Sooner or later, the old but apparently evergreen debate over the various merits of Science Fiction vs. Fantasy and the boundaries between the two resurfaces like some kind of grim Lovecraftian deity, accompanied by the usual chants and drum beats. For whatever reason, there will always be those that insist that the books they read many years ago as young people set an eternal, infallible, incontrovertible standard for what is right and proper in the field of speculative fiction, and then decry any perceived deviation from those rules vigorously and volubly, in the same way one might urge the inconsiderate young to vacate the grass in front of one’s domicile.
For those who stopped personally experiencing the passage of time sometime in the Reagan Era, it’s simply a matter of pointing back at the past and saying, “In my day, we could tell science fiction from fantasy.” Science fiction bore an atom sticker on its spine, whereas fantasy sported the far less respectable unicorn. This indicated quite clearly to the reader that science fiction stood for reason and science and all those good things, whereas fantasy was mere…fantasy.
Perhaps some examples are in order…
Science fiction provides its readers with iron-hard, fact-based possibility. For example, Frank Herbert’s Dune played with the possibility that the right combination of eugenics and hallucinogenic drugs (taken from enormous alien worms) might allow messianic figures to draw on the memories of their ancestors. Well, how else would it work?
Science fiction teaches us that starships, when hurled precisely enough at black holes, might reappear light years away; that over a century of experimental support for relativity has probably overlooked some loophole of the sort that facilitates exciting plots; that in a universe more than ten billion years old civilizations will probably emerge on worlds across the solar system Milky Way in the same handful of millennia, thereby facilitating narratives in which alien species wield technologies that are somewhat close to those employed by us humans.
Science fiction teaches us that the secret of fusion could easily be ours provided we take the simple step of sending astronauts to the Sun to collect a cup of plasma; that extracting material from Jupiter merely requires inserting a long straw (so that Jupiter’s internal pressure can provide the motive force to drive material into orbit, of course); and it also reminds us that space stations have for decades been inexplicably neglecting to replenish their air supplies with long hoses dangling from low Earth orbit into the upper atmosphere.
All perfectly reasonable assertions based in gritty hard science…except for those bits of inconvenient science that might undermine the sort of stories people want to read.
Where but science fiction could we find stories like Pohl and Williamson’s Reefs of Space series, which explores the possibility that the Oort Cloud could be filled by an ecosystem powered by biological fusion and that a few lucky humans might someday enjoy mind-melds with intelligent stars? And where but in science fiction could we entertain the quite reasonable possibility that someday a young woman with whichever psionic powers the plot of the week requires might have to contend with invisible cats? Who but science fiction writers will remind us of the very real possibility that one day starships might be propelled at superluminal velocities by the power of women’s orgasms?
And what, on the other hand, can mere fantasy offer? Airy-fairy nonsense, like Tolkien’s peculiar belief that wartime trauma can last a lifetime. Well, what slide rule did he use to calculate that? Addison’s The Goblin Emperor similarly wastes readers’ time with a clear-eyed, sensitive exploration of how to resist the urge to continue a cycle of abuse without any discussion of plasma-borrowing missions or giant space-straws to move things along. Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion urges dogged persistence in doing the right thing, even when it hurts, even when it seems hopeless. Fantasy is simply a gossamer illusion concerned with matters that will never have any relevance to the real world.
Perhaps the most damning indictment of fantasy comes from those authors who took time out from writing proper science fiction to dabble in mere fantasy. Fritz Leiber, for example, demonstrated that he was more than able to present the world with entirely sensible novels about cat-women stealing the Moon but still he inexplicably wasted time spinning yarns about two men in some a dubious place called “Lankhmar.” I suppose these stories let him examine aspects of “character” and “companionship” and other hypotheticals that cannot be measured in a lab, but what of all the poor cat-girls who went unwritten?
Jo Clayton stands as another example: She could have focused on exploring perfectly reasonable possibilities, like the ever-present concern that strapping on alien psionic amplifiers might greatly complicate the search for a lost homeworld, but instead she chose to write fantasies in which characters invest a lot of time looking for affordable birth control. I ask you, how often is birth control going to come up in the real world? And isn’t time spent worrying about such issues time that would be better spent pondering what to do when enigmatic aliens want their toys back?
