Author: Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

Fantasy from A to Z: T is for Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien is to fantasy literature what George Washington is to the United States of America. In a very real and a very deep sense, he is the father of modern fantasy. His accomplishments are truly remarkable, and though it may have become fashionable in recent years to downplay his contributions to the genre, we all owe him an incalculable debt.

Lots of knowledgeable people have written about how Tolkien has shaped modern fantasy, so I’ll focus instead on my own personal experience with his books. I first read The Hobbit when I was in middle/high school, around the time I made my first novel writing attempt. I’d already read a lot of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, as well as some middle grade dragon fantasy, but mostly I was into science fiction. However, since the book I was writing was fantasy, I figured I should read some of the classics to understand what I was getting into.

I never finished writing that novel. My reach exceeded my grasp at the time, and I gave up in frustration, lamenting how inadequate my writing skills were at the time. But I don’t think it was too much of a problem that I was comparing my own amateur writing with Tolkien’s. Indeed, it was Tolkien that helped me to climb out of that writing funk, which lasted a little longer than a year. After finishing The Hobbit, I moved on to The Lord of the Rings, and was immediately drawn into the story. It took me the better part of a year to finish it, but I was enthralled from the first page to the last, and spent hours studying the maps (the edition I read had some extra-large fold out copies) and imagining what Middle Earth must be like.

My favorite character in The Lord of the Rings was Faramir. In the movies, he briefly gives into the temptation of the ring, but that isn’t true of the books. Indeed, one of the things that defines his character is that when Frodo and Sam fall into his custody, he has every opportunity to seize the ring from them, but has the wisdom and strength of character to let the ringbearer go. As the oldest child in my family, my father drilled it into me that I needed to set a good example for my younger sisters, so I really resonated with Faramir’s strength of character (even though Faramir is technically the younger brother, growing up in the shadow of Boromir and always feeling like he had to measure up—and that is one aspect of his character that the movies showed very well). Also, I really enjoyed the love story between Faramir and Eowyn. The moment at the end, where they’re holding hands as they watch the fall of Mordor when the ring is destroyed, is one that I really love.

But my favorite part of the book by far is the ride of the Rohirrim. Such an epic moment! The forces of Mordor have all descended upon Minas Tirith, the white city, and are poised to utterly destroy it. The first ring of walls has fallen (if I remember correctly, that’s both in the movie and the book), and Denethor has lit his pyre, totally giving up to despair, and the ringwraiths have descended on their monstrous mounts… and then, the horns of Rohan sound, and the cavalry arrives, contrary to all of the work of the adversary to ensure that Rohan would not come. This is one scene from the books that the movies absolutely do justice to. I love that scene so much, reading it and watching it. So epic!

While I was reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time, it was announced that they were going to turn the whole trilogy into a series of movies. The first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, came out a few months after I finished reading the books, and I absolutely loved it! From the opening moment of the film to the credits at the end, it was clear that Peter Jackson had a deep and abiding love for the original source material, and it shone through really well. Of course, he made some changes, such as giving Arwen a more prominent place in the story and dramatizing the last alliance of men and elves to set up the backstory, but I think all of those changes made the story translate much better into film. And the visual spectacle and sheer attention to detail in the films was absolutely stunning. The original Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is an absolute masterpiece, one that I doubt Hollywood is even capable of replicating today.

While waiting for the second movie to come out, I read The Lord of the Rings again, and found it just as good on a reread as a first read. That’s something that can be really hard to pull off, and a mark of a really good book. Some people have read The Lord of the Rings forty or more times, and while I haven’t read it quite that much, I am currently on my third reading, and will probably read it a fourth time with my daughter when she is old enough to appreciate it—which probably won’t be that long, because she is literally reading everything she can get her hands on, whether it’s on her reading level or not.

In any case, after rereading The Lord of the Rings, I decided to tackle The Silmarillion, which is a lot more dense and difficult than any of the other books. In fact, The Silmarillion reads kind of like Middle Earth’s equivalent of the Bible. But I loved it. In fact, it quickly became my favorite of Tolkien’s books. The depth that it gave to everything else I’d read was truly amazing. I also really loved the mystical elements, and the subtle Christian symbolism and cosmology. 

