Why I Read Sci-Fi & Fantasy

A therapist's guide to speculative fiction

The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, 1888

As a therapist, I read a lot of books in the fields of psychology, spirituality, and self-help. I also read classics, poetry, and literary fiction. But one genre stands above the others as my favorite, and perhaps the closest to my heart: science fiction and fantasy, also known as speculative fiction.

Traditionally, these genres have been treated with a certain highbrow snobbery—with a sense that there’s something immature, perhaps even childish about reading stories that couldn’t possibly happen in “real life.”

“Serious” readers, to the extent that they read fiction at all, are only allowed to enjoy literary fiction, which, today, tends to consist of stories about the complex emotions and relationships of people living in modern, secular, capitalist societies.

While I enjoy the occasional Booker Prize finalist, I can’t help but want something more. Perhaps it’s because I’m one of modernity’s discontents. But as a therapist schooled in depth psychology, I feel that stories that limit themselves to the narrow bandwidth of our present predicament are missing something vital.

Fantasy literature is the genre that connects most directly to the taproot of myth, to the collective unconscious of humanity, the part of us that remembers the old stories with their gods, magic, heroes, and quests. Like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, I believe that we as humans have an inherent hunger for myth, because myth connects us to what it means to be human on the deepest levels.

When we read about the goddess Demeter’s desperate search for her daughter Persephone, kidnapped by Hades and trapped in the underworld, we connect to something very deep within the human experience: the loss of innocence, a mother’s grief, the reality of trauma. The same could be said for the legend of King Arthur and his court of Camelot—we all long for a wise and just leader, one we can believe in.

By playing with themes from our mythic past—kings, wizards, dragons, magic, and so on—fantasy connects with something deep in the human psyche, with what Jung described as the archetypes of the collective unconscious.

I felt this powerfully when Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films debuted in theatres, between 2001 and 2003. I had read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as a teenager and loved them. As a dedicated Dungeons and Dragons player, fantasy reader, and general-purpose nerd, I very much inhabited the world Tolkien created.

But it wasn’t just nerds who were moved by The Lord of the Rings films. They swept through the culture like a divine wind. Seeing those movies in the theatre when they came out was a religious experience, and I mean that literally.

Our word religion comes from the Latin re-ligio, to reconnect. For myself and many others, the Lord of the Rings films reconnected us to a mythic past—not the historical middle ages with their religious wars, plagues, and oppressed serfs, but a deep past in which people lived with a spiritual connection to nature, where rulers were wise and just, and where there was always hope for good to triumph over evil.

Even the wars in The Lord of the Rings are fought for just causes, and those who fought and sacrificed their lives were imbued with a sense of dignity and valor. When King Théoden fell in battle at the Pelennor Fields, I don’t believe there was a dry eye in the theatre.

Contrast that with what was happening in the world at the time: George W. Bush had become president in a disputed election fraught with “hanging chads” and ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. Right or wrong, Bush was widely perceived as a dunce. The 9/11 attacks psychologically devastated, and then temporarily united the nation. But they were swiftly followed by the divisive (and Orwellianly-named) Patriot Act and by invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that were based on dubious pretenses and would ultimately prove disastrous.

Against this backdrop, who wouldn’t want to follow Aragorn, the archetypal image of a good king? (Even today, I believe Aragorn is one of the best models our culture has for healthy masculinity.) Who wouldn’t long for Gandalf, the wise wizard, to guide us?

While fantasy connects us to our mythic past, science fiction helps us imagine possible futures.

Take the example of my favorite sci-fi novel, Dune. (If you haven’t seen the new film by Denis Villeneuve, do yourself a favor and watch it on Netflix before the sequel comes out). Dune is ostensibly about a far future in which the workings of interplanetary civilization depend on a scarce resource, the spice, which is only found on the desert planet Arrakis. It can be read a number of different ways, but one of the most obvious is as a metaphor for our dependence on oil and the relationship between colonial Western powers and the Middle East.

But Dune is about much more than that—it’s about a planet on which water is scarce and how people survive on that planet (something we should really think about here on Earth). It’s about religion and the power of mythic stories to shape political events and inspire violence (think of the current situation in Israel and Palestine).

Dune even addresses the question of human potentials and how they might be enhanced by contemplative practice and psychedelic drugs—through the “prana-bindu” exercises of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, the mentats who serve as human computers, or the spacetime-folding abilities of Guild navigators.

Today, sci-fi and fantasy are more diverse and relevant than ever before. In the past, the fantasy genre focused mainly on stories derived from Western myths and history, particularly those of medieval Europe. Today, the field is far more expansive, with female authors, authors of color, and LGBT perspectives becoming more prevalent. Contemporary works of fantasy and science fiction draw from many cultures and mythologies, including those of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, adding to the range and overall richness of the genre.

I’m currently reading A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, in which an ambassador from a small, independent space station is drawn into the intrigue of the galaxy-spanning Teixcalaanli empire, one inspired by Aztec culture. At the same time, this novel explores questions around how human consciousness relates to new technologies, from brain implants that provide access to another person’s memories to cities run by powerful AI.

Martine’s novel is a perfect example of how sci-fi isn’t about escaping into an imaginary future, but about exploring issues that are vital to us in the present, and to our decisions about what kind of future we will create. As a therapist, I’m especially interested in how new technologies impact our minds and our culture, and in how we can make wise decisions about how we use those technologies.

Ultimately, speculative fiction isn’t about the the past or the future, but about the human psyche. While connecting us to the depths of our collective memory, it also helps us explore the possibilities of who we might become.

In case you’re interested in delving deeper, here are a few of my all-time favorite fantasy and sci-fi novels:

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Books of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (My master’s thesis was actually a Jungian analysis of this novel)

Dune by Frank Herbert

And here are a few more recent books I’ve enjoyed:

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladwell and Amal El-Mohtar

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar

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Thanks for reading,

Chris Cordry, LMFT

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