By Epic Fantasy Novels
In 1939, J.R.R. Tolkien stood before an audience at the University of St Andrews and asked a question that still cuts through every argument about what fantasy should be:
“Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”
And then the knife twist:
“Critics have confused the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.”
Tolkien wasn’t making a casual point. He was drawing a line in the sand that fantasy writers and readers have been arguing over ever since. And in 2026, with fantasy shelves increasingly filled with books that use elvish settings to deliver modern political lectures, that line matters more than ever.
The Case for Escape
Fantasy, at its best, opens a door.
You step through and you’re somewhere else. Not a slightly modified version of your daily commute — somewhere else. A world with its own rules, its own dangers, its own beauty. The Hyborian Age, where Conan walks among the ruins of civilizations older than memory. Nehwon, where Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser scheme through the corrupt streets of Lankhmar. Middle-earth, where hobbits carry the fate of the world across mountains and marshes. The Dying Earth, where the sun gutters and wizards hoard spells they can barely hold in their minds.
These worlds don’t exist to comment on your world. They exist to replace it — temporarily — with something wilder, more dangerous, more full of wonder.
That replacement is not weakness. It’s not escapism in the pejorative sense — running from your problems, refusing to face reality. Tolkien addressed this directly: the people most opposed to escape are jailers. The people who sneer at fantasy for offering escape are, consciously or not, defending the walls.
Escape is toward freedom. That’s not Tolkien talking — that’s Ursula K. Le Guin, a lifelong progressive, a woman who wrote some of the most politically engaged science fiction in history. And even she defended the escape that fantasy provides:
“The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is the escapism of fiction? It is a desire for, an opening toward, a reaching for something real — something that is a deep and permanent reality.”
If Tolkien and Le Guin — a Catholic conservative and a feminist progressive — agree that escapism is noble, maybe the argument is settled.
What Tolkien Actually Said
Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories” lays out three things that fantasy does for readers beyond pure entertainment:
Recovery. Fantasy makes the familiar strange again. You return from Middle-earth and see your own trees, your own hills, your own sky with renewed attention. The enchanted forest makes the real forest more enchanted, not less. As C.S. Lewis put it: “He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all the real woods a little enchanted.”
Escape. The legitimate desire to transcend the limitations of your immediate circumstances. Not cowardice — aspiration. The prisoner thinking about the world outside the walls is not a deserter. He’s the only one who remembers that the walls aren’t everything.
Consolation. What Tolkien called eucatastrophe — “the sudden joyous turn” that doesn’t deny the darkness but triumphs over it. The moment when the eagles come. When Aragorn arrives at Pelennor Fields. When the ring goes into the fire. Not cheap happy endings, but earned hope in the face of genuine despair.
These three functions — Recovery, Escape, Consolation — are what fantasy is for. Not commentary. Not education. Not political instruction. Freedom.
The Modern Problem: Dragging the Prison Into the Fantasy
Somewhere in the last decade, a significant strand of fantasy publishing decided that escape was the wrong goal. That fantasy should, instead, be a mirror held up to the modern world. That the best use of a story about elves and magic was to explore gender identity, racial politics, systemic oppression, and the sins of Western civilization.
The argument goes like this: “All fiction is political. Tolkien was political — his work was shaped by his Catholicism, his experience in World War I, his horror at industrialization. Howard was political — his Hyborian Age encodes ideas about civilization and barbarism. So there’s no such thing as ‘apolitical’ fantasy, and anyone who claims otherwise is naive.”
This argument is technically correct and fundamentally dishonest.
Yes, all fiction contains worldview. Yes, Tolkien’s faith shaped Middle-earth. Yes, Howard’s philosophy informed Conan. But here’s the distinction Tolkien himself drew — and it’s the distinction that matters:
“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations… I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
Applicability means the reader finds their own meaning. Tolkien didn’t write the Scouring of the Shire as an allegory for industrialization, but readers can see it that way. The meaning emerges naturally from a richly imagined world.