For the next year or so, I was really into Tolkien. I got a copy of the Tolkien bestiary and pored over it constantly, and also read a bunch of the extra histories and atlases that Tolkien scholars have written. I also read the Lost Tales, though I didn’t think it was as good as The Silmarillion (really, it was just an expanded and slightly more disjointed version of that book). I watched the old animated movie version of Lord of the Rings, and found it to be hilariously bad (though I did appreciate how Peter Jackson cribbed the part where the Ringwraiths attack the sleeping hobbits in Bree). I also followed all of the updates on the movie’s official website (this was before fan wikis were a thing).

I left on my mission before the last movie came out, so I never saw it in theaters. That was a major sacrifice. But I remember when it came out, because the soundtrack circulated all over the mission (as missionaries, there were strict rules on the music we could listen to, but soundtracks fell into a gray area). The last song, “Into the West,” by Annie Lennox, is perhaps the most perfect musical encapsulation of all of Tolkien’s work. Such a great song! It was in my head for months afterward—and indeed, it lived rent-free in my wife’s head for the next two decades. One of the first things I did upon coming home from my mission was watch The Return of the King, extended version, along with the extended versions of all of the other movies.

I never really got into any of the Tolkien-esque fantasy clones, such as Terry Brook’s Shannara series or the other epic fantasy books that were basically cheap knock-offs of Tolkien. There’s a really solid argument to be made that where Tolkien created the modern fantasy genre, his publishers ruined it by pushing all of their writers to follow a rigid formula based on Tolkien’s work. I don’t necessarily agree with that argument, but I think it makes some good points. Thus, for several decades, epic fantasy was either extremely derivative of Tolkien (such as Terry Brooks), or was deliberately trying to subvert Tolkien (such as Donaldson, or G.R.R. Martin, or Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Era I). It hasn’t been until the last decade or so that fantasy has begun to climb out of Tolkien’s shadow.

And yet, even though I can appreciate the need to get out from Tolkien’s shadow, I still prefer to read fantasy that stands upon his shoulders. Without a doubt, he is the greatest giant in the field, even several decades after his passing. David Gemmell may be my favorite fantasy writer, but I don’t think I’ve ever become as immersed in a fantasy world as I have when I was at the height of my love for Tolkien. Even his non-Middle Earth books were delightful, such as Farmer Giles of Ham and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I haven’t read his translation of Beowulf yet, but I did read the epic Arthurian poem that he started and never finished—and boy, do I wish he’d finished it! I’m a real sucker for some good Saxon-style kennings and alliteration.

So that has been my own personal experience with Tolkien. Without a doubt, he’s been a major influence on my own work—so much, in fact, that his influence is probably invisible to me. It’s almost like the water we swim in, and I think that’s great. There’s plenty of room for originality, of course, but we all stand on the shoulders of giants—and Tolkien’s shoulders are the highest and the broadest shoulders in the genre. His work and his imagination have truly blessed this world.

Moving this week

We’re moving this week, so the posts are going to be a bit sparse. I’m not going on hiatus, but I probably won’t post much else for the next week.

We moved from Orem to Provo (the next town over) when my in-laws left for their mission. They were going to be gone for 18 months, and they didn’t want to deal with the hassle of renting out their house, so they let us house-sit for them while we rented out our house.

That was back in 2022. They moved back in 2023, but offered to let us stay while my wife was getting her PhD (though the real reason was probably to spend more time with the grandkids). The arrangement worked out really well for us, but my wife is finishing up her dissertation and starting a new job, so it’s time to move back to our old house.

If all goes well, we should be living in the new house by the end of this week. It will probably take at least another week to move all of our stuff over, and maybe the rest of the month to get settled down, but the big stuff is all going in the next couple of days.

