It is perhaps more surprising to think of fantasy as a literature which has come to maturity and is significantly mired in this century. Fantasy says that the twentieth century is wrong. Science fiction, on the other hand, says that the twentieth century can be made to work. In fantasy, there is none. I've worked up a four-stage model in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy .
Recognition follows, the moment of turning when the story or memory or land is recovered.
That world is the world out of which great fantasy novels offer a form of transformation. In science fiction, the Conceptual Breakthrough was the moment at which the old world was understood in terms of how to get to the next world. In fantasy novels, the corresponding term is Recognition. It is the moment when the characters recognize the Story they are in, or the Memories they have suppressed, or the true nature of the Land they must redeem. You're recognizing the nature of what has always existed, as opposed to breaking through into what is going to become.