Someone once wrote that Science Fiction describes the plausibly impossible, while Fantasy is about the impossibly plausible. Scifi also has the additional glamour of imagining the future, coming up with concepts that may seem outlandish at the time, but more often than not end up being true. Fantasy on the other hand is stuck creating worlds that by definition cannot actually exist. But here’s the thing…what if this might no longer be thew case? Science is getting to the point where it might very well resemble magic to the untrained eye. Elves, dwarves and orc’s might merely be flickering’s of overly imaginative minds at the moment…but whose to say that at some point in the far-to-near future someone might not cook up strange creatures resembling them physically in a test tube somewhere, thereby creating whole new races that may their roots in H. Sapien’s genetic mud, but are then branched out in different ways. Transhumanism, some might call it…or bringing what was fantasy into a no longer mundane reality. Imagine the theme parks of the future, where the Snow White really does frolic with the Seven Dwarves, the ren faires of tomorrow, where The Dragons Are Real! Pointy ears and all the rest… Come to Orc World! Kill three beats and get a fourth one for free! -Axes not provided…. (What the porn industry might go with all this…no, let’s not go there. I just had lunch.)
Scary thing, the Brave New World that might come. But when figments of the imagination can be turned into reality…what does that leave for imagination?