I’ll still try to write a little whenever I can, but the move is going to take priority. And since the writing takes priority over the blog, the blogging will be a bit sporadic for a while. I did my best to schedule some posts over the road trip to Canada, but I wasn’t able to write and schedule them all through the move. But if you leave a comment, I’ll still see it though, and do my best to respond.

Fantasy from A to Z: S is for Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson is, without a doubt, the most popular fantasy writer currently living and writing today. He is also one of the classiest and most gracious authors you will ever meet, in any genre. I’ve also got a personal connection to him, from taking his writing class at BYU.

Brandon decided to become a writer when he was very young. The way he explains it, the bug really bit him when he read Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. Depression runs in his family, and growing up, he always felt emotionally monotone and distant—until he read that book. From then on, he became obsessed with fantasy, both with reading and with writing it.

The way I heard Brandon explain it, that emotional monotone has been both a personal struggle and a great asset. It’s part of the reason he’s able to write so much, since where other writers tend to have huge emotional swings that affect their ability to write, Brandon is able to just sit down and do the work, day after day after day. It’s also part of what gives him an even keel that makes him such a gracious and generous person. Where other writers tend to get worked up on social media or join outrage mobs, Brandon avoids all of that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of him becoming outraged about anything.

Brandon was one of the last major authors to break into book publishing before the indie revolution began turning everything upside down. He broke in by researching agents and editors, attending all the important conferences, and networking with everyone who’s anyone in the genre. He also wrote a lot of really good books—as well as a lot of crappy ones. I believe that Elantris, his debut novel, was actually the sixth novel he wrote, and Mistborn: The Final Empire was something like the 13th. He landed his agent, Joshua Bilmes, from attending World Fantasy, and his agent eventually got him his publisher, Moshe, at Tor.

Elantris and Mistborn were good, but not immediate bestsellers. In fact, Brandon was on track to be an average mid-list fantasy author with a relatively unremarkable career, until Robert Jordan died, leaving the Wheel of Time unfinished. By that point, a lot of readers felt frustrated with the series and used his death as an opportunity to write scathing screeds about how it had gone off of the rails and grown far too bloated and large. But Brandon was much more classy and gracious than that, and wrote a tribute to the man instead, praising his work and the impact it had had on his life. When Robert Jordan’s widow read Brandon’s post, she decided that he was the one who should finish the Wheel of Time.

Personally, I’m not a huge Wheel of Time fan. I read the first three books and enjoyed them, but I got lost midway through the fourth book. My wife read them all and feels like the series is overrated, and I generally trust her judgment. But I can appreciate how a lot of people really love the series—and really, there is a lot to love. Just because it isn’t to my personal taste doesn’t mean that it isn’t good. 

My friends who are Wheel of Time fans tell me that Brandon not only finished the series—he rescued it. Apparently, the last three books rejuvenated the series, wrapping things up in an incredibly satisfying way. Of course, Brandon would defer and say that it wasn’t his genius that turned the series around, but Robert Jordan’s original vision and the detailed notes and outlines that Brandon followed. But there’s no denying that Brandon really stuck the landing.

It was around this point in the story that I met Brandon. I was a student at BYU at the time, and I had an opportunity to take his writing class. From the time when I was eight, I had wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t think I would ever turn it into a career. Brandon’s writing class changed all that, and helped me to see that I could pursue writing as a career. He also taught me the nuts and bolts of writing fiction, vastly improving my writing skills. I had started several novels in high school, but never finished anything until I took his class. And while my first finished novel was a disaster that I promptly locked in the trunk, my second novel attempt (which I started writing in Brandon’s class) ultimately became my debut, Genesis Earth.

(As a side note, my wife was also in that ‘08 class with Brandon Sanderson, though we didn’t actually meet each other until almost a decade later when we matched on Mutual. She also started a writing group with her college roommate, who won the Writers of the Future and married into Brandon Sanderson’s writing group. Our writing group has also got one of Brandon’s college roommates.)

