# How important is escapism in SFF?



## Brian G Turner (Sep 9, 2017)

A comment in another post suggested there may be a modern backlash against escapism in SF/F. 

I thought that might be a very interesting discussion in itself. 

I've said previously that I much prefer a book to challenge me to think - it might be new ideas, a new outlook on the world or existence, or new experiences outside of my own. 

For me escapism is simply visiting a familiar writer who isn't going to challenge my boundaries, but can still engage me intellectually. This is probably why I turn to thrillers for that, as most are built around the principle of Stories as puzzles.

However, I expect different readers will expect different things - perhaps from different genres or writers.

How much does escapism play a role in your reading - now, and previously?


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## Montero (Sep 9, 2017)

Not being difficult - but first define escapism. 

I prefer reading books which have in some way energy and characters pushing back against what is dumped on them. Ideally I'd like to see some success. In real life you get the whole range of people and results between try/try not, succeed/succeed not. Stories tend to select a thread rather than covering everything....


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## dask (Sep 9, 2017)

I think it's how well it's presented. With such short lives we live selectivity must be taken seriously. Well written escapism is better than poorly written boundary bashing. Whenever I hear the phrase "challenging one's boundaries" I think of FINNEGAN'S WAKE or propaganda. Unless college credit is involved how bored do we really want to be?


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## Nick B (Sep 9, 2017)

For me, escapism is reading protagonists who overcome odds that would be pretty much insurmountable in real life. When I read, or watch a movie, I don't want reality, I want heroism.
Yep, that may be old-school and un-hip, but that's what I love. I want The Expendables. The Equalizer. I want a one-woman war machine wading through hordes of zombies. I want heroes and heroines, because, to be frank, real life can suck pretty hard. Escapism, for me, is about not being like real life.


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## The Big Peat (Sep 9, 2017)

I don't really see the point in fiction that doesn't involve at least a little escapism and I don't really see how its possible for fiction not to have some. I mean, no matter how hard hitting the subject, you're still sat down engaging with this created story in a safe way rather than engaging with real life itself.

I'd agree that escapism does seem to have become a dirty word. Like your books are lying to you. Like you're not smart enough to differentiate between fiction and reality. Maybe because a lot of prior works that are now seen as escapist reflect a slightly different view of humanity, one in which life is simpler and most people are nicer. I also think the darker view on humanity lies behind the idea that escapism is a bad thing - look at you running away! Of course, we live in a fantastic time for escapist entertainment... just people have to pretend its a wee bit more.

The thing is, I like to have that wee bit more.

In the same thread that pB mentioned escapism being a dirty word, I thought Toby made a very good point about a bit of range/variety/contrast making for more interesting characters. I think it makes for more interesting creations in general.

As such, that bit of confronting reality in my stories makes the escapist elements all the better. And a good streak of escapism makes the hit of reality all the more powerful. Stories where you get both are, imo, the best stories. I also think they're the most popular stories.

As a corollary to this, I'm cheesed off with the way people seem to treat only pain and suffering as being worthy and serious - that examinations of happiness, growing up, friendship and everything else with happy endings are escapism only.

Also - lets be honest - 95% of hobbies are escapist; just most of them aren't called on it.


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## DelActivisto (Sep 9, 2017)

It depends. I like a story that focuses on issues and makes me think about things. I despise "fluffy" books, where nothing really actually happens aside from a lot of explosions, fighting, and action, and all the characters and plot are just there as an excuse to have lots of explosions, fighting, and action. Not that I don't like that, but I also enjoy a plot and getting to know the characters. In order for me to feel something about a book, I need to believe the people are real. When things happen to them, and the closer it is to being realistic, the better in my mind.

So I also wind up liking some literary fiction, such as that written by John Steinbeck. But ultimately, the reason we read is for personal enjoyment, except for public schools, where you're forced to read books that largely make no sense, find the "deep, hidden meaning behind life," and write a convoluted philosophical dissertation on why you can't understand the book:







To be fair, I'm not saying we shouldn't do that. And there's nothing wrong with escapism, and it's why I still read. Because imaging you're on a dragon flying through the wilderness is so much better than reality.


