The fine boundary between fantasy and non-fantasy

[KatG]

Kat,

You actually typed all of this up? Simply, wow!
This is definitely a good read. I will have to re-read your opus a few times, to understand it completely.

Thanks a lot for your time and effort!

I've done it before on this topic. It's a perennial for SFF fans. There are many subject ideas which are quite popular for both SF and fantasy, so the rationale distinction is again the operating framework for grouping them. Zombies, psychic powers, time travel, alternate dimensions, etc. all can be used for science fiction or fantasy stories. We divvy them up as to whether those elements have a scientific, natural reason for existing or a supernatural one beyond the natural world -- otherworldly being another term used. Zombies from a virus or a bad science experiment -- science fiction. Zombies from magic spells or demon possession -- fantasy, and so on.

The real problem with genre-bending isn't the Star Trek fans, it is the dedicated SF readers who read for the wonder of ideas played out to their logical conclusion. Those folks would find the addition of fantasy elements without scientific examination a waste of their reading time - which is just another reason to be careful trying to straddle both worlds.

Every time I try and think of a book that tackles science and fantasy, all I come up with are SF books that attempt to explain witches (The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.), vampires (Blindsight) or the like with science in a way SF fans will love and fantasy people would likely find un-Romantic.

The Romantic tradition, while still part of the academic discussion of lit and lit history, isn't really involved anymore in how we group them, since we entered the "modern" age in the 20th century. And again, a fantasy story with science fiction elements isn't really bending anything -- it's been done all the time. A lot of contemporary fantasy stories also make use of science fiction elements and straight real world tech elements. "Elves with computers" stories have been popular since the 1980's. Post-industrial secondary world fantasy novels will add science fiction elements and there is a long tradition of post-apocalyptic Earth or secondary worlds with science fiction elements added to the fantasy ones, such as Terry Brooks' famous Shannara books, Emma Bull's legendary Bone Dance and Steven Boyett's renowned Ariel for big older ones and we were recently talking about Django Wexler's new secondary world one Ashes of the Sun.

Fantasy stories set out in space are fewer but are not unusual. They're not meant specifically for science fiction fans, but many SF fans enjoy them, especially if they also read fantasy. C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy, Andre Norton's Witch World and Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's Keltiad series are older ones, but we have newer ones, such as Tamsyn Muir's big hit Gideon the Ninth. Likewise, fantasy fans are again often inclusionary and like a lot of SF books, mainly in the space opera area, such as Dune of course, Gene Wolfe's Ur-Sun series, Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, C.J. Cherryh's Riders at the Gate trilogy and newer titles such as Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha, where the characters call some of their science magic and other parts science, as there are strong religious themes in the story. Hurley also did a secondary world, multi-dimension fantasy trilogy, the Worldbreaker Saga, and has another space opera SF novel, The Stars are Legion, that many fantasy fans like as well.

And fantasy fans like Star Wars, which is space opera SF, but has certainly been muddled about it as sci-fi worked on by hundreds of people tends to be. It has laser swords and princesses, which some people seem to regard as quintessentially fantasy-like (which again confuses it with historical-ish elements which is only a small part of fantasy fiction.) Lucas started with a very light background quantum explanation for the Jedi superpowers -- everything is energy/quantum particles -- and the Jedi are able to tap into it to work the energy, mainly through the emotion centers of the brain. When Lucas did the prequel films, he started playing around with it, making it "more" SF in the ridiculous midi-chlorians and at the same time having a more mystical cast with the Anakin chosen one balance prophecy thing where there was a future time-reading superpower essentially. As writers have played with the Star Wars property, there have been more religious and fantasy-like trappings to the Jedi aspect and a lot of inconsistencies. That's again not unusual in t.v./film sci-fi. But Star Wars remains from its original form science fiction. Star Trek is also science fiction -- it does not have any supernatural elements; everything is given a natural world explanation for existing, however loopy. Same for Doctor Who.

