Can a Humanist Write Fantasy in Good Conscience?



The Goddess Durga

The Highest-Mother-Who-Has-No-Name
with her star nurseries

      















When I first started this self-publishing effort, I happened to make the acquaintance of an indie author who was a convinced atheist.  This writer abjured fantasy in all forms because of the underlying premise of magic, which assumes a spiritual foundation not grounded in science.  This writer would read science fiction, but  only if it omitted all non-material assumptions.  Since then, I've encountered other atheists who seem to feel the same way.  The most convinced atheist is a fullblown materialist and simply can't allow for anything unexplainable by science.

        Those of you who may have followed this blog since its early days will remember that I'm a humanist. Humanists are by definition supposed to be atheists, but I reject that appellation because my view is more that of the agnostic -- I reject the notion that it's possible to know anything about god or gods, but I leave the possibility open that something beyond the explanatory ability of science might exist.  

       So how does one define belief?  I define it as conviction without proof.  A convinced religionist "believes" that he/she knows the truth, but the fact is that there is no way to prove if that person is right.  A convinced atheist "believes" there is nothing spiritual anywhere, but he/she has no proof, either.  That's why I reject dogmatism (of either the religious or the atheistic variety) and view it as the source of countable wars and evil acts committed against the best principles of right behavior (what I call the Right Way) that are embedded (along with the capacity for evil) in the human consciousness.

       I see humanity as having the capacity to fix things on their own without the intervention of gods, and that is what I mean by humanist. However, while many humanists are atheists, I call myself a spiritual humanist.  I simply state that you cannot know the truth about what might be beyond the ken of science.  Therefore, I have no problem with belief in itself.  My problem is  with those who believe so strongly in their rectitude that they want to force their belief on the whole world,  either through conversion (under corecion if necessary) or by  eliminating those damned recalcitrant sinners, individually or through warfare.

       Consequently, I can enjoy fantasy -- stories with spiritual or magic elements in them -- and I can write such stories.  (And I want to add parenthetically that I realize not all atheists reject fantasy; some simply accept the role of the imagination in human endeavors, suspend disbelief, and enjoy themselves.)  All of my books include some spiritual elements.  I can write in The Termite Queen about a future history of Earth that has rejected religion and lives by the humanist Mythmaker principles, but in the same book I can write about a termite planet that has Seers who are in touch with a Mother Goddess who lives among the stars.  And I can conclude that book with references to Christianity, which I think not everybody who has read the book has recognized.  Kwi'ga'ga'tei the Seer takes the sins of the universe on herself (TheWound That Will Not Heal) and atones for them.  The myths of all religions can be adapted for many purposes.

       Similarly, in the series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, I retell (among other epics) the Song of Roland.  When I was rereading it in preparation for adapting it, I was struck by how in medieval times both the Christians and the Saracens called each other infidel and how we're still fighting that useless war today -- a war over disparate "truths" neither of which can ever be proven.  So I made the Marcher Shshi and the People of the Cave to be at war with each other over the "truth" of whether the Highest Mother lives in the sky or in the ground.  In the beginning Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer is rather shocked, because he has never encountered any form of worship other than of the Sky Mother, but as time passes, he comes to realize that it doesn't matter which way you perceive the Goddess -- what matters is the way you behave toward your fellow "humans" and how you honor the principle for which the Goddess stands -- in a termite context, the rare and beautiful procreative principle.  I think all this is quite pertinent to our own sad times. 

