Zeke Newbold
Carbon based biped.
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2015
- Messages
- 1,249
So I want to discuss subtle but important genre distinctions (in, mostly, writing) here - and what significance they have.
I am a sort of science fiction and horror fan and can read most things which fall into this genre. However, giver me a book of what would be termed Fantasy - straight Fantasy - you know, sword and sorcery, or stuff involving magical kingdoms and Elves and such like then I find that the stories just don't work for me. I can't lose myself in them.
It seems to be a simple question of exposition. The way it works is this. Tell me that Once Upon a Time there lived a race of dwarves who lived underground and had special psychic powers and try to proceed from there ...then you have lost me at the outset. However, tell me that there is an alien humanoid race on a planet in such and such a galaxy which is of small stature and which lives underground following a nuclear war and which has, over time, developed psi-powers because... yadayadayada...then I'm hooked!
it seems to me that often the only serious distinction between science fiction and Fantasy lays in the fact that Science fiction will always provide a rationale for whatever magic unfolds - probably a B.S pseudo-scientific rationale, but rationale at least, whereas Fantasy won't. Take Tolkein's work: you're dropped straight into the Middle Earth and there are Elves and such like there. Is it the past the future or another planet or what.?..You are simply not told and it is expected to not matter.
But I find I need explanations, no matter how silly of far fetched they may be. It is Just So won't do for me.
Sometime in my thirties I began to wonder if I was missing out on something by not reading Fantasy and I tried to read some - people like Terry Brooks and so on. It was okay, but it just didn't hook me. I find that there is a sort of scale and I can only go so far along it. So I can read - say - Jack Vance or Piers Anthony (both tip over into Fantasy, I'd say) but, for example, the Star Wars franchise has always left me cold because I think my brain recognises it as Fantasy (Good versus Evil, Princesses, Sword fights etc) despite all the SFnal paraphenalia it is cloaked in.
If one is being honest about it though, both science fiction and Horror (which I will not embark on here) are both subsets of Fantasy. Science fiction is more of an adventure tale which uses `science` as its background explanation and horror more of a thriller which uses the Occult as its basis - but both are fantasies.
In this regard, it is interesting to note that the distinction between science fiction and fantasy is an Anglophone one. I can tell you that in the Russian language there is only `Fantastica` - which encompasses both science fiction and fantasy without distinction. Of course, there are words to distinguish SF from Fantasy - but these are not widely used and do not appear in bookshops of or film genre descriptions. (It is interesting to note that Fantasy, unless you mean fairytales, hardly existed in Russia until recent times. There are not Russian Tolkeins or C.S Lewises that I know of, but plenty of science fiction writers. Many of these, such as Boris and Arkady Strugatsky often embarked on what we would call Fantasy, however. And, of course, Russia has since pioneered it's own form of `Urban Fantasy` courtesy of Lukyashenko and Max Frei and some others).
I used to belong to a Science Fiction club in a British town. We eventually changed our name to Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Club. The `horror` was for me, as I like that genre too, and the `Fantasy` was for one other member for he only read such books. He was outnumbered but, sometimes, after he'd swilled down a few Lancaster Bombers he's say things like: `You all take the piss out of me because I'm into Fantasy - and yet you all read stuff in that has telepathy in them - for which there is very little scientific evidence for at all!` (He was a teacher of Psychology). He had a point.
Anyway, the points to discuss are:
* Where are you on the Science fiction/Fantasy scale (if you will allow for it)?
*Or are you like me, someone who can't really relate to Fantasy at all? (Or vice versa - a Fantasy fan who doesn't do SF)?
*Do you believe Science fiction and fantasy constitute quite different genres or - like I haver hinted at above - really not so different as all that?
*Are there any Hard S.F purists here who can only take on board science fiction written by scientists and/or which has a carefully researched grounding in real science?
I am a sort of science fiction and horror fan and can read most things which fall into this genre. However, giver me a book of what would be termed Fantasy - straight Fantasy - you know, sword and sorcery, or stuff involving magical kingdoms and Elves and such like then I find that the stories just don't work for me. I can't lose myself in them.
It seems to be a simple question of exposition. The way it works is this. Tell me that Once Upon a Time there lived a race of dwarves who lived underground and had special psychic powers and try to proceed from there ...then you have lost me at the outset. However, tell me that there is an alien humanoid race on a planet in such and such a galaxy which is of small stature and which lives underground following a nuclear war and which has, over time, developed psi-powers because... yadayadayada...then I'm hooked!
it seems to me that often the only serious distinction between science fiction and Fantasy lays in the fact that Science fiction will always provide a rationale for whatever magic unfolds - probably a B.S pseudo-scientific rationale, but rationale at least, whereas Fantasy won't. Take Tolkein's work: you're dropped straight into the Middle Earth and there are Elves and such like there. Is it the past the future or another planet or what.?..You are simply not told and it is expected to not matter.
But I find I need explanations, no matter how silly of far fetched they may be. It is Just So won't do for me.
Sometime in my thirties I began to wonder if I was missing out on something by not reading Fantasy and I tried to read some - people like Terry Brooks and so on. It was okay, but it just didn't hook me. I find that there is a sort of scale and I can only go so far along it. So I can read - say - Jack Vance or Piers Anthony (both tip over into Fantasy, I'd say) but, for example, the Star Wars franchise has always left me cold because I think my brain recognises it as Fantasy (Good versus Evil, Princesses, Sword fights etc) despite all the SFnal paraphenalia it is cloaked in.
If one is being honest about it though, both science fiction and Horror (which I will not embark on here) are both subsets of Fantasy. Science fiction is more of an adventure tale which uses `science` as its background explanation and horror more of a thriller which uses the Occult as its basis - but both are fantasies.
In this regard, it is interesting to note that the distinction between science fiction and fantasy is an Anglophone one. I can tell you that in the Russian language there is only `Fantastica` - which encompasses both science fiction and fantasy without distinction. Of course, there are words to distinguish SF from Fantasy - but these are not widely used and do not appear in bookshops of or film genre descriptions. (It is interesting to note that Fantasy, unless you mean fairytales, hardly existed in Russia until recent times. There are not Russian Tolkeins or C.S Lewises that I know of, but plenty of science fiction writers. Many of these, such as Boris and Arkady Strugatsky often embarked on what we would call Fantasy, however. And, of course, Russia has since pioneered it's own form of `Urban Fantasy` courtesy of Lukyashenko and Max Frei and some others).
I used to belong to a Science Fiction club in a British town. We eventually changed our name to Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Club. The `horror` was for me, as I like that genre too, and the `Fantasy` was for one other member for he only read such books. He was outnumbered but, sometimes, after he'd swilled down a few Lancaster Bombers he's say things like: `You all take the piss out of me because I'm into Fantasy - and yet you all read stuff in that has telepathy in them - for which there is very little scientific evidence for at all!` (He was a teacher of Psychology). He had a point.
Anyway, the points to discuss are:
* Where are you on the Science fiction/Fantasy scale (if you will allow for it)?
*Or are you like me, someone who can't really relate to Fantasy at all? (Or vice versa - a Fantasy fan who doesn't do SF)?
*Do you believe Science fiction and fantasy constitute quite different genres or - like I haver hinted at above - really not so different as all that?
*Are there any Hard S.F purists here who can only take on board science fiction written by scientists and/or which has a carefully researched grounding in real science?