But again, sci-fi is not quite the same as written SFF. Written SF is set once it's down. Writers can change things in later books, which can alter a series, but they pick one or the other rationale approach for the overall universe and are consistent with it. In sci-fi, it's lots of different creators -- writers, producers, directors, actors, etc. -- who can flip back and forth over long spans of time. Which is also how we get the Marvel and DC Comics universes with their mix of stuff and many game universes as well (which can also have tie-in fiction.) So it's been easier to just call all that sci-fi, and using examples of film/t.v. properties to explain how written SFF works are grouped and sold doesn't help you that much.

Basically, all Noel has to do is call the project futuristic fantasy and that will work perfectly fine with publishers, etc. They do try to label things so that the most interested readers will find them as easily as possible.

 

[NoelWell]

As long as there is such category in their routine, I am all for it!

Someone else suggested portal fantasy. It is also a good thought, but it only exists in very few agent and publisher choices.

Thanks again!
Noel

 

[Stanley Steamboy]

And again, a fantasy story with science fiction elements isn't really bending anything -- it's been done all the time.

And as we already agreed, such a story is fantasy. What I was suggesting is that it truly isn't possible to write a story that actually straddles both genres (and is both) because they always have ink in them. And then I tried to illustrate why the ink is off-putting to the dedicated SF folk so that they will actually reject the effort.

All sort of fiction has "SF elements", since SF just means that someone references space, science, the future or technology in the plot or exposition. Thrillers, military, medical fiction, mystery, comedy and even romance are frequently well vested with science stuff - yet no one gets upset that Tom Clancy isn't in the SFF section. Technology and the heavens are historically natural parts of human wonder, and there is no escaping it. Even LOTR has chemical explosives.

What we call SF isn't just the density of sciency stuff, but the act of creating tension and wonder through it. It is the point, and SF books earn the title by decidedly being nothing else.


What I find really interesting are the Claire North books that function like SF without ever suggesting the underlying why. But they all hinge on a single speculative thing, and then take that element through its paces to some sort of conclusion. That special thing could have a sciency explanation or not, but what is very SF about the stories is that they stick to the ramifications of that one thing and don't divert the line of reasoning by dumping more elements into the plot. The Sudden Appearance of Hope logically sticks so closely to its one unreal element that the effect is little different than Vinge's very SF Marooned in Realtime. But her books are truly neither SF or F, though they sit well in that section. Banks' Transition is similarly neither fish nor fowl.


The OP's "problem" is that a list of stuff - dragons, magic stones, speeder bikes, rocket skates - doesn't define a genre unless that's all that's really there to point at. I'd like to think that the spirit of SF or Fantasy lives more in the telling and not the menu.

 

[BFLee]

The analogy I've usually used is ink (fantasy) and water (science fiction.) If you add water to ink -- science fiction elements to fantasy fiction, it's still ink -- fantasy. If you add ink to water -- fantasy elements to science fiction -- it's no longer water, it's ink -- fantasy. That's because science fiction defines itself as only being in the natural world. Fantasy posits an unnatural/supernatural reality beyond the natural world and understanding and plays with that idea.

I love your ink and water analogy. What if it looks like ink but it is really water?

Would Fantasy readers be put off by the scientific explanation? Would Science Fiction readers not even give it a go since it looks like Fantasy?

 

[KatG]

And then I tried to illustrate why the ink is off-putting to the dedicated SF folk so that they will actually reject the effort.

Would Fantasy readers be put off by the scientific explanation? Would Science Fiction readers not even give it a go since it looks like Fantasy?

SFF readers differ from one another. The majority of both SF and fantasy fans read (and view) both types of works. Large numbers of SFF authors have always written both types. It's just not really an issue for most of the field. There are some who want to read only SF but they may enjoy space opera nonetheless. And there are fantasy readers who only want to read fantasy but will happily read futuristic fantasy stories or contemporary or historical/alt historical fantasy with science fiction elements in them, as well as maybe read SF with alien beasties or telepathic powers because they like those too even though those stories have nothing supernatural in them. There are quite a few SF fans, for instance, of China Mieville's Perdido St. Station, which is a post-industrial secondary world fantasy novel with science fiction elements. And there are fantasy fans of Jeff VanderMeer's Veniss Underground, which is a trippy cyberpunk science fiction novel involving nano technology, and also of his bestselling Annihilation novel.