       My WIP The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars is much more a work of literary science fiction than it is a fantasy and it explores the nature of the humanist future of Earth more fully than I had space to do in The Termite Queen.  But even in MWFB there are elements of fantasy.  We see how religion has evolved into remnant communities that are sanctioned by EarthGov as long as they keep their worship private and don't proselytize.  In some cases Enclaves are chartered by EarthGov, in which communities of religionist believers can operate openly, again as long as they remain within the Enclave boundaries and keep the rules established in their charters. 
       However, I also investigate what might exist in the unexplored reaches of space.  Could there be something unexplainable out there, something that might not want us entering its domain?  Or is the entity only a figment of a disturbed mind?  This is mostly developed much later in the book, but I do have one reader of my unfinished opus who really likes the book but who, as an atheist, has complained that he would perfer I stuck to the scientific, no matter how fanciful my science is, and omit anything spiritual.  Well, I can't do that.  The concept of the spiritual is deeply embedded in the psychology of the intelligent being, and much of the wonder that exists in our lives comes from things we can't explain. 

       I constructed my future history around a group of 20 ethical precepts called the Mythmaker Precepts.  You can read my earlier posts on the topic here under the label Mythmakers in the sidebar, but it's best to start with the first one, Who Are the Mythmakers and Why Do They Matter? and then proceed through the series. The instinctive impulse toward belief  is embodied in the myths that humans devised to explain the world in a time less versed in scientific methodology.  I see fantasy as modern myth (I've stated elsewhere that most significant fiction has an element of fantasy within it [see Defining Fantasy according to TermiteWriter]).  Those myths become metaphors for important moral and ethical considerations; they clothe the deepest insights of modern man in wonder and give those insights a psychological and emotional foundation.  They can teach us and move us and appeal to our deepest selves.

Virgin Mary, Folk Art, Peru
19th century
http://www.arttoartpalettejournal.com/2011/04/exhibit-is-a-us-first/

      

Mythmakers: Some Responses to a Comment

       I've had some interesting comments by Neil Aplin on the earlier Mythmaker posts (see the comments here) and I need to respond, so here goes!  It was about time I wrote a new Mythmaker post!  This is rather hastily composed, but I'm going to post it today anyway (without a serious proofread).

       Mr. Aplin writes: "Just because man’s internal sense of right and wrong doesn't preclude the supernatural, it doesn't necessarily mean that the supernatural must therefore exist." 
       My response: Neither I nor the Mythmakers say that man's ability to discern what is right proves the existence of god or the spiritual, only that there can be no proof that god or the spiritual doesn't exist. That is Precepts No. 1 ("No one can know deity; neither can it be proven that it does not exist")
and 3 ("Since the purpose of deity for humans, or even whether it had a purpose for humans, is unknowable, it is incumbent upon humans to look within themselves and find the way to right action"). 
       I refuse to be a full-blown atheist, because I think a lot of them to be just as closed-minded and bigoted as the most hot-headed religionists. I find Richard Dawkins to be like that.  I don't even particularly like the term "agnostic."  These terms suggest fixed beliefs with no room for growth or development or change or novelty -- the very opposite of scientific! It seems to me that there will always be something beyond what science can teach us -- beyond the Big Bang, beyond what came before what came before that -- but we will never know its nature.  Therefore, it could come in any form.  That's why  we can write fantasy.  A true atheist couldn't write fantasy because it would go against his belief in the supernatural.  It would be a travesty to have spirit beings or gods working miracles in a book.  A true atheist should have a big book-burning and get rid of every allusion to anything spiritual that has ever been written.  Throw Tolkien on there, because his elves cannot be scienfically proved to exist!
 