So set aside your comforting but empty fantasy novels, which will never provide you with anything of value beyond the occasional insight into human nature, and go pick up a proper science fiction novel. And the next time you’re tempted to stray, just think of the poor hypothetical cat-girls!
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He was a finalist for the 2019 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, and is surprisingly flammable.
Are you trying to use up Tor.com’s allotment of sarcasm?
Forget Tor.com. I just checked the market value on sarcasm futures, and prices have spiked dramatically. James may be attempting a Hunt Brothersesque cornering of the world’s entire sarcasm reswrves.
Sorry about the duplicates. It’s the fault of my phone or its owner.
@5: No worries–we’ve just unpublished the duplicates :)
When I started reading this, I was going to comment to praise the first sentence. Then the first paragraph. To cut to the chase, I would like to praise the whole thing. Much appreciated.
As someone whose SFF reading began more than 50 years ago with the double barrelled combination of The Hobbit and Norton’s The Time Traders, I have always enjoyed both ends of the continuum and the many points in between.
Always thought it was a false dichotomy.
Sci-Fi is a sub-genre of fantasy.
Well played, that person.
Amazing article.
@2 AndyLove Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft sarcasm gap!
@9: Exactly! It’s all fantastical fiction, just sometimes that fantasy is nominally based on science.
Any takers for Algis Budrys’s claim that sf is a subgenre of children’s literature?
“Who but science fiction writers will remind us of the very real possibility that one day starships might be propelled at superluminal velocities by the power of women’s orgasms?”
Uh, I don’t know that one. But I know one of more recent vintage where the kinetic energy of crew walking on deck plates powers a starship.
Or another from last couple of years where a starship travels thru a multiversal network of space fungus and can blink out, then blink in instantaneously over tens of thousands of light years.
And don’t forget the infinite improbability drive which makes space travel a trip in two senses of the word, or the ship powered by the irrational numbers on a waiter’s pad.
What about men’s orgasms? Not powerful enough?
As I recall, men weren’t able to provide sufficient ump.
Hmmm….
@16 Wasn’t that the film Battle Beyond the Stars, and yes I am embarrassed that this is what the adolescent me remembers about it…?
Smart Alec! Both Science Fiction and Fantasy are awesome books to read!
@17/Roxana: They needed those to power the galley?
Which Jo Clayton story deals with birth control?
Sunspear @16:
I’m guessing Norman Spinrad’s The Void Captain’s Tale.
@Jana: “They needed those to power the galley?”
Is that a “keep men in the kitchen” joke? :p
I was thinking of Moonscatter but the Diadem books are shaped by the fact the lead doesn’t have access to birth control on her backward birth world,
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/the-war-on-boredom
@25/Sunspear: Yep :)
@26/James Davis Nicoll: Thanks! I read the Diadem books when they were new, but I haven’t read Moonscatter.
A whole post without footnotes? Are they too scientific for fantasy / too Pratchett for serious SF?
@14/24: Please consult our Moderation Policy, point #6 in particular, and keep the discussion within the tone, scope, and spirit reflected in the original article.
@@@@@12: Precisely the quote I was thinking of.
Alexandra Erin just published a really good essay on this in Uncanny Magazine!
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-science-fiction-and-fantasy-of-genre/
I like hard-Fantasy… the kind where how many miles you can ride a horse is correct, or details on medieval economics plays a major role in the tale! (The latter is from Spice and Wolf. Medieval trade practices are thoroughly examined and are central to the plot.)
One of science fiction’s merits is that it can inspire some exciting learning about science. For example, here’s a talk on how to teach physics using Larry Niven’s fiction (http://www.larryniven.net/physics/img0.shtml) Can you think of examples of fantasy (or genre-mixing stories) which inspire similar learning about the real world (either in science fields or in other fields of study)?
Oh, and those giant space straws in Donald Moffitt’s “Jupiter Theft”? Even that example is instructive, and only because it occurs in the context of science fiction. Because “Jupiter Theft” is intended to play by the rules of known physics, readers (and especially reviewers) are inspired to point out the error and explain why it is one. (You might be surprised by how many SF fans don’t understand why it is an error.) If “Jupiter Theft” had been explicitly intended as a fantasy, I think readers would have simply nodded and rolled with it, and thus missed out on either laughing about the error or learning from it.