Gideon the Ninth, which has necromancers in space, has drawn all sorts of fans, is a bestseller and won/been nominated for SFF awards. If you write a futuristic fantasy, you're not writing for SF fans who don't like to read fantasy, so whether they would reject it or not is really not an issue.

All sort of fiction has "SF elements", since SF just means that someone references space, science, the future or technology in the plot or exposition. Thrillers, military, medical fiction, mystery, comedy and even romance are frequently well vested with science stuff - yet no one gets upset that Tom Clancy isn't in the SFF section. Technology and the heavens are historically natural parts of human wonder, and there is no escaping it. Even LOTR has chemical explosives.

Again, science fiction isn't just having science stuff or technology in a story. That's mimetic -- real -- material. To be science fiction, it has to have UNREAL elements that do not exist in our world but which are given a natural rationale for existing in the story world. Thrillers that have tech in them but not unreal tech are not science fiction. They're mimetic thrillers. Science fiction stories of the past that had unreal elements in them that have since become real -- such as going to the moon -- remain science fiction stories, but to have a story written today be considered science fiction today, you have to have elements that are unreal right now.

Also, a story doesn't have to be sold in the category market -- the SFF sections of bookstores -- to be science fiction or fantasy. The category market for SFF is a book-selling market served mainly by specialty publishing imprints (their titles are shelved in the specialty section of shelves), specialty media, specialty conventions and websites and is then also often cross-marketed to the larger fiction market and/or other category markets. But there are a ton of SFF titles that are published by non-specialty imprints in general fiction or by specialty imprints in other category markets such as mystery/suspense or romance, often cross-marketed to the SFF category market media but not necessarily stocked on the category specialty shelves, and they are all part of the general SFF field. And then there is the children's/YA/New Adult area, which has its own set of publishers and shelves, etc., and also puts out SFF that is part of the whole SFF field.

Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October is science fiction and was cross-marketed to the science fiction category market under the suspense sub-category of technothrillers (thrillers involving science fiction tech elements) back in the 1980's when it was published. Paranormal romance is a sub-category of the romance category market, as is SF romance, but titles from it are often cross-marketed to the SFF category markets. Horror is predominantly fantasy fiction but there is also mimetic horror and SF horror. Most horror was and still is in book form sold in general fiction, but the magazine market and general marketing worked with the SFF category market. In the mid-oughts, a horror category market for selling novels was established in bookstores (though this varies by country.) So where a work is sold in a bookstore is not the defining grouping of the book, since that's usually determined by who published it, not simply the book itself. To be grouped in science fiction as part of the field, though, you do have to have the unreal elements. Otherwise it's just real world science and tech, not speculative.

What we call SF isn't just the density of sciency stuff, but the act of creating tension and wonder through it. It is the point, and SF books earn the title by decidedly being nothing else.

Again, there is no requirement as to the amount (density) of science fiction elements that have to be in a story to make it science fiction. A story can have one unreal natural science fiction element in it and nothing else and it is still science fiction. Nor is creating tension and wonder required -- that's a stylistic and thematic preference and subjective. If you have at least one unreal element that is given a natural rationale for existing and you have no unreal elements that have a supernatural rationale for existing (fantasy,) it's a science fiction story. It's a very low bar.

What I find really interesting are the Claire North books that function like SF without ever suggesting the underlying why. But they all hinge on a single speculative thing, and then take that element through its paces to some sort of conclusion. That special thing could have a sciency explanation or not, but what is very SF about the stories is that they stick to the ramifications of that one thing and don't divert the line of reasoning by dumping more elements into the plot. The Sudden Appearance of Hope logically sticks so closely to its one unreal element that the effect is little different than Vinge's very SF Marooned in Realtime. But her books are truly neither SF or F, though they sit well in that section. Banks' Transition is similarly neither fish nor fowl.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here, but Claire North writes under a couple of pen names and different types of fiction. But mostly she writes fantasy and fantasy horror. The Sudden Appearance of Hope is a fantasy story. Banks' Transition is a science fiction story. The shadowy operatives of the novel use quantum mechanics to hop multiple dimensions but only with their consciousnesses with the help of a drug. The unreal elements are given a natural rationale for existing. If Banks had wanted to make it a fantasy novel instead, he'd have changed the rationale for the unreal elements, but he chose the science fiction one.