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## Toby Frost (Sep 9, 2017)

To start with, I think Western intellectual society (or whatever it's called) is very much against escapism in novels, especially cheerful escapism. One of the main differences between literary and genre novels, I think, is that in a literary novel the hero is likely to be passive and have a miserable ending, where a genre novel will have an active hero and a happy ending.

Personally, I see no reason why a miserable novel should necessarily be more realistic than a cheerful, "escapist" one. Actually, I don't think that the term "escapist" needs to mean "upbeat". The First Law trilogy, for instance, feels escapist to me, just as a serial-killer story or a blood-and-guts war novel is escapist. The escape is to a world of exaggerated misery rather than exaggerated fun, but it's still not "real life convincing". In fact, I've read bits of "grimdark" prose (not by Abercrombie, I should say, who is a good writer) that reminded me strongly of this character:






I suppose that a novel written in deadly seriousness is less likely to feel like escapism for me. I couldn't call _The Shining _escapist, even though it's about ghosts. Perhaps also the closer a book (or set of books) get to soap opera, the more escapist they get. Also, some novels just feel serious: _Memory Sorrow and Thorn_ is classic epic fantasy, but it never quite feels like a jolly adventure, perhaps because the characters are too introspective and solemn. It might be that escapism requires a degree of irony or tongue-in-cheek quality, such as in some of Kim Newman's novels, where no matter the body count it feels like a sort of intellectual game is being played with the reader's knowledge.

Anyway, how much do I need? I find this really hard to answer. At the risk of dodging the question, I think I want to be entertained and engrossed more than to escape, as such (or perhaps being entertained and engrossed is escaping!). Often that entertainment needs a "light touch", although that doesn't mean it needs to be frivolous. What I do know is that I don't want crude moral messages or unconvincing "tough guy" stuff. I don't want to plough through three hundred pages to be told that invading other people's countries is bad, or to hear another bunch of cardboard cut-out mercenaries discussing s*** and whores around the campfire.


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## dask (Sep 9, 2017)

I was going to say before I saw your parenthetical note that I do equate being engrossed and entertained with escapism. To me THE SHINING was a cinematic escape. Being profound need not squash boundaries.


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## Ashleyne (Sep 9, 2017)

Speaking as someone who likes psychological horrors and thrillers, I don't read books to be challanged, to have my boundaries pushed. I read books to be put into the shoes other people who live more interesting lives than me, whether that be agonising or exhilarating.

Sure, it's good to read something that affects my view of certain situations, confronts me with things I may not want to be confronted with, but first and foremost, I read books so I can escape from real life. If a book doesn't contain escapism, I don't see the point in me reading it.


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## Jo Zebedee (Sep 9, 2017)

Very. But escapism to me is about becoming absorbed in a book - and that doesn't depend on its themes


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## The Big Peat (Sep 10, 2017)

Quite a lot of people seem to reckon that reading a book is inherently escapist. But are some books more escapist than others?


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## Jo Zebedee (Sep 10, 2017)

The Big Peat said:


> Quite a lot of people seem to reckon that reading a book is inherently escapist. But are some books more escapist than others?


No - it's personal preference. Characters I love, a voice I like, something that makes me think, de nada. Immerse me and that's escapism - for me that immersion has happened with light stuff,heavy stuff, horrific stuff, funny stuff


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## BAYLOR (Sep 10, 2017)

Escapism is high on my list of why I like to read. It allows me to forget about the world around me for a few hours.


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## Cathbad (Sep 10, 2017)

My first favorite author was Edgar Alan Poe.  My second was Agatha Christie.

Both authors dealt with mystery and the unknown, whether it was "what's around that dark corner", or "Who killed Roger Akroyd?". 