Brandon’s success with Wheel of Time was what catapulted Brandon from a midlist author to a bestselling phenomenon. But even then, if he wrote at the same slow pace as most other fantasy authors, he would have forever been known as “the guy who finished Wheel of Time.” Instead, he became famous for writing and publishing massive +300k word doorstopper tomes at an unprecedented rate, leading fans to joke about his writing super powers. Then the pandemic happened, and he wrote four “secret” novels with all of the extra time he had from not traveling anywhere. The fans went crazy, and his kickstarter blew everything out of the water.

I haven’t read all of Brandon’s books. I really loved the Mistborn era I books, and the first Stormlight Archive book was good, but my favorite is Emperor’s Soul, because I think that Brandon is at his best when he writes shorter novels rather than the massive +300k word doorstopper tomes. In my experience, Brandon is a 3-star author who writes 5-star endings. His writing tends to meander, especially in the early middle, but around the 3/4ths mark there’s usually a twist that brings things together, and the conflict escalates consistently until it builds into a really satisfying ending.

Brandon is also known for his hard magic systems, which have become a signature trait of his books. Some readers feel that clearly explaining the rules of magic defeats the sense of wonder that a fantasy novel should have, but that’s not been my experience with his books. When I read a Brandon Sanderson novel, I feel almost like I’m reading a video game. Knowing the ins and outs of the magic helps me to see the possibilities for the characters to use it, and Brandon is usually really good at adding an unexpected twist, exploiting the rules of magic in a surprising yet inevitable way. This creates its own sense of wonder that really adds to his books.

Brandon also is known for how all of his books are tied together into the same transdimensional “cosmere” multiverse, though I actually think this is the least remarkable thing that makes his books so distinctive. For one thing, he’s not the first one to do it—David Gemmell also discretely linked all of his books, which blew my mind when I discovered that particular easter egg. For another thing, Brandon has turned his cosmere from a delightfully hidden easter egg and nod to the fans to the grand key that you must possess in order to understand and appreciate his later books. As a result, the cosmere is becoming an obstacle to new readers, even as his most ardent fans all swoon over the cosmere connections.

I think Brandon’s ultimate goal is to turn his books into a massive cinematic universe, kind of like the MCU. From what I understand, he was really close to signing a Hollywood deal, but it fell through at the last minute, leaving him back at square one (I don’t know all the details, though Jon Del Arroz did some interesting reporting on that). This is also probably why his books have become more woke in recent years. 

I’ve already written at length about that subject, so I won’t belabor the point here. But I really do feel that this represents a betrayal of his more conservative fans, many of whom turned to Brandon precisely because his books tend to be free of all of the gratuitous language and sexual content of most modern fantasy. Also, one of Brandon’s really great strengths during the gamergate and puppygate fannish controversies of the 2010s was his strict neutrality. While the culture wars were raging all around them, he continued to be his classy and gracious self, refraining from picking sides or wading into the mudfest. With the LGBTQ romantic subplot in Wind and Truth, that appears to have changed.

I hope he turns away from all of that. What the world really needs right now are books that transcend the whole woke vs. anti-woke divide, bringing us together and healing the artificial (and in many cases subversive) divisions that pit us against each other. Maybe Brandon will surprise me, and accomplish exactly that, just from the left side of the aisle. But as of Wind and Truth, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve reached peak Sanderson. Only time will tell.

Regardless, I will always be grateful to Brandon Sanderson for the things he taught me, and for all of his graciousness and generosity that he showed in his writing class. Without that experience, I probably would have pursued a different career, and not written nearly so many books. I also probably would not have married my wife, since one of the big things that drew her to me was my love and dedication to my writing craft. 

