This took me many years to realize for a number of reasons. First, I write fantasy! Well, I don't write that medieval-like crap they call fantasy. I write contemporary fantasy, whre magic is a part of this world, hidden or untapped. But let's face is. When you go to the bookstore and you peruse fantasy, you don't get much of that. You get "The brave knight sets forth on an heroic journey to fetch the magical talisman of blitz from the Evil Mage. He is joined by a thief, a wizard, and a horse that will inevitably die partway into the journey."

Science fiction, on the other hand, is diverse in its plots, methods, and madness. When I pick up a science fiction story I might even learn something. I definitely won't have preconceived notions about what will happen and how it wil end.

I'm just about done (thank God!) with the first of a trilogy by David Eddings: The DIamond Throne. The book was written for little boys. That's all there is to it. There's no depth, no substance, very weak characterization, pathetic and predictable conflict that is highly linear. How do they sell this stuff to adults? (That's the last time I take a book recommendation from this particular friend...grrrrrrr)

Medieval fantasy is simple, requires little deciphering as far as the physics of the universe goes. I have also tried reading some urban fantasy, namely The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford, and I struggle through those for some reason.

And you could say all the same things about laser guns and green aliens for scifi as I've said for medieval fantasy, but here's the thing: CLiche is mainstream in fantasy. Those scifi cliches you mentioned are laughed at now by serious scifi lovers. If you get claustrophobic in science fiction, then you clearly have not read enough of it to understand the broad depths it can go. It does not even stay in *this* universe! Alternate realities have been a part of science fiction for years and, IMHO, provided an interesting inlet into the Witch World series (which I have only read the first of), which is a blurred fantasy because of that science fiction inlet.

Aliens and laser guns? How about mutations, psychic phenomenon, the exploration of the universe that is far more diverse than any fantasy landscape I've ever seen, colonization, medicine, time travel, cloning, science used in evil ways to hurt manking, science used in ways that is supposed to help manking and hurts them...themes that go to human nature, what might be, what is, mistakes, successes, triumphs, etc. And these just scratch the surface.

One thing I decided to try when I was a teenager to make my world different was to set it on another planet instead of a fantasy kingdom. Yes, this introduces elements of scifi but so what? If, like me, it's the magic that you like it can happen on another planet as easily as a made up world.

Personally, I like good speculative fiction, whether it is fantasy or scifi. However, I generally find that really good fantasy does more for me than really good scifi, which is why I'm striving to write really good fantasy.

For instance, Eon, Eternity, and Legacy, by Greg Bear. Though he's purported to be hard sci-fi, there are some fantastic magic going on.

Or even the Rendezvous With Rama series, at the end who do we learn is responsible for sending massive cylinders into our solor system? God.

Of course, apart from fiction, when the mysteries of quantum mechanics are looked at, and how they may be responsible for the mechanisms that cause free will, conciousness, and the barrier between life and non-life, there are some amazing goosebump-causing mysteries left to ponder.

How does an atom go through two slits at once? Magic, for all I know...

I love fantasy because it can bring me in contact with strange worlds and cultures. Fantasy fiction is largely what made me want to study archaeology (working on my degree right now). I hope my fantasy never reads like a tiresome mideval cliche. I try to work in ideas, cultures, and technology from ancient people to give my world the exciting flair I look for in fantasy books.

But I am sick of all that medieval stuff, I wish there was more fantasy set in more remote and stranger regions of the world.

Shendülféa:

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All I've managed to come up with is an Arabian-like setting rather than a medieval Europe setting, and different races besides the usual Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves, but the story itself seems to still follow a similar formula. It's hard to get away from! I'm going to keep trying, though.

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I'll admit that Beth summed up my feelings beautifully when she said:

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I think she's saying that "current mainstream fantasy is overwhelmed by crappy cliches, while current mainstream SF is exploring new and interesting ground," which is a very different hypothesis.

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Thus I do not hate fantasy nor do I reject the genre entirely. I think I am done with the medievalish stuff, but I won't swear to it.

I have simply noticed that scifi, with the confines of what could be but probably isn't, seems to have done a better job of exploring time, space, and humanity than fantasy, with no confines whatsoever.

Oh yeah, a wrench. I've noticed that there seem to be quite a few preconceived notions about what constitutes scifi.

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I’d rather cherish the unknown for it’s bizarreness, as is the case for fantasy, than tackle the unknown in order to change it.

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This, to me, does not seem like a fair summary of what scifi is or what it is trying to od. Granted, there has been a lot of scifi written with the intent to explore what might be and has, through circuitous means, brought about change, but I have not found most scifi to be this way. I have read much scifi that, as you say, tackles the unkonown for the sake of bizarreness. I have read much scifi that is nothing more than a question of...What if? I have read scifi that is an exploration of the human condition.

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This, to me, does not seem like a fair summary of what scifi is or what it is trying to od

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Yeah, I guess your right, I was being pretty whimsical.