A related merit of science fiction is the sense of wonder it can generate. As a reader, I relish the opportunity to say to myself ” Despite how incredible this story sounds, the universe really makes this possible. Wow!”” Since Donald Moffitt is getting picked on above, I’d like to point to his novels “Genesis Quest” and “Second Genesis” as great examples of books which generate that sense of wonder. And of course, I only get that opportunity when I feel that the authors have gotten many of the science details right. Is there an analogous feeling for fantasy readers? If not, that’s fine, but for me, it is an importance difference.
32, there’s a KJ Parker where for background research Parker made every bow featured in the book _except_ for the one whose manufacture required a homicide beforehand.
33: have you confused the Jupiter Theft with the same author’s The Jovian?
33: It seems to me the ‘spend thirty years lovingly creating a world and its languages before writing the first book’ crowd gravitates to fantasy rather than SF but I don’t know why that would be. I mean, four hundred billion star systems offers a certain license for diverse linguistic development.
@33
People are inspired by the things they’re inspired by. Lots of young people in my language, history, and mythology courses got fired up by fantasy and decided they had to learn more about something, whether it was the Latin language–or some doggy version of it–via the Harry Potter books etc, or Norse myth via Tolkien etc, or Greek myth via Percy Jackson etc, or Roman and medieval history via King Arthur etc.
I’m not knocking sf (which I credit for my own fascination with the physical world) nor, I’m sure, is JDN. But all fantasies (including science fiction) are made out of the real world and provide escape from it as well as ways to return to it with deeper understanding.
33, you mean aside from the linguists inspired by Tolkien, programmers working to create unicode fonts for minority languages based on work they did to adapt Tolkien’s languages into computer fonts, the environmentalists inspired by Tolkien (man, that guy was everywhere), climate scientists and geographers use (that guy again)’s detailed maps to show how Middle Earth would have worked and thus relate it the real world, the fake-umentaries based on dragons and mermaids to talk about evolution and what would actually be required to make such creatures work, and so on and so forth?
Or are those too squishy to count?
@37 I don’t want to pick a fight – I’m honestly asking for intersting examples. Nothing is too squishy if it is an academic topic, like JameEnge’s (@36) suggested topics of language, history, and mythology.
In the few minutes since I commented, I was just reading about a proposed sub-genre classification that is new to me: “Hard Fantasy” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_fantasy
@33: Thanks for citing my talk (hope you liked it)
@39 It is a great talk! I loved your take on Niven’s numerical error in the Integral Trees/Smoke Ring – you corrected the numbers while showing why it wasn’t important for understanding the concepts. Also: a friend who is a university professor mentioned that he was looking for a way to make orbital dynamics more intuitive. I told him about Niven’s “East takes you Out, Out takes you West….” but he was only convinced that this would be instructive when we looked at your talk together, and I showed him the very helpful diagrams that you included with Niven’s saying.
Since Andy Love is here: I’m afraid your diagram for “out takes you west/in takes you east” (slide 34) is messed up. One of those drawings is not even a possible orbit—the star isn’t a focus of the ellipse—and neither of them is what you get from a pure radial inward or outward impulse. Take a look at the correct diagrams on Stack Exchange: Change of orbit with radial impulse. The orbits after in/out perturbations are in fact symmetric, and both have the same, slightly longer period: that is, both take you equally “west” after one full period. I’m a bit dismayed by people thinking they’ve learned something from that diagram. (The “east takes you out/west takes you in” diagram is OK, it’s the other one that’s wrong.)
@37: Linguists, plus those inspired to study Old English, Welsh, or Finnish.
Lots of fantasy is inspired by real history and inspires readers to go back to the source. I learned bits of Spanish history thanks to Bujold’s Chalion series.
@41: You’re right, that’s a clumsy diagram – I tried to create it with Powerpoint, and didn’t do a good job. I’ll see if I can fix it.
If I don’t read much fantasy these days, it’s only because I got spoiled by the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. Little that I’ve looked into lately can hold its own with the classics in the field. With science fiction, there is stuff being written today that’s every bit as good as the stuff that I read half a century and more ago, and that includes reading the entire original Terry Carr Ace Science Fiction Specials as they were released. I don’t know why this is, and I’m probably missing out on some good fantasy stuff, but that’s the way it looks based on what I’ve sampled.
I always felt that the difference between science fiction and fantasy came down to explanations. Science fiction respects the need for explanations (even asinine ones) whereas fantasy does not. So called Hard Fantasy is really science fiction, by that measure. Lovecraft is science fiction. William Peter Blatty is not.