Again, everybody can have discussions about whether a particular SF title is science fictiony enough for them (leans enough towards hard SF,) or if a fantasy premise could be given a natural, scientific rationale instead (usually it could.) But we don't group them or sell them based on what one person thinks is acceptable for science fiction or fantasy. We group them in very broad, general categories just by basic elements authors have stuck in them.

The OP's "problem" is that a list of stuff - dragons, magic stones, speeder bikes, rocket skates - doesn't define a genre unless that's all that's really there to point at. I'd like to think that the spirit of SF or Fantasy lives more in the telling and not the menu.

If the stuff is unreal, it makes it speculative and thus not mimetic and in the SF or fantasy categories, and why the unreal stuff is there groups it in fantasy or SF.

 

[Stanley Steamboy]

If the stuff is unreal, it makes it speculative and thus not mimetic and in the SF or fantasy categories, and why the unreal stuff is there groups it in fantasy or SF.

You keep saying that while ignoring Gibson's three present day books and the film Gravity. All are SF with no unreal elements.

The Sudden Appearance of Hope is a fantasy story.

Who says? It appears to be classified in most references as SF, as is the similar First Fifteen Lives of Harry August which won both the Campbell and Clarke SF Awards. Neither explains the principle involved, just as Transition (written under the non-SF Iain Banks authoring) has no explanation for how those characters are gifted to travel.

Are you acessing some sort of publishing database that says these books are classified one way or another?

 

[NoelWell]

A civil battle of titans is such a rare occasion on the Internet these days! You both draw applause from me with strong arguments in defense of each of your positions. And you get it right! I have asked this questions due to constraints imposed on me by the publishing industry.

See, even Smashwords, being the most writer-friendly platform out there, confines me into the boundaries, where I have to select the following primary and secondary genres:

Fiction -> Fantasy -> Paranormal (since I have demons, dragons, gods, and magic artifacts)
and
Fiction -> Science fiction -> Space opera (since much of the action occurs in and about space)

There is no line in the sand, there are no hard rules, there is only the writer's choice, driven by the existing constraints. I hope that I had chosen correctly. Time will tell.

Thank you,
Noel

 

[NoelWell]

Would Fantasy readers be put off by the scientific explanation? Would Science Fiction readers not even give it a go since it looks like Fantasy?

Great question! I also wish I knew, since I try to find scientific explanation for magic in my books, much like Peter Dickinson does in the Flight of Dragons that, in my opinion, is still a fantasy story by a great margin. Even when Ommadon's head explodes from the mention of sociology, the book still remains fantasy, in my humble opinion.

 

[pogopossum]

As referred to in the above posts, readers don't really care about absolute definitions. Although people have proclivities, all but a few purists who might be out there enjoy whatever more based on the quality of the story rather than worrying about the exact nature of the forces that separate it from mundane fiction.
I will still go with the atmosphere created in a book as being important rather than a line of separation.

Kat G draws a difference (Ink) and Stanley does feel that it is important. Quote, " Ink is off-putting to the dedicated SF folk so that they will actually reject the effort."
I just don't see it. Atmosphere will drive away readers with other tastes. But not whether something falls on which side of a technical line.
I appreciated Jemison's skill and enjoyed the first two books of each of her trilogies until the unrelenting dystopic gloom sent me away in the third book of each trilogy. But I had not even a random thought until later as to whether they were SF or F. The difference was not atmosphere that defined genre but atmosphere that defined the character and action of the works. The difference for most readers isn't an either or, bifrucation of genres, that attracts, repels, or makes something acceptable.
Perhaps the techie stuff in the Quantum Magician could drive you away, or the introduction of one more ghoulie by Patricia Briggs., but that's to do with appreciating (or not) the writers choices, not whether they are SF or F.