       Mr. Aplin quotes me as saying "Myth and gods are .... a truth, which the individual recognizes by some instinct built into the genes."  But the full text of what I said is this: "Myth and gods are not science; they are faith-based. But by that very nature, they can't be proved to exist; they can be neither denied or proved true or real. They can only symbolize a truth, which the individual recognizes by some instinct built into the genes." "Symbolize" a truth is different from saying they "are" a truth.  When symbols are used, as in poetry or literature -- or myth -- it gives us a deeper insight into what is reflected or embodied.  By "built into the genes," I'm talking about the need of the evolved human brain to explain the world in which it finds itself.  I remember reading somewhere that there may be a genetic component to this need.  Non-human creatures don't seem to be able to explain the world through symbols or to have a need to do so (well, bower birds do have a certain artistic capability!) 
       Gradually these primitive symbolic explanations (such as Zeus hurling thunderbolts) become replaced with scientifically provable facts.  But again, there is always that point beyond which we cannot go.  Therefore, we can write fantasy or construct mythic systems -- we can satisfy our need for symbols by embodying the unknown in our personal creations, and by gaining deeper insight through those creations.  I consider all religious writing to be mythic in nature, including the Bible (or perhaps especially the Bible).  I'm not against religious myth; I'm only against dogmatic religious institutions that proclaim they have the one and only Truth and want to force the entire world to believe as they do.
       So -- maybe infinitely huge entities exist, inhabiting a plane of existence or a dimension we can't even conceive of (see my short piece "A Little Laboratory Work"), playing soccer with comets and using the entire universe as a laboratory.  Maybe malevolent beings lurk out in deep space -- beings who don't want us out there (that's in my Man Who Found Birds among the Stars).   
       And maybe there really is a big Termite Queen (see at left) who fills up the sky with the mighty creative force of her belly, lays the stars from her ovipositor, and occasionally meddles in her creation.  I can have this Goddess talk to the Seers among those who worship her, even though Earthers have become humanists and don't believe in her or any other god.  Or maybe humanity believes more than they realize.  Decide for yourself after you finish v.2 of TQ!

This is enough for now.  I've only touched on Mr. Aplin's remarks.  I'll get back to more of them at another time.

Book Review: The White Goddess: An Encounter, by Simon Gough

       I’ve posted a shorter version of this review on Amazon and Goodreads, but for publication on my blog, I’ve added some additional remarks and examples.  In fact, this review really belongs on my other blog because it focuses on myth in literature, but I'm posting it here, hoping it will accrue more attention that way.

 

       I have sometimes thought that all fiction of merit contains elements of fantasy and Simon Gough’s The White Goddess: An Encounter is no exception.  The author, a grandnephew of the writer Robert Graves, calls his book an “auto-bi-fantasy,” a term that makes for an accurate description.  The piece is autobiographical, but it also inhabits fantasy worlds.

       Graves was foremost a Poet with a capital P, but he was also a novelist and a classical scholar, writing what I consider to be the essential distillation of Greek myth, entitled (appropriately) The Greek Myths.  He also wrote his own White Goddess, a book of poetic theory in which he details how poetry and myth are related (and I sympathize with Simon’s attempts to read that book: he writes, “It’s a bit like fighting one’s way through an impenetrable Welsh forest in pitch darkness.”  Personally, I’ve never managed to fight my way all the way through; I’ve mostly just dipped into it.)

       In both works, Graves sets forth his personal, quirky views of poetry and myth.  First, the poet must have a Muse, who can be a human woman who incarnates the White Goddess (the ancient female principle whose worship Graves believed to have preceded Zeus worship) and inspires him to great feats (he states that all genuine poetry is about the Goddess).  Second, he develops the concept of the death of the year as embodied in the myth of the Twin Kings, one of whom is killed at the Goddess’s whim at the winter solstice and replaced by the other.

       Gough’s White Goddess contains two fantasy worlds that arise straight from Graves’ familiarity with and personal view of Greek myth.  The Island of Majorca and specifically the region around Deya where Graves lived for the greater part of his life, palpably embodies the Golden Age of Greece, when gods and spirits walked the Earth in harmony, permeated by the archaic worship of the Triple Goddess but presided over by Zeus.  In this case Zeus is the mighty Graves himself, who emerges as an Olympian figure – intellectually and physically all-powerful, yet rife with the brutish nature of humanity, even as were the Greek gods:  he farts, sneezes and hacks, blows his nose on his fingers, takes out his false teeth at the table in order to clear out pips that are hurting his gums (in a memorable scene).  Graves is larger than life, overwhelmingly charming, straightforward, and supportive toward the ten-year-old Simon, yet always dangerous, ready to fling lightning bolts.  If one were to novelize Greek myth, Zeus might be endowed with those very same qualities.

