....Is the topic of a paper I've decided on for a Science Fiction course. "Incredible!", you say, but no! It is indeed worth three credits. So saying, my question is this--what is the difference between science fiction and fantasy? Are they one genre or two? Is it purely a difference between science and magic; orcs and aliens? What makes each one fundamentally what it is? I have some ideas, but I'd like yours as well--in order to see things from every angle, as it were. I'd especially like to see Mr. Gaiman's on here...no offense to the rest of you, but I can cite him. At any rate, I'm looking for some good conversation; college campuses are surprisingly bad sources of such.

/Discourse!

Phaedrus

Neil doesn't post here nor read the forums. You can contact him here, though, historically, he doesn't help people with their homework.

I assume you've already looked in the various handbooks/encyclopedias of literature?

edit : And, FYI, you can cite posts found on message boards.

edit : IMHO, Barnes and Noble is rarely right, especially in terms of classification.

Thank you for the information, though it would have been more for his opinion than for the homework...the topic's a bit of an obsession for me. Reference materials tend to define scifi and fantasy by particular items--time machines equal sf and dragons equal fantasy. Often they define by citation, which is no good to me--I know Asimov wrote sf and Tolkein wrote fantasy...I'm looking more at the philosophical context of the literature here, which means there isn't really an answer, as philosophers are in reality quite useless. Ergo, asking your opinions...I'll worry about citations after I've drawn conclusions, I guess. Thank you also for the cite site...I did not know there was an official format for that.

Phaedrus

edit: Why is it you say that Barnes and Noble are rarely right?

I'd say that if you go for broad definitions of genre, it makes sense to put fantasy and sci-fi together, since the difference between them on such a general level is that of a coat of paint, so to speak. Arguably, a novel such as Frank Herbert's Dune is closer in what it does to Lord of the Rings than to Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or Lem's Solaris.

ok, i used to work in publishing, and it basically comes down to the fact that there's a lot of crossover in readership between the two.

As a general title, some have proposed 'speculative fiction'... the common ground is that the two genre's generally do things that are 'impossible' to us.

and then we get to Clarke's aphorism "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

so yeah... basically, they are together because the same marketting budget covers the majority of people.

so in that sense, they are 'right'

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Murphy (last sane man in the asylum),

so if computers and technology and space travel are SF and dragons are Fantasy, I wonder how Anne MacCaffrey's Pern books would be classified?

I think Murphy's explanation works just fine.

I'd imagine that book shops would rather go for sci-fi and fantasy than the probably more accurate speculative fiction simply because your average customer knows the former, whereas they might not have much of an idea when it comes to the latter.

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy:

As a general title, some have proposed 'speculative fiction'...

I watche a debate on TV among "sciece fiction" writers and they all preferred that definition, on the grounds that a lot of the science fiction that was around didn't involve a lot of science, but sometime sit speculated around sociology, philosophy, even linguistics... The action was set in a future world or alternatve universe as sa mere device to let the speculation happen.
They considered Gulliver's travels and utopia, for example, as aworks of "speculative fiction2, although they'd never be considered Sci-fi.

quote:

so if computers and technology and space travel are SF and dragons are Fantasy, I wonder how Anne MacCaffrey's Pern books would be classified?

I recall her stating in an interview that she considers them Sci-fi, but I don't have a source for it.

quote:

Originally posted by cloverheart:

They considered Gulliver's travels and utopia, for example, as aworks of "speculative fiction2, although they'd never be considered Sci-fi.

well, this is all part of the snobbery of things. I remember when Paul Theroux wrote a book call O-Zone a while back, and he basically said, "it's not science-fiction because the dome over my cities represents loneliness and isolation"...

yeah, cos sci-fi never deals in metaphor, eh, you pillock?

'Mainstream' writers don't watnto be tarred with the sci-fi brush, because sci-fi sells fewer copies.

Iain Banks v Iain M Banks is a good example of this phenomenon.

SCIENCE fiction vs Fantasy. science fiction explicity uses science, while fantasy uses other means of the fantastical.

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy:
well, this is all part of the snobbery of things. I remember when Paul Theroux wrote a book call O-Zone a while back, and he basically said, "it's not science-fiction because the dome over my cities represents loneliness and isolation"...

yeah, cos sci-fi never deals in metaphor, eh, you pillock?

'Mainstream' writers don't watnto be tarred with the sci-fi brush, because sci-fi sells fewer copies.

Iain Banks v Iain M Banks is a good example of this phenomenon.