July reading recap

Books that I finished

Boomerang by Michael Lewis

The Iron Marshall by Louis L’Amour

Surprise, Kill, Vanish by Annie Jacobsen

The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson

Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen

On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray

The Man from Skibbereen by Louis L’Amour

Writing for Impact by Bill Birchard

Seven Things You Can’t Say About China by Tom Cotton

The Greatest Comeback Ever by Joe Concha

Books That I DNFed

  • Genesis by Henry Kissinger, Craig Mundie, & Eric Schmidt
  • Minifarming by Brett L. Markham
  • Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  • An ABundance of Caution by David Zveig
  • The Cancel Culture Panic by Adrian Daub
  • AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Qiufan
  • Resolute by Benjamin Hall
  • Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom

Back from the Great White North

We just got back yesterday from our second family road trip this summer, this time to Alberta for a family reunion. My wife’s grandmother passed away in the winter, and it wasn’t a good time for us all to get together (not to mention that we didn’t have passports for the kids yet), so we scheduled a family event for the summer to get together and remember her.

I’ve been to Canada before, but only to Quebec. This was my first time driving through Alberta. It was interesting. About as similar as you can get to the United States while still being a foreign country. Alberta itself feels kind of like a cross between Nebraska and Pennsylvania, with Hutterites instead of Amish, and more rapeseed (for canola oil) and alfalfa than corn and soy. This was especially true up in the northern part of the province where we were going, where there were also lots of little lakes, and all of the trees were high-altitude trees (aspen and pine, mostly). Even though it was summer, the air was pleasantly cool, which makes me wonder what the winters are like. Probably brutal.

At the reunion itself, we had lots of food and outdoor games. Had a big campfire both days and roasted marshmallows for s’mores, which the kids really enjoyed. There was also a LOT of pie, including saskatoon pie, which was a new thing for me. Saskatoon berries are kind of like blueberries, except tart, and they grow in large bushes a little like currants. We picked our own saskatoons for the pies.

Overall, it was a very good trip. About sixteen hours of driving, split across two days, so that wasn’t too bad. There were a couple of times where we had to change poopy diapers on the side of the road. There aren’t really any rest stops in rural Alberta, just roadside pullouts with trash cans for throwing away your garbage. Lots of cows too. We drove up route 36, which feels more like a state highway than a true highway. As far as I can tell, there aren’t any American-style highways in Alberta, except perhaps around the major cities. And the speed limit was 100 km/hr for most of the way (about 65 mph), so it was kind of nice to get back into the States where we could drive faster.

I didn’t get much writing done on the trip, but now that we’re back, that’s hopefully going to change. However, we do have a bunch of stuff going on. My wife is starting her new job at BYU, and also finishing up her dissertation, so that’s the priority right now. I’ll be watching the kids for most of the time, which limits how much I can write (though the family study room on campus is good for working while letting the kids run around). Also, we’re going to move back into our house in Orem over the next couple of weeks, so that’s going to be another big project. But we should hopefully be settled down before the end of the month.

Long story short, things are going to be crazy for a little while, but I should still be able to make at least a little bit of writing progress each day. The two big WIPs I’m working on right now are The Road to New Jerusalem, which I hope to finish before October, and the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling, which is more than halfway finished but is still a massive epic fantasy novel. No idea when those WIPs will be done, but for now I’m just going to keep chipping away at them a little at a time, and make more definitive plans later once things are a little more settled.

Fantasy from A to Z: R is for Races

What is your favorite fantasy race?

Races are to fantasy what aliens are to science fiction. This is especially true of traditional epic fantasy, which often features elves, dwarves, and other mythical beings living alongside humans. Every author has a slightly different take on each fantasy race, and many authors get creative and invent their own, but there are some common tropes and archetypes.

Almost all fantasy books include humans in some capacity, usually portrayed as somewhat more medieval than we currently are (to capture that yearning sense of nostalgia for a lost world or time that is a defining characteristic of the fantasy genre). They are almost always the default, meaning that if there are no other fantasy races, then the characters will all be humans.

Elves are typically forest people who live closer to nature than the humans, and as such they are usually more mystical and more magical. They are often immortal, and stand out visually by their pointy ears. There are, of course, many other takes on fantasy elves, ranging from Santa Claus’s primary labor force to the nasty little gremlins who like to steal babies, but most elves in modern fantasy are derivative of Tolkien’s elves, who are immortal, ethereal beings of glory more akin to angels than to humans.