       On a darker note, Graves also becomes the Minotaur, in the climactic chapter entitled the same.  Simon even approaches his final confrontation through a grotto.  It’s a powerful scene, mirroring the bullfight scene in Madrid, which occurs at another climactic point in the story:

 

       “ ‘And you knew!’ he bellowed, his monstrous dark forequarters twisting round in front of me as he grabbed the arms of my chair –

       “I nodded dumbly, paralysed by my awful vision of him, his huge head still twisting around, aligning the horns of his hatred, his fury, to my heart, my head –  ”

 

        The golden world of Deya dominates up to the point where the 18-year-old Simon leaves for Franco’s Madrid of the 1960’s.  This is the second, contrasting fantasy world – a dystopian cityscape of horrors – an underworld presided over by an unseen Hades (Franco?) with his legions of demon guards, and inhabited by grotesques whom Simon encounters when he first arrives alone in the city.  Is the porter of the pensión Cerberus, rattling keys to the underworld?  Is the legless beggar in his cart, whom Simon placates with coins, Charon conducting the spirits across the Styx?  There is even the requisite descent into the Underworld in the visit to the catacombs, complete with guide (Alastair), and Simon brings back a token from that place to prove he has completed the anabasis.  Of course, no exact correlations can be drawn here between myth and reality, but for me these implications add mightily to the weight and suggestiveness of the book.

       Strangely, while Simon’s vision of Margot Callas (the incarnation of the White Goddess herself – or is she, too, only a metaphor, a wish fulfillment?) is often erotic, there is no explicit sex in the book.  One is not sure with whom Margot has had sex, or even whether she has ever had sex with anyone.  Just what aspect of the Triple Goddess is she?  Aphrodite or Athena Parthenos?  Or is she the Crone, the Death-Giver?  Most likely, you could call her Hecate, the Triple Goddess, embodying all three aspects.

         As to style, it’s florid in the extreme, loaded with similes and metaphors which are highly effective but which gush out at a breathless pace that can be exhausting.  The book also exists at a high emotional stress level.  The characters never do anything halfway or with restraint.  Part of this is the point of view – Simon is so young and so full of raging hormones, expected to behave with a maturity he couldn’t possibly possess.  And the author makes heavy and obvious metaphorical use of the weather – the violent lightning storm in Madrid at a moment of intense passion, the sirocco in Deya near the end when the Golden World is falling apart. 

       I could give many examples of the use of metaphor in the book, but I’ll limit myself to only two.

       One of the most memorable moments comes when Margot is first revealed in her Goddess state:

 

       “Once they’d gone, I glanced around at Margot – but she’d vanished again, not physically this time – she was palpably standing there, facing into the sun from the step above me – but her face was sphinx-like, still, and so suffused with evening sunlight that the source of it appeared to be buried deep within her.  Some trick of the light had turned her eyes into liquid gold, their moltenness overflowing, not as tears, but as a tegument, a golden mask, set forever in that instant –

       …

       “Whoever she was, or said she was, and wherever she said she came from, the face I’d just witnessed belonged to another time and to another world.  Whether or not it had been a trick of the light, I knew that I could never see her in the same light again; there was more than one of her… and sometimes there was none.”

       One thinks instantly of the golden “Mask of Agamemnon” excavated from the ruins of Mycenae.

       In fact, staring into the sun is a noticeably frequent occurrence in the book; at one point Simon almost blinds himself doing so.  Who is not blinded by staring into the face of the Goddess?

       Another striking example of metaphor occurs after Margot has departed and Simon and Robert are walking down to the sea for a swim:

 

       “We were walking along the bank of the torrent now, in the deepest part of the gorge, the dry riverbed choked with elephant boulders and dead trees, strangely ominous in the silence of its violent past, the dripping limestone caves on the far bank leaking a deep rust-red trickle from oxidization, like menstrual blood seeping from the womb of the mountains behind us –

       “She was here – still – as she had always been!  I had to believe it!”
 