I find my escape reading about characters escaping (or not) dangerous circumstances, or puzzling out who the killer is.  I don't read any non-fiction, other than books that will teach me things - no political essays, no self-improvements, no how-to's.

If I'm not studying a biology or math book, I read fiction,  And I read fiction EXPRESSLY to escape reality!


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## DelActivisto (Sep 10, 2017)

So it looks like reading for fun in any sense is, at the extreme end of the spectrum, escapism. 

I am going to guess however, that we restrict the definition back to the book itself. In that respect, I say that total non-escapism is non-fiction, while total escapism is a book written purely to take you from the real world. It has little sophistication and does not encourage the reader to ask questions or think of anything, and so bacially has the intellectual depth of a teaspoon. 

Let's scale the definition back again to novels. Now the extreme end of the spectrum is probably going to literary fiction, which closely tries to reflect, mirror, and refract the objective world to ask questions, poke fun, encourage thinking and explores reality at point blank range. 

Like with most things, I enjoy the middle ground. A book that takes me to another world, lets me fly with the wings of a dragon, but also asks me questions, like "Is war ever just?" or "can we justify killing these innocents over here," or "is this political structure fair?" and so on.


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## dask (Sep 10, 2017)

Just wondering, would people talented enough to get published really try to write a story encouraging their readers not to think? Not saying it isn't so but sure seems a monumental waste of a genuine super power (writing a publishable story I mean).


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## Cathbad (Sep 10, 2017)

DelActivisto said:


> It has little sophistication and does not encourage the reader to ask questions or think of anything, and so bacially has the intellectual depth of a teaspoon.



I think that's a very rough description!  But, perhaps it's solely a personal view?

I find escapism in every novel I read - that doesn't mean they don't make you think, imo.  Nor are they necessarily shallow.


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## The Big Peat (Sep 10, 2017)

Cathbad said:


> I think that's a very rough description!  But, perhaps it's solely a personal view?
> 
> I find escapism in every novel I read - that doesn't mean they don't make you think, imo.  Nor are they necessarily shallow.



Its definitely personal which pieces of art strike an individual as shallow/hugely more escapist & entertaining than educational/pick your own definition for what DA was getting at.

But that there are pieces of art commonly regarded as shallow, that is having little purpose other than "kick back and enjoy", that I think is less personal and more objective. Ditto that there are genres of art that are commonly regarded as lending themselves more to this. I say art because I think its more obvious in movies and music but you can see it in books as well. I think the romance genre routinely gets rocks thrown at it for this - I have zero idea how fair that is - but 95% of everything ever described as a holiday read also falls under this. I think the accusation is levelled at a lot of  Epic Fantasy and Space Opera from time to time.

I certainly think its fair to say that some creators as not as concerned with being thought provoking as others.


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## dask (Sep 10, 2017)

How do shallow writers get published? Doesn't sound right.


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## Cathbad (Sep 10, 2017)

The Human Condition is ever-thought provoking.

I don't read Romance, so I can't speak to that, but I have *literally* never read a book that provoked no thought on the human condition.  There are a lot of books I did not like, but they still offered more than just "mindless babble".

I think it would be extremely difficult to write a novel that entertained, but had no other redeeming quality.

I have seen the accusation made on Space Opera, specifically Star Trek and Star Wars.  But the accusation, imho, is born of a prejudice against the genre.  Was the agonizing soul-searching Luke went through not thought provoking?  Was not Spock trying to overcome his despising of a forced mind meld not worthy of consideration?

Can you name a single novel in which one learns anything and makes no one _think_?

I loathed Moby Dick.  But the struggles of the narrator made me finish it - and I came away knowing far more about whaling than I ever wanted to learn!

On the screen, _The Exorcist_ was a mindless horror flick.  But the book presented the Priest's struggles against his own doubts.  I came away realizing the whole book was about a small amount of Good defeating a great amount of Evil!