The Hugo Award now explicitly recognizes Science Fiction or Fantasy. Neither what I could find on the Internet nor in my old copy of Franson and DeVore mention when the shift was made to explicitly include Fantasy in the wording of the awards. Until the fracas about group voting (2015?) I believe that the system was purely driven by the works with the most nominations getting on the final ballot. This resulted in Witch World getting nominated in 64 and Too Many Magicians in 67.
So as to history, there has been an assumption that in some way, it's one field. As particularized in KatG's earlier description. Separating is not exactly a distinction without a difference, but dividing into two genres is not the point.

 

[NoelWell]

You are probably right: from the reader's POV it is not really critical. It probably inflamed my concern that the agents and publishers are very strict about the genres they are agreeable to read and accept. Also, Smashwords publishing guide that I try to follow insists that the author must be honest with readers, and choosing the right genre is one of the items.

 

[Mostlyharmless]

There are a group of novels that start off reading as fantasy and later reveal that everything has a scientific explanation.

Sometimes what the author intends becomes clear after reading a few chapters as in Karl Schroeder's Ventus. A review http://www.sfreviews.net/ventus.html explains "In one sense it's a fascinating narrative conceit, as it allows the novel's characters to react to concepts like AI's and nanotech as if they were magic, thereby nicely dramatizing Arthur C. Clarke's popular quote about sufficiently advanced technologies. On top of that, Schroeder gets to have battle scenes featuring men in armor on horseback wielding swords and call it SF".

However, I am currently reading the Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein. I have read volume 1 and started volume 2 and I am enjoying the tale. At this point, I do not know whether there is any of KatG's ink present or not. I suspect that it will be science fiction (please don't tell me) but it is clear that the tension is deliberate and that the author does not want the story classified before reading.

 

[pogopossum]

A strength that I appreciate on this forum is the multiplicity of viewpoints. Academic, consumer, critic, creator.
And many that combine two or more of the above. Thank you.

Earlier I questioned the difference between reading purely for pleasure and with an idea of producing reviews/criticism.

Well here we are again, on a seemingly quite different question.
Perspective again rears its (complex? ugly? difficult?) point of view.

 

[Stanley Steamboy]

As referred to in the above posts, readers don't really care about absolute definitions. Although people have proclivities, all but a few purists who might be out there enjoy whatever more based on the quality of the story rather than worrying about the exact nature of the forces that separate it from mundane fiction.
I will still go with the atmosphere created in a book as being important rather than a line of separation.

Kat G draws a difference (Ink) and Stanley does feel that it is important. Quote, " Ink is off-putting to the dedicated SF folk so that they will actually reject the effort."
I just don't see it. Atmosphere will drive away readers with other tastes. I appreciated Jemison's skill and enjoyed the first two books of each of her trilogies until the unrelenting dystopic gloom sent me away in the third book of each trilogy. But for me it isn't an either or, bifrucation of genres, that attracts or repels.
Perhaps the techie stuff in the Quantum Magician might drive you away, or the introduction of one more ghoulie by Patricia Briggs., but that's to do with appreciating (or not) the writers choices, not whether they are SF or F.

The Hugo Award now explicitly recognizes Science Fiction or Fantasy. Neither what I could find on the Internet nor in my old copy of Franson and DeVore mention when the shift was made to explicitly include Fantasy in the wording of the awards. Until the fracas about group voting (2015?) I believe that the system was purely driven by the works with the most nominations getting on the final ballot. This resulted in Witch World getting nominated in 64 and Too Many Magicians in 67.
So as to history, there has been an assumption that in some way, it's one field. As particularized in KatG's earlier description. Separating is not exactly a distinction without a difference, but dividing into two genres is not the point.

I had thought I clarified this earlier, but some people like one genre and not the other, while many do not care. For those with a strong preference, the difference is night and day, making SFF as a single genre seem like a gross error. People get different things out of reading, and these lines aren't just classification for classification's sake but an articulation of what works and what does not for them.

 

[NoelWell]

A strength that I appreciate on this forum is the multiplicity of viewpoints.