       What could be a clearer evocation that the Goddess inhabits and pervades all things, but particularly the body of that magical, ancient island called Majorca?

 

        To descend from the sublime, I want to speak of a major oversight in the Kindle formatting of this book: the lack of a linked table of contents.  It doesn’t even have an unlinked ToC, and it’s a long book (450 pages in the paperback version); if you lose your place, there is no easy way to find where you left off.  And I never got a real sense of the shape of the book – for example, whether there is any coherence or sequence to the way the author names his chapters.  What I should have done was to write down the Chapter headings and Part titles as I went along so I could make use of the search function on Kindle.  The word “Chapter” isn’t even part of the headings, so you can’t use that for a search.  It would be helpful to future readers if the publisher republished the Kindle version with a linked ToC added. 

       At Amazon, the book is available only on Kindle, although some Expanded Distribution sources for the paperback do appear there.  For a new paperback, you need to go the publisher’s website http://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/book-store, and that would require shipping from the UK.  It would be more convenient for Americans if the publisher placed the book for sale on Amazon.  I don’t find it in Barnes & Noble, either, although I’m sure any regular bookstore would order a copy for you. 

 

       For me, being captivated by both Robert Graves (whom I'll never look at quite the same way again) and by the function of myth both in literature and in our lives, this book had an unforgettable impact.  I will certainly read the promised sequel, and I strongly recommend the work, particularly for anyone who shares those interests with me.

View Max Cairnduff's review of this book here.

Some Words on Evangeline Walton and Narrative Style

       I've never intended to use this blog as a vehicle to review oither people's books, but today I'm making an exception because it introduces a topic I've been intending to cover in a blog post, anyway.  If you've been reading this blog right along, you know what a proponent I am of Evangeline Walton's writings.  Yesterday I posted a review of her recently published posthumous collection of short stories, "Above Ker-Is" and I'm reprinting it here:    

       According to Douglas A. Anderson, the editor of this posthumous collection, the first seven of these stories were written between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, when the author was between the approximate ages of 20 and 25 years, predating the 1936 publication of The Virgin and the Swine (later known as The Island of the Mighty, the first novel of the Tetralogy to be published).  The final three stories were written from the late l940s to the early l950s.  This collection is a good vehicle in which to observe the development of Walton’s style.  

    The first three stories, which are retellings of a Breton folktale about a city sunk beneath the waves through the actions of a princess who may or may not be viewed as an evil force, employ an old-fashioned, circuitous, first-person style in which a narrator hears a story from another person and then retells it.  It can be a priest hearing a confession or a folklorist recording the tale of an aged informant.  This, combined with a conventional depiction of some characters, makes the early stories not particularly memorable, in spite of some fine descriptive writing and mood creation.

       The central four stories can be considered a transitional phase.  In “The Tree of Perkunas” we start with a narrator who has reconstructed the tale from a friend’s letters, but then this narrator disappears and a straightforward third-person tale develops. In “Werwolf” the fictional framework disappears altogether, although the opening paragraph gives an omniscient narrator’s introduction.  In “The Ship from Away” the author reverts to the fiction of a third party (“Young Devlin told me this story”) who functions to reveal the fate of Devlin at the end.  “Lus-Mor” also utilizes the format of a person telling the tale to another; in this case the tale is first person and the recipient also has a small role to play at the end.

      The last three stories are quite different.  The narrative is direct, with less time spent setting up the premise and creating layers between the reader and the story.  There is a sense that the author has matured and is in command all the way through, knowing exactly how to move the story along and create a sense of horror.  Here are the opening lines of “The Judgment of St. Yves” (“I had this story from old Yanouank Ar Guenn, that aged fisherman whose years must number nearly a hundred now”) or of “The Tree of Perkunas” (“It was from the last letter of my friend, Serghei Zudin, that I pieced together this story … ”) Compare the opening lines of “At the End of the Corridor” (“Whenever Philip Martin felt like being funny he would say that he was a professional grave-robber”) or of “The Other One” (“I should have locked the door.  You can’t drag a solid body through a locked door.”)  The endings of these last three tales are equally strong.  They are the sort of story that grabs the reader and then remains in the mind.