The Star Trek novel _Enterprise _presented a unique race:  How the crew learned what the race truly were made for a fascinating peek into our own prejudices!

I'm sorry, but I cannot agree there even _are_ books that are "soley" for escapism as described above.


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## TheDustyZebra (Sep 10, 2017)

Jo said it for me. Everything I read is escapist -- it's not my own life, no matter what it is, and if I'm reading it, I'm somewhere else. It doesn't matter if it's SF or fantasy or mystery or horror or non-fiction, funny or serious or terrifying or educational -- if my nose is in a book, my head is in another world.


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## DelActivisto (Sep 10, 2017)

Cathbad said:


> I think that's a very rough description!  But, perhaps it's solely a personal view?
> 
> I find escapism in every novel I read - that doesn't mean they don't make you think, imo.  Nor are they necessarily shallow.



It was an extreme example. Like many extreme examples, sometimes there isn't actually a very good representational novel. That's also my interpretation of what 100% escapism would look like. I'm going to assert that most all books fall somewhere in the middle. It good business to realize that most people have a short attention span and lots of things clambering for their attention - jobs, wife, kids, hurricanes, etc. 

I have read novels that seemed to exist solely to, well, exist. They're terrible enough that I put them down. I doubt if a 100% escapism book, by definition, would even be readable, because it would logically contain absolutely nothing to do with reality.

Does that clear things up a bit?


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## DelActivisto (Sep 10, 2017)

I think this article more gets at what I'm trying to say. By definition, escapism has a negative connotation. It's the idea that there's something wrong with escaping, and that to be REAL literature buffs, we can only read John Steinbeck and Moby Dick. Pshaw. Any book can teach us a lesson, help us understand reality better. 

Further, "escapism" may really be more of an action word, and much less of a noun. I think it's rather an amorphous word, which could be why this seems like a challenging subject. 

Anyway, here's the article:

http://themissingslate.com/article/literary-or-not/

H





> The social and emotional value of escapism in fiction cannot be ignored just because it affords the readers an escape into an alternate world. In fact, by allowing its readers to become absorbed into the world of fictional characters, escapist fiction enables them to be more compassionate, something researchers believe stems from “the direct immersion in another person’s mind and body – that stimulates our empathic muscles”[1]


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## Dave (Sep 10, 2017)

The Big Peat said:


> Quite a lot of people seem to reckon that reading a book is inherently escapist. But are some books more escapist than others?


I think all stories are escapism to some extent, even biographies. When I read a story, I'm reading from another person's point of view, and the decisions they made are their decisions to tackle the problems they encountered. (That could be either the author or their protagonists.)

The challenge is if I think they are the right choices and would I have made them myself in that position. These may be problems I have never experienced myself, or would never experience myself, but they could just as easily be problems I'm very familiar with. However, if the story was too close to my own everyday experiences then I wouldn't find it as interesting, so those set beyond my own experiences are those I choose to read.

Those set in a fictional fantasy world, a future world or a historical world are by definition, beyond my own experiences, but equally, a different country, culture, or someone in a different profession, or a in different section of society would work.


dask said:


> I was going to say before I saw your parenthetical note that I do equate being engrossed and entertained with escapism.


It is personal, but I certainly do. If I'm simply an "observer" of events then I'm not engrossed. If I can imagine myself in that situation or that time period then it is much more satisfying (though I accept that historically and culturally, societal values can be different and take some understanding.)

If the story is fantastical then I still need to be able to suspend my disbelief. If I can't do that, then you have lost me as a reader. Those are the books I haven't finished.


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## Toby Frost (Sep 10, 2017)

dask said:


> Just wondering, would people talented enough to get published really try to write a story encouraging their readers not to think? Not saying it isn't so but sure seems a monumental waste of a genuine super power (writing a publishable story I mean).