The “debate” between Sci-Fi and Fantasy is no different than the one between Marvel and DC – and about as interesting. They are, at their core, the same thing, and everything else is details.
Fun article! I certainly spent my childhood reading a lot of sci-fi but ignoring fantasy almost entirely because I liked science and didn’t have much of a taste for magic (the only exceptions were fairy tales and Harry Potter). Finally learned to appreciate fantasy more generally in my mid-to-late teens and have been trying to catch up with YA and adult fantasy ever since.
I am going to restrain myself from going on a selection bias rant (I don’t know who this Reagan fellow is, but we live in the 2010s now) and instead focus on the overlap between Sci Fi and Fantasy.
His Dark Materials, The Craft Sequence, and Discworld all have elements of Sci Fi and fantasy, and they are all excellent. As someone who prefers soft magical systems*, a hybrid setting is often a perfect destination.
*Except in the case of our lord and saviour B.S.
@33: I haven’t gotten around to reading Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy yet, but my understanding is that fandom discussions of its magic system (which involves the manipulation of metals) often delve into real-world principles of metallurgy. Similarly, some ASOIAF/GOT fans have postulated configurations of Planetos’s solar system that might account for its bizarre seasons.
This whole fantasy versus science fiction argument is about as useful as the tastes great versus less filling debate in those old beer commercials. Both are good, and neither is mutually exclusive.
@15 There should be no takers. Algis Budrys said science fiction is a branch of technology fiction. Instead it was Thomas M Disch who said science fiction was a branch of children’s fiction. He was wrong too. Children’s fiction is much better written.
I do think there’s a fundamental difference in mind-set, something that isn’t immediately apparent because there are overlaps – which is why the term ‘speculative fiction’ is so handy. Steam Punk is essentially fantasy with pseudo-scientific trappings. Space Opera might have reflected a possible outcome fifty years ago; today anybody writing Space Opera must know they’re writing something about as realistic as LOTR.
But this was pretty much acknowledged by the advent of Cyber-Punk. Cyber-Punk recognised that future technical innovation would lie in the local and the particular as opposed to conquering the stars – a prophesy which I think has been largely vindicated. When is the last time fantasy told us anything new? Or did anything new? The genre peaked a long time ago – I reckon in the thirties and forties – more or less from the moment of it’s inception. Since then it’s been a case of steadily diminishing returns.
Which brings me back to the issue of mind-set. I find it telling that fantasy’s best and most influential authors tended to be conservative in their outlook – Lewis, Tolkien, Lovecraft and Peake (the class politics of Gormenghast are pretty questionable) and therein lies the problem.
@51
Eh. William Morris was a socialist; Fritz Leiber was a pacifist; Le Guin certainly resided in some anarchic, peaceful zone of leftist politics. On the other hand, the post WWII Heinlein, the post 1950s Poul Anderson, the any-decade Jerry Pournelle are all pretty right wing. Any attempt to map politics onto genre can only succeed by a fairly arbitrary selection of examples.
It seems unreasonable to identify Peake’s politics with a society in his famous trilogy, by the way. Depiction is not endorsement. People can write about werewolves without being werewolves.
20/zdrakec -Is the embarrassment because you don’t remember the shape of the starship, or because you do?
I think technically what we have here is snark, which I think of as kinder than sarcasm. Beautifully done.
“It seems to me the ‘spend thirty years lovingly creating a world and its languages before writing the first book’ crowd gravitates to fantasy”
How much of a crowd is that? Tolkien, and…? Taken literally, anyway. I can think of other long term world builders, like Barker’s Tekumel. OTOH for developed conlangs there’s the very SF Crest of the Stars. For less developed ones, Dothraki for fantasy and Klingon for SF.
“The genre peaked a long time ago – I reckon in the thirties and forties”
Narnia started in 1950. LotR was published in 1954. I take it you consider these part of fantasy’s decline, from some unnamed peak in the 1930s.
“I find it telling that fantasy’s best and most influential authors tended to be conservative in their outlook – Lewis, Tolkien, Lovecraft and Peake”
Lovecraft is usually lumped with SF, if not horror, not fantasy. Le Guin is at least as influential as Lewis and hardly conservative. Fantasy’s most influential authors these days would include J. K. Rowling and GRRM.
