’ book containing record players, cassette tapes and stuff I don’t even understand.

            Science fiction, on the other hand, is based in the future. It teaches people about a possible view of the future and other worlds. It’s fun and awesome, up until we pass the story in time, culture, or technology. Look at Back to the Future – now out of date because we passed the time when we were supposed to have hover boards and flying cars (yes, we have some reasonable facsimiles, but not what we were expecting). On the other hand, there’s the early Star Trek which, while doing very well for when it was made, had a culture that we have advanced beyond.

            Fantasy differs from other genres in one major aspect: it is deliberately taking people to another world, and therefore assumes that people need to be taught about that world. A lot of time and effort is put into teaching about the fresh world and cultures, without making any assumptions. As such, it never goes out of date – assuming, of course, that the writer hasn’t allowed too much of their culture to leak into their work.

            Historical fiction, of course, comes close to fantasy for timelessness. Once again, it is taking people to a place that it’s assumes they don’t know much about and, as such, it teaches them. Of course, with a subject much closer to home, it is easier to make assumptions that the readers will know certain things, which could cause the story to get out of date.

            So, as you can see, fantasy has the best ability to last forever. Will The Hobbit ever go out of date? I think not. That said, it’s still possible for books from other genres to last throughout the ages. Perhaps more of them could do so if they were created with the specific intent to do so; written in a way that taught about the world without making assumptions. However, I believe that fantasy is the only genre to which timelessness comes naturally.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Rules of Time Travel

            In fiction, there are three main concepts for time travel. Each of them have their own rules that must be followed in order to maintain consistency.

            One of these methods is the constant timeline. This is the theory that events throughout time cannot be changed at all. Characters can travel backwards or forwards in time, but anything they change was already accounted for and had been changed for them. A perfect representation of this is in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where the characters travel back in time in order to save some lives, only to discover that they had done so all along – one of them had even caught sight of themselves before they knew they were traveling back.

            Next is the theory that time is fluid. In this theory, a time traveler can go through time, changing whatever they want – and, in turn changing the future, sometimes with disastrous results. This is sometimes tempered by a rule that history will work itself out, such as in the Dr Who series where the Doctor and his companions are constantly saving people and changing things without altering the course of history.

            Thirdly, we have the dimensional theory. In this case, as in the fluid one, time travelers can change the course of events, but each change branches off a new dimension of reality. The changes are there for the people moving through time, but the other dimension (where the time travelers came from) usually remains unchanged. I some cases, if a big enough change is made, this method allows some branch dimensions to be erased, or at least cut off from the other dimensions. An example of this can be seen in the Back to the Future movies, were the main character nearly causes himself to have never existed – and later finds himself in an alternate timeline that is nearly apocalyptic.

            Now, it really doesn’t matter which theory of time travel is used for any particular work of fiction. It needs to be chosen to fit both the story and the world well. The important part is that once a rule set is chosen, it gets stuck to. Every story – or series – needs to follow the same rules, without jumping from one rule set to the other. As soon as the established rules are broken, the internal consistency is broken and the believability of the story falls to pieces.

            So, if you use time travel, choose and choose well. Then stick to it, no matter what.

            This semi-ranting blog has been inspired by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – an good story, except for the part where the internal mechanics do not match those established earlier in the series.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

A Geeky New Year

            Welcome to 2015! According to Back to the Future, we get hover boards this year, so we have that to look forward to. For all those sciency people out there, I have two words for you: electro magnets. Make it happen.

            Anyway, Colleen and I had a great New Year’s Eve – we celebrated by staying home and making our way through a geek countdown. What’s a geek countdown, you ask? It’s when we count down from ten geeky movies, shows and games to midnight instead of seconds. The catch is there had to be a numerical value associating the activity with the number of the count.

            Our countdown went like this: We started by watching the episode Blink from Doctor Who (with the 10^th Doctor), then watched an episode of Deep Space 9 (the Trouble with Tribbles crossover episode). Next, we played some Super Mario World (an 8-bit game) followed by the 7^th episode of Firefly (Jaynestown). After that, we watched Star Wars episode 6, Return of the Jedi, the 5^th Element and the Fantastic 4. We finished off by playing a little bit (because we were running out of time) of Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, Portal 2 and the 1^st Little Big Planet.

            Yes, we managed to squeeze that all into one day (all before midnight) and it was a blast. We’re thinking of making it a New Year’s tradition – with different activities, of course. We’ll have more time to plan for next year, so we could get really creative.

            I hope all of you had as great a New Year as we did and that 2015 is fantastic for everyone.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.