Changes

World literature started with tales that would be now claimed by the fantasy genre. For a long time, fantastic tales were very much the mainstream of fiction, and only with the growth of the classic realistic novel, the fantastic, later on split into the fantasy and sci-fi, became "genre fiction". There is an incredible temptation - and appeal - in setting your story in a world that isn't - or doesn't have to - be constrained by laws of science and requirements of realism. And how much more appealing is it to believe that those other worlds are real - can be reached with a hand that extends just far enough, really here, behind the wall, inside a mirror, between the pages of a book?