I could not agree more! Been to the forums (not necessarily literary) where one strong opinion is the only right one. [sigh]

 

[KatG]

Let me see if I can catch up here:

You keep saying that while ignoring Gibson's three present day books and the film Gravity. All are SF with no unreal elements.

Who says? It appears to be classified in most references as SF, as is the similar First Fifteen Lives of Harry August which won both the Campbell and Clarke SF Awards. Neither explains the principle involved, just as Transition (written under the non-SF Iain Banks authoring) has no explanation for how those characters are gifted to travel.

You're falling into a trap here that this is a just a matter of personal debate between folks of what they regard as SFF. We can certainly talk about whether we feel that a title is SF or fantasy and it's part of the fandom and the experience of SFF to do it. Hobbit and I have a long running joke on this about Gene Wolfe's New Sun/Ur-Sun series, for instance. There have even been books and such on it. But these conversations don't change the way that we collectively in the field group and sell SF and fantasy titles. Again, this is not my personal theory of what should be science fiction and what should be fantasy where I'm trying to win an argument about it. I didn't make it up. It's the system of how they've been grouped and sold for decades.

I'm assuming Gibson refers to William Gibson, but you'll have to tell me which titles you're talking about. On Claire North's books, I said that the author writes several types of fiction under multiple pen names, but mostly does fantasy/fantasy horror and that The Sudden Appearance of Hope is a fantasy novel. Which it is; it won the World Fantasy Award in 2017. I have not read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August to see exactly how she does that one, but from the coverage of the book, it is a science fiction story using quantum theory in the form of alternate universes generated by altered looping timelines by people who are able to remember the previous universes/versions of themselves (a favorite idea of altered timeline SF stories including shows like Star Trek, Doctor Who and Marvel: Agents of Shield.) It is very similar in set up to Kate Atkinson's SF novel Life After Life. So it got a Clarke nomination, which possibly made some SF fans unhappy.

Iain Banks also wrote in multiple genres, mimetic dramatic and adventure and science fiction. He was eventually talked into/forced to insert the middle initial M. for his science fiction books in the U.S. because his U.S. publishers wanted a separation from his mimetic works (probably due to BookScan.) In Transition, Banks uses the many-worlds speculation of quantum mechanics that postulates parallel realities and has people again who are able to access parallel realities by conscious connection facilitated by a drug -- a natural substance. (This is somewhat similar to the t.v. show Travelers in which operatives can time travel backwards but only their minds into hosts in the past, not their bodies.)

Aspects of quantum theory have made for many types of wild SF premises that are not very plausible science but make for interesting set-ups that are given a natural rationale. Some fans of SF feel that stories involving quantum theory, quantum entanglement, natural alternate universes/parallel realities, alternate histories and time travel all should not be considered real science fiction because they find the science usage implausible. But nonetheless the system groups them all as science fiction. Some SFF fans also like to argue that many fantasy stories aren't fantasy but instead taking place in an alternate reality/universe on the basis of quantum theory in which laws of physics, etc., are simply different. We had a discussion here once where member Owlcroft had a very narrow personal definition of fantasy fiction that required an actual person to be creating something supernaturally with intent to be fantasy and other types of fantasy stories he considered to be quantum science fiction stories of alternate universes. That doesn't change the fact that they were grouped as fantasy out in the world.

The film Gravity essentially falls into the timey-wimey folds of science fiction (very typical of film/t.v. sci-fi) by a hair from its details creating an alternate universe/timeline of Earth. The astronauts are using an imaginary Space Shuttle for their mission, but the Space Shuttles were decommissioned in the summer of 2011. The Tiangong Chinese space lab used in the movie was deployed in September 2011. So the film story, where the exact time of its events is kept nebulous, is either an alternate Earth/timeline where Space Shuttles were around longer or a near future story in which Space Shuttles have been redeveloped and are being used again. Either situation is an unreal element that does not exist. Additionally, Bullock's astronaut is collecting new discovery data in her experiment and thus it's an unreal speculative element, though again details are kept vague in the film. And then there's the Kessler Syndrome, which while proven to be an issue for LEO operations to deal with and plan for, is debated as a theory in regards to whether we've reached the predicted threshold that produces cascade debris effects in LEO. In the film, the speculated cascade effect definitively occurs -- an unreal (sort of) aspect that is made naturally occurring for the story. Obviously these unrealities are slight and audiences aren't focused on them mostly, but it still makes it grouped as science fiction. There are a number of people who feel Gravity doesn't count as science fiction, including the guy who created it, but grouping is going to happen anyway. (It is also worth noting that several SFF awards will sometimes give nominations to non-science fiction films/t.v. for dramatic presentation awards if they are about space/historical, such as Apollo 13 and Hidden Figures. But they don't do it for the written fiction awards.)

