For me, the notion of “true fantasy” is about the concept of fiction speaking to deeper truths than fact ever can. Although THE MOONQUEST is not an objectively true story (nor, as a fantasy set in a mythical time and place, could it be), it is a story about larger truths.

In one sense, there is no such thing as objective fact. Even history — supposedly a delineation of facts — is always colored by those who put it forth. You know, “history is always written by the winners.” Even something as apparently factual as your birthday, falls on different days depending on which calendar you use to calculate it (ie, Jewish, Muslim, Chinese, Julian, etc.).

However, the human heart at its deepest levels always speaks truth. That’s where our most powerful stories come from. That’s where our truth resides.

I believe Jesus spoke in parables because he knew that the innate truths of those stories would touch and transform his followers far more deeply than could fact or prescription. I also believe that powerful, transformative and visionary stories — stories that speak truth yet free the reader to have his/her own experience of that truth — will soon begin to replace many of the self-help books now flooding the market (and airwaves).

Self-help books tell you what to do and how to do it. Stories, parables, fables and the like free you to interpret your life through them and thus empower you to make your own way, guided by the still, small voice spoken of in so many spiritual traditions. For me, stories — those we hear and those we create — are the ultimate tools of growth and empowerment.

Because THE MOONQUEST is a story about story, about a time when fact is represented as the only truth, I felt that the “true fantasy” tag line spoke to the deeper truths that underlie all stories, the deeper truths that touch our hearts and souls far more deeply than any raw recitation of fact ever could.

For whatever it’s worth, in terms of political parallels, I wasn’t even living in the U.S. when the story was written. (I’m Canadian.) And the earliest drafts, whose broad outlines have not changed at all in the final text, were penned in the mid-’90s, truly a different time, politically and socially.

— Mark David Gerson