posted
hey all first i hope i posted in the right place then I have read OSC's book on how to write SF and Fantasy. but what I'd like to have is your opinion on the two following question: What define fantasy as a genre? Why the use of fantasy or SF to express views?
(if there are mistakes it might not be only typo it might be because I am french so pardon my english)
posted
C.S. Lewis believed that fantasy ("fairy-tales") were the only useful lies, because in a fantasy world, you can distill moral truths from all the confusion that attends them in the real world.
J.R.R. Tolkien believed that fantasy was truer than the "truth," for the same reason.
posted
Fantasy, science fiction, and in a sense all fiction, are really just different areas on a continuum, with large amounts of overlap between them, and no clear, absolute lines of demarcation.
If the overriding ideas are extrapolations of science/technology, it's probably science fiction. If the overriding ideas are extrapolations of mythology/spirituality it's probably fantasy. That's the cleanest way I can think of to divide them, although it's surely inadequate.
For example Star Trek is an indisputable example of science fiction, yet, anyone who has taken any level of physics in college could easily tell you that their science is not possible. Nor will it ever be. While space-travel and whatnot aren't unfeasible, obviously, the exact mechanics of their "world" is impossible. So to say Science Fiction might be possible in the future, to me, is like saying that it must adhere to known physical and chemical mechanics. Which isn't the case.
So, in my opinion.
Fantasy--(Lord of the Rings)--A fictional setting with unbelievable elements that intentionally remain unexplained. (No effort is made to logically defend the "science" of the world. ie: magic)
Science Fiction-(Star Trek)--A fictional setting with unbelievable elements that are explained or supported by some system of logic. (ie: space travel)
Then we have my favorite: Science Fantasy--(Star Wars)--To some degree the unbelievable elements of the story are explained (like space travel, the death star plans, hyperspace, etc) but a lot remains unexplained. (like the force...[I'm talking about classic Star Wars here])
But as I understand it genres are like lines of demarcation that sometimes just can't do the job. Lines for the sake of having lines, especially because most fiction encompasses some degree of every genre. Suspense, Romance, Fantasy, etc. So while you might think you're writing a science fiction book, your publisher might decide it's actually a fantasy.
(But then again I'm speaking completely based off my gut instincts on all of this)
posted
Why go to these genres to express yourself?
I'm sure any competent writer could take a storyline and express it in a number of genres, but speculative fiction (be it fantasy or science fiction or magical realism or slipstream, or whatever) allows an author to explore ideas in a milieu that does not immediately contrast with and confront the idea. That doesn't mean that there aren't any constraints on writing in sf, there are, but the constraints are more to do with internal consistency than a specific cultural position or take ON an idea.
In my cumbersome way, I guess that I am trying to say that as a bartender, if you want to explore new ideas for a mixed drink, you don't do it in an alehouse, nor a coffeehouse; you do it in place people go to drink and have fun, where they're not going to get on your case just because you didn't use a recipe.
posted
Mike's words echo my own except I wouldn't say that there is only one way to express yourself.
I consider the genres of writing not matters of personal expression (though they can be) but rather modes of communication and delivery.
For example...
If I want to write about how synthetic genomics might effect futrue events I must generally write science fiction.
If I want to write about how grief over loss of a wife is overcome through good friends and family then I must generally write "literary" fiction.
If I want to write about how love can transform the deepest parts of our lives and make it more bearable then I must generally write "chick-lit"
If I want to write about a powerful man/woman and their quest to rid the world of all that is evil I must generally write high fantasy.
If I want to write about outcasts who live in sub-classes of sub-cultures and war with denizens of the dark in a concrete jungle then I must generally write urban fantasy.
The list goes on. OSC takes a special approach to writing fantasy/SF. He is in my opinion an author who crafts his stories around ideas, particularly ones of a moral tone. This is not to say that he does not do an excellent job at characterization or setting nor that all is stories are I stories in the MICE formula. Rather that the strength of his writing is the thematic elements.
Some authors craft their stories around characters others around events. Turtledove has always struck me as an author who develops the events first while George RR Martin has always struck me (even before Song of Ice and Fire) as an author who focused on the characters and who they are and what they do.
OSC I believe found in SF/F a genre that let him express the themes he wanted without compromising his ability to also sell them. I say this because I don't believe OSC is writing SF/F because that is all he can write but rather SF/F is how he wants to tell his stories.