I have asked this questions due to constraints imposed on me by the publishing industry.

See, even Smashwords, being the most writer-friendly platform out there, confines me into the boundaries, where I have to select the following primary and secondary genres:

Fiction -> Fantasy -> Paranormal (since I have demons, dragons, gods, and magic artifacts)
and
Fiction -> Science fiction -> Space opera (since much of the action occurs in and about space) .....

It probably inflamed my concern that the agents and publishers are very strict about the genres they are agreeable to read and accept.

Okay, first off, Smashwords is not the publishing industry. It's an e-book publishing vendor primarily for self-pubbed works. (And I don't consider Smashwords that writer-friendly, none of the e-book vendors are, but that's a discussion for another time.) To sell on their online platform, you have to use their sub-categories as tags, but their sub-categories are not particularly reflective of the actual market. They have the sub-category of "General" Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction. That is not a thing and seems to be a catch-all. They have Contemporary and Paranormal Fantasy, the latter not apparently being Paranormal Romance so it's not really clear what the difference is between them. In Romance, they don't have Paranormal, just Fantasy Romance, etc. So that may be annoying, but as you have, you do the best you can with what tags they allow you.

But if you're going out to agents and license publishers for a license deal, you don't want to be trying to use Smashwords' sub-categories, I would suggest, because Smashwords has clearly made up stuff to suit itself. And no, agents and publishers are not strict in sub-categories in SFFH. Some agents like certain sub-categories or only do YA SFF, etc., and they'll specify it, or things they don't like but people have been known to change their minds on that. Mostly they'll look at a broad range and the big and majority of the category publishers do both SF and fantasy, so agents who do one also usually represent the other. And for publishers, the larger they are, the greater variety of SFF they publish and marketing at the sub-category level is flexible. And again, futuristic fantasy is a thing. It exists. It may even be getting a market expansion in the next few years. If you have more questions about this, we can talk about them in the Writing Forum.

 

[NoelWell]

Okay, first off, Smashwords is not the publishing industry. It's an e-book publishing vendor primarily for self-pubbed works. (And I don't consider Smashwords that writer-friendly, none of the e-book vendors are, but that's a discussion for another time.)

Well, de-facto, Smashwords had made themselves a part of publishing industry, through disruption, whether others agree or not. And from the author's perspective, thanks to them, I do not have to put up with perpetual stonewalling and rejection. Being on their platform, I do have to agree to be confined into their definitions of the genre, whether I agree or not. Such is this ruthless world.

From the purely technology POV, I agree that Smashwords is not THAT writer-friendly. Their conversion engine is difficult to satisfy and very restrictive on Word manuscripts. But at least they do not reject anyone, other than on the basis of clearly defined guidelines. This is a huge advantage over the traditional publishing industry that keeps filling my inbox with rejection emails for the past year. My opinion will change as soon as someone else signs a contract with me.

Cheers!
Noel

 

[Stanley Steamboy]

But these conversations don't change the way that we collectively in the field group and sell SF and fantasy titles. Again, this is not my personal theory of what should be science fiction and what should be fantasy where I'm trying to win an argument about it. I didn't make it up. It's the system of how they've been grouped and sold for decades.