As Peat says, it depends what you consider shallow. I know people who would see _The Lord of the Rings_ as a nothing more than disposable entertainment because it looks interesting and it doesn't relate directly to real life. I can't think of a book that encourages people _not_ to think (well, _Mein Kampf_, I suppose, but that hardly counts), but there are plenty of books that exist solely for entertainment. Graham Greene used to divide his books into the more serious works (properly depressing) and the "entertainments" (slightly less depressing). 

Writing any sort of coherent book is tricky, and that may be enough of an intellectual exercise for some writers. Writing something like a P.G. Wodehouse novel, which are surely pretty shallow in terms of meaning, would be very difficult. For me, putting in the references and jokes into my books is enough (the more serious stuff is as yet unpublished), and I suppose that deep down they do have real ideas behind them (actually, I think that comedy is better for discussing "difficult" issues as it seems relatively free from the code of silence about talking about "problematic" things, since nobody gives it much attention). I think again we risk saying that a "fun" book can't be an "intelligent" book by definition.


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## The Big Peat (Sep 10, 2017)

I don't think that hunting for the ur-example of complete escapism is useful in terms of establishing whether there's a spectrum or not, but I am going to throw out the nearest thing I can think of to it just to try and establish an example of a spectrum.

_Commando_.

Look, I defy anyone to come up with any meaningful moral from the movie _Commando_, other than Arnie looks good wearing little other than baby oil. Anything that might be considered of interest to the mind is buried under the wave of ridiculously unrealistic fights, survivals, dialogues... everything. Sure, a lot of messages enter the mind unheeded while you're busy laughing, but even there _Commando _doesn't have anything to say. It's not pro-any ideology, other than vague self-sufficiency, its not anti-any known country, the effects of the violence are glossed over... its just a set up for one guy to pretend to kill a bunch of people while making awesome jokes about it. I'm pretty sure more time is dedicated to Arnie paddling around in his speedos than is dedicated to talking about politics.

Compare that to say, _Heat_, and its questions about whether its really worth having nothing in your life than you're not prepared to walk out on in 30 seconds flat, the examination of the love we have for our partners vs the love we have for our friends, its shots at the cost of revenge...

I think there is a clear difference in terms of intellectual heft, in shallowness, in the amount you can get from each movie if watched for value other than its entertainment factor. I think it shows the existence of a spectrum.

I picked movies because I think they've got a bigger spectrum but looking at my book case, I'm seeing a spectrum there too. I think Robert Howard's _Conan _stories are designed to be a lot less thought provoking than the _Wheel of Time. _I think Terry Pratchett has more interesting things to say about the human condition than Raymond E Feist. Not saying Feist has got nothing, but he's saying little that hasn't been said before.

Entertaining doesn't have to mean shallow. But it doesn't mean not shallow either. I don't know what we want to call this a spectrum of - but there's clearly very different approaches going on.


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## dask (Sep 10, 2017)

The Big Peat said:


> Its definitely personal which pieces of art strike an individual as shallow/hugely more escapist & entertaining than educational/pick your own definition for what DA was getting at.
> I certainly think its fair to say that some creators as not as concerned with being thought provoking as others.





Toby Frost said:


> As Peat says, it depends what you consider shallow.



Sounds like shallowness and profundity, like beauty, is best left to the beholder's eye. Or put another way, anyone who disses his coworker's FNG country music does so at his own peril.


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## DelActivisto (Sep 10, 2017)

dask said:


> Sounds like shallowness and profundity, like beauty, is best left to the beholder's eye. Or put another way, anyone who disses his coworker's FNG country music does so at his own peril.



I'm sorry, but country music is always fair game - unless it's Glen Campbell, of course. *watches closely for incoming rotten fruits*


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## Vertigo (Sep 10, 2017)

I've always thought escapism is essential to any fictional book. As I understand it escapism is about escaping from my own life, at least for a little while, and that is what any piece of fiction does or should do for me.

Bottom line; I thought reading fiction was, by definition, escapism.


