When you’re 14, anything with a sword and a dragon is pretty cool. But when you’re 21 and you’ve read 2,000 fantasy novels, you start to realize that some of those books, well, they weren’t really good. OK, let’s be honest. A lot of them were crap.
They shaved my head, eyebrows. This is not a sci-fi picture. It’s not a fantasy picture. You’re dealing with something that’s supposed to be in reality. But we had a genius makeup artist.
I love horror, fantasy and sci-fi. Those are my genres of love and devotion.
I feel that good fantasy will always be in demand. I think children especially need literature that helps them escape from the real world, which is very scary to them right now.
There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.
Especially, I think, living in any fantasy or science fiction world means really understanding what you’re seeing and reading really densely on a level that a lot of people don’t bother to read.
My fantasy had always been making a music video and performing with music that I had created.
There’s a lot of fantasy about what Scotland is, and the shortbread tins and that sort of thing.
I honestly think anthropology is one of the most useful fields a fantasy writer can study, more so even than history.
Fantasy films tend to skew towards what Tolkien fantasy was, which is that the humans, the Hobbits, and the cute creatures are the good guys, and everything that’s ugly are the bad guys.
Quite often, intent on conveying how things can go wrong for a culture (science fiction) or an individual (horror) or all of magical creation (fantasy), works of fantastika often preclude comedy, because humor gets in the way of messages of doom or struggle.
I think when writers play with dragons, we are simply doing what fantasy writers have always done.
I remember, when I was younger, it was such a big fantasy for me. Now that I actually have a career and have made an album, it’s really surreal.
I know I’m not a woman’s fantasy man; I don’t have to uphold this image of male beauty, so that’s kind of a relief in a way.
For the last 30 years our cinemas have been ruled by science fiction and horror. We’ve had some very good Fantasy films in that time period, but for my tastes I still haven’t seen fantasy done to absolute perfection. That is the hope I have in this project.
It was always a dream as I was growing up. I would watch movies, mostly American movies, and be so engrossed in those stories, all I wanted to do was be there. I wanted to be part of that romance or that fantasy or be that warrior or that struggling soul who finally makes it good.
I have always regarded historical fiction and fantasy as sisters under the skin, two genres separated at birth.
To me, steampunk and urban fantasy are naturally hinged together. And I think that’s because I love the early gothic Victorian literature, and both things spring from that movement.
But basically what I like are the possibilities, and the fantasy element of the show. Not science fantasy so much, but fantasy, the humanistic elements and how people relate when they’re in a dire situation or comedic situation.
I mean, I am my own fantasy.
Yes, I enjoyed my share of fantasy fiction series and comics. Among superheroes, Spiderman was my favorite. I always had this fascination for costume-clad vigilante who would come and save the day!
We love fantasy novels in which the characters think that they’re peasants but turn out to be princes and kings.
When I was thirteen years old, I didn’t exactly discover epic fantasy on my own. I acquired it as a social defence mechanism.
Of the two, I would think of my work as closer to Science Fiction than Fantasy.
I think sometimes you have to imagine a fantasy world in which we are represented and visible the way we should be.
As a kid, I harbored this fantasy of starting a company. I looked at the entrepreneur column in Forbes. I looked at it every month and thought, ‘I want to be that guy.’
Honestly, I think there’s a cycle to the popularity of fantasy and fairytales that usually coincides with times of unrest or hardship in our own world. By retelling these legends or immersing ourselves in fantasy realms, we can safely explore the very real, very day-to-day darkness of our own lives.
I loved ‘Pan’s Labyrinth.’ It transported me into another world. I like fantasy worlds; I love ‘Lord of the Rings’ as well, for that reason, because you really get to get out of reality and go somewhere else.
I read mostly science-fiction and fantasy when I was a teenager, and I was always drawn to stories where the characters had telepathic powers.
I appreciate both… for me, I think ‘Star Wars’ is more science fantasy and is based on a lot of great legendary heroes and morality plays and stuff. And ‘Star Trek’ is just pure fun. Pure science fun. And I’ve always appreciated both.
There are definitely times where I am listening to the radio, and I think, ‘That would be awesome. I would love to sing that.’ It’s this weird karaoke fantasy that I might someday get to live out on the big screen.
With photography, you’ve captured a moment time – it’s that moment only – and in painting, you play with it; you manipulate how time is presented. It’s about fantasy and illusion and the creation of desire.
Like steampunk, silkpunk is a blend of science fiction and fantasy. But while steampunk takes its inspiration from the chrome-brass-glass technology aesthetic of the Victorian era, silkpunk draws inspiration from East Asian antiquity.
Publishers often push women in a subtle way to focus on fantasy and paranormal writing.
I was lucky enough to be able to do comedies, dramas, completely different parts. At the beginning, when you start you have a fantasy that you could be somebody else. Which is absurd. That’s part of being an actor. It’s your voice, it’s the way you move, it’s your body, even if you transform it, you play with it.
I don’t think people should confuse fantasy and reality because no one is perfect – we all know that.
We are pre-disposed for fantasy, there is a natural impulse for human beings to want to get off their heads or out of their heads in something in a substance or a drink or an idea or a religion which will comfort them and make life exciting.
I don’t think I’ve ever not had a dark side. But one of the wonderful reasons why you go into this business is that half your life you live in a fantasy, which is somebody else’s life. It’s actually a great release because you’re not having to deal with the itty-bitty bits of life.
What happens in a fantasy can be more involving than what happens in life, and thank goodness for that.
Since fantasy isn’t about technology, the accelleration has no impact at all. But it’s changed the lives of fantasy writers and editors. I get to live in England and work for a New York publisher!
Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.
You can’t have whatever you want. But to a child who must ask permission for every single thing, adulthood looks like a constant parade of every desire’s satisfaction. It is a heady and terrifying place. It is the Otherworld. It is Fairyland. In fantasy, we make this literal.
With superheroes and comics and fantasy and sci-fi being absolutely the popular currency in cinema, it’s like people have said in endless magazines, it’s the revenge of the geeks and all that. There’s some truth in that.
I am a fan of magic and fantasy, particularly when it’s grounded in reality.
The idea of death is something that doesn’t make sense to a lot of people. But to bring something back – or vampires who never die – is a logical fantasy for a human being.
Ray Bradbury’s connections to fantasy, space, cinema, to the macabre and the melancholy, were all born of his years spent running, jumping, galloping through the woods, across the fields, and down the brick-paved streets of Waukegan.
Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
As popular culture becomes more presentist, we move away from entertainment as the vicarious experience of a narrative – as watching someone else’s story – and much more toward enacting one’s own story. Moving away from myths and toward fantasy role-playing games, away from movies and toward videogames.
I have an affinity for good roles in good films. I like a variety of parts, and if some of the good stuff happens to be in fantasy and horror, I do them.
Part of the problem is that many directors treat female characters too often as precious. Or they want to live in a fantasy world where they just do spinning hook kicks and knock out guys who are six foot four, and that doesn’t work either.
I think once you have children, you just don’t have the same kind of freedom to pick up and go. But then, I sort of think, how often did I really do it? How spontaneous was I really? Part of what I think I miss is this fantasy of my wild days, but they never existed!
I think that my passion for writing fantasy began at about the same time as my passion for reading fantasy.
