ALT Severance between now and then, between here and there, generates the tension that gives fantasy its driving force, as a coiled mainspring drives a clockwork mechanism. It’s severance rather than the notion of ‘re-enchantment’ which seems to me key to the genre’s power today, when we feel ourselves severed from our ancestors by time, space and cultural practice as never before in human history, with all the emotional, intellectual and political complications this entails.