Allegory means the author controls your interpretation. The story exists to deliver a message. The characters exist to represent positions. The world exists to teach you a lesson.
Traditional fantasy trusts the reader. Message fiction dominates the reader.
Tolkien had a worldview. Howard had a worldview. Leiber, Moorcock, Vance, Le Guin — they all had worldviews. The difference is they told stories first. The worldview was woven into the fabric of the tale so naturally that you could read for pure adventure and never notice it — or you could go deeper and find layers of meaning. The choice was yours.
When a modern fantasy novel puts a character on a quest and then stops the action for a monologue about privilege, systemic injustice, or the right way to think about gender — that’s not applicability. That’s allegory. That’s the author stepping out from behind the curtain to lecture you.
And it breaks the fundamental promise of fantasy: the door is supposed to take you somewhere else.
The Science of Escape
The sneering dismissal of escapism — “it’s just escapism” — ignores what modern research actually shows about what happens when people read fiction:
Stress reduction. University of Sussex research found that reading can reduce stress levels by up to 68%, outperforming walking, drinking tea, or listening to music. Just six minutes with a compelling story slows heart rate and eases muscle tension.
Cortisol reduction. Thirty minutes of daily reading lowers cortisol (the stress hormone) more effectively than most other leisure activities.
Depression. Habitual readers show significantly lower rates of depression and self-esteem issues than non-readers.
Cognitive benefits. Reading fiction improves neural circuit connectivity and cognitive performance. It builds the brain.
Empathy. Fiction readers show improved empathy and perspective-taking — the ability to understand other people’s experiences. (Ironically, the very quality that message fiction claims to promote is better developed by stories that don’t preach.)
Sleep. 39% of people who read before bed report better sleep quality.
Fantasy — escapist fantasy, the kind that takes you fully into another world — delivers all of these benefits. It is, in a measurable, scientific sense, good for you.
The people who dismiss this as “just escapism” are telling you that stress relief, mental health, cognitive development, and empathy are worthless. They’re telling you that the only valuable fiction is fiction that makes you think about the real world’s problems.
They’re telling you to stay in the prison.
“But All Fiction Is Political!”
Let’s address this directly.
Yes. All fiction contains assumptions about how the world works. Every story makes choices about what matters, who matters, and how people relate to each other. In that broad sense, all fiction is “political.”
But there’s a world of difference between:
A story where a barbarian fights sorcerers across a decadent civilization, and the author’s views about civilization vs. barbarism are embedded so deeply in the worldbuilding that you might not notice them at all — or might find entirely different meanings than the author intended.
And a story where a character in a fantasy setting explicitly discusses the problems with patriarchal power structures, and the narrative rewards the “correct” position and punishes the “wrong” one, and the reader is left with no interpretive freedom because the message is spelled out in neon.
The first is Tolkien’s applicability. The second is allegory — or worse, it’s a sermon disguised as a story.
Robert E. Howard had a complex, sometimes contradictory philosophy about civilization and barbarism, informed by watching Texas oil boom towns rise and fall. He never stopped a Conan story to explain this philosophy. He built it into the bones of the Hyborian Age and let you discover it — or not — on your own.
Fritz Leiber had sharp observations about urban corruption, class, and human folly. He put them into the fabric of Lankhmar so seamlessly that you could read Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as pure adventure and miss it entirely — or read them as social commentary and find layers upon layers.
Michael Moorcock was an anarchist who embedded his political philosophy into the very cosmology of the Eternal Champion — Law vs. Chaos as a fundamental structure of reality. But Elric’s stories work perfectly as dark adventure even if you’ve never heard the word “anarchism” in your life.
That’s the craft. That’s what makes great fantasy great. The worldview serves the story. The story doesn’t serve the worldview.
When a modern fantasy novel has a character deliver a monologue about pronouns, or stops the plot to explore how a fantasy kingdom’s power structures parallel real-world systemic racism, or features a villain whose crime is basically “being a traditional authority figure” — the worldview has swallowed the story. You’re not in another world anymore. You’re in this world with a thin coat of fantasy paint.
