From Lances to Light Sabers

Why do we write? Well, that's a highly personal question for which each person needs to look inside him or herself to find the answer, but I would guess that, in many cases, it is a way to set aside "everyday" life for a while and retreat into a setting of your own creation. After all, when you're writing a story, you don't describe all the routine things people do everyday, because the reader doesn't need or want to hear about all that, as it is a regular part of life. Characters in stories have to use the restroom just like normal people, but how often have you read about them doing it? As a writer, you don't relate every moment in the day; only aspects of your characters' lives that are interesting and pertinent to the story. As another example, television shows often dramatize certain professions. One example I can think of is the now-cancelled "Boston Public." Winslow High School had an awful lot of problems - several every week, in fact. Anybody who watched and interpreted this show as a documentary of the American school system missed the point and should have gotten their information elsewhere. We didn't spend an hour watching teachers grade papers or give lectures, because who would be interested in that? But, returning to the matter at hand, we want to forget about our "normal" lives for a while and create our own tale, and this is especially true of the fantasy genre. You don't have to be writing about Hobbits and hobgoblins or dungeons and dragons for your work to be considered fantasy. If your story takes place in a fictional world, then that is obviously fantasy, but if you are writing about our otherwise "real" world, then anything that is outside of our typical understanding of the way things are - or, in the past, were - supposed to be can be considered fantasy. As a starting point in discussing science fiction, I think it might be beneficial to begin with a dictionary definition. According to Dictionary.Com, science fiction is "a literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background," which means that science fiction is a sub-genre of fantasy. It is merely a type of fantasy that has become very popular, and therefore deserves its own designation. Stories with magic and mysticism in the past or present are what I will henceforth refer to as "fantasy" stories, even though, as I have said, that label encapsulates much more. The idea of the "good old days" doesn't just exist in the minds of groups of elderly men sitting around tables in small town caf