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BBC FOUR Wednesday 12 March 2008The Worlds Of Fantasy –Through The Looking Glass Ep 3/3Wednesday 12 March9.00-10.00pm BBC FOURIn the last 10 years, fantasy has been one of the biggest forces in popular culture, conquering everything from books to interactive games. Readers, gamers and cinema-goers in their billions now regularly travel to the unique worlds created by writers such as JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling and Philip Pullman.The final part of The Worlds Of Fantasy asks how this happened and what it says about people. It also asks whether fantasy is the pure escapism many think it is – or whether it has something significant to say about the human condition.This film sets out to answer those questions, exploring the extraordinary and dazzling work of Terry Pratchett, creator of the Discworld series, which has made him the No. 1 bestselling British male author.Pratchett's childhood inspiration was the bible of fantasy – Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings, which kick-started the genre's explosion in the Sixties. As writer (and sometime member of rock band Hawkwind) Michael Moorcock explains, fantasy surfed the wave of Sixties drugs culture and was part of a new, radical way of looking at the world.But fantasy's increasing dominance hasn't simply been about escaping from reality – for the greatest writers it has, rather, been a way of reflecting it. From Pratchett's satires on bureaucracy and global conflict to the new, more politicised generation of writers including Neil Gaiman and China Mieville, fantasy at its best is about who we really are.With contributions from Pratchett, Gaiman, Moorcock, Pullman and a host of fantasy fans, this film shows how fantasy became a force to be reckoned with.