My short bio, or profile, begins thus. “G. Wulfing, author of kidult fantasy and other bits of magic, is a freak. They have been obsessed with reading since they learned how to do it, and obsessed with writing since they discovered the fantasy genre a few years later.”
However, it was really one specific series of books in ‘the fantasy genre’ that did it. These books are now famous, but at the time I was one of few people I knew who had even heard of them. They are The Chronicles Of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis.
C.S. Lewis said that a book named Phantastes, by George MacDonald, ‘baptised his imagination’, and this ultimately led to his becoming a writer of science-fiction, fantasy, and other things. For me, C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles Of Narnia did the same. As a child, I was introduced to the second episode of the B.B.C.'s television adaptation of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe; and it was as though a light went on in my head, illuminating everything.
I already loved reading, but my exposure to fairy tales, legends, myths and fantasy had been minimal. I had no concept of fantasy such as Narnia showed me. It is not an exaggeration to say that with that single episode of that television series, my world was blown wide open. I felt like I had seen the sky after living my whole life underground. The very world around me had shifted, or perhaps I had shifted within it. Everything felt different. I knew that I had been changed irrevocably. And I knew that there was nothing more in the world that I wanted to do than go to Narnia.
I watched every subsequent episode as it aired, fanatically. Then I watched the adaptations of Prince Caspian, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, and The Silver Chair, as they aired. When I realised that the series was based on a series of books, I asked my mother to read them to me. She read The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, then decided that she disliked it – which was baffling, but adults have always been baffling to me – and said that she would read no more: if I wanted more, I would have to read it myself.
So I did. I read every book about Narnia. I thought about it constantly, and wrestled with the question of how to get there.
Yes: how to get to Narnia. As though it were a real, non-fictional place. Because, on some level, I felt that it was, even as I knew that the books are fiction. I still do: if you told me that Narnia does not exist, I would, on a rational, cerebral level, with my adult brain, have to agree with you; but part of me – the child inside me – would feel that I was lying. Part of me, deep down, knows that Narnia is, somehow, in some way, real.
Of course, I surreptitiously checked every likely-looking wardrobe I encountered, just in case one of them was a portal to Narnia. I checked everything else that looked likely, too. Every mysterious, magical-looking object, every strange door, every curiously perfect gap between trees. I sought out places that looked like Narnia, or looked like they could hold a portal to it. I fantasised that the next time I looked up from a stream, or passed between two large rocks, or stepped into a ring of daisies or mushrooms, I would find myself in that beautiful, perfect land. The land that held everything I had ever wanted; the land where I could be everything I wanted to be, and have everything I wanted to have. The land so far removed from everything I have always hated about this cruel, unsatisfying world.
And as the years passed, and no portal appeared, I reluctantly had to admit to myself that my chances of reaching Narnia were negligible, and I was wasting my time looking for an entrance.
The only way to get to Narnia was take myself there.
And since I couldn’t go there physically, I would have to go there in my mind.
I already went to Narnia vicariously, through the books themselves. But if I wanted more, the next best thing was to create it myself.
But I couldn’t imagine stories about Narnia by myself: that would be wrong. I wasn’t the author, so I couldn’t possibly know what the author’s characters would do. I could fantasise about meeting Aslan, and Peter and Prince Rilian and the others, but that wasn’t the same as being able to create whole adventures in Narnia by myself. I did not know, at the time, that there is a word – 'fanfiction' – for what I was contemplating, but the concept felt wrong to me. It would feel … fake, somehow; dissatisfying; because I would be writing about people and things I hadn’t actually experienced. (I am not disparaging fanfiction in general: I like fanfiction, and have written some myself.) I didn’t want to write fanfiction about Narnia – I wanted to go there. But if I couldn’t go there, and I didn’t feel that I could write fanfiction about it, the only other option was to write fantasy that was like the Narnia tales but did not actually feature Narnia. I would have to create my own world.
So I did.
And then I wanted to explore other ideas that the rules of my world did not allow for; so I created another world. And another. Some were well developed, some were fragments; – shards just big enough for me to tell a story on. I wrote short stories, and parts of stories, and outlines of stories, and poems. Then I wrote a first draft of a novel. And, of course, I read every book I came across that looked like it might give me a feeling that could almost compare to that which Narnia gave me. Some came close. The Lord Of The Rings, written by someone who I later discovered, to my delight, was actually a friend of C.S. Lewis, made me feel very much the way Narnia did. So did the Star Wars films.
And it wasn’t the same as being in Narnia. It wasn’t perfect. It did not fully soothe my longing; oftentimes it aggravated it unbearably.
But, in the same way that travelling to your destination can give you a taste of the joy of being there already – as you look at the horizon and know that you are drawing closer to where you long to be – as you pack and prepare and work toward your desire – so did seeking and creating other worlds help to make me feel less far away from Narnia: the land that held everything I had ever wanted.
There are now a thousand worlds I want to visit. A dozen or so, so far, of them are ones that I have created myself, and writing about them is the closest I – or perhaps anyone – can get to reaching them.
I am still a sad little beast, longing for a Paradise: for a world that holds everything I have ever wanted.
But so is everyone else.
I have realised that, deep down inside, and though most people would never admit it, everyone longs for a Paradise. And that everyone has a different concept of what Paradise, for them, would be. For me it is Narnia, or Middle-Earth, or something like it.
I have also learned that this powerful, powerful longing for Paradise – for something more, for a world that holds everything we ever wanted – is not a bad thing. Many people criticise those who they know yearn to visit another world, dismissing them as daydreamers and escapists. But, as Lewis and Tolkien and others would agree, the whole point of escapism – of fantasy itself – is to enable us to rest and recover from the sorrows and suffering of our own world, and to teach and entice us to build a better future than we can currently imagine.
If we can envisage a world that has everything we ever wanted, and has not the things we hate about this world, we can be motivated to make changes to what we have now. Escaping to other worlds helps us to return to this one stronger, and longing for something better helps us to change what we already have.
The Chronicles Of Narnia changed my world. It is entirely possible that everything I am now, I am because of Narnia.
I cannot quite flatter myself that any of my worlds will have the same effect on someone else. But if any of my stories eases – or aggravates – someone else’s longing for Paradise, or makes them feel just a little less further away from it … then I will not consider my time wasted.
Somewhere out there may be another sad little beast who understands exactly what I mean. If I am talking to you now, little beast, then I greet you. These words are for you.
Keep searching for your Paradise. For travelling toward a desire, even an unattainable one, is better than standing still and accepting a world that dissatisfies you.