It's the readers too, though. The kind of reader who goes for every multi-volume fantasy epic or who collects all the Star Wars novels doesn't necessarily enjoy J.G. Ballard or Stanislaw Lem. And you also get reverse snobbery, i.e. people dismissing authors and novels because they're <gasp!> literary.

Genre is all about expectation. It tells you about the setting, yes, but more importantly, genre tells you about what to expect from the plot.

At the bare bones, science fiction is sub-genre in fantasy. It's just instead of magic, the difference from the real world are technological, but it's still uses the fantastic (supernatural or advance technology) to drive the story.

Compare with mystery,romance, and horror, where the focus of the story is one something completely different. In mystery it is the detective trying to discover something which no one else sees. Romance is the trials and tribulations of the right girl getting the right guy. Horror is not fantasy or science fiction, even when it uses vampires or clowns from outer space, because the story is about survival against an attacker of some sort.

The rest of it, the cyberpunk, the magic realism, the high fantasy, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, steam punk are all just descriptions to help customers and readers.

It does come down to sci-fi equal spaceships, fantasy equals dragons (even when they are scientifically engineered). Because story wise, that is the difference.

What do you mean by philosophical context of the literature here?

quote:

Originally posted by APEX:
SCIENCE fiction vs Fantasy. science fiction explicity uses science, while fantasy uses other means of the fantastical.

I understand your argument but I respectfully disagree. Ray Bradbury writes science fiction without an ounce of science.

Personally, I tihnk the line between science fiction and fantasy is different for each person, which is why the two genres will be forever married.

I think Murphy's sources hit on it with their adjective: "speculative." The purpose of Science fiction and fantasy is to set up a world with laws so different from our own that they can ponder questions that just aren't plausible in ours. I can be horribly cheesy ("How WOULD the world change if elves lived in LA?") or wondrously philosophical ("What if science could produce creatures that could not be told apart from humans at all?") but couldn't be explored in the standard medium of realistic fiction.

While the specific tools used differ in the two genres, the purpose is the same and the end result is usually at least similar. As we've already discussed, McCaffery's Pern crosses boundary lines. Neil does the same, both in Sandman and in American Gods, China Mielville plays more holy havoc with genre-bending before breakfast than most others manage in a lifetime . . . and so on.

quote:

Originally posted by lurkergrrl:
It does come down to sci-fi equal spaceships, fantasy equals dragons (even when they are scientifically engineered). Because story wise, that is the difference.

Ursula LeGuin says (I paraphrase wildly) the difference is between an imagined future and an alternate past/present/future.

Linky

Fredric Jameson has a chapter on this in his "Archeologies of the Future." (Believe it or not, I have it in front of me and it's Chapter 5, The Great Schism.) If you can understand Jameson clearly, more power to you, but the main point I got from it is that he takes issue with the feudal ideologies he sees inherent in fantasy. He thinks fantasy is based in a Medieval religious framework, whereas SF is based in a "mode-of-production" framework. He feels SF is the more responsible genre in this sense. He's a post-Marxist theorist, so make of that what you will. He also talks about the use of magic in fantasy and the emphasis on organic forms (i.e., dragons rather than spaceships) that lurkergrrl mentioned. I can't summarize the chapter well, sorry--his writing style gives me a migraine.

Interestingly, he considers Le Guin to be one of the few writers to avoid what he feels are the weaknesses of the fantasy genre. But to be honest, I think his problem is that he is comparing poor or formulaic fantasy to good SF and making his value judgment from that. I don't think Le Guin is such an exception to the genre--she's just good at it! That's just my take. I'm not such a fan of Jameson's. But he is definitely a legitimate source for you to quote and a heavy-hitter in theory.

Also you can take a look at Darko Suvin's writings for SF theory.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Xiao Bai,

Interesting... this goes with my main beef on fantasy, as well as the idea of destiny. Of course when it's done well i don't mind, but the cliche is very well worn.

But even at it's best i find few fantasy worlds manage to touch the psychological and philosophical depths of the best sci-fi.

Murphy-- True, some of those cliches are very well worn! Maybe that's why breaking the formula in one aspect while still clearly within the genre can cause such a stir. I'm thinking of George R. R. Martin's books right now. They're set in a feudal world with all the Medieval trappings, but they break out of the formulaic ideology with a bang.

(Sorry to post right after myself.) I also think it's interesting that many SF enthusiasts and pros are also heavy-duty Medievalists or former Medievalists (IME). A strange point of overlap...