@51 I’d turn the question back around–when is the last time science fiction told us anything new? No matter what speculative fiction genre you’re in, the authors are all grappling with the same old questions: how do you be a good person? What is the value of being a good person? Who counts as a person? And so on. These questions are older than our modern genres and older than any form of writing. We have to keep answering the questions again and again in new ways. That’s what fantasy and science fiction both do.
I can’t tell what you mean by “did anything new,” but if you’re talking about trappings and subgenres, fantasy has had plenty of changes as a genre over the years. I’m not sure what you like in a book, so I’m not going to throw random recommendations at you, but I assure you there’s a lot of fascinating, novel stuff out there. I hope you can seek out some recommendations from people who will know what you’re interested in!
“All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.” Gene Wolfe
55. ‘Narnia started in 1950. LotR was published in 1954. I take it you consider these part of fantasy’s decline, from some unnamed peak in the 1930s.’
I guess I’d put most seminal fantasy work into two categories – the work produced for Weird Tales in the Thirties (Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft et al), plus I think ‘The Hobbit’ was written around the same time? The second period was postwar and mostly English – I’m talking about Peake, Lewis and the publication of LOTR. The last big innovator in the field doesn’t fit into either category, in terms of his politics or the timeframe, but I think that’s basically because he had a healthy contempt for the genre, despite being very influential in it – ie, Mike Moorcock. I’d classify him as the exception that proves the general rule.
‘Le Guin is at least as influential as Lewis and hardly conservative. Fantasy’s most influential authors these days would include J. K. Rowling and GRRM.’
Influential yes, but better? I was being a bit opaque when I said the fantasy genre peaked ‘more or less from its inception’. Specifically, it seems to me that the most influential authors in the genre also produced the defining works in that genre. You may like GRRM, but would you say GOT is better than LOTR? Similarily Rowling’s work is just an amalgam of a lot of previous stuff – specifically Enid Blyton – and conservative in its ambitions; boy with special destiny goes to magic school. And whereas I have a soft spot for the Earthsea books, how original are they in terms of world-building? (I cite this below as the primary criteria for what makes an exceptional SF work). I read Le Guin for her emotional nuance rather than her inventiveness.
51. ‘I’d turn the question back around–when is the last time science fiction told us anything new?’
Well, I think SF is coasting too – but I did cite an example: Cyber Punk. Have there been any real innovations since? Errr….
“How do you be a good person? What is the value of being a good person? Who counts as a person?’
No argument from me on that score! But surely these are the defining features of all literary works (or should be)? What separates SF from other genres is its world-building. I didn’t read any fantasy or science fiction for twenty years. I started reading again in my late forties, and it was a bit like settling oneself into an old, comfortable armchair: all the familiar tropes were still there. Sure there’d been a bit of tweaking – a more progressive attitude towards gender in some instances, a greater level violence in other work, but the core tropes were pretty much the same.
I also reject the idea that there is no essential difference between science fiction and fantasy. They may not be clearly delineated territories, but they are certainly at least clouds. I don’t think it is the trappings of the background that are determinate, but more the attitude.
So for me, the Lord Darcy stories look like fantasy but are SF in outlook, whereas something like classic Star Wars looks like SF but is fantasy in cosplay.
I think this stems from the backgrounds of the authors. I believe fantasy grew mostly out of a literary tradition (ie: from academics and artists) while early SF was dominated by scientists and engineers. That gave SF a problem solving and discovery bent that has cast a very long shadow on that genre.
Neither SF or Fantasy tell us anything “new”. That is not their intent. They use fantastic trappings (other worlds, other times, etc) to tell stories that are difficult to tell about in non-genre fiction. Le Guin was especially good at talking about the social failures of the modern western culture by dressing them up – hence The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness and Always Coming Home.
@53 That is actually a good question, ’cause I don’t :D
On point with the main topic, Fred Saberhagen’s marvelous Empire of the East comes to mind as a science fiction / fantasy hybrid.
C. L. Moore wrote Jirel of Joiry, set in a fantasy universe of demons and warlocks. She also wrote Northwest Smith, set in a world of aliens and superscience. Same universe…
It’s all fiction. I blame librarians for the dichotomy that has existed since I picked up RAH’s Red Planet from the Sfantasy section of the library when I was 10. And what has changed? The library where we live now classifies every bit of it “Science Fiction.” And mysteries, of course, still occupy their carefully segregated shelves apart from the proper litachoor…..
