Today's ponderable

[swan_tower]

I'd like to talk about portal fantasies. Or rather, I'd like you to talk about them.

By that term, I mean the stories where people from this world go into another, more fantastical world. Narnia, for example. Once upon a time, these seem to have been more popular; now, not so much. And if I had to guess, I'd say that's at least in part because of the way a lot of them were transparent wish-fulfillment: Protagonist (who is an emotional stand-in for the author, though only in egregious cases a Mary Sue) goes to Magical Land where things are more colorful and interesting than in the real world. And maybe they stay there, maybe they don't.

Talk to me about the portal fantasies you've read. Which ones stick in your mind? What was your response to them, both as a kid and now? Which ones did the wish-fulfillment thing extra transparently, and how so?

(Yes, I actually have a special interest in the bad examples of this genre. In fact, if you approach this entire question as an academic curiosity of the structural sort paired with a authorly eye toward writing a deconstruction -- not a parody -- of the tropes, you'll be on the right track.)

Portal fantasies. Talk to me about 'em. Good, bad, ugly, laughably naive. What's your take?

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Are there stories in which ours is the wish-fulfillment world for characters from elsewhere?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The proximate cause for my brain chewing on this was jimhines' review of sartorias' Once a Princess, which begins with secondary-world characters having taken refuge in ours. I can't think of others at the moment, though.

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

Peter David's Knight Life and One Knight Only sort of qualifies, with King Arthur being rescued from misty Avalon and being brought to NYC. Where he embarks on a political career of course.

I also seem to recall an element of that when the various characters from The Magic Kingdom of Landover finally make their way out of Landover and into Vegas, at some point.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Merchant Princes has a bit of that: women from a feudal America encountering the modern USA. And all the tech and wealth they get from us, since it's a two-way portal world. MP also handles languages naturally: the Clan has learned English, and Miriam has to learn other languages the hard way... though I think the third world speaks English, it being a parallel Earth.

Other points:
Time travel stories can be a form of portal story, e.g. Connecticut Yankee or Lest Darkness Fall. This may provide more male characters than the straight portal fantasies. Also something like Stasheff's Warlock books. Julian May's Pliocene Saga is a multi-character time travel portal story.

Japan has some number of portal stories: Twelve Kingdoms novel and anime (features: political not romantic, divine magic solves the language problem, limited two-way contact); Fushigi Yugi, Escaflowne, Mahou Shoujoutai (Magical Girl Squad Alice, brought over as Tweeny Witches *cries*). Female-centric, though in 12K Taiki is a male who's crossed and back, and the anime brings a male and female companion for Youko that she didn't have in the novel. Plus two very important other characters are males from Japan... though most of these are actually 12K natives who got blown to Japan as fetuses.

12K also deconstructs standard portal fantasy a bit: Youko has a rough time of it; Suzu is an actual Japanese girl who has an even rougher time of it (not being a ruler, she doesn't get the magical language facility); the anime companions include a girl who takes the whole fantasy portal scenario to heart... but *isn't* the chosen one.

Other portals: Rick Cook's Wizardry Compiled books (male), and yeah, vaguely remembered books where people got sucked into a D&D world, with dice rolling across the sky and real hexes. Oh, and the D&D cartoon.