First, we're having what I hope is an informative and interesting debate about how something works, not about how either of us feels it works. I'm perfectly happy to be shown to be wrong - I'm just asking you to consider the function of the exceptions that I'm pointing to. Additionally, you present this "system" as being real and yourself as something of an authority on it - where are these definitions laid down, and how did you come to be their champion? Because I'm not asserting any authority myself - I'm just agreeing with some of the definitions suggested here:

Isaac Asimov, "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology."

or

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls, contains an extensive discussion of the problem of definition, under the heading "Definitions of SF". The authors regard Yugoslav born academic, writer, and critic Darko Suvin's 1972 definition as having been most useful in catalysing academic debate. Suvin's definition is: "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment".

Science fiction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The last section of that article also suggests different uses of the terms "sci-fi" and "SF" than you have been asserting as fact. Which is why it is hard to have a discussion when one party asserts authority over definitions.

I'm assuming Gibson refers to William Gibson, but you'll have to tell me which titles you're talking about.

Pattern Recognition, Spook Country and Zero History are Gibson's three novels set in the present day, deal with technology and social change, and contain no unreal elements.

They are very similar to the way Neal Stephenson's contemporarily set Cobweb, Interface, Zodiac and Reamde discuss the use of technology in society or use science as the catalyst and tool of the protagonist's quest without overt "unreality".

And then there's Bellwether, Connie Willis' excellent novel about social scientists and their research. Nothing unreal there; nominated for a nebula. While we could certainly dither about some of these other books publishing marketing, Bellwether appears to be 100% SF in its categorization and fandom.

There are certainly others that I can't think of.

Iain Banks also wrote in multiple genres, mimetic dramatic and adventure and science fiction. He was eventually talked into/forced to insert the middle initial M. for his science fiction books in the U.S. because his U.S. publishers wanted a separation from his mimetic works (probably due to BookScan.)

This does not appear to be accurate. Banks' first SF novel, Consider Phlebas, was published by MacMillan UK in 1987 under Iain M. Banks a year before St. Martins US published it. Meanwhile, the 2009 Little Brown UK imprint of Transition was an Iain Banks book, while the Orbit US was changed to M. Banks. So it would appear that Banks has had UK control of which books were M. SF and which were not going all the way back to his fourth novel. Walking On Glass and The Bridge also contain unreal elements, and were also left as Iain Banks novels, so I think it is fair to say that Iain classified Transitions among his non-SF work.

Which brings us back to the books written under the name Claire North, and whether they are SF, fantasy or neither. You're pointing to "many worlds" as the SF element in Transitions and the First Fifteen Lives of Harry August as the basis for them being science based, but works that use parallel timelines or universes that way pre-date the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics by decades - starting with HG Wells' Men Like Gods and ending with Andre Norton's The Crossroads of Time. It is a very old literary device that did not have a scientific basis until 1956. But the real problem is not the universes themselves; it's the unreal element that creates the plot: The movement between these worlds. Banks' uses a magic drug and a mental jump, North uses reincarnation - neither have a basis in science. They are unexplained miracles. Similarly, the protagonist's cloak of forgetability in The Sudden Appearance of Hope is unreal, even though its effects are explained similarly to the real fallibility of human memory. All three give the reader less than Superman's yellow sun to go on, yet you're drawing these very distinct lines between them that don't appear to apply - especially when reviewers of Hope call it "genre blending" and "reminiscent of William Gibson".


In summary, where did you get that "unreal element" definition, who is applying it to Bellwether and The Sudden Appearance of Hope, and where can I view the publishing industry's label of fantasy or SF attached to those two books? Please offer a reference more than simply KatG: You learned this from somewhere, and I want to learn it from the same source(s).

 

[Stanley Steamboy]

So the film story, where the exact time of its events is kept nebulous, is either an alternate Earth/timeline where Space Shuttles were around longer or a near future story in which Space Shuttles have been redeveloped and are being used again. Either situation is an unreal element that does not exist.

If that's the measure of an unreal element, it applies equally to Pride and Prejudice - a story full of people that never lived and mansions that were never built.

 

[Hobbit]

Another perspective to add to the discussion, which may confirm or deny your ideas:




From Science Fantasy magazine, written by Brian Stableford, November 1965.

 

[Hobbit]

And finally....



Just so happened to come across this today, whilst reading on 'the other job'.