       It’s too bad Evangeline Walton didn’t return to the Ker-Is folktales after she had developed the approach presented in The Island of the Mighty (what a difference a few short years can make!)  In that novel, the peculiarly bizarre magic and the powerful characters of the Mabinogion myths are reworked with such realism that the reader is held spellbound.  That in this reviewer’s opinion is the way myth should be retold!  This being said, however, there is a lot of power in the collection Above Ker-Is and the book is recommended to anyone interested in myth and folktale, in the paranormal, and in horror fiction.

[End of review]

       My topic today takes off from the discussion of the presentation Walton used in her early stories.  I want to compare it to my own methodology.  I've always thought I'm pretty good at stories told by somebody else or through the utilization of a fictional scholarly framework.  Let's discuss the former method first.

       The device can be used to distance the reader from the subject.  In the Walton stories, however, distancing is not really needed; the characters are generic and non-essential and so it becomes something of a distraction or a complication.  In the case of my books, the latter half of "The Termite Queen" is the object in question.  I can't say too much about this because I don't want to play the spoiler, but I can say that I utilize the device of two people who are essential to the plot sitting around talking about something that has happened.  It's the only way to bring about a final understanding of the characters.  Somebody told me that it was too static -- that I was telling and not showing.  That's probably true, but it's impossible to do the job through any other means.  And it seems to me that, since in this case the action is psychological and not physical, the showing takes place within the context of the telling.  All stories are told by somebody, after all -- it's just that in some cases, the teller is more obvious than others.  So I make no apologies for my method.  I do confess that the story is overly repetitive, and for that I do apologize.  It's a case of the writer loving her material too much!

       Now to the second method: the utilization of a fictional scholarly framework.  From my background of studying and working on college campuses most of my life, I'm attracted to academic things and I was first intrigued by the form when I read Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" close to forty years ago.  The first chapter opens: "From the Archives of Hain.  Transcript of Ansible Document 01-01101-934-2-Gethen:  To the Stabile of Ollul:  Report from Genly Ai, First Mobile on Gethen/Winter, Hainish Circle 93, Ekumenical Year 1490-97."  Chapter 2 begins: "From a sound-tape collection of North Karhidish 'hearth-tales' in the archives of the College of Historians in Ehrenrang, narrator unknown, recorded during the reign of Argaven VIII." Not all chapters begin this way, but many do, and when I read all that, I was absolutely fascinated.  To me that framework gave the narrative a huge sense of reality.

      Now take a look at my novella "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder."  I do exactly the same thing -- I draw on government documents to piece together what happened on the planet Kal-fa.  I acknowledge a direct influence there!  Ursula LeGuin has long been a favorite author.

       That brings me to the series "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head."  Here the whole concept is one of an academic undertaking.  I didn't write the books, after all, even though I'm putting my name on the title page and the cover for the sake of convenience.  Di'fa'kro'mi wrote the books,  Prf. Kaitrin Oliva translated them, and they were first published in the 30th century.  That's why I'm including a facsimile title page, and that's why Kaitrin wrote a Translator's Foreword, explaining the origin of the tales.  How they came to be published ahead of their time, in our present day, remains a bit of a mystery.  Maybe Thru'tei'ga'ma the Seer could explain it, but I cannot!  I like to say, I'm channeling them from the future! (LOL, wink, wink, ;-) -- I'd better put in all that so you don't think I'm too crazy!)

       And the format is again that of somebody sitting around telling the story to somebody else.  The aging Di'fa'kro'mi is dictating his memoirs to his young scribe Chi'mo'a'tu, who occasionally interrupts with clueless remarks and questions that inject considerable humor.  I do hope nobody will criticize this format as showing and not telling.  Personally, I think it works great!  I think you'll find plenty of action in these stories, along with that humor that I mentioned, a good bit of serious philosophizing, and some opinionated rants!

