Fantasy and the power of storytelling

Before the TV set, before the feature film, before the serial and the book and the radio show, was the magic of story.

It remains enduring evidence of the compelling power of the human imagination to go and do.

We may dabble at space travel but what we cling to from childhood through senescence is story.

What is it? Where is it? Take me there!

I offer in evidence “The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, Featuring Unforgettable Stories by Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, G.K. Chesterton, E. Nesbit, W.E.B. Du Bois, Franz Kafka, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Vladimir Nabokov, Karel Capek, Zora Neale Hurston, J.R.R. Tolkien AND MANY MORE!” (Vintage Books Original, 822 pp., $25.)

How many more?

The editors — Ann and Jeff VanderMeer — provide 90 complete tales in all, plus an inspired introduction and illuminating commentary.

The VanderMeers hold a dramatic mirror up to life.

Sometimes it looks back at us and makes a face.

“So they set off up the hill arm-in-arm, the Saint, the Dragon, and the Boy,” writes Kenneth Grahame in his timeless “The Reluctant Dragon” (1898). “The lights in the little village began to go out; but there were stars, and a late moon, as they climbed to the Downs together. And, as they turned the last corner and disappeared from view, snatches of an old song were borne back on the night-breeze. I can’t be certain which of them was singing, but I think it was the Dragon!”

Don’t be daunted by the wide variety and colorful flamboyance of these insistently ambitious and thoughtful stories.

We are captured and taken aside by experts to notice life.

These great writers remind us again and again that the way to wisdom is not a march.

No no no.

Friends and neighbors, I’m here to tell you flat-out:

It is a parade.

Bill Ruehlmann is professor emeritus of journalism/ communications at Virginia Wesleyan University.