"The viewer of a Fantastic image hesitates, wonders whether what he is seeing is real, if what he is confronted with is indeed reality, or whether it is no more than an illusion. The ambiguity is sustained to the end of the encounter: reality or magic? Truth or illusion? Which brings us to the very heart of the Fantastic. In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know and recognise, we perceive an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar world. The person who sees the event must opt for one of two possible solutions: either he is a victim of an illusion of the senses - or else the event has indeed taken place, in which case reality is controlled by laws unknown to us. The Fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose a rational explanation or a supernatural one, we emerge from the Fantastic and enter the Uncanny or the Marvellous. The Fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event. 'I nearly reached the point of believing,' that is the formula which sums up the spirit of the Fantastic. Either total faith or total incredulity would lead us beyond the fantastic: it is hesitation which sustains its life. " (Misquote, Todorov, "The Fantastic: A Structural Approach")