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## dask (Sep 10, 2017)

DelActivisto said:


> I'm sorry, but country music is always fair game - unless it's Glen Campbell, of course. *watches closely for incoming rotten fruits*


Yeah, Glen Campbell's pretty cool. Great guitar picker.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 10, 2017)

R


Cathbad said:


> I think that's a very rough description!  But, perhaps it's solely a personal view?
> 
> I find escapism in every novel I read - that doesn't mean they don't make you think, imo.  Nor are they necessarily shallow.



When I read a book or story that enthrallings me , I tune out this world with its problems and hang ups. It's nice to be able imagine being somewhere else, being someone else and letting the real world fade into the shadows for brief time. THis is one of the few and real temporary escapes and respites  that we have in this life. So we might as well avail ourselves of it whenever we get the opportunity.


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## Cathbad (Sep 10, 2017)

The Big Peat said:


> Look, I defy anyone to come up with any meaningful moral from the movie _Commando_, other than Arnie looks good wearing little other than baby oil



A father's love for his daughter.  

One of the funniest scenes in cinema is when Arnie is being shot at with automatics.  Amazing how those flowers were stopping the bullets!


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## J Riff (Sep 12, 2017)

"An inclination to retreat from _unpleasant_ realities through diversion or fantasy."
_Source - a dictionary._
Ergo - 'escapism' is relatively pleasant by definition. 
But it was just: 'escape from reality'... then the question is:
Can reading non-fiction be termed 'escapist'?


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## Toby Frost (Sep 12, 2017)

I don't know, but there does seem to be a whole genre of paperback non-fiction books about the worst battles of history - Stalingrad, Kohima and so on - designed for dads to read on holiday.


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## The Big Peat (Sep 12, 2017)

I think that reading non-fiction can definitely be a pleasant escape from reality. In fact, I'm not utterly sure I trust someone who enjoys reading but has never found non-fiction books they'd real solely for joy.


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## Overread (Sep 12, 2017)

I think the problem here is that the question asked is how important escapism is and all we are getting in replies is a myriad of various impressions to the degree of escapism people find within fiction books - and general fiction media.

I think the key issue is to realise that fiction in itself is an escapism construct; thus any fiction book is going to include a degree of escapism. Indeed one could argue that many non-fiction books are a form of escapism too. I know many people who might not like fantasy, crime thrillers or sci-fi but who love to escape the modern drudge of reality by reading biographies; or technical manuals; or text-books or even journals.

Escapism is a personal thing and also whilst its a defined word, its a very unique series of things to each person; furthermore its not bound to a single element for any one person. Heck for some escapism can be forums and coming to post or roleplay and such. So you could argue that Chrons is a form of escapism. 

Of course one can quickly start to see that, in life, escapism from life is part of life and thus somewhat of a contradiction. You escape life by performing an action within life (since, whilst you're alive, you can't escape life itself). So if we take it a little too far we start to have to ask ourselves where escapism begins and ends; for which I suspect most will say something along the lines of after work/housework/chores/taxes/kids etc.... stuff is done. However even within that its not fully true; many people love to escape "home" life to their work - or vis versa. 




So I'd say its part of fantasy, but that the degree of escapism and what makes up escapism in itself is going to vary from person to person; and that even with the same person different things will evoke different levels of escapism. Further even the same thing might have different levels of escapism depending on their mood, situation etc....


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## Cathbad (Sep 12, 2017)

The Big Peat said:


> I think that reading non-fiction can definitely be a pleasant escape from reality. In fact, I'm not utterly sure I trust someone who enjoys reading but has never found non-fiction books they'd real solely for joy.



Only if it's teaching me something.


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## BAYLOR (Oct 9, 2017)

Escapism is fine  so long your visiting these places and not living in them full time.