Like Spaceman has said, I think that the line drawn between scifi and fantasy is quite nebulous, and many novels cross over to the other side.

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Oh yeah, the wrench...What is scifi? What is fantasy? […] At their heart, something about scifi makes certain people shy away from it (both in writing and reading) and the same is true for fantasy. For those on both sides of this, what is the heart of your favoed genre? What is the heart of the other one?

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Perhaps fantasy is a tendency towards the unbelievable, blind faith for the supernatural (the serious kind at least).

I'm fascinated by the direction you're going, basing fantasies on Arab myths and settings. Very cool.

It's high time someone created fantasies populated by characters who don't look, act, or speak like JRRT's. Time to innovate, else fantasy will stagnate. (Some, obviously, say it has already.)

Vatyma --

Actually, my favorite reading is the classics, anyway, and I have way too many of them to read for me to waste my time on most modern writing-- fantasy or sci-fi. (Although HP is a guilty pleasure I thoroughly enjoy! ) Sorry to say it, but there it is. And no, I'm not trying to be a snob-- just honest.

BTW, pretty much anything I write is fairy-tale type stuff. I come here because you guys are great writers, and I know I have a lot to learn from you, whether or not I read the same genre.

I actually like Tolkien and Herbert for the same reasons. Regardless of the millieu, I enjoy complex plots that portray multi-faceted characters. I like reading about the effect of politics and/or religion on the society. If the author can throw in a few twists that haven't already been done to death, then I'm hooked.

I DON'T like science fiction that gets consumed by the science. It becomes too dry for me. I don't care for fantasy stories where evil villains are REALLY REALLY evil, just because they love their evilness and the heros and heroines are good because they are noble. Bleah.

Neither of these are the result of genre; they are a result of questionable writing skills. It just happens that there are a lot of mediocre writers who get published.

Which gives me hope that some day I might get good enough to rise above them.

I would like to point out, however, that I have often heard people (fans, writers, critics, etc) refer to something they call "lowest-common-denominator" fantasy when they discuss what they like and don't like, but I don't recall hearing anything about a similar term for science fiction.

I'll admit that I really haven't read entirely too many books--maybe about thirty or forty books which weren't class required--so maybe in a few years I'll be tired of the European-type setting for fantasy stories.

Have you read the Game of Thrones series, Doc Brown? That series, with its inherent violence, incest, and other seedy story elements tore apart my comfort zones, and I'm starting to sympathize a little with Jaime Lannister, who commits and has committed incest.

But maybe I'm just ignorant and stuff like that happens all the time in mainstream fantasy but I just have yet to read it.

I do know that I shall never read science fiction books which make me feel like an idiot for being unable to visualize and understand the scienctific parts.

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I like your email account name. Do you speak Arabic?

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You could not only bring something fresh to the genre but, through letting them learn of the myths, also give readers a better understanding of the culture, the people, and their history.

Or you could just tell a ripping good yarn, and leave off exploring what your themes might have been to Lit profs for torturing their students to distraction in the future.

My husband has read the book and says it fills in some details that the movie missed/didn't have time for. (He thought it was a good movie too, but let's face it, the screen can't capture everything in a book.)

I keep meaning to put that on my reading list.

cklabyrinth: When I read what you said about not having read many books outside of class requirements...it struck a chord. I seem to recall that the first few classic fantasy books I read weren't bad. Every new generation has to experience those tired old cliches a time or two before they become tired and old. I guess I've just read enough of it now. (BTW, I hated Martin's series. My husband LOVES it for most of the reasons I hate it, but that's for another topic, I think. I won't deny that he has more depth and character than most....I just wish I liked some of them.)

The same can be said for a lot of genres. I got into romance for a while when I was in high school. (BTW, for the lurking high schoolers around here, I would NOT recommend reading about steamy sex in books....it's unrealistic in such a way that it can pose a problem when it's time for the real thing.) Anyway, those too were almost all the same. Like fantasy, though, I read a lot of them before I got fed up.

I've also read some mystery/suspense. There is more varity there than with romance, but those familiar plots get old after a while too. There are only so many ways you can cleverly disguise clues before I'm going to start noticing them.

The strange thing about science fiction is that I've been reading it longer than any other genre, have read more of it than any other genre, and still have not grown tired ot it. Oh, there are some specific plotlines that I don't want to see again. There are some authors I don't want to read again. (Ursula K. LeGuin...how the heck did she win any awards? I can't stand the way she writes!) But I keep finding stuff to engage me there if I look hard enough.

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I'm not sure you could interst me in it by setting it in the Arabian Desert instead. Maybe.

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I'm writing an story at the moment that's got elements of both genres; I suppose that's where the term, "speculative fiction" could be applied, but I'd much rather prefer, "far-fetched exotic tale....

I tried reading Martin's GAME OF THRONES and the nastiness put me off. I find that if I don't have characters I can care about, the story had better have something else going for it and that something else had better be pretty amazing, or I won't keep reading.

