swan_tower | Today's ponderable

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?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think Alan E. Nourse's "The Universe Between" could be called portal science fiction. It has a child traveling back and forth between worlds, but none of the wish-fulfillment I associate even with good portal fantasy. It also has our world be the "other" world, as someone asked about in comments.

So it shows our world from the perspective of the outsider?

It does, but only briefly. Mostly our world is at a "dimensional twist" from the originating world, so it looks impossibly disjointed and non-Euclidean, thus threatening the sanity of visitors. That could be the author's commentary, I suppose.

I'm tossing it in to your discussion as a contrast around wish-fulfillment, because the originating world thinks that the portal(s) will solve all their problems, and they don't. Also, the child's family knows he is traveling back and forth, which is unusual.

Adults being aware reminds me of the Green Knowe books, but I think that is drifting even farther from your specific request.

Thanks for starting a fascinating discussion!

Today's ponderable

Portal science-fiction

Re: Portal science-fiction

Re: Portal science-fiction