 

Mundane Science Fiction - an Oxymoron?

This morning I learned for the first time about something called "mundane science fiction."  Here is how Wikipedia defines it: "It focuses on stories set on or near the Earth, with a believable use of technology and science as it exists at the time the story is written" and the article goes on to state (in summary) that there is no evidence for the existence of any of the premises of SF, such as FTL travel and communication, intelligent aliens, alternate universes, etc.  Therefore, "the most likely future is one in which we only have ourselves and this planet"; furthermore, the article states that "unfounded speculation about interstellar travel can lead to an illusion of a universe abundant with worlds as hospitable to life as this Earth [and] that this dream of abundance can encourage a wasteful attitude to the abundance that is here on Earth."

I couldn't disagree more!  I thought we were writing fiction here!  Most fiction -- even the most mainstream or literary non-science fiction is not totally reflective of everyday life.  The very idea of creative writing and art in general is to be creative -- to expand and enhance our perceptions of the human existence.  Tolkien spoke of the Sub-Creator, and that's how I like to think of the best writers.

The first people to create "science fiction" were sitting around a campfire shortly after the invention of language.  They looked at the stars and the seasons and the weather and the process of birth and growth and they invented explanations for these wonderful and fearful things according to the best understanding of their times.  They invented gods (the greatest fiction of all), and they invented myth, which enhances our perceptions of our humanity better than any experiment with molecules can do.  Today we may call this way of writing "fantasy," and in my opinion the borderland between SF, fantasy, and reality is where the most impressive creations lie.

If you want to write a story set on Earth, with science and technology as it exists today, that's fine, but you would do just as well to write a mainstream novel.  What "mundane" SF  seems to want to do is to eliminate or at least restrict the human imagination -- no mythmaking allowed!  In my opinion, the best Fantasists are writing modern myth.  Think what you can learn on a psychological basis from Frodo's final statement after he has endured so much suffering to save the world from evil, "I have come, but I do not choose now to do that I came to do!  I will not do this deed!  The Ring is mine!"  What about the mysterious insights obtained from reading about Ged as he chases his evil self across the oceans of Earthsea in the boat Lookfar, only to absorb it into his greater self when he finally catches it?

And if you want a more typical SF treatment, let me cite a couple of my favorite "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episodes.  One is "Darmok," where a race is encountered whose language is based on metaphor and thus, while the words can be translated by that improbable Universial Translator, the meanings cannot be comprehended without a knowledge of the myths of the culture.  Alone together on a dangerous planet, Jean-Luc Picard and the Captain of the alien ship have to communicate using their respective myths; Picard uses the Gilgamesh story.  And at the end Riker catches Picard reading the Homeric Hymns in Greek (in a "real" book, by the way) and the Captain explains, "More familiarity with our own culture might help us to relate to theirs."  Then in the episode "The Inner Light" a probe enables Picard to experience the life of a man on a dying planet and thus is able to keep the memory of that planet alive.  I have probably seen that episode a dozen times!  Sure, the science is improbable; no probe exists that could make Picard live that man's life and there is no such alien race that speaks in metaphors.  But there are universal truths expressed in all these examples.  It's not for nothing that the human species was endowed with the ability to suspend disbelief!

And one final word -- this business that SF creates a "dream of abundance [that] can encourage a wasteful attitude to the abundance that is here on Earth."  In other words, anything that leads a person to conceive of something beyond what is known causes us to behave like spendthrifts and waste all the goodness that the Earth provides.  Are people really so incapable of telling the difference between fantasy and reality that they have to be shielded from the imaginary?  There are lots of reasons why a greedy, selfish, heedless humanity is likely to destroy its home planet. I really don't think imagining the possibility that the grass is greener elsewhere is going to be at the top of the list!  In fact, many works of SF, including my own, present a significantly cautionary tale about the future.