The door has been slammed shut. You’re back in the prison, but now there are elves.
What We Lost
Here’s what fantasy was, at its best:
A world with different rules. Not Earth with magic stapled on — a genuinely different place, where different things are possible and different dangers are real. The Dying Earth, where the sun is red and wizards speak in riddles and every valley holds a new wonder or horror. Nehwon, where gods are petty and thieves are heroes and nothing is ever safe. The Hyborian Age, where civilization is a thin crust over chaos and a strong arm is worth more than a crown.
Problems you can solve with a sword. Not as a metaphor for violence — as a relief from the grinding complexity of modern life. In fantasy, the dragon can be killed. The dark lord can be overthrown. The curse can be broken. G.K. Chesterton understood this: “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.“
Heroes who act. Not heroes who wait for permission, process their trauma, consult their therapist, and then maybe act if it aligns with their emotional journey. Heroes who face the darkness, draw their sword, and move forward — even when they’re afraid, even when they’re flawed, even when the cost is everything.
Stories that trust you. That drop you into a world and let you figure it out. That show you a complex moral situation and let you decide what you think. That don’t treat you as a student who needs to be educated, but as a reader who deserves to be transported.
Fantasy Is Not Dead. It Just Moved.
The demand for escape hasn’t gone away. It’s just finding different outlets.
Brandon Sanderson raised $41.7 million on Kickstarter — the most-funded campaign in the platform’s history — because 185,000 people wanted his brand of epic, adventure-driven, world-building-heavy fantasy and were willing to pay for it directly.
Dungeon Crawler Carl sold 6 million copies because readers wanted adventure, humor, danger, and a hero who earns his survival through cunning and grit.
The US manga market hit $1.06 billion because millions of readers — mostly male — found in One Piece and Naruto and Solo Leveling the adventure and progression that Western fantasy publishing stopped providing.
Royal Road — a free web fiction platform — gets 50 million monthly visits from readers who are 70% male, spending an average of 27 minutes per session reading adventure fantasy. That’s not the behavior of people who don’t read. That’s the behavior of people who can’t find what they want in bookstores.
The appetite for escape is enormous. It’s the supply that’s broken.
Keep the Door Open
Tolkien was right. The Escape of the Prisoner is noble. The people who sneer at it are — in Tolkien’s devastating phrase — preferring “the acquiescence of the quisling to the resistance of the patriot.”
Le Guin was right. The direction of escape is toward freedom.
Chesterton was right. Fairy tales tell us the dragon can be killed.
Lewis was right. Fantasy doesn’t make the real world smaller — it makes the real world bigger. “The reading makes all the real woods a little enchanted.”
The science is right. Reading reduces stress, fights depression, builds empathy, sharpens the mind.
Fantasy is not a vehicle for delivering modern political messages in a medieval costume. Fantasy is a door. A door to another world — one with its own beauty, its own danger, its own rules, its own justice.
The best fantasy opens that door and invites you through. The worst fantasy opens the door, shows you a glimpse of another world, and then drags all the baggage of this one through after you.
We believe in the door.
We believe in the escape.
We believe in the hero.
Epic Fantasy Novels — Celebrating the tradition. Finding the new. Keeping the door open.
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Sources
- Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy-Stories” (1947). Wikipedia
- Le Guin, Ursula K. “Some Assumptions About Fantasy.” ursulakleguin.com
- Chesterton, G.K. Tremendous Trifles (1909).
- Lewis, C.S. “Three Ways of Writing for Children” (1952). Desiring God summary
- Moorcock, Michael. “Epic Pooh” (1978). Wikipedia
- University of Sussex: Reading and Stress Reduction
- Psychology Today: Mental Health Benefits of Reading
- CNBC: Brandon Sanderson Kickstarter ($41.7M)
- Grand View Research: US Manga Market ($1.06B)
- SimilarWeb: Royal Road (50M visits, 70% male)