Good bad or indifferent, OSC is a man of deep convictions. His writing demonstrates this time and time again.
posted
Fantasy has elements that defy explanation. For example, magic, it doesn't have a scientific basis, it is some force that can be manipulated to do things. There are still rules, there still must be a defined concept for how things work, even if they don't have a specified system within the story. For most rpg computer games, they used spell points to determine how many spells a character could cast before having to rest or use some item to restore their power. There have been a great number of writers who choose fantasy thinking they don't need any rules and anything goes. This make for very poor fantasy.
Scifi deals with things that could be possible and do have some form of scientifically based concept. Does physics have to already be known for an idea to be used...no. If that were the case scifi would be very limited. Faster than light travel is common in a great deal of scifi books, and if there had to be real science to back it up, they would all fail. The trick is using plausible ideas that you can make the reader believe.
Why use either? That depends. Some stories can't be told without magic, or things that can not be explained and are harder to be believed. Fantasy allows these things to exist and be a part of the world your story is written in without it remaining unbelievable. Other stories use science to implement the needed elements required by the story. I'm currently working on a story that involves a human colony and an alien device. Could I have placed my story on Earth? Yes, but the change in environment, and the plausible timeline that creates the conditions could never be possible on earth...so the environment I have created requires not only space travel, but other technologies that are never explained.
What universe we choose to write in is up to us, but think through the reasons for doing so. I read somewhere that if a story works just as well without the scifi or fantasy elements, then it isn't either. Do think it through and figure out the reason you want to write in one or the other before just choosing to.
posted
Erm, not to throw a wrench in the works, but SOME Star Trek "science" is being made, y'know. Phasers - there are scientists who are developing real ones, or things similar to them. The communicator thingies on their shoulders - similar things are in development, so I read. There are even scientists trying to develop (and having a bit of success, so I read) an Invisibility Cloak like Harry Potter's (and Harry's stories are fantasies, not SF).
posted
thanks to everyone for yours views on the subject. here is what i think on the first question. Fantasy is a genre with no real boundaries as any writer can push them further. The presence of some elements such as magical skills or swordfighting are part of what helps categorize a novel as a fantasy one but are not enough because those element could happen in others genre too. Then there is the idea of alternate world; an alternate worlds definitely set a novel as a fiction if there are space ship involved or high tech it is science fiction if it is medievalish it is fantasy. of course we could distinguish sub-genre such as the post apo or the steampunk or others but in the end those subgenre would belong to either the SF or the Fantasy. In the end I think that a fiction novel happens in an alternate world where things happen that couldn't happen in ours but here have a justified explanations ; if futur technologie is involved we have SF, if not Fantasy. Of course as I write those words i realize that not all SF or Fantasy novel strictly fit to that description but that's why I talked about writers stretching the boundaries. then I'll end that answer with quote from OSC: "if a story takes place in a universe that follows the same rules as ours, it is science fiction.if it happens in a universe that doesn't, it is fantasy.or put it anotherway,sf talks about what could be and fantasy talks about what couldn't" (hope my translation is close enough to its original version i have the book in french...) on to the second question: I tend to disagree a bit with matt's classification because I can tell a story about love in a fantasy worlf (ARTHUR, LANCELOT, GUENIEVRE). I think that setting stories in fictional worlds helps bringing out subject to readers that are not used to them. Through the distance between the book's world and our own it is easier for the reader to accept some point of view. to finish i would quote Margaret Weiss in a short essay: "Fantasy tales are today's parables. They present problems and issues of today in a manner that is enjoyable and therefore often dismissed. Fantasy tales are not less powerful simply because they are entertaining. Sometimes we see so much evil around us that we become hardened, inured. Move the problem into a different setting and we suddenly see them more clearly."
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posted
Science fiction originally is futuristic writing. Writing about what you think things will be like in the future.
One could write a futuristic story based on tomorrow, but by the time it was written, edited, published and distributed, yesterday would have been long gone and everybody would know whether you were accurate or not. Generally, one write science fiction farther into the future. In the 1960s, they wrote about 1994 or 2000 so that they had room to move and not be wrong. Of course, if you read the books written back then, they had no clues. Many were written about society trends like 1984, but most were based on technological advancements.
The farther we write into the future, the less likely we will be found wrong.
Once we start writing about colony worlds, alien planets, etc, all bets are off. If one wants to rewrite history, it is possible.
To have colonies, though, one has to tweak the rules of physics. Interstellar travel if one is not doing generational ships or suspended animation or hybernation of some form, one needs to to adjust physics in some way to travel faster than light, to visit stars in months instead of centuries. Hyper drive or warp drives are created for story effect. There is a possible explanation for this but not likely.