I think both science-fiction and fantasy can teach us something new. Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris teaches us about depression and mental illness. A lot of science-fiction does teach us what it is to be human. It may highlight something like prejudices gains to aliens which is remote and can be discussed, where prejudices against different type of people is too polarized. Jany Wurz also wore a series that you thought was fantasy, but ended up being science fiction (the demons were really aliens that had been freed in a space crash). I enjoy both types of fiction.
58: “Well, I think SF is coasting too – but I did cite an example: Cyber Punk. Have there been any real innovations since? Errr….”
I don’t view cyberpunk as an innovation. I see it as traditional noir dressed up in sf drag, and I believe others have said much the same thing. Which doesn’t mean I haven’t enjoyed some of it, I just never thought of it as anything new. Another giveaway for me was that it was touted by many fans as Hard SF, when Gibson at least knew nothing about computers and was engaged in a literary project rather than a science-related one. That many readers mistook it for Hard SF supports JDN’s main point, I think.
I’m a little surprised that no-one referenced Sturgeon’s comment on fantasy and sf. :-)
@@@@@ 51
By limiting the “greats” to the 1940s you’ll get a biased sample of mostly fellos that look quite conservative by today’s standards.
If you had extended that some decades you’d have gotten the anarchist Moorcock or the socialist Mieville.
@56
”Who counts as a person?”
This is the central question in, off the top of my head, RAH’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Cherryh’s Cyteen and Chanur books, and Anne Leckie’s Ancillary series. All favorites of mine.
This is wonderful :)
Once I started reading things like Pern and Shinn’s Samaria trilogy and realizing I didn’t know which ‘shelf’ to put them on (to say nothing of my love for Star Wars) I started to view it more of a spectrum.
As for themes and being ‘conservative’, well, when I was in college I was part of a group studying old pulp SF magazines, and many of those writers were also pretty ‘conservative’. And not all ‘fantasy’ is about wanting to go back to the good old days of the king (as much as I love Tolkien, heh).
@@@@@ 58
I don’t know if the same questions are being asked. The ground can look similar, but the questions asked are very different in the Lord of the Rings and Brandon Sanderson’s works. The only two BS works I’ve read are Elantris and the Mistborn first trilogy. Sanderson’s basic question in these two books is about religion: can good stuff come from a false religion? This seems like a very important focal point of his writing. Compare this to Tolkien’s Middle Earth, in which people don’t actually discuss any religious matter. They discuss moral matters (is it right to spare Gollum’s life? In the end it was), but not religion and gods and the frustration some find when they discover they’re not real.
@9 – and vice-versa.
@68, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is Philip K. Dick, not Heinlein.
Isn’t it all speculative fiction?
“What would happen if…”
I do have one nit to pick with the OP, though. Herbert’s notion of genetic memory had been unlocked by his Bene Gesserit long before the discovery and exploitation of the Water of Life on Arrakis. “There are other poisons the Reverend Mothers can use for their tricks,” he writes. Later in the series it’s done without any drug at all. What’s necessary, he has a character tell us, is that the mind be focused into cellular awareness by the absolute danger of being conscious for the destruction of the body.
The idea that conscious personhood exists independent of the flesh is sort of the ultimate speculation. What defines “human?” Is it spirit or is it meat?
“Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness… focusing the consciousness… aortal dilation… avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness… to be conscious by choice… blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions… one does not obtain food-safety freedom by instinct alone… animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct… the animal destroys and does not produce… animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual… the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe… focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid… bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs… all things/cells/beings are impermanent… strive for flow-permanence within…”
Herbert speculates that it may, in the end, be the interlocking of both that ensures survival of the species.
A common difference between SF and Fantasy, young adult fiction, IMO, is that in SF, the protagonist either did or must work to acquire skills and abilities that lead to his position as the hero of the story; in fantasy, the protagonist was born to it or is otherwise somehow entitled without really working for the position.
I don’t know if this affects how children develop — young sf readers vs. young fantasy readers.
But it is a difference I find at least a little disturbing.
But then, I’m prejudiced. I read Doc Savage as a youngster and have always been disappointed that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to be as expert and fit as he was. I guess it helps if one starts out independently wealthy and doesn’t have to spend time on pesky things like making a living and doing the laundry.
