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Paper short abstract

Fantasy has long helped us perceive the world anew. In a time of Climate Emergency is the nature of Fantasy changing to reflect the challenges it presents? Can the blue-sky thinking of the Fantastic provide us with useful tools for addressing ‘the defining crisis of our time’ (UN)?

Paper long abstract

From Gilgamesh to Gawain and the Green Knight, the Brothers Grimm to

Grimdark, the natural world has provided the backdrop for Fantasy since

its earliest iterations. The playgrounds of childhood are often a writer’s

first Fantasy landscape and can develop into fully fledged storyworlds.

Do readers of Fantasy seek out the genre for a taste of this unsullied

environment? Is it nostalgia for the lost Edens of childhood, a way to

escape, or to find resilience and inspiration? And in a time of Climate

Emergency, is the nature of Fantasy changing to reflect the challenges it

presents? Can the blue-sky thinking of the Fantastic provide us with a

useful tool for addressing what the United Nations has called ‘the defining

crisis of our time’?