I can come up with all sorts of scientific like explanation for magic to exist in a science fiction setting, so that allows one to blur the lines between science fiction or fantasy. My favorite, by the way, is a higher dose of certain metals in the brain, in just the right location, acting like an antenna, converting background radiation into energy.
If one can change the rules for interstellar travel, one can also change the rules for how magic operates too. Keep changing the rules and one ends up with a science fantasy like Star Wars. There are possible scientific basis for what happens, but it is really stretching it.
Of course, if one forgets about our future, even more possibilities are available. With magic as discribed above, and a different past and future that a different species would provide, one can ignore anything set in reality and have fun.
Hard Science Fiction is basically a technology or social trend pushed to the limit and the effects on the society. Old hard science fiction tended to have characters plugged in to show the science.
Soft Science Fiction is where the science is a charicter study in a science fiction setting. Remove the science fiction and the story does not work.
Science fantasy is where the science is a background to the story where magic exists. It might take some doing to remove the science and still make the story work, but it could be done.
****
Fantasy started with Tolken and ghost stories and witches and horror stories, and developed from there. They might be placed in a modern society, but still follow the patterns set by those stories. Place these characteristics into a present or future period, and one might end up with science fantasy.
There are other gradations and options but those are useful for this discussion.
you can disagree with me but in your answer you are misinterpreting me.
I never said love couldn't be a part of a fantasy novel but I do believe that Love cannot be the main point of a high fantasy novel.
Yes certain tellings of the Arthurian legend does dwell heavily on the love triangle.(Though when and why that part was added in is of much dispute)
But No if you make a love story the focus of the Arthurian legend you really start telling a historic romance[i] if you wrote low fantasy or paranormal/fantasy [i]romance if you wrote high fantasy. (notice emphasis on romance)
Technically these can fall within the boundaries of fantasy but really they appeal primarily to a difference audience.
Which is why though Time Traveller's wife is a wonderful book, full of lots of Spec Fiction elements; its really a paranormal romance because though the story wouldn't exist with Henry's Chrono-impairment, the story's point is to tell a love story.
Fantasy has boundaries in the sense that there are things that are fantasy and things that are not fantasy.
Within the bounds of things that are fantasy, the sphere of possibilities is ever increasing. Yet fantasy is not boundless except by itself. Fantasy even more than literary fiction is a tautological genre.
[This message has been edited by Matt Lust (edited July 14, 2007).]
quote: but what I'd like to have is your opinion on the two following question: What define fantasy as a genre? Why the use of fantasy or SF to express views?
What I love is that the BOLD word says that we're all right.
posted
To a professional writer, fantasy and science fiction are genres. If you want to sell to Analog, you need to get most of the science right, but ftl and time travel are grandfathered in. If you want to sell to Asimov's, anything goes, including fairies in the rocket fuel, provided the story is pointless and the characters unpleasant -- no, sorry, scratch that, Gardner's gone.
Ahem! Got carried away. Try again. The commercial difference between sf and fantasy is the icons you use. Rocket ships are sf, fairies are fantasy. Fairy powered rocket ships are science fantasy. Some book stores put them on different shelves, some on the same shelf. Nobody knows where to put Neil Gaiman.
Seriously, to sell to an sf market, you must know some science. Outside of comic books, there is no sound in a vacuum, no air on an asteroid, and a fifty foot tall monster cannot have pipe stem legs. If you don't know why these things are true, stick to fantasy.
quote: IAB, i'm thinking that bold is your online version of black leather
You've found me out!
Rick Norwood
quote: Nobody knows where to put Neil Gaiman.
Contemperary Fantasy is the answer you're looking for. Ironically:
quote: Outside of comic books, there is no sound in a vacuum, no air on an asteroid, and a fifty foot tall monster cannot have pipe stem legs.
Neil Gaiman has been a comic book author for years. And, it would be a severe mistake to group all comic books into this description. Some are what they were intended to be : still movies; visual novelizations. The crow,V for Vendetta,Sin City, and300 are prime examples of what's possible with that genre.
Also, it's not "Science Fantasy", it's either "Space Opera" (like Star Wars and Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of Seven Suns) or "Slipstream".
And, my "definitions" were an attempt -- whether sad or not -- at simplifying the terms.
posted
to disagree with someone doesn't mean that that person is wrong I was just expressing my own opinion(couldn't find how to type it in bold ). But matt is right I was misinterpreting (reading to fast). Anyway opinion are expressed to be discussed that is what makes us go forward.
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posted
Whatever rule you come up with for defining fantasy or science fiction, someone will come up with a title that is SF or fantasy, but does not fit the definition.
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