TOP TEN TUESDAY | Ten Reasons I Love SFF

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme for bloggers who like books and lists. It's awesome and is graciously hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt is pretty open.  It's all about enumerating our love for a certain special thing.

Ten Reasons I Love X -- could be a certain book, character, author, your indie bookstore, a fandom, a tv show, reading, a hobby, a genre. Honestly anything you want to gush about.

I've decided to list all the reasons I love reading Science Fiction and Fantasy.  So SFF...Why do I love you? Let me count the ways:

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1) Anything Goes

Literally.  Everything is possible in SFF so you can get such a breadth of stories - from a very brainy, noir type mystery set in a city that is really two cities (The City & the City by China Mieville) to romping about with the Greek Gods in present day New York City (Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan).  Because of this virtually limitless possibility, I believe that SFF is able to  encompass and embrace all the other genres.  I love a good genre mash-up and SFF is brilliant at this:  Alt History. Check! Fantasy Romance. Check!  Mystery set on a spaceship? Check!  It's all there. Wanna laugh, Wanna cry, Wanna be thoughtful? It's got everything your heart desires.

2) Escapism

One reason I read is to take a break from the mundanities and stresses of  everyday life and nothing is better for that than a good SFF book.

3) Spaceships

Do I need to explain this?  Space is awesome.

4) Dragons

Again, is explanation needed?  Come on, admit it.  No matter how old you get, Dragons are always cool.

5) Hidden Messages/Commentary via Spaceships and Dragons  

SFF is frequently used to make a point or ask a question in a way that becomes more interesting and sometimes more palatable when moved away from our everyday experiences.  Fantasy example: Many of us grew up wishing we would walk through a door and suddenly find ourselves in Narnia and BFFs with Aslan. Most of us (well at least me) didn't realize at the time that these books are Christian fiction that are telling the stories found in the bible and dealing with numerous theological questions but with talking animals and fauns.  Science Fiction is especially used to examine moral questions.  When examining government control vs. freedom, the questions involved in this become more interesting when you deal with them in a story set in a generation ship that is tightly confined and the last hope for the human race.  So many examples of this!  A YA example is Across the Universe by Beth Revis.  I actually had mixed feelings about this book but I thought the questions raised about authority and truth-telling in the book were lots of fun to dissect.  And I was sometimes surprised by my answers!

6) Series

SFF seems to have an inordinate amount of series storytelling which I love, love, love to a slightly self-destructive degree.  I love getting multiple stories in the same universe with the same beloved characters rather than one sad little book.

7) Nostalgia

I loved the simple propulsive adventure stories I read as a kid and it's nice to revisit that from time to time.

8) SFF readers?  They're the best.  SFF Nerds 4 Evah!

Need I say more? THE. BEST.

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9) Heroes and Heroines

Fantasy literature, in particular, embraces the trope of the everyday person who finds the hero or heroine inside them.  Frequently very literally. I love this trope and enjoy reading stories that have this type of journey.  AND I also love a good anti-hero which fantasy also has in spades.

10) Re-Reading

Because of frequently page turning stories and lots of subtext (see #5), I think SFF lends itself really well to re-reading and re-discovering!

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Any SFF fans out there?  What do you love most about it?  Is it the dragons?  Admit it.  It's the dragons:0).