On a slightly different note…
SF and Fantasy can be excellent societal mirrors, pointing out things at a distance that folks have trouble glancing at in their home or society. However, I think SF sometimes is better at showing us how society can be better. I haven’t seen much of this in a long time, but the attitude of constant improvement, and inspiring the questions, “What can I change to make this better?”, “What could we build that would be better than what we have now?” These are the questions that come from an attitude of optimism about humankind. There is so much righteous self flagellation in the popular culture these days, that that kind of optimism isn’t seen much, but I think we need it.
Debating the merits of both is all well and good,but you have to admit the only reason Michael Swanwick’s Iron Dragon trilogy is so good is because of the science.
Or is it because of the fantasy? Hmmmmm.
@74/trag: Good point about showing us how society can be better, and also about the predilection for chosen one protagonists in many (not all) fantasy books.
Many of my favourite stories are SF, and none of my favourite stories are fantasy. That’s why the distinction makes sense to me. Of course the boundary is fuzzy. But that’s true for every boundary. Realistic and fantastic stories. Fiction and nonfiction. Chairs and armchairs and sofas and beds. That doesn’t make categorisation meaningless.
Well done. This is an excellent rebuttal to the Asimov’s column.
Whereas Tolkien made everything up out of whole cloth with no predecessors in myth or history.
@78 Ha! :-)
I DO hope those giant space straws are made of paper rather than plastic!
@72
quite right. Many thanks.
Does it bother anyone else that “invisible cats” is the MOST scientifically plausible item in the list?
@74: You’re born with Jedi potential or you’re not, but you have to spend a lot of time learning to use it. Does that help? Also, if Harry Potter didn’t spend all that time at magic school, and getting special tuition, he wouldn’t have been “The Boy Who Lived” for long However, spending all of that time in school suggests that an author is not committed to delivering ESCAPIST FANTASY!
All characters have a period of growth and learning to get to a level of competence with their abilities. Just because they have the gift or whatever it is doesn’t mean much unless there’s a learning curve involved. Most of the fantasy books I’ve read all put the character into situations where they have to work to come into their own, whether it’s some kind of road block (any of Tamara Pierce’s series), the MC’s own reluctance to deal with his heritage (Clara Coulson’s Frost Arcana series or Rachel Aaron’s Heartstrikers series), or some other problem. To say that they’re entitled without working for a position is kind of short sighted and really short changes a lot of stories in which the characters actually have to grow up and accept responsibility for themselves and others.
So, let’s talk languages and SF. Apparently everyone seems to have forgotten Suzette Haden Elgin and her Liaden books, along with COMMUNIPATH. Learning an alien’s languages leads to having to potentially sacrifice a child on both sides, in her universe. But I guess there’s too much feminism there for people to remember them as SF.
And let’s talk the Ozark trilogy–ostensibly a fantasy, it’s actually SF as well, and written in a wonderful, lyrical Appalachian dialect. Ok, it could be characterized as Grand Old Space Opry, but there you are.
Wasn’t Liaden the name for Lee and Miller’s series? Native Tongue, etc, had a language called Láadan, though.
@@@@@ 32, kedamono:
I like hard-Fantasy… the kind where how many miles you can ride a horse is correct, or details on medieval economics plays a major role in the tale!
I recommend Poul Anderson’s On Thud and Blunder.
https://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/
@@@@@ 58, Anghus Fallon:
I guess I’d put most seminal fantasy work into two categories – the work produced for Weird Tales in the Thirties (Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft et al), plus I think ‘The Hobbit’ was written around the same time? The second period was postwar and mostly English – I’m talking about Peake, Lewis and the publication of LOTR.
John W. Campbell’s Unknown was published from 1939 to 1943. It produced fantasy that was seminal in a different vein. Campbell required magical systems that were logically consistent. De Camp and Pratt’s Herald Shea stories included The Mathematics of Magic. Heinlein’s Magic Incorporated treats magic as an everyday technology. De Camp also published Lest Darkness Fall, a cornerstone of the alternate history genera. Leiber debuted his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series in Unknown. Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think provided a scientific rationale for werewolves.
Unknown paved the way for later works like Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions, a fantasy that took account of the laws of physics. And Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy series, which treated magic as a rigorous technology.
