This is a bit of a departure from my usual fare, but I feel the need to applaud HBO for its terrific adaption of Game of Thrones, the first book in George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Fire and Ice.  (The TV series, like the book, is certainly intended for mature audiences, so for the legion of young children who read this blog, please check with your parents before you read or watch.)

People love to make fun of the superhero comic book genre, the fantasy genre, and the science fiction genre, both in movies and in books.  This is unfortunate, because all three of these types of fiction provide some the most fertile ground for the creation of words that, though different from our own in important ways, nonetheless allow us to reflect on the realities of our customs, cultures and institutions.  For some reason, these three genres are often considered to be “nerdy” or “dorky” and the typical mainstream reviewed will often make a snide remark about the intended audience for these types of fictions before launching into a review of the actual material in front of them.  (Take a look at this New York Times review of the TV series for a prime example.)  That these genres are taken seriously is a shame, because great fantasy, science fiction and superhero stories can be among the best ways we have of thinking deeply about who we are.

And Game of Thrones is great fantasy.  The four books in the series that Martin has published thus far (the fifth comes out in July) have successfully created a world which has some fantastical elements (summers and winters which last years, magic, undead folks who walk around sometimes and dragons) but which, fundamentally, is recognizable.  Game of Thrones introduces the reader to this world, its players, it customs and the rot which has begun to work its way deep into society.  Put simply, things are beginning to fall apart, and the book (and its sequels) are really about how people and institutions react when the things that seemed sturdy and ever-lasting turn out to be ephemeral.

The most potent symbol of this notion is The Wall, a giant structure of ice in the northern most part of the settled lands in Martin’s world.  Characters continually stress how huge and ancient the wall is, standing in its place for thousands of years, literally keep chaos at bay.  The brilliance of Martin’s work is that the slow disintegration of the wall and men who guard it mirrors perfectly the (rather more rapid) disintegration of the entire social fabric of the kingdom supposedly protected by the Wall.  Martin’s books, and HBO’s faithful-but-not slavishly-faithful adaption of the first novel, show the effects of this disintegration on a wide swath of characters, as well the (mostly detrimental) impact on the institutions of church, state and family.

To dismiss this sort of writing because it includes some witches, swords and dragons is absurd.  After all, Dante’s Inferno features a major character who is indisputably dead, and Homer’s Illiad describes the interplay of mortals and immortals. The question for great fantasy writing is not whether the fantastical elements make the story fit snugly into the fantasy genre (they do) but whether those elements help create a world in people who are recognizably human can live fully realized lives.  As another example, consider the super powers of heroes in comic books.  Of course these powers are fantasy, but the question is not whether the powers are “realistic” the question is if the characters relate to those powers in a realistic way.  So, for example, the way the world reacts to the mutants in the X Men universe says something important–or at least tries to–about how society relates to difference.  The recent movie X Men First Class had some problems (two thoughtful analyses can be found here and here), but the meditation between mutants who “looked different” and those who could “pass” wasn’t really about superpowers at all, or at least, it didn’t have to be only about that.

The truth is, serious readers of Bible should understand this dynamic perfectly.  On some level, it does not really matter whether an historical Abraham existed, or whether God really told him to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, as the narrative in Genesis 22 describes.  What matters is that the tension between religious and human morality is put on full and powerful display in that narrative, and that religious people struggle tremendously with that tension.  By reading the story of Abraham and Isaac, we have a window into that struggle, and way to think about the issues involved.  We have a way to talk about what it means to be a believer in the Divine operating in a human world.  That narrative does what great literature always does: forces us to respond, to imagine the world different, to imagine our lives and dreams and hopes in a different light.  This is why I don’t really care that much–on a religious level–if Abraham lived as the Bible says he lived.  I recognize Abraham: his passion for God, his terror at the meaning of that passion, and his willingness to sacrifice that which was dear to him.  And I recognize Isaac as well: his silence in the face of his father’s desires, his seeming befuddlement at the religiously inspired madness, his silence at the end of the traumatic events.  I ever recognize God: the need for proof of faith, the joy at seeing Abraham express that faith, but the unwillingness to force the issue to its logical conclusion.  That is the power of the Biblical story, and why it still speaks to me thousands of years after its composition.

The genre does not matter, the human story does.