…or at least, not entirely. Fantasy works may be separated into two groups – often overlapping and intertwined, actually. On the one hand there are fantasy novels (or movies, or TV series) that stage completely non-existent worlds and situations, tales that unfold in unreal – and often unrealistic – places. This is, for instance, the case of the ultimate fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien’s saga adapted in a movie series a few years ago; or, more recently, the TV series Game of Thrones, based on the books by George R. R. Martin. The link to reality is, in these books and movies, immediately cut off. Readers can usually tell at a glance that they’re meeting unrealistic characters acting in imagined settings.
In the other group is another line of fantasy. Characters gifted with extraordinary powers are inserted into common and ordinary contexts. This is the case with the Twilight saga (again, a screen adaptation: four movies based on Stephanie Meyer’s novels): vampires and werewolves living and rubbing elbows with common people until the main character, a common girl, falls in love with one of them, ultimately discovering their secrets. Obviously any superhero stories, from Superman to Batman and so on, are included in this strand. Even Harry Potter fits in here. Outlander has none of that. It is actually a series of historical novels about love and adventure, set in recognizable countries, initially Scotland. It is no coincidence that Scotland has hugely benefitted as a tourist destination from the saga’s success, welcoming for more than twenty years Jamie and Claire’s fans, who at first were just fans of Diana Gabaldon’s books, and are now fans of both the books and the TV series. Travelling to Scotland is actually one of the most frequent side effects of Outlander addiction! So, what about fantasy in Outlander, then? It is limited to a single supernatural strand in the story – the time travel through the stones. Everything else is rooted in reality.
People are actually real people. They are born and they die and they get sick with existing diseases. Seasons pass by. Places exist on maps. In fact, historical settings are accurate – wars, battles, 1700s political movements, historical figures are mentioned properly (okay, let’s forget about the slip-up on the ending date of World War II!). Even one of the main characters, Claire, who lives the extraordinary experience of traveling through time, does not acquire special skills or supernatural powers after it. So the one fantasy element that identifies the Outlander saga as a fantasy is the moment in which the Craigh na Dun stones work as a wormhole. We’re a far cry from pure fantasy, which stages completely concocted worlds or super-gifted characters. Seen in this light, a saga like Outlander has more in common with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a literature masterpiece adapted to screen in the early ‘90s featuring Tilda Swinton; or, more recently, with the movie Adaline. In both cases the supernatural event happens once. It consists of an ageing block: the main character, normal at first, suddenly stops getting older, becoming immortal – in Orlando's plot there’s also a sex change. But life around them – people, history, cities – remains real. Even this analogy is not adequate, though, for Claire (or Roger or Brianna or the other time travellers) do not stop ageing after having travelled through the stones! Of course, time travelling is undeniably a fantasy element. Maybe even a science fiction one, for the standing stones are referred to as conduits to wormholes – scientifically accepted time warps – and wormholes are considered science fiction elements... But we digress. The fact is that, as Diana Gabaldon herself stated, time travel in Outlander “is not supernatural; it actually has a physical basis of explanation. What's happening to Claire is not magic, it's not ghostliness: there's not really much supernatural to speak of, but there is a fantastic, 'woo-woo' element.” A “woo-woo element”, then: not the main essence of the story. Certainly very important – “the main conflict” in the first book, according to Diana Gabaldon, again: Claire's inner conflict, to leave the 18th century and return to her own time or not? – but not really something to support the choice of relegating Gabaldon's books to the minor shelves (no offence to fantasy fans! It's just a matter of in-store positioning) of fantasy novels. If someone happens to read one of Diana Gabaldon’s novels, picking a random page, or watches an episode of the TV series while flipping channels, he wouldn’t realize at all that he was reading or watching a supernatural story. Because nothing in Claire’s life is supernatural – save the way she's travelled from the1900s to the1700s. And that’s not enough to define these books or the TV series adapted from it, as a fantasy – with all due respect to the genre. PS: if you agree with this article, and you'd like to do something useful... Please do share it or email it to a bookstore manager! :-) © insideoutlander [English version proofread by Kath at www.gofoolproof.com] More article in English? Please press here!