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## Bashfull (Nov 1, 2017)

_"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"_ - Ursula K. LeGuin (and sometimes incorrectly attributed to Tolkein)


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## BAYLOR (Nov 1, 2017)

Bashfull said:


> _"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"_ - Ursula K. LeGuin (and sometimes incorrectly attributed to Tolkein)



That works


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## tinkerdan (Nov 3, 2017)

Escapist Fiction Novels are much more structured than reality.
Reality is Chaotic there are so many shades of gray that they include all the shades of grey.

But that distinction is one of the things that makes Escapist fiction so important. I think that a lot of people yearn for that structure and it's a great place to go to get away from all the madness of real life.

Things are Black and White; Good and Evil; Beautiful and Ugly. There are not so many shades between. At least that's the way it was for quite a while. Today a lot of the fiction starts to have gradients of all of these and comes closer to the chaos of reality.

However there is still the structure that the worlds are made from that have sets of rules that are strictly adhered to(often offered in the light that it makes the story more realistic; yet sometimes reality isn't that structured).

As a contrast it would seem that literary fiction tries to play off of the chaos to gain it's sense of realism.

I know a number of people who read very little 'fiction' usually meaning what is usually defined as escapist fiction. However when I look at what they do read it tends to be historical, biographical stories and I'm uncertain if they realize that those, even when not fictionalized, tend to be structured in such a way that there is order to that persons life or that event in history and in truth that's achieved by leaving a lot of the stuff out that would let messy reality crowd into the story and give it disorder.

The search for escape reading material is a way to shut down the chaos of normal life and bring in some order that we know on some subliminal level simply does not exist in real life.


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## dsri (Dec 14, 2017)

I think it depends on the audience for the novels. A young adult might want more of escapism than adult who might want a story that makes them think.


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## Paul Meccano (Jan 10, 2018)

For me, reading is a healing device. Not one of healing the past but certainly in the moment. immersion or escapism ( difficult to differentiate when talking about reading a book is about making me feel well in the moment. After all feeling slightly uncomfortable in this life, no matter how happy a person, is our lot as humans. Personally I love that I have to escape into a book to feel happy.

Life is perfect if you live it perfectly in a perfect world, does seem to be a modern thing, of which I am no fan at all. it seems more false than escapism to me. There's always place for escapism, just as creativity.


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## Brian G Turner (Jun 17, 2020)

I'd love to find some escapist reading at the moment, just light and relaxing and fun to read books. The trouble is, I'm a very fussy reader.


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## Ambrose (Jun 17, 2020)

Back in 2017 Dask wrote: How do shallow writers get published? Doesn't sound right.
Remind me of one of Piet Hein's Grooks, to the effect that good writers starve while bad writers prosper because writers that can't write are read by readers that can't read.  That's not an exact quote, but I don;t have the book to hand/


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## Montero (Jun 17, 2020)

Brian G Turner said:


> I'd love to find some escapist reading at the moment, just light and relaxing and fun to read books. The trouble is, I'm a very fussy reader.



In SFF you might try T Kingfisher Paladin's Grace. It is a romance - but it is a romance between two people who really can't believe the other one likes them..... it has a lot of not-entirely-light things - like a serial killer - but it is all handled in an upbeat kind of way. It also does an excellent job of handling how people who have a deep and passionate interest in something behave. Far too many books and authors just don't understand people who are experts and how deeply that pervades their life and viewpoint.

Other than that, truly light - A Cat Called Birmingham and You Can Take the Cat out of Slough by Chris Pascoe

Or if you like living abroad books, then Driving Over Lemons and the sequels to that.


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## chongjasmine (Jun 24, 2020)

I read fiction to escape from real life. Therefore, I like fictions like wheel of time where good triumphs over evil.
And tend to dislike fictions that are too much like real life.
Life is already hard, why read about real life when one can escape into a world of make-believe.


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## jbmwriting (Jul 3, 2020)

I personally lean towards escapism, but I feel like you can explore a lot of meaningful topics, even in a series that has consistently happy endings. I don't need all rainbows and butterflies, but that's the balance I like personally. Explore some real topics, see real character development, and then have the good guys win in the end.


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