Since, unfortunately, I’m not very good at sarcasm or its detection, I’m going to take Mr Nicoll’s essay very literally.
Of course, science fiction and fantasy are completely clearly delineated genres: one extrapolates solid science into rational, well-governed future universes where social mobility, justice, and fairness are present for all, as opposed to fantasy, which looks back, with great nostalgia, into a past where social mobility, justice, and fairness were only available to people with both the right sets of parents and sufficient money.
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I’ve read both science fiction and fantasy for many years. The more I read, the more I’m convinced that science fiction and fantasy are poorly defined, largely overlapping genres, and the overlap was at least as bad, and quite likely worse, during the “golden age.” Obviously, there are some works where the advancement of knowledge has rendered some parts of the story obsolete (all of the Barsoom books, although the science in them was poor, even in terms of the era they were written, e.g., egg-laying animals and humans being able to interbreed [there are egg-layers that have mammary glands, but decorative mammary glands are unique to humans] and Carter’s completely impossible ability to leap in Barsoomian (Martian?) gravity; iron as an energy source in Triplanetary, analogizing light speed to the speed of sound as a barrier to be broken in much 1940s and 1950s sf), but there are many more where contemporary known bad science is carried into the future with the great care of medieval monks copying Scripture, usually when the bad science involves social stratification (one of the most common, exemplified by the story “Marching Morons” is that poor people are stupid, lazy, and improvident).
@89/swampyankee: I don’t think that there is such a thing as completely clearly delineated genres. All genres overlap.
Well I guess – on one level – the distinction is very simple. Science Fiction is futuristic. Fantasy mimics the past.
@91. Aonghus: “Science Fiction is futuristic.”
Dune and it’s galactic feudalism want a word with you.
92. Yeah – quite a lot of that going around! Plus interplanetary Sword-and- Sorcery. Both clearly Science Fantasy (along with Steampunk).
Plus Bakshi’s Wizards and Brooks’ Shannara are set in the future…
I’ve come to think that, when trying to identify a story’s genre, the fewest pathological cases arise when Sci-Fi and Fantasy are viewed as complementary ends of an axis defined primarily by narrative structure and focus. The Sci-Fi end of this axis tends toward stories that are more concept-driven, with plot and character development being devices to define the Problem/Solution or Big Idea at the heart of the story. Conversely, on the Fantasy end are those stories whose central focus is more thematic, where the central concept is used instead to drive the plot and character development. Obviously this view is a gross oversimplification, and distinguishes based on some criteria that aren’t even necessarily in direct opposition to each other, but I think that most of the stories discussed here and in similar threads could be ordered along that axis in a way that wouldn’t cause too many arguments.
I find it interesting the degree to which the elements of this discussion are distorted by a handful of mid-20th-century titles. Think how much the debate would change if the entertainment industry had not anchored in our minds the notion that Forbidden Planet, Dune, and Star Wars were ‘Sci-Fi’ based on a cursory view of their most visible story elements.
@92: Or Warhammer 40,000 and its galactic feudalism. Or Destiny and its literal space-magic. Or Shadowrun and its classic high-fantasy races set in a post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk setting. Or the Powder Mage novels and their Napoleonic-era tech levels.
True, there’s a lot of space feudalism. How many fantasy republics are there?
@Jana: “How many fantasy republics are there?”
The USA?
@97
Neglecting urban fantasy?
Most fantasy occurs in various caricatures of the pre-gunpowder era. Even in the real pre-gunpowder era, the number of countries which could be described as “democratic” or even “republic” was severely finite.
There are times when I have come to believe that the various monarchies, feudal states, or plutocracies of far-future sf are authors’ wishful thinking.
Well writ!
I’ve leaned towards harder SF for over five decades, but what would I take to a desert island? Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, hands down, no contest.
(In reality I’d take a laptop fully loaded with music and books with an eInk display and a solar charger. But if I had to pick just one series, it’d definitely Discworld.)
I don’t agree with the conclusion. Science fiction is preferred by some because they consider it to be at least hypothetically possible, while they show contempt for fantasy because it is just made up nonsense? And they are wrong because some sci-fi stories are just as impossible as fantasy, while fantasy can offer real world metaphors and problems, three dimensional characters and explore the human mind? Both genres are the same in that regard, and I can’t remember anyone claiming otherwise, except those who are more focused on the words than the semantics.