When Martin killed off the only character I liked in the first book by having him do something stupid, I shrugged and stopped reading. (I have enjoyed a lot of his other stuff--he does science fiction well, too--but not GAME OF THRONES.)

Lian Hearn's fantasy trilogy starting with ACROSS THE NIGHTINGALE FLOOR is very well done fantasy, in my opinion.

I have been enjoying C J Cherryh's DEFENDER series (or whatever it's called) a lot. I like her science fiction much more than I do her fantasy.

I think that the heart of the debate lies in understanding what SF and Fantasy are, what makes them different from each other. Fantasy is, and always has been, about the fantastic. SF is a relatively recent off-shoot, and it is defined largely by the use of science to persuade us that the fantastic elements of the story are actually possible.

In a post-enlightenment age, the boundries between the two genres have lapsed and become irrelevant to the vast majority of readers. So we start to see popular SF, also known as Sci-Fi, which is just the usual fantasy fare dressed up with lasers and spaceships (or technobabble explanations of how the fantastic element in the story is a "real" possibility). We also see a lot of urban Fantasy, which suggests that certain kinds of magic really might exist in our own world. And not all the readers of these books need to suspend their disbelief in such things.

That said, I believe that the more "cliche" kinds of stories will always be with us in quantity. Another way to look at them is "formulaic". Those stories are easy to make and market, and have a predictable return on investment for the publishers (not so much for the writers, though occasionally a writer does get rich that way). A lot of the established markets for written SF are actively committed to innovative new ideas and concepts, which is natural. Fantasy doesn't have that (sometimes dubious) advantage.

And of course, SF has undergone a sort of mitosis several times, so that now you have a range of "hardness" in terms of how plausible the story is in terms of actual science (and how directly that science affects the plot and characters). Most SF is nowhere near the values of "hardness" required to convince experts in the affected fields to think, "something like that could really happen." Whereas a significant and growing percentage of the reading public is likely to believe that magical events in certain urban fantasy stories are possible.

Myself? As I've said before, I don't particularly regard genre as being a meaningful indicator of a work's value. It's something we have to deal with as a reality of the publishing industry, and I'm more comfortable writing stories that I can believe are plausible in this universe. That means that I can explain how the world as it is now (or was at some known point in the past) gave rise to every milieu I've created for my own stories, including the Fantasy settings (which actually slightly outnumber my harder SF settings).

I don't make the same demand of worlds created by other authors, though. As long as the milieu makes some kind of sense, I'm okay reading. I've read a lot of really good Fantasy and a lot of really good SF. And I've had fun reading some pretty silly stuff too.

I think it's like what Christine is saying. The best fantasy, to me, beats the best SF. But the best fantasy is so rare, and although I can enjoy mediocre SF, mediocre fantasy bores me to death.

I think it's partly because of the different goals. SF shows us what life might be like if physical reality were a little different. Fantasy shows us what life might be like if supernatural reality were a little different, and that's a grander sweep. SF shakes up the way I work or live; fantasy shakes up who I am, who God is, what reality is.

It's easier to shake up external reality and do it well, than to remake everything.

Small-scope fantasy can work (fairy tales). But even that, I think, shakes up my very nature.

Just my two cents' worth. Or lack, thereof.

Inkwell
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"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous

But that could be a track to follow. All You Zombies, where a character has an incestuous relationship with himself / herself, pushed my comfort zone. So did None Lives, which had characters with perfect sex partners: opposite sex clones of themselves. Then there was Cat's Cradle, which didn't have incest, but had ordinary humans who practiced a whole new form of sexual intercourse.

Frankly, these are weak examples. The best speculative fiction stories explore the meaning of our existence. Bicentennial Man is an example, so are Contact and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (b.k.a. Blade Runner).

The problem of this generation in all media is afraid of pushing forward and trying something new. I see the same movies coming out of Hollywood everyday and the same books coming out everywhere everyday.

Writers need to look at the roots of fantasy and sci-fi to see what they must do. Millions of die-hard Tolkien fans have probably never read my favorite sci-fi book of all time, Frankenstein.

To defeat the cliches of both generes, it is necessary to look at the basic principles of both. With sci-fi, you pose a question and back it with logic, while with fantasy, you pose a question and back with unrealistic logic and realistic logic. The problem is that these days most people think that all the good questions have been posed and we should just take the safe bet on the best used questions. This is why Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Dragon Riders of Pern, and Harry Potter are good books. It is not because they are old or in Potter's case just easy to read, but because their authors dared to challenge the cliches of their times with incredible books. We must risk being condemned as naive for trying something different in order to push forward the world of writing ahead.

In terms of plauability, I think a pure fantasy world with magic would have some elements of technology, or at least something that to us looked like technology. Can you imagine someone with the power to change matter into energy through the power of their mind, not be able to travel long distances? Of course, if you limit the magic to less potent spells, you are really falling into a quest type story by default.

Her posted comment goes on to describe a reader who approached her at a book signing to complain that the gutter on the printed page was too narrow for his tastes, so he would never buy one of her titles again.