Proper sci-fi takes a high concept – say, how a specific technological advancement might play out if taken to its most logical extreme – and uses this as a device to critique aspects of our society. It does not matter if the actual “science” is nebulous or unsound, so long as the story and its characters are grounded in some human truth. When it works well, it often proves prescient. It offers a warning of what might be – and what we might become.

Fantasy is the flipside to this. Instead of futuristic ideas, it leverages tropes of the past – our histories, cultures and politics – and reimagines them through a fantastical lens. All the knights and dragons, or, in the case of my book, The Wyvern And The Wolf, samurai, ninja and monsters (unapologetic plug), merely serve as colourful backdrops to tell universal stories. So, rather than swashbuckling escapism, great fantasy asks us to face the problems and injustices we continue to struggle with in real life – war, inequality, disease, classism, racism, environmental destruction. Take your pick.

One only has to wander through the streets of London, the American South or Australia’s cities to find old monuments to venerated heroes of the past still standing. Unsurprisingly, most of them are of men. And very few of these roguish characters would be considered true heroes by any modern benchmark of valour or chivalry. In many cases, they were responsible for suppressing native populations by the most brutal methods. Yet, there they are – the bronze busts of butchers, tyrants and murderers, overseeing the spot in the park where you sit down to have lunch.

This is not intended as some overly woke mediation on why we must pull down colonial-era statues, even if I would argue there is a moral imperative to do so. It is merely to highlight how history often presents us with heroes who were more like villains.

If fantasy still isn’t real enough for you, I would invite you to gaze at an elephant. Take a brief moment to contemplate just how alien its physiology appears to be. Or what about an octopus? A pangolin or a platypus? Or any of the other unlikely, otherworldly creatures that pop up in the most benign of Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries?

Now just marvel over the confluence of evolutionary factors that led to you – a bipedal mammalian primate – existing right now, bequeathed by your ancestors with the intrinsic dexterity to execute complexities, such as painting, playing the piano or writing fiction.

Yes, fantasy novels are full of many bizarre faunae, but are they any more peculiar than some of the denizens that occupy this planet? Recognising that they are not stresses the importance of preserving our strange world and its increasingly precarious grip on life.

When done well, fantasy allows us to explore a paradox that plagues humanity – the ongoing tension between advancement and atavism. By that I mean that, even as our scientific and technological prowess expands, we still find ourselves devolving into tribalism and barbarism. What’s more, the success of Game Of Thrones perhaps reveals our innate desire to be entertained by such conflict. How can we stop being motivated by conflict when it forms the basis of all our storytelling?

In his efforts to understand the awful, inexplicable silence of the universe, the physicist Mr Enrico Fermi theorised a kind of unknown immutable barrier, be it evolutionary, self-imposed or extraterrestrial, which he dubbed the Great Filter. Once triggered, it would act as a “ceiling” that curtailed any sentient civilisation from flourishing beyond the limits of its home planet, much less lasting long enough to make contact with another. I am certainly not the first to wonder if the pursuit of conflict is our in-built flaw.

If we read enough good fantasy, who knows? Maybe we will learn strategies for overcoming this. I live in hope. At the very least, it sure sounds like a cracking read.