My favorite take on the elves is probably from Tolkien himself. Perhaps I need to read a little more, but I haven’t yet encountered any other take on elves that seemed to do it better. Though I did appreciate Larry Correia’s trailer park elves from his Monster Hunter International series. That was hilarious.

Dwarves are much more industrious and mechanical than elves, and tend to live deep underground, where they mine for ore and treasure. They are short but stubborn and ferocious warriors, who tend to drink a lot and grow long beards (even the lady dwarves, in some accounts). Their preferred weapon is usually an axe. 

My personal favorite take on dwarves is the game Dwarf Fortress, which has so many ways in which your adorable little dwarf colony can die, including the “catpocalypse” where the cats adopt your dwarves as pets, then start to breed faster than your CPU’s cycles can keep up with them, so to keep your game from crashing you have to cull a few of them, resulting in their pet dwarves losing their minds and going berserk, causing other dwarves to lose their minds and go berserk, and the next thing you know everyone in your adorable little fortress is dead. Dwarf fortress is… a quirky game.

Most traditional fantasy books will also feature a race like the orcs, who are inherently and irredeemably evil. I’ve dedicated a whole other blog post to orcs, so I won’t recount it here, except to point out that in some iterations, they aren’t inherently evil so much as inherently savage. Basically, the orcs are the barbarians of the fantasy world, providing your aspiring Dark Lord with plenty of mooks and cannon fodder. Occasionally, you’ll get a story from the point of view of an orc, or more commonly a half-orc. Expect lots of graphic violence from these stories.

Hobbits or halflings are another common fantasy race, especially for fantasy that is derivative of Tolkien. As far as I can tell, this is a race that Tolkien made up on his own, and his books were so influential that the hobbits soon became a standard fantasy archetype in themselves. The original hobbits were basically little furry-footed British people who prefer to stay at home and eat lots of food rather than go on adventures. Perhaps this is why they became so archetypal: they’re the perfect kind of hero to refuse the call of adventure, a key step on the hero’s journey.

Those are the standard races. You’ve also got things like vampires and werewolves, the fey, and various other monsters like trolls, ogres, and dragons (though many of these are portrayed as beasts and not as people, even when they can talk). There are also various hybrids, such as half-elves and half-orcs, usually interbred with humans. Shapeshifters are also quite common, and can make for some very interesting story.

Why so many races? For many of the same reasons why science fiction has aliens. It gives us a chance to look at strange and foreign cultures without carrying any of the baggage that can come from using a real-world foreign culture. As with most aliens, most fantasy races aren’t truly any more foreign to us western readers than the Japanese. But it can go deeper than this, giving us a chance to play around with things like immortality or magic so that we can ask ourselves “how would we be different if we had that characteristic?” Because ultimately, no matter the race (with the possible exception of orcs), all of the characters who belong to these races are still people.

Fantasy from A to Z: Q is for Quests

What is your quest in life? What is your driving goal, the thing that gets you up in the morning? What do you hope to accomplish before you go the way of all the Earth and depart this mortal coil?

Quests are huge in fantasy literature, because they resonate so much with our own lives. Most of us are not just merely existing, drifting aimlessly from one life event to another—or, if we are, there is something deep within us that yearns for greater meaning and purpose in our lives. Quest stories give us that sense of meaning and purpose.

I asked Grok to define “quest” in the context of fantasy literature, and this is what it told me:

In fantasy literature, a quest is a narrative framework where a protagonist or group embarks on a challenging journey to achieve a specific goal, often involving adventure, trials, and personal growth.

Grok then gave me a list of five things that all quest stories typically include:

  • a clear objective,
  • a journey,
  • challenges and trials,
  • some kind of character transformation, and
  • some kind of symbolic meaning.

One of the best-known examples of this is Frodo’s quest in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which is actually a subversion of the traditional quest story, because instead of seeking to acquire the object of the quest (in this case, the ring of power), Frodo is seeking to destroy it. 

The objective is to take the ring to Mount Doom and drop it into the lava, because that is the only place where it can be destroyed. 

The journey takes Frodo far from his home in the Shire, across nearly the whole length of Middle Earth to the desolate lands of Mordor, where the Dark Lord is gathering his forces. 

Frodo faces all sorts of challenges and trials, from the attack of the ringwraiths at Weathertop to the near-death experience with Shelob the spider. But perhaps the greatest challenge comes from the ring itself, which is constantly tempting him to submit to the Dark Lord’s will.

The story transforms Frodo so completely that by the end, he finds that he cannot return to his former life in the Shire. He leaves Middle Earth for the Grey Havens and sails with the last of the elves to the Undying Realms beyond the western sea.

As for symbolic meaning, the whole book is rife with it, from Gandalf as the Christ figure to the ring as a metaphor for the temptation of absolute power.

But what does an epic story like this have to do with us? How and why does a quest story like this one resonate so deeply with us? After all, very few of us have been attacked by giant spiders, or had a murderous experience with a ghost-like entity from beyond the veil. So why do we resonate with the idea of a quest? 

I can only speak to my own experience, but this is how my own life has resembled something of a quest:

My objective, ever since my college days, has been to make it as a professional fiction writer.

The journey has been more of an internal one than an external one, though I have traveled a bit for conventions and the like. I also spent a year teaching English overseas, not only to make ends meet, but to gain the sort of life experience that I thought would lead to better writing. In fact, I’ve taken a lot of odd jobs along the way, all of which have given me experiences that I’ve later drawn on.

As for challenges and trials, it’s been an extremely difficult road, because the vast majority of aspiring writers never manage to make a living at it. I’ve made just about every mistake that it’s possible to make (except writing porn—though some people would argue that not writing porn is the greater mistake). Overall, I can say that pursuing this writing career has been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life.

Has it transformed me? Yes, it has—and I know this because one of the major things that attracted me to my wife was my passion for writing, and the diligence with which I have pursued it. If I’d taken the path of least resistance instead of pursuing this difficult quest, I probably would have ended up as a morbidly overweight slob, addicted to porn and video games—in other words, the kind of person my wife would have never given a second glance.

As for symbolic meaning, I’ll say this: when my first child was born and I held her in my arms for the first time, I had the distinct impression that “this is her story now.” As a writer, I’ve pored over lots of writing advice, and one of the best pieces of advice I’ve received is to remember that every character is a hero in their own story. So when I had this powerful experience of holding my child for the first time, is it any surprise that one of the lessons I’d learned from my quest to become a professional writer helped me to understand the deeper meaning of that moment?

Those are some of the ways that quest stories resonate with me. I’m sure it will be different in your own life, but the main points are likely all there—which is why the quest story has become such a powerful archetype.

Of course, not all fantasy books involve a quest of some kind. In recent years, “cozy fantasy” has become something of a thing, where the story is less of a quest than a low stakes, slice-of-life sort of tale. Perhaps the most successful example of this is Travis Baldree’s Legend and Lattes.

Why do those stories resonate so much? Frankly, I think it’s because so many of my fellow Millennials feel like they have failed to launch. We came of age during the Great Recession and the Global Financial Collapse, saddled with way too much student loan debt. With all of the bankruptcies, mass layoffs, hiring freezes, and delayed retirements, many of us struggled to find meaningful work. As a consequence, many of us were forced to move back in with our parents and put off major life decisions like buying a home, getting married, and starting a family. Far too many of us have sadly put off those decisions indefinitely. And things haven’t gotten much better in the decades since. Indeed, our Boomer parents have the dubious distinction of being the only generation in American history to enjoy more prosperity than every generation before and since.

But I do think that is changing with the rising generation. There are a few key ways in which Zoomers are the diametric opposites of Millennials, and one of them has to do with this hunger for stories about quests. Just compare Epic: The Musical to Legends and Lattes. The contrast is stark. So as Zoomers come into their own, I think this subgenre of cozy fantasy is going to fade. It may stick around for a while, but I don’t think it’s going to be more than a tiny niche.

After all, what is your driving goal in life? What is your own personal quest?

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