(Note: Whether or not you're a future optimist, try and go along with the world I'll lay down)
If in the future certain folks such as Aubrey De Grey and David Sinclair turn out to be correct and immortality will be a reality (fingers crossed), and If CRISPR and other possible future technologies will allow us to edit our own genome as we please after it has been fully mapped, and If a thousand and one more incredible things will happen in the future.... Do you think this will invalidate Fantasy? If all that is incredible in stories can be replicated in real life, will it lose its significance?
My own thoughts on the matter are that Fantasy would still retain its place in fiction, even if we could replicate every single thing within it. I think this because the narratives themselves will still not be replicable. You might be able to buy a sword that would have been magical in the time of Arthur, but you still wouldn't stumble across it by a lake and be given it by a magical woman who happens to be part of your mystical, magical journey. You might be able to... I don't know, grow your own dragon-knock-off, but you still won't be the dashing knight who saves the conveniently placed prince(ss) from it.
So what are your thoughts? And how would Fantasy have to evolve in a theoretical world where its aesthetics and worldbuilding are no longer exclusive to it, but shared by us? Feel at liberty to ramble.
If in the future certain folks such as Aubrey De Grey and David Sinclair turn out to be correct and immortality will be a reality (fingers crossed), and If CRISPR and other possible future technologies will allow us to edit our own genome as we please after it has been fully mapped, and If a thousand and one more incredible things will happen in the future.... Do you think this will invalidate Fantasy? If all that is incredible in stories can be replicated in real life, will it lose its significance?
My own thoughts on the matter are that Fantasy would still retain its place in fiction, even if we could replicate every single thing within it. I think this because the narratives themselves will still not be replicable. You might be able to buy a sword that would have been magical in the time of Arthur, but you still wouldn't stumble across it by a lake and be given it by a magical woman who happens to be part of your mystical, magical journey. You might be able to... I don't know, grow your own dragon-knock-off, but you still won't be the dashing knight who saves the conveniently placed prince(ss) from it.
So what are your thoughts? And how would Fantasy have to evolve in a theoretical world where its aesthetics and worldbuilding are no longer exclusive to it, but shared by